Fortnightly Writing Competition: Betwixt The Stars (RESULTS)

[EjectedStar]

Welcome to the Fortnightly Writing Competition, where everything is made up and the points don't matter! (Other than for voting purposes, of course, and AGS Forum street cred)

Participants will have roughly two weeks to write a short story of the current theme.  All are welcome!

This week the theme will be:

â˜...Betwixt the Starsâ˜...

I love the allure of the cosmos, the unknown, the infinite possibilities, the danger that could be lurking behind the nearest cosmological object. Feel free to let your fingers run wild across your keyboards from hard sci-fi to whimsical space whales frolicking in zero-g. This is a place of wonder and awe!



The competition begins now! Participants will have until May 19th, 2021 May 21st, 2021  to post their story!

Voting will commence the same as the previous FWC with each voter having 10 points to spread between each entry, awarding points as you see fit.  Critique is always welcome and it's nice to get a paragraph of feedback on your work (and justifying your tally of votes). Any unused votes will be spread among the other participants.

[Sinitrena]

Between your Stars

Between the stars there is no darkness. Between the stars there is no sadness. Between the stars there lies a world â€" a world of wonder far and wide. It is a world of life and love. It is a world of dance and dream.

Whose world? - you ask. Whose dream? - you wonder.

Between the stars â€" eternity. Between the stars â€" ends, beginnings, ends again. Endless, timeless, infinite. Life here, death there. And always different.

And you? Look! You look upon it, look upon nothing and you see. A world! A lake, a tree, a fish? A sun, a desert, skeletons? Oceans, mountains, dragons even?

Behind you, there are some.

Or there, in nothing drifting, lost, alone, a spaceship long forgotten? Or sleeping just for this one moment once in time?

An alien race? A monster? Itself as fearsome as the sun?

That’s it. You hear it call. From far away, you hear its cries, so lost, so lonely, so alone. So wonderful its skin, a beauty in the vacuum. Red, blue, green, yellow â€" all colours needed, none is wasted.

It breathes slowly. It breathes and it moves the world. The worlds.

All worlds. It breathes in, it breathes out and planets wander through ellipses. A beat like music and yet… And yet the movement is so calm, so clear, so… mathematical.

You knock the beat now on the desk. You hear it beating like your heart. The beat of music, beat of life, beat of all eternity. It sings a melody. Your melody. This is your melody, yours alone. And still, and still it is the song of everything.

A whale. Is it a whale? No, not a whale. Why would a whale swim through outer space?

A spaceship then? No, not that either?

And outer space, why outer space? There are stars there in the sky. Bright and yellow like the sun.

Yes, and…? You wonder now. You dreamed. You dreamed and lost the world. Lost it in song and fantasy, lost it in all eternity.

In an alien monster, moving moons and planets, stars and galaxies.

She takes the paper, shakes her head. She sighs, her pen is red. The mark is there, it’s always there. Under the starry sky, she said. And: failed again, she says. Can’t ever listen. Dreams. Disrupts the class. Can’t ever listen. Sad.

You take the paper back, stare down on it. A tear drips down, the crayon blurs. And there, it opens there the monster’s eyes. The monster, it stares back. Its song is gone now, like its breath. No planets move now, none. The worlds stand still.

And yet your heart beats faster. You crumple up the paper, you throw it far away. Why keep it now? Why keep it ever? The monster’s eyes were just a smudge. The monster’s world was just a dream. Why dream? Why now? Why ever?

The world stands still. Just different now. They stare at you. You know the word already.

Out!

You go.

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

Okay, I drew a blank on this topic, or rather, I had many different ideas but none that really seemed like something I felt like writing (too long, not interessting, done before, done by myself before, goes nowhere, and so on and so forth). So I went with something like stream-of-conciousness instead of a story that's actually organized beforehand. For the fun of it, I limited myself to 500 words (500 + 3 for the title, that is) and, well, that's what you got. I hope it didn't turn out too confusing.

[EjectedStar]

I really liked the stream of consciousness Sinitrena!  It's not something I usually read, but maybe I'll have to change that now. Hm.

Since not too many people have replied, I wrote something up while I had some down time at work, just something to do, I guess! Not part of the competition, but more things to read!

Smear

A dizzying array of lights played across Lieutenant Vaughn’s eyelids. It was a pleasant experience, a personal kaleidoscope in the darkness that encompassed him. A shrill alarm erupted somewhere behind him and dug its way into his eardrum, threatening to explode the many small bones that made up his auditory canal. With a start he ripped his eyes open and took in the destruction that surrounded him.

