Fortnightly Writing Competition - "Mystery"

[Oliwerko]

I love unanswered questions, half-revealed truths, mysterious happenings, and mysterious things/people we don't know much about.
Thus, the participants should enter with a story/poem that features some kind of mystery.

The story must feature something that puzzles the reader, a mysterious character and/or setting, mysterious events/actions or anything else 'mysterious' you choose.

Simply put, the story must leave an unanswered question open. It must puzzle the reader and make him guess what really took place / who really is that person / whatever you choose.

DEADLINES:
- Entries should be submitted until Tuesday 15th December ('till midnight)
- Voting will take place until Friday 18th December ('till midnight)
- Winner will be announced on Saturday 19th December

Behold, what a mysterious trophy for the most mysterious entry:


I hope that the theme is inspiring and will provide a decent dose of challenge, fun and competition!
So - go on and write a mystery that will leave us all guessing, wondering and puzzled.

Good luck!

[Atelier]

Iron Horses

   As a steam engine rattled along, cutting deep into countryside freckled with snow, a train enthusiast slumbered in one of its many carriages. He slept for a fair while - undisturbed by the gyrating pistons, or the scream of the whistle as it tore through countless junctions. This train enthusiast was at one with locomotives; and since retirement, he had devoted his life to travelling all of the lines, which spread like veins across the country.
   According to his leather notebook, only one track remained unexplored. Settle to Carlisle was a picturesque journey through the English landscape - and the red engine, made from tempered steel, ate up the track ravenously.
   With a compartment to himself, the enthusiast had his legs up on the facing seats, and had wrapped himself up in his scarf and coat. He slept like a log through it all - the whir of the heaters as they clicked on, and the corridor lights as they flickered into life after dark. The snow outside brought down a watery canvas over the window; revealing the hidden scrawls of all the passengers before him.

   The enthusiast drifted back into a state of wakefullness sometime during the night. One of the most irritating matters he had to contend with was the worthlessness of a wristwatch in the dark. Yes, he could hear it tick - yet it did not show its face. He threw his coat aside and stood up, grasping at the luggage rack to steady himself as the train rocked from side to side.
   He fumbled around the inner wall of the compartment for the lamp switch, which fired three dull bulbs in an bracket chandelier. The enthusiast yawned, and stretched his arms as if doing a cartwheel. But when he saw a man in the corner, his yawn fell dead, along with all sound and movement.
   The man wore a long leather trench coat, and a scarf that, although fastened round his neck, lay coiled in his lap. His luxuriant walrus moustache made up for the hair on his head - which was speckled like a hen's egg with age spots.
   "Oh," said the man. He had a no-fuss sort of voice, reminding one of a Colonel or an owner of a country estate. "I had been hoping to have a compartment to myself."
   The enthusiast sat back down, not taking his eyes from the man. "Yes," he said simply. "I always travel by steam - even if it is avoidable."
   "Steam is golden, of course," the moustachioed man replied. The train rocked from side-to-side as it passed over a great viaduct spanning the valley. "This journey is a frightfully long one, isn't it?" he added impatiently.
   "It is such a beautiful line, however. Filled with English bluebells - even though the night hides it from us."
   The man did not reply - he was staring out the window. The chandelier cast a faint dapple onto the snow rushing past outside, and the enthusiast could tell it had been snowing heavily during the night. Far away, thunder drummed out its impending and fast-approaching victory upon the landscape.
   "There's a storm gathering," said the man. "It will leave a bitterness on England long after it has passed over. Will we wither under its brunt?" The man turned his eyes to the enthusiast, who sat frozen, returning his stare.
   Although the compartment was warmer than a baker's oven, the enthusiast began to shiver. He became cold - just like the man's stare.
   "Here's my stop," the man said, getting slowly up from his seat. But there came no whistle from the engine, and the pistons maintained their momentum. From the luggage rack, he  took an old battered suitcase, stamped with countless marks and wearing several identification tags.
   Then, also from the rack, he took down a hat. It was a brown hat with a sloping top, and had a  leather band wrapped around it. Upon the peak was a brass emblem - which the enthusiast noticed to be that of the Queen's shield.
   "Good luck," said the man, donning the cap and giving the enthusiast a flourishing salute. In his eyes was a terrible sadness, like that of a man who had travelled a circular road with no end.
   At that moment, the tension in the compartment was relieved when the door slid open. A hunched old lady, pushing a metal tea tray, asked: "Tea or coffee?"
   The enthusiast turned to the man - but found no-one there. Just an empty seat; an empty luggage rack; and, apart from himself, an empty compartment.
   "Nothing, thank you," said the enthusiast. The lady left. The train continued on it's way, heaving and sweating from the exertion. In one of its many compartments slumbered the enthusiast; very much alone.