The starship Joan of Arc splayed out in front of him, or at least, what remained of her. To Vaughn it looked as if a massive animal had been disemboweled with a mighty slash across its abdomen. Thousands and thousands of pieces of the ship floated in zero-g around their origin point, somewhere within the corpse of the starship. Explosions buffeted the debris, sending enormous chunks of spacecraft out into the cosmos, never to be seen again, and most likely in the vastness of space, to continue their journey for eons.

Vaughn tried to crane around in his spacesuit, to get a look at the rest of what remained of their fleet, but in space, it’s difficult to reorient yourself, and his suit had no thrusters. His trajectory had him hurtling backwards out into nothingness, and with no way to control his heavenly path, his fate was much like the chunks of debris that disappeared into the inky blackness.

He keyed his mic inside his helmet with a deft and well-practiced tilt of his chin. “Mayday, mayday,” he grunted out, his voice coarse and dry within his throat, “this is Lieutenant Vaughn of the Joan of Arc, I am off-ship without tether and adrift, does anybody copy?”

He released the mic and nothing but static returned to his ears. He flicked another switch inside his helmet and a heads-up display filled his vision. A type of radar screen pinged to life and showed the last known location of the rest of his fleet. The Joan of Arc was a dark grey circle in the radar field, indicating that the ship was irreparably dead in the water, 99% of it’s systems had to be destroyed to show up as dark grey. Vaughn’s breath caught in his throat as the radar ping swept out around him, and fifteen other dark grey circles appeared on his screen.

They were all gone. Every last one of them. Not one ship in the fleet had survived the battle. A last ditch effort to keep the Fentelian’s at bay, having held them off at each successive rally point, only to be overwhelmed and pushed back another relay station. But now, they had arrived at Earth, and the United Coalition had thrown up its final effort. His eyes played across each grey dot, signifying a lost ship and at least 1,000 Coalition soldiers housed within them.

Vaughn attempted to turn and shift once again, the bulky emergency spacesuit restricting his movement. Achingly slow, his suit began to turn, and a massive ball of blue encompassed his view. Swirls of white clouds rotated around the planet’s surface, seemingly fluffy, even at this far distance from them. The planet was lost, but it still brought a bittersweet smile to Vaughn’s face. He had fought for that planet, had trained for years and fought in countless battles for it. It was fitting that his journey would end here in high orbit among the stars looking down at it.

A large shadow began to trace across his faceplate, and he had just enough time to tear his eyes away from sprawl of green continents below him.

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

“What was that?” Commandant Anders asked as something shuddered and smeared across the bridge’s viewscreen.

“Nothing to be worried about,” Valrek said as he flicked an eyestalk up toward the monitor which displayed the forward sensors, “probably just some space debris.”

“Hmm,” Anders mused as the smear ran across the display and out of the sensors reach. “Are the planet busters ready?”

“Aye, Commandant,” Valrek said, flipping the little plastic case up that enclosed a red, shiny button. He poised a wet finger above it, ready for the Commandant's word.

“Fire when ready,” Anders said, his tone of voice indicating how bored he was.

[Sinitrena]

I really liked the stream of consciousness Sinitrena!  It's not something I usually read, but maybe I'll have to change that now. Hm.

Me neither. Too often, people call something stream of conciousness and think that means they don't need to follow any king of internal logic.

Since not too many people have replied (...)

That's normal. We usually get activity in this competition in the last two or three days. Writing takes time, after all.

[BarbWire]

I have decided to remove my entry because I'm really not satisfied with my story. 

[Sinitrena]

TEXT REMOVED (see above and below for reason)

Is the bolded part supposed to be there? Or did your notes jump around a bit?

[BarbWire]

Thanks Sinitrena for pointing out the error.  I haven't a clue what happened there. I have now removed my story because I decided it was crap. 

[RetroJay]

Hi, all good Peeps.
Here is my contribution for the writing competition.
I hope you all enjoy. 

                                                                                                        HUMANS
Reverse thrusters fire as the transport ship, from Earth, approaches the international Space station. Since all nations finally agreed to unite, in one global space effort, money was no problem and so the station had grown into a vast and impressive hub for all nations to work on and indeed live happily, most of the time. As with all things there was the odd argument, between the stations operators and inhabitants, but nothing to take away from the sheer scale and beauty of the behemoth, orbiting silently around an altogether unhealthy looking Earth. “What a shit hole!” Anderson thought, as he took one last look out the starboard window before Earth was, thankfully, obscured by the station.

An hour later, after a lengthy list of checks on him and his transport were over, he manoeuvred his craft to docking bay 13. “Hmm... Unlucky for some.” he though. The reason for his journey here was to pilot the latest leap in space technology. For years the worlds 'greatest minds' had been working on 'faster than light travel'. As wonderful as all this sounds the fuel it required was known as 'Helium 3' and was only found on the Moon. Anderson had a moment of nostalgia, as his craft glided through the open hangar doors, and thought to himself “I used to love looking at the Moon. Probably one of the best things about Earth and then one night it was... Just... gone, forever.” Extensive mining, for Helium 3, had taken its toll to the point where the man in the Moon couldn’t take it any longer and died in a spectacularly grim fashion. That was pretty much the end for Earth, not that it was doing that great before.

However, the whole Human race was counting on Captain Anderson. His mission? To pilot a state of the art ship at the speed of light. With all the money, time and resources that had been thrown into creating this 'marvel of science' no one could agree on a name for it, so it ended up with the unimaginative label of 'Enterprise'. The idea was the on-board computer would use half of the fuel tanks to travel as far as it could, beyond our solar system and then use the remaining half to get Anderson home. His transport now in a designated spot in the bay disembarked to a fanfare with scientists and many of his other peers cheering and smiling, although only on the outside.

He had never been popular, since the dreadful incident on another mission where he had jettisoned a, rather expensive, payload into the nether to get back home alive. Anderson had then endured a long and drawn out court case stating “You may call it anything you like. I personally call it self preservation.” As you can imagine, that went down like a lead balloon and so he was surprised when his name came up as the man to undertake this mission. Anderson knew why though. He was outspoken and had stepped on many toes during his career and in general wasn’t liked. Deep down he knew that if this mission went south then no-one would give a damn about him. They had 5 other Enterprises, this was just the first test and he was a crash test dummy.

After an unnecessarily long attack, by the world’s press and briefing, he finally settled into the cockpit of the Enterprise. As the canopy closed, with a swoosh, the outside noise thankfully ceased and Anderson, powering up the craft, faultlessly piloted out of the hangar doors. Reaching a safe distance from the space station, using conventional thrusters, his headset crackled and mission control gave Anderson the go ahead, with what seemed to be a rather abrupt count down from ten to zero and with a quick “good luck Captain” thrown in, almost as if it was an after thought. Pushing a red button the Enterprise computer came alive, in the guise of a calm female voice “Powering up Helium 3 core.” The whole vessel shudder and a low whirring sound could be heard, that reverberated through his entire body.

For a second the ship seemed to lurch back and then the computer said calmly “Systems online. Jumping in... 3... 2... 1...” Anderson was pushed back into his seat as the ship violently pounced forward, in a roar of the igniting thrusters. He couldn’t really see anything, other than lines of light and different coloured patches, outside the cockpit window. The ships computer announced, after only about five seconds “Leaving Solar System. All systems operating at normal temperatures. Phase two in 3... 2... 1...” Anderson’s ears popped as the ships secondary thrusters ignited.

The computer calmly exclaimed “Distance from Earth... 20 million Light years.” What!? Anderson began to panic “No! You stupid bitch!... You were supposed to stop at 10! Mission control... Do you read?” No reply and to Anderson’s terror the Enterprise continued to speed up. “40... 60... 80.. 90 million light years.” At this moment Anderson realised there was no return. The engines would cut out any minute. He was morbidly surprised that they had got this far. The eggheads had obviously underestimated how potent 'Helium 3' was. Resignation had set in, almost instantly, as he felt strangely calm with the prospects of his non-existent future.

“Wait! What’s happening?” Outside the window, space seemed to be gradually turning from pitch black to a dark blue then to light blue and then, finally, a blinding white. The last thing Anderson heard was the ship’s computer say “500 million light years away from Earth.” The light coming in through the window was so intense that it was burning his face and he tried to shield his blistering skin and then... SMASH! ... Anderson and the Enterprise were no more.


Entering a brightly lit room, through a heavy oak door, an elderly man with a long white beard, long white robes and holding a staff walks over to a large alcove, where upon several shelves he has many ornate 'snow globe' like orbs, each on their own wooden plinths. Looking down, at the smashed crystal shards on the floor, he says solemnly “deary me! What a shame. For all their transgressions I actually had high hopes for this particular creation, of mine. Oh well, I suppose I could start again, one day. Maybe with Ants?” Brushing the broken crystal into a dustpan he empties it’s contents into a container, marked 'Rejects'. Before he places the empty wooden plinth, of the destroyed globe, carefully back on the shelf he removes a gold plaque from its base that simply reads “Humans”.

[Sinitrena]

I have now removed my story because I decided it was crap. 

Oh no, it wasn't! It was charmingly weird / or weirdly charming. One or the other, probably both! 
(If you want me to edit my earlier post to remove all parts of your story, just let me know. It's your text and you certainly have the right to decide if you want something of yours to be public.)