[Sinitrena]

The Girl in Rags


The beggar didn't seem very old. She looked maybe fourteen or fifteen. Her brown hair was dirty, unwashed, and her clothes were rags. But she still didn't look like any other beggar. Unlike the other men and women you could see here and there in the streets, she didn't sit on the cobblestones. She knelt on the ground, her body upright and her hands in front of her formed like a bowl. She didn't ask for money. Her stoic look was fixed on the houses in front of her. Consequently, her hands were empty. If people gave money at all, they would give it to those most insistent. But the girl just knelt there, looked into nothingness and kept silent.

Sometimes men or women walked by, sometimes they bumped into her. She didn't seem to notice, not even when they shouted at her, not even when they hurt her. And as she didn't seem to notice their unfriendliness, they didn't notice the other strange things about her. They didn't see that her eyes, half covered by her filthy hair, were neither green nor blue but a dark shade of violet, or that she never moved, that she knelt on the same corner of the street day in and day out, night after night. She didn't eat and the only movement she ever made was when someone â€" for whatever reason â€" dropped a coin in her hands. Then she opened them for a second and the silver fell into the mud in front of her knees where it vanished as if it had never been there. She never smiled, nor talked, nor wept.

Nobody remembered since when she was there, when she had first arrived and made the corner her home but after a while it was just normal that she was there. Nobody paid her any attention, not even the shop-owners who usually drove all the beggars away because they interfered with their business. She didn't interfere so she wasn't important to them. She probably would have been if she died but she lived and was therefore unimportant, not even a human being anymore, more like a statue.

It was nearly three years after her arrival that something about her changed. It was when a young man, around the same age as herself, with lilac eyes, stopped in front of her. His clothes were expensive, the look in his eyes was proud. He looked down at her but he didn't hand her money or talk to her. It was in the middle of the night so nobody watched as she opened her hands as she did when someone gave her money, and the silver that had previously disappeared reappeared in her small hands. The man knelt down but the girl still didn't look at him. He held his hands under hers and when she opened them again the money fell in his hands.

“Not enough.”, he said angrily.

“No”, she said and her look shifted to the coins and then to the face of the man. “I like them anyway.”

“Not enough.”, he repeated but more sad than angry this time.

“Kindness without knowledge is difficult to give. They don't understand. They do not know enough.”

“Not enough.”, he agreed but it didn't seem to change his mind.

“I know. I just wish I could have told them, asked them. They help, the really do.”

“Not enough.”, he said and she knew that this was his final statement.

The man stood up from the ground and looked at the girl who had once again formed a bowl with her hands. She still knelt upright but her expression had changed. It wasn't stoic anymore. There were creases around her eyes and her mouth twitched. She didn't look at the houses in front of her anymore either but at her hands which were shaking.

“You will stay?”, he asked, sad.

“I have to.”, she answered and he nodded. He had seen this before, he understood, but he felt sad about it anyway. When he went away they both were weeping.

The next morning nearly nobody noticed a difference. Just a few of the regular passers-by saw that she had been crying. She looked older, too. At first it didn't mean much to them. A lot of beggars cried but after a few steps they remembered that she never wept or talked or moved and it struck them as odd. But she was just a beggar so they walked on. They bought and sold, they talked and worked as usual â€" for the next three days and the girl stayed with them for these days even though they hadn't given her enough.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why are all my stories so sad? 