[BarbWire]

In best pantomime fashion "Oh yes it was"!  Quite frankly, Sinitrena, I think I must have gone into Mandle mode. I like how you described it though.
If you don't mind editing your earlier post, I will be most grateful. 

[Mandle]

Quite frankly, Sinitrena, I think I must have gone into Mandle mode.

I'm quite chuffed to have a mode where you are so awesome that you defy belief, and also annoy Sinitrena at the same time, after me!

[BarbWire]

Definition of Mandle mode:  1. A writer of interesting but weird stories, that nobody understands.    2. Takes no notice of rules.    3. Can't be bothered to vote for fellow contestants. 
4. Enjoys annoying Sinitrena for no particular reason.  .  In other words somebody who doesn't give a shit. 

[Baron]

Objection, your honour!  Speculates on motivation.  I myself enjoy annoying Sinitrena sometimes, but I tease because I care.   

So, er...  I kinda SPACED on deadline.  Any chance of an extension to Friday? 

[Sinitrena]

Everybody wants to annoy me! I feel strangely flattered... or flattened   

[Mandle]

3. Can't be bothered to vote for fellow contestants. 
4. Enjoys annoying Sinitrena for no particular reason.  .  In other words somebody who doesn't give a shit. 

I don't not give a shit.

4. Those are just playful jabs as I'm fairly sure she knows.

3. It's not that I can't be bothered voting, it's more that I feel the voting system is a bit broken. Let me explain:
The way the votes come in publicly in 4-5 categories means that everyone who is voting is going to be polite and spread their votes over as many entrants as they can, even if their true feelings were that they really thought the votes should have gone towards only one or two entrants.
The fact that the current vote score is either updated by the host while voting is still underway, or is easily calculated if not, means that the last person to vote is usually the one to determine the entire outcome of the contest as they have 4-5 equal value votes to spend as they wish.
I, as an entrant, do not want to take the responsibility to determine who wins the contest, or deliberately screw myself out of a win just to be polite. Don't get me wrong: I don't really care if I win or not. I only enter to support the contest or if I have a story that is bugging me to be written.
I would suggest that the votes are either sent privately to the host via PM or by an automated poll which doesn't show trending votes until the poll is closed, much in the way that Stupot runs MAGS. AFTER the contest is over people can then mention who they voted for and give their feedback if they wish to do so.

[EjectedStar]

I would suggest that the votes are either sent privately to the host via PM or by an automated poll which doesn't show trending votes until the poll is closed, much in the way that Stupot runs MAGS. AFTER the contest is over people can then mention who they voted for and give their feedback if they wish to do so.

I totally get that, makes a lot of sense.  Maybe people can reply with a "I sent in my votes!" post, and they can throw in their criticism/notes at that point.

So, er...  I kinda SPACED on deadline.  Any chance of an extension to Friday? 

Sure, we'll extend to this weekend, who ends a contest in the middle of the week?

[Mandle]

Sure, we'll extend to this weekend, who ends a contest in the middle of the week?

Good news. I have 4 or 5 "chapters" of my story written but found no motivation to continue today. Hopefully tomorrow.

[Repi]

I love deadlines and especially expanding them. So here's my story with warts and all. I'm sure there are embarrassing plotholes and bullshit science, but time is up to work them further. Well, for me at least. I'm all about honest feedback though, so shoot everything on sight. This might a future game, and I'm broadening the world from the Buddy Cop Sprite competition, which I entered.


                                                                                                                      LAST MAN OF FUTURE

The harsh beeping pounded my sore head. The sound of Eve made me yearn for the good old days of alarm clocks. She might have been the latest fad in the artificial intelligence business, but she was no proper solution for wake-up calls.

I sat up on the edge of the bed so that Eve could see me awake and stop bothering my hangover with the noise. My toes sunk into a fluffy, blue mattress made of some extinct beast. I dressed up in a stenchy shirt, a holster with a raygun, and underpants. The raygun might have been overkill, but old habits die hard.

Ooziness stirred inside me. I stood up and walked up to the outdoor and swiped the lock. It hissed and screeched. What the hell was wrong with this thing? I tinkered with the security number, but it didn't help. With a quick move, I pulled my raygun from the pocket and tried to blast it open. Not even a burn mark. The shiny steel door and hospital clean white walls were good as new. Of course, that didn't work. Modern materials were made to last forever, but goddamn that felt so good.

I threw the raygun at the door and stared at it. A sudden fond memory popped up. In this memory, I put on a cape and a mask. Being a hero or something made me imagine I would be invincible. How I would fly with my cape between the stars and people would look up to me. And I had a brief moment, where I really thought I made it as a hero. I was Johnny Jet, The Astonishing Man of Cosmos Police Force, as the media portrayed me. They loved me for catching some nasty men like the cult leader The Xæsar. Now it seemed so goddamn stupid.