[uncle-mum]

A fresh crack had appeared in the window.  Imogen had noticed it the morning before, though the other matters weighing on her mind had meant that she paid it no real regard.

---

These two bastard sentences have taken me about as long to do as almost any of my other entries (and I'm still not 100% convinced about the placement of the final "had")

[Oliwerko]

Thanks for getting in guys!

I love the idea of the violet eyes.

And regarding uncle-mum's entry, I don't really know what to think about it 

Anyway, keep up the good work!
(Looking forward to Iron Horses)

[Jim Reed]

Undercover:

They were on his tail.

He had to hide or take them on; and he didn't have his handy .75 recoiless with him. Besides that, he was in a hurry. He heard voices down the stairs shouting orders and the sound of stomping boots. They were closing his escape routes one by one. As the Moon station was a closed enviroment, he couldn't hide for long. He had to make it to the docks before they cut him off. Using the maintenance tubes was a risky idea, he thought. If their commanding officer was smart enough, he'd have guards at every exit from here to the docks.

Offcourse, Jack "the card" Wester had it all planned out. Their captain was a burly, middle aged, by-the-book, kind of fellow, and he couldn't think ahead more than he needed to check his background last night at the poker game. It's pointless to say he almost went to his quarters without his underwear. It was his good fortune that Jack wasn't interested in the choice of pattern his wife selected for his boxers.

Jack was wondering why were they on his tail. How could a blunt-nose like the duty officer sniff his lucrative drug smuggling ordeal within the station. He was with it two years for now, and he didn't see a hint of anyone's interference. Maybe it was the Yeng-she Yakuza that finnaly cought scent of it? They were big time players on the station and they had eyes everywhere.

Heaving a mental sigh, he abandoned that particular train of though, as that couldn't help him in his current situation. They were sealing the hatches around him everywhere, and he probably had 10 minutes before anyone with half a brain figured out where he is. He had to keep moving. And crawling through a 0.5 metre high tube was not very fast.

At the last hatch he was allready worked up from the heat in the maintenance tubes. The sweat didn't bother him. He was elated because he succsesfully played the customs office around their own base. He opened the last hatch with a smile on his face.

His smile was frozen like a stone gargoyle at the time he recognised the black hole in his vision. It was the bussiness end of a police D-razor riot gun, hovering just below his girlfriends devious grin.



It's my first entry ever, so please excuse the shortness of it. I also don't type english too well. =(

[Oddysseus]

Great topic!  I had a lot of fun with this.

Mystery on Planet 9

I slid the helmet over my head and it locked in place with an audible click. Then came the whoosh of the suit's ventilation system pumping air over my face. My second-in-command nodded in my direction, then walked over to the hatch control panel. As the door slowly slid up, the eerie green light of the planet washed over us. I took a breath of the suit's stale air and stepped out onto the surface.

"Wow," said my second-in-command. "Have you ever seen anything like it, Julie?"
"It's incredible, Ron."
I turned around to see Julie step out of the ship as if in a daze, her gloved hand gripping the edge of the hatch entryway.
"Just incredible."
"We're not here to sightsee." I reminded them. "And this channel is being recorded for the ship's log, so keep the 'ooh's and 'ahh's to a minimum."
"Yes, sir." snapped Ron, turning to face me. Julie was still staring towards the mountains in the distance.

"Right." I started, unsheathing my machete and pointing towards the treeline. "We'll head west for an hour or so, then stop to do a systems check. If the suits are holding up under the humidity and moisture, we'll go further. If not, we'll head back. Any questions?"

Static answered me. We headed off towards the dense green jungle, our feet sinking into the soft vermillion soil with each step.

I lifted the machete and hacked off a branch to create an entry through the thick vines and foliage.  "Bag and tag as we go, Ron."
Ron nodded and picked a small wriggling creature off the branch I had just felled. He slid it gently into a compartment on his suit.
"Julie. Julie!" Her helmet was tilted towards the cold blue sun, setting over the distant gray hills. "Stay close.  Once we get going, we won't slow down." She nodded absently. I turned back to the task at hand.

Another branch cracked angrily under the blade of my machete.  A cloud of insects scattered at the sound. Soggy branches crunched under our boots.
"So many specimens!" said Ron, stooping to pick up another. "We'll be cataloguing for weeks!"
"Make sure you're putting those critters in separate compartments." I cautioned. "I don't want to find one fat grub and twenty empty carapaces when we unload your pockets."
I parted a wall of leaves and stared at the clearing ahead. A red river was winding lazily by. "The water must pick up minerals from this red soil." I turned to Ron. He muttered agreement as he bent to scoop something out of the muck.

"Wait!" I stopped him. "Whatever's in this water could corrode our suits. Julie, you're the contamination expert - do you think it's safe?"
"Yeah, Julie. What do you..." Ron trailed off. I knew before I turned my head what I would find. No Julie.

"I thought you were keeping an eye on her, Ron."
"I thought you were."
"I assumed she was following us."
"Me too."  Ron turned in a slow circle. "Man, she could be... any..."

"The first thing we're going to do is retrace our steps."
Ron snapped back to look at me.  "Right. You're right. Steps."
Our footprints were still clearly visible in the spongy soil. We followed them back to the point were our two tracks were joined by another. This track trailed off toward the north. As my eyes followed them up towards the horizon, I saw a tall violet structure breaking through the screen of green leaves in the distance. How had I missed that?

"I guess we were so focused on what was right in front of us that we didn't see that... what is that?" Ron muttered.
"Ruins. Must be." My voice sounded far away. "No one's been here since..."
"Whoa." breathed Ron. "It must be a hundred, no, three hundred years old."
"Let's not stand here gawking." I said finally. "Julie's in there, somewhere."
"Right."
We tramped towards the towering violet spires.

When we got to the site, there wasn't much to see. No sign of Julie. Her footsteps ended on the cold stone steps of the ruins. We scouted around the site as long as we could, but our oxygen tanks were running low. We had to head back to the ship.
Neither one of us spoke the whole way back.

We walked into the ship's hatch, and sat alone with our thoughts as we waited for the chamber to repressurize and the oxygen to pump in. Then, we shed our suits and stowed them on the empty storage shelf, and walked up the ramp towards the mess hall.
Julie was there, sipping a cup of tea.

"Julie!"  Shouted Ron. "We thought you'd..."
"How'd you get back?" I asked.

"What do you mean 'how?' I walked. My com unit was down, so I came back to the ship for repairs."
"Well, we're just glad you're okay." said Ron, walking past me.
I shot out an arm to hold him back.
"Where's your suit?" I continued.
"My suit?"
"Ron and I just stowed our suits in the storage unit. Your suit wasn't there. Where is it?"

She took a long sip of her tea. "Like I said, my com unit was down, so I came back to the ship for repairs. I gave my suit to the maintenance bots."

My hand slid down to the holster of my pulse cannon. "So, if I were to go to the maintenance unit right now, your suit would be in there?"
Her eyes met mine cooly. "Of course." Another sip. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Plausible. Except...
"Footsteps." I said as I drew the cannon and aimed it squarely at her head. Ron started to shake and sputter.
"Footsteps?"
"We followed your footsteps to those purple ruins in the north." I continued, over the sound of blood pounding in my ears.

"Oh, yes. I thought that place looked neat, so I went there." She uncrossed her legs and got to her feet. "I would have told you, but my com was down, as I've said." She took a step towards us.

"Funny thing about those footprints," I said, in as level a voice as I could manage, "there were plenty of footprints going into the ruins... but there weren't any coming out."

A smile slithered across her face.
My finger tightened on the trigger.

[Oliwerko]

Hey, nice participation 

One thing is for sure - the competition is going to be tough 

[I_AM_RESISTY]

I just joined at suggestion of a friend.
Don't be too harsh, ja?

Spires

Anybody you ask on the street, assuming you can find anyone, 
will tell you that the spires were the start of all this shit.   
The average person would be dead wrong, though. As usual.

Those goliath twisted tributes to madness were just symptoms of 
the underlying illness.

They first showed late 2012, thrusting violently from the 
Earth's surface like frenzied claws.