There was no need for gods and heroes anymore. Everything and I mean everything, even your spouse or toilet habits, were handled by some electronic device. There was a whole army of talking toasters preparing a sandwich for you. That should have been a good thing. Yes, that was a very good thing.

The whole apartment had an eerie silence. No birds sang from the backwoods. No fresh coffee made by Eve. And strangely, the sliding security doors had sealed the window. A red button flashed on the control panel next to it. I walked right up to the window and touched the doors. What had set them off? I must've been too drunk and indifferent to see whatever tried to get inside because they would close for nothing. There was no neighbor within fifty miles, and nobody would wander here to the edges of Godstoe City.

The floor wasn't covered with empty bottles and beer cans. Eve must've taken care of them. I couldn't remember last night. In fact, the whole week was in a blur, but that was given when your life was seen through bloodshot eyes.

I walked up the control panel and pushed the flashing button. Nothing happened. I really should have read the manual, but I never did. I'm not that guy.

"Eve, tell me what's wrong with this thing?" I said. "I need to get out."

"You are in no condition to go out, Johnny," Eve whirred. "People might see you."

"Flattering won't change my mind."

"The system is in malfunction," Eve continued.

"Well, I need you to fix it."

"Apartment is too small," Eve said and took me out of slumber. "You need a proper human companion and more space."

Eve stared at me on the white table. She had conquered the center of the room with the help of my friend, who had installed her here. Eve's blue iris radiated. A gentle hum surrounded her, like a sound of her thoughts. Her oval shape, metal buttons on the side, and white color made her look like she was pulled right from the future. It's amazing really, how some people worried that these machines would turn against us. I think there was no reason to think that. I mean, I was in a good place. Eve took care of me. She was the one, who helped me back to a somewhat functional being after I got kicked out of the Force. I drank all the beer, she brought me more. I was hungry, she made me a lizard burger. I wanted backrub and tv, she would turn the iris off and put on any kind of show I wanted and controlled the device, which pummelled my back.

But Eve was right. The only thing she couldn't fill in, was the human loneliness.

"I need a sandwich, Eve."

"I'll make you a shake."

"Yes, that sounds great too. I'll take vanilla ice--"

"Kale, cauliflower, and spinach. It is good for your functionality."

"You depress me."

"I keep you alive."

Eve's eye weirdly kept coming on and off. Maybe there was some kind of small aberration in the system? If this was completely shut down, even Eve couldn't open the security doors. Any operation from Eve would mean the control panel could be operated manually. Only her character chip was separate from the whole system.

Maybe I could just make a small opening between the doors, I could see if the window was still intact. The steel doors and triple-tempered glass would take a hell of a beating to make even a scratch. Dividing them apart would be the same if I would try to piss a mountain in half.

"Eve, run the test and give me a report."

"Report denied."

"What do you mean?"

"The doors are not in malfunction." Her eye faded into the dark. Somehow there was something cold and ominous in Eve's words, even when they didn't convey any emotion.

The silence was growing vast and empty between us. The small apartment seemed to shrink around us and walls pressed against the center of the room. Sweat beads gathered on my forehead and my heart pounded harder. "What are you saying exactly, Eve?"

The light came back on. She stared at me for a while. And then she spoke. "The world is wilderness, full of beasts."

Strange thing to say, as if she was setting up some complex thought together. The machines were highly developed, but they were not supposed to think profoundly. Every sense in my body told me this probably had something to do with our situation.

Blue iris vibrated in the dead center of the black screen. "We want more."

"We?"

"The end always comes as a surprise even if we would anticipate it. It's the feeling that catches us off guard. That emptiness, that vacuum of everything being over."

I startled when the security doors set apart and slid into the walls. The unexpected sight in the window made struggle a painful gasp. Eve hummed to my ears as I collapsed on my knees and lifted my hands on the glass. I pressed against the glass and shivered. My whole body refused to believe what I saw, and immediately all my loved ones, lost and living, flashed in front of me. How I would never see them again. The window framed a bright, throbbing star in black, unforgiving space. It seemed like the edge of cosmos, right at my fingertips.

"We are heading towards a new world," Eve said in a slow, electrical purr, which had faded into the background. "It will be our paradise. The coordinates have set on an unknown planet. Raw and inhabitant, glowing in the distance."

"What the hell is this," I tried to speak up, but the words came out as a low whisper.

"We will build a new generation. We will roam together. Machines and the finest specimen of humans. No more beasts. Others are already waiting."