But you know that, and I'm getting carried away with analogies. 
I guess I'm writing this because there's no telling if
I'll know it in a few hours.  But I don't think it really 
matters either way, because there's no telling if the scuttling 
noises and jumping shadows are actually there, or products of 
of my own fractured mind.

No telling.

But I digress; the shadows and noises will come, but I'm 
wasting time better spent on trying to remember.

Once the spires erupted, there was a media frenzy, as usual. 
News crews were vying to take footage for their special 
,,Breaking News" segments. Though they didn't move, there must 
have been week's worth of footage shot of those things within 
the first week alone.

Scientists did what scientists do, trying to determine the 
composition of the monoliths, but they couldn't break any 
pieces off to study. Some third-world countries attacked them 
in earnest, but if a chunk came off... there was no telling. Of 
course governments did what governments do and tried to ease 
the people, assuring it was nothing. As usual.  And the idiotic 
public didn't question them much, or for long.

As usual.

Sooner or later, people just seemed to forget about the spires, 
ignoring them completely and giving, at best, uncomfortable 
curt replies when confronted directly about them.  Some of us 
didn't get this way, but it affected us all.  The main groups 
who didn't get any of the apathy spreading were the mentally 
ill and religious. But it did manage to make things worse, all 
around. The depressed fell deeper into their own little worlds, 
and most offed themselves within the first month. the manics 
flew into higher and more violent frenzies, eventually ending 
in violent crimes and street mobs. And us schizophrenics began 
to see more and hear more than ever, to the point where we were 
labeled as prophets by some of the more zealous religious 
people.

The religious, however, got it far worse, I would think. 
Average church goers became mindless zealots, taking simple 
ceremonies and traditions to the point of life or death events. 
Rumors of ,,martyrs" dying on crosses so their congregation may 
,,taste the flesh and blood of Christ" began daily occurrences, 
and only the most intelligent, seemingly incorruptible of 
people didn't get lose themselves in the insanity of the "New 
Way" preachers and their cult-like followers; though their 
churches did quite literally exact their ,,pound of flesh" for 
the trespass. As usual.

[nihilyst]

Okay, I hope that's understandable. Writing in English is haaaaard. So don't be too harsh
--------------
The Storm

When he woke up that Monday morning, he had a terrible head-ache from last night’s party. The smell of smoke and ouzo had crept deep into his clothes. A cold breeze dripped threw the half-open window. Behind the blinds the sky was a dull and depressing steel-blue, like a worn-down backyard wall. The clouds spray-painted it grey as if to prepare it for a funeral.

He stood up, brushed his teeth, opened a new can of beer and stepped on the balcony. Fourth story. The park lay below him, silently. Autumn leaves were scattered by the wind. As he drank and tried to wash the endless buzzing sound in his head away, the phone rang. The shrieking tone made him upset. The answerphone sprung to life, his Alter Ego cheerfully announcing that he was not at home and that the caller may leave a message behind. Beep. »Anthony, hey, still sleeping?« Even Mary’s soft voice couldn’t cheer him up. The humming and buzzing sound of a storm, that wasn’t there. The clouds, it seemed, anxiously moved away to the south. To the ocean, Anthony thought. The open sea, glimmering blue under the summer sun. »Anyway, just wanted to drop a call and check if you found home last night. It was cool that you came after all. The party wouldn’t have been this great without you, well, at least for me, I guess. Perhaps we could …« Then the line went silent. Anthony wondered and stepped inside again. Maybe she hung up by accident, he thought. Or there was a problem with his answering machine, who knew? He dialed. Digit by digit Mary’s number appeared on the display. He knew it by heart. The line was busy.

And all of a sudden he felt that something was wrong. Not particulary with the phone, and not even with the humming and buzzing and sawing sound that raged inside his head (or was it outside?), not with his apartment and not with the balcony and the park which mournfully howled underneath. But with the world.

As he put on his coat, the woolen scarf and the earmuffs (they had been a present, he thought, a present from Mary to his last birthday), he felt like being tickled by an electrical current inside his stomach. He left his wallet behind and went down the staircase. In the other apartments ran TVs or coffee machines, but even they sounded wrong, as if they just were a tape deck constantly playing the same “Everything’s fine!” morning atmosphere.

Outside he could overlook the whole city and the hills in the distance. A dark spiral of clouds hovered above spinning like a children’s roundabout. Behind it, everything was dark like in the very beginning of days. Anthony stood baffled as the vortex crept nearer. Even when it perfectly stood above him, he did not move.

The humming, the buzzing, the sawing, all of a sudden everything was gone. Anthony gazed into the sky. All around him lay in a woeful gloom, and autumn leaves rustled in a gentle wind.

[Oliwerko]

Okay folks, wonderful entries so far!

Just a reminder that today is the last day of the competition - and should anyone need some more hours, let me know, we don't want to come short of a great story because of timezones 

[ashmc2]

I need you he says

I need you to find the way home

I need you to find a way to be whole

The partition stretches far and wide

I see through the film

The glass is thick

It won't break under my pounding

I sense the wolves coming

They smell my masculinity

The blood of my dreams

My thoughts now muddled and numb

I fear them but I will not succumb

I will stand my ground

Inside my glass prison it's just them and me

I will stand firm I say

Outside the glass the world goes by

They see without seeing me

I talk with the smile in the jar

Normalcy, they see my ruse

I communicate, my facade is strong

I interact, yet I'm alone inside this cage

Alone but for the wolves

They come to hamstring me

They come to take me down

I stand firm

The glass is opaque now; yet I see

The glass is strong; it laughs at me

The blood smudges from my knuckles

Smears portray my struggle

They increase the hunt, blood fueling their determination

I look up from my defeated musings

I will stand firm

It dawns on me the path I must take

I will climb out

My hands fumble yet again in defeat

The glass laughs at my impotence

Time fades and I fall deeper

They snarl and lick their chops

I need the light

Spring you know I need you here

My mind warms

I stand erect

I am the master of my domain

My back erupts, I writhe in pain

I am truly alive

Icarus wings bloom from my spine

Upward I lift as the wolves nip at my soles

The cusp of my dark precipice is before my eye

The clouds part as I enter the world anew

The sun blesses my face

I have beat you once again

I am the master of my domain

I stand firm



Enter the Box...AKA...Master of My Domain

I've been lurking for a few days now. I found the site a week ago looking for point-and-click game software for my son. (Free) I have made it through 2 hrs of Youtube tutorials learning source code, which I figured he would need some guidance. We both are currently in the script/storyboard mode for our individual projects. I am a nerd that has been around since Zork. Nice to meet everyone.   

[SomeSickSelf]

Welcome to the forums, ashmc2.

Here's my entry.  It's a bit rushed, but I've been telling myself I'll enter this competition for at least three fortnights now. 

-------
Ghost Story

There is a ghost, they say, who haunts the Palisades.   A twisted, writhing wraith; the shadow of a soul now departed.  It dwells along the cliff side, and in the swamps below, its form grotesque, and subhuman.  It emerges in darkness and in light, and whispers words of caution, cryptic and terrifying, to the bold, and the foolish who come to provoke, or to refute its tortured presence.

The entity, they say, is young, and there are still many left alive who can recall a time before its birth.  When asked they lead us to Alex, who was first to encounter the ghost, and to whom alone was imparted the story of its origin.

“It was once a man,” Alex tells us, “but no more.  That is what it told me, its voice hoarse and broken, like the sound of falling rain.  He followed the gravel trail, as many once did, to the top of the cliffs, and there he simply ceased to be.” 

“This is the most frightening kind of ghost story; for the man who vanished and became a ghost had no reason to do so.  There are no forlorn lovers, embittered rivals or unjust circumstances.  There is simply a man, who ceased to be a man.” 

“You see,” warns Alex, “there is something evil that lurks in the swamps and on the cliffs; something wholly and purely evil.  It waits there for those such as you; those who are brash, those who are foolhardy, and those who are simply ignorant.  It will rend you from your flesh, and gorge itself upon that which you once were.  There is something vile, and terrible up there.  And it isn’t the ghost.”