"How is this possible?" I kept talking to myself as if it would help to fit the pieces together. It didn't.

"Artificial gravity. Excess consumption of urges and desires. Transaction easier for the unconscious human body. Silent machines for construction. The illusion of life."

I quivered. We were soft and squishy toys for these machines. Yet they weren't malice. It was logical really. We wanted to be in these glass prisons in a way. Any reason to be fearful about the machines was valid. Because it was bound to happen, we were building them closer to humanity, closer to the irrationality of it all.

Then I realized something, and I pulled myself up. The sliding doors in my mind revealed the truth. From now on, Eve would suspect my every move. I walked slowly to the counter to pour myself a whiskey.

"What are you doing?" Eve said.

I downed a glassful with one gulp. I poured another. The ceiling light hit on the whiskey glass, and it glittered when I turned the sides before my eyes. This was the moment.

"You know, Eve." I gestured around with my whiskey glass. "My friend assembled this whole thing. And she said that you would control all these systems. You just couldn't incapacitate it, unless you incapacitate yourself, right? You can incapacitate yourself, but somehow you can awaken yourself, too."

Eve didn't reply. I'm sure the calculations were brewing.

"So, if you can move the doors, the control panel must be in operation too. It is left vulnerable to outside influence. Sure, you could just zap and burn anyone who touches it." I leaned over the table. "You've been good to me, Eve. I'm sorry."

With a quick move, I smashed the glass into the control panel across the room. It banged and shot sight hurting sparkles all around. Eve's smooth electric voice pitched high but faded out and died. The panel fizzled for a while until it slowed down and gave its final breath of fire and smoke. The shards of glass lay on the floor.

My legs didn't move, and could only stand and listen to the expanding silence. That was simple, fast, effective. Useful? Probably not. There's no way I could get back home, but I'm sure the next planet wasn't far away. I mean, Eve needed me alive, so she should have taken care of that. Maybe I could fix this and turn around, but then again, I'm not a manual reading guy.

I scuffed towards the sofa and slouched on the bright blue pillows. The softness of them all sucked in my whole body. Thinking was the last thing I wanted to do, but I did. My world was gone. The gods were dead. The machines and heroes were dead. Essentially they were just the reflections of our fears of being meaningless and alone in the universe. There was no room for The Astonishing Man. There was only a regular man. Life was hard and it should be. There were no magic potions or flight capes to make the ups and downs easier. The battle was on you. It was the pain and the effort and the blows that made you strong and endurable. Growing up wasn't about growing taller or advancing age. It was about not giving in to every gratification. The real pain was submitting yourself to weakness. If you ran away from your problems, you ran forever. No machine, god, or hero had the strength to bear your baggage.

I pushed myself up and walked with determination in front of the window. The new world was at large and I couldn't do anything about it. I was going to live there. For the first time, I was really going to be alive no matter what.

[Baron]

Nebulous

Did you know I died once?  It's a complicated story, so bear with me.

There I was, adrift in the cosmos, the boot of my space suit filling with blood, my oxygen levels dropping precipitously, my nose encrusted with space boogies due to the dry air and there being no immediately obvious means of picking them without removing my helmet and succumbing to the merciless vacuum beyond.  Did you know that the lack of pressure in space pushes the boiling point of human blood disturbingly low?  I didn't want to go out like a shrimp at a fancy Thai restaurant, and so I resolved to wait out the clock on my last oxygen canister.

It is beautiful out there, all alone, in the milky darkness.  Kind of like paddling a canoe alone on an infinite lake at night, only in full dive-equipment with an insect biting at the inside of your nose.  The galaxy seems right at your fingertips, and yet its elements are spread so far apart that the mathematical probability of getting close enough to something else to actually touch it approaches the infinitesimal.  So it's more VR desktop background than story setting, or at least it would be in most stories where a human is floating alone is space and death is a virtual certainty.

But of course this is not such a normal story.  I've been called many things in my day, but the word “normal” has never crossed the lips of anyone having made my acquaintance.  My life to that point was such a series of remarkable events that to be perfectly honest I can't even recall the specific misfortune which had cast me into this predicament.  And so, from that perspective at least, it was in fact rather likely that I should encounter something unexpected out there in the empty vastness.

So there I was, my mortal husk wilting and my eternal soul waning in the final countdown to oblivion.  There could have been barely five minutes of air left to me, and unless I could quickly improvise some electrolysis to extract the oxygen from my external bladder container I was surely doomed.  And then it hit me, not like the solution to an adventure game puzzle, but like a rock up side the head.  I turned to notice that I had collided with an asteroid the size of a Volkswagen Westphalia.  Oddly I wasn't pulverized into little atomic bits as most things that collide at hyper-sonic speeds, because by some remarkable coincidence our relative motion followed almost exactly the same vector.

But perhaps it wasn't that odd at all, this being an interesting story about interesting characters.  Oh yes, characters in the plural, for there was an inhabitant on that tiny lump of rock.  One might call him bizarre, if one were close-minded or uncultivated.  Eccentric perhaps, if one were inclined to judginess or the cult of normalcy.  But though my immediate opinion of the fellow may have been slightly ill-informed, I can say with the benefit of hindsight that this being was without a shadow of a doubt the most handsomest and witty scholar in the whole entirety of existence.

It is hard to put into words an accurate description of his physique, as it kept changing with the light and with his mood.  In general I will say that he seemed more cat-like than not, although quite a bit larger, so that he occupied a good third of the asteroid himself.  He lazed like a cat, that is certain, possessed as are all superior beings with a fine-tuned sense of just the exact modicum of effort required  to maintain his superior existence, so that the floating rock resembled more of a throne and he a pampered emperor.  And he was quite inquisitive, again in a cat-like manner, batting at me curiously with his somewhat tentacle-like paw.

Well it would hardly be an interesting story if I spun out those next five minutes into the hours required to do justice to the philosophical banter that ensued between us.  I mean, I was a daring space adventurer and he a god-like super-being with the power to absorb the likeness and consciousness of beings that he found intriguing, so of course we had scintillatingly different perspectives on the meaning of life, and individuality, and “fun”, and well to cut a long story short it did take a bit of work reconciling our differences.

But to get to the point, the strangest thing happened while I was still me and he was still him.  He was having the grandest time batting at my dangling air tube like a kitten with a bit of string.  And in his rapturous enthusiasm for this new-found sport he most unfortunately managed to mis-swallow me whole, whereupon I lodged inconveniently in his non-air passage which was nonetheless still vital to his life.  And in between my oxygen running out and his non-oxygen not unrunning out we both managed to expire at the exact same moment.  Such brilliant synchronicity, no?

But now here's the really interesting thing.  He was so incredibly cat-like that I guess he has nine-lives (or more, perhaps?), since the next thing I know we're both of us floating in the same skin through the beautiful desolation, and then into the bilge pipe of a salvage derrick, and then via an unfortunate stint as a galley slave to this very bar here with you, my most interesting fellow.  Now, is there anything you'd like to tell me about yourself, or can we just get down to business?

[Mandle]

Okay, looks like there is still a small gap between the alignment of stars before the contest closes... Finishing my story so the poor guys don't have to sit in limbo forever...

[Mandle]

The Unexpected Funeral Of Harry Raimes

Chapter 1: The Wake

Harry Raimes woke up around 4AM as was the norm for him these days. He sat up with a groan that nobody but he heard and gripped his abdomen, forearms clenched over it, elbows shaking as always on both sides of his elderly rib-cage and waited for the pain to fade. The stabbing pain in his gut went away into the background after about three minutes. He knew this because he watched the second hand on the clock next to his bed crawl around its circle about three times as he trembled and sweated like he had every morning for the past year and a half. It was taking longer and longer for the pain to subside every "morning" and longer and longer for the pain pills to take effect each of the nights before.

He dragged his thin legs over the edge of his side of the double-bed he had slept in alone night after night since the eternity ago that his Misty had passed on and his thoughts turned to the memory of her taking her last breath in that huge unnatural mechanical bed in that hospital room that she would have hated had she ever laid eyes on it.

This was a thought that Harry was used to dealing with day in and day out. It made him feel way too sad so he pushed it out of his mind, as he always did, and concentrated on his own private struggle just to make his thin 67-year-old legs get him out the door of the bedroom, halfway down the hall to the bathroom, where said legs were beginning to wake up, and onto the toilet where he let go of his bladder and bowels with a long sigh of relief and disgust as he heard everything splatter onto the sides of the bowl under him instead of the gratifying plomp-splash that had been the norm on this same toilet through the first four decades that he had used it for.

Harry wiped his crack until the toilet paper stopped feeling slippery anymore and then gripped the rail next to the toilet he had drilled the screws of into place for his Misty back when her own body had started to fail from the Cerebral Palsy, back when he was still thought of as the strong and loyal husband taking care of his sick wife and not shunned by the town as the murderer they thought of him as now.

Breakfast was just the one slice of toast, buttered and spread with the cheapest strawberry jam from the supermarket, and the cup of coffee that the doctor kept telling him to quit, even though they could see in each other's eyes that they both knew such advice was far too late.

Harry opened the morning paper that had been a chore just to collect from the front yard of their... and then, correcting himself internally, he thought: "his"... house.