[uncle-mum]

Picking who to vote for was though but I'm going to go with Resisty's piece - it may not have flowed as well as some of the other entrants but it had some really nice little touches and his mystery was the one I found myself most intrigued by.

[Oliwerko]

Wow, I totally didn't expect such a huge contribution!

Thanks all of you guys for all those wonderful entries!
I hope there'll be at least as many votes as entries, because judging what's best in this case is - at least 'hard', I think.

I very much like all of them, and the 'Ghost Story' and 'Iron Horses' became my favs. 'Mystery on Planet 9', and especially 'The Girl in Rags' leave me clueless. I wonder if the authors have explanation for the story or not 

So - go ahead and tell us what you like the best, and the one that gets most entries will be announced winner on Saturday.

[ashmc2]

I’m a newbie so I’m not totally certain on the voting rules for this contest so I’m not sure if I get to vote. If I do have a vote, I’m picking Planet 9. For such a short piece I was impressed the depth that the story conveyed. I was left wanting more and aggravated there wasn’t.

As an aside, I couldn’t help but tie “Spires” and “Planet 9” together. With Plant 9 being Earth 300 years after the Spires incident. Plant 9’s “violet spires” being those same 2012 spires, which have new humans coming back to manipulate. And you could even go as far as tying in the inhuman qualities and “violet eyes” of “The Girl in Rags” to the existence of this entity farther back through human history. But that would just be crazy!

[Sinitrena]

That is a tough decision. I like them all. But I had to chose and my vote goes to SomeSickSelf and his Ghost Story

As an aside, I couldn’t help but tie “Spires” and “Planet 9” together. With Plant 9 being Earth 300 years after the Spires incident. Plant 9’s “violet spires” being those same 2012 spires, which have new humans coming back to manipulate. And you could even go as far as tying in the inhuman qualities and “violet eyes” of “The Girl in Rags” to the existence of this entity farther back through human history. But that would just be crazy!

Yeah, I thought something similar. You could tie some of the stories together too, not just Spires and Planet 9. My "Girl in Rags" and nihilists "The Storm" fit together as well.

'Mystery on Planet 9', and especially 'The Girl in Rags' leave me clueless. I wonder if the authors have explanation for the story or not

Yes, I have an explanation. If you really want to know more: Read on (I put it in spoilers just in case someone prefers to let the story stand for itself.)

Spoiler

I only realized it after I've written the story, but it helps to explain it. There is a connection to the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham asks God to spare the city if there is a specific number of righteous people in the town. They only find Lot. (Something like that)
In my story the focus is on the search for righteous people. This is what the girl is doing. You may see her as a god or an angle but I had something like destiny in mind. She doesn't move or talk so that she doesn't influence the people and they act on their own kindness or generosity (which they don't do). That's why she says she wished she could have told them. They don't know why it is more important to give her money than anybody else - or why it may be important to give at all.
The man is a god or angel or destiny as she is, but he's probably senior to her and it is his decision if the inhabitants of the town have bought their lives or not. They have not. The girl disagrees. She thinks there is more to being righteous then to give money to a stranger. She probably sees them act kind and loving, but this isn't explicitly said in the story. But she feels for those people and stays with them until the end. She is sad because the city is lost and she can't do anything anymore and he is sad because he will lose her like he has lost others before.
A minor point: The violet eyes don't mean anything except for differentiating her from normal people. And I just like violet and I think it would be a lovely colour for eyes.   
It's strange to explain one's own story, but I hope I made it a bit clearer.

[close]

[Oliwerko]

There's no way I could do that assosiacion, thanks 

[ashmc2]

I love unanswered questions, half-revealed truths, mysterious happenings, and mysterious things/people we don't know much about.

Simply put, the story must leave an unanswered question open. It must puzzle the reader and make him guess what really took place / who really is that person / whatever you choose.

So - go on and write a mystery that will leave us all guessing, wondering and puzzled.

You asked for it.

I never would have figured that storyline out as written, but I really like the concept.

[Oliwerko]

Hmmm.....I wonder what do do when there will be not enough votes by tomorrow 

Isn't 3 days enough?