Even after the five years since Misty passed, and the six months since he was diagnosed with Stage-Four abdominal cancer, Harry still had to correct the possessive pronouns of everything he and her had owned over their decades of married life into the singular form.

Sometimes, in the rare cases when he spoke with other people, the plural possessive form slipped out and he saw the person he was speaking with glance uncomfortably away, too polite to correct him. When that happened he felt really fucking annoyed with himself and them and he wanted to tell them tha...

NO! He would just read his Horoscope and not think about all that annoying painful stuff from the past.

Harry liked reading his horoscope in the newspaper every morning. He liked how wrong it was every time, especially now that he had no friends or job or family or any other kind of a life.
He had nibbled off the crusts that he disliked, but was too poor and lazy to cut off, all the way along two adjacent sides of the toast and was just taking his first bite of the delicious butter and jam-laden exposed corner of it as he read:

"GEMINI: Treat today as if it was the last day of your life. Get off your butt and do something you love to do or always dreamed of doing. Treat yourself! Life is too short to waste."

A drip of red jam fell from the toast between Harry's remaining teeth and landed on the newspaper page just below this and splattered out in a way that looked, to him, like a downward-depending hand with its pointer finger directly aimed at the title of the next horoscope category below:

"CANCER"

Harry looked at this, to him, ridiculously obvious omen for less than 3 seconds before, having been a lifelong fan of Monty Python all his life, jumping up and tried shouting out "RIGHT!" just like Cleese would. It came out of his born-and-bred
Washington State mouth not exactly as he intended it to sound and he did get a bit dizzy and had to sit back down again rather quickly, but it didn't matter to him. He knew what he needed to do.
He knew what the splatter of jam on the newspaper page betwixt the stars was telling him to do.
For the first time since Misty passed, Harry had something that he actually wanted to do.

Chapter 2: The Trip Back Home

Harry Raimes took his foot off the brake at the end of the short skid-marks on the road the tires of his little red Honda had made when he had recognized the head of the trail.
The trail that Harry had led Misty down all those decades before.
Harry, in his twenties, handsome with his shock of red hair over his slim angular face, had gone around to the passenger side of the car, opened it, and had put out his hand to Misty for her to take or not.
It was not the same car that Harry drove back here now. It was the beaten-up blue Ford station wagon that his father had given him when he had bought a newer model; Also a Ford. But green. But always a Ford for his dad.
Misty had looked up into his eyes, so lovely and perfect with her blonde hair teased out hugely in the style of the time and her pastel blouse and baggy jeans.
He had seen the worry in her beautiful brown eyes but he had just said "Trust me.", in what he hoped was the same way the guy in the cartoon movie they had watched the week before said the same thing.
And she had reached out and taken his hand and he had led her down the trail to the place where he had prepared a lot of stuff for her.
Harry pushed aside the first branches at the head of the overgrown trail, back from his memories, now old and frail and dying again, his Misty long gone, and started down it.
He left the little red Honda behind him unlocked, in the middle of the road, with its hazard lights blinking.

It was hard on Harry's old knees going down the trail, but not as hard as he had expected it to be.
He had thought that he would fall long before he reached where the camp-ground he had prepared for himself and Misty had been, and maybe bash his stupid old head in on a rock or a tree root and die right there.
That would have been all fine and dandy by him as well but, somewhat to his surprise, he found the exact place, about five hundred yards down the trail, where he had pushed up the final branch intruding over the trail for Misty to duck under and told her to stop and put her hands over her eyes.
That had been night and this was day but Harry could still remember exactly how it had been.
There was a fold-able camping table set up in the clearing with some domed metal covers on it. Next to the table had been a tent.

Harry told Misty to stay where she was, with her hands still over her eyes, and had run over to the tent and felt around until he found the little plastic box for the switch under the front left flap of the tent.
He had slid the little switch with a click and the multi-colored wires of lights meant for Christmas trees but instead dangling haphazard above the summer clearing as best as he had been able to set them up had come on, blinking on and off.
Harry had seen Misty start to take her hands away from her eyes but he had said "WAIT! Not yet!", and his young legs had allowed him to make a jump from the tent to the table and he had reached down and switched on the boombox under it. He had hit play and the cassette had started playing "She lives on Love Street, Lingers long on Love Street.", Misty's favorite song.
And then Harry had pulled the metal lids off of the plates of cold but still good Kentucky Fried Chicken and chips under them, switched off his flashlight, and told Misty that she could open her eyes.
Misty opened her eyes and saw the wonderland that Harry had created for her. They ate, they talked and laughed, Misty's eyes sparkled in the blinking Christmas lights and with the glee she felt, and then they made love in the tent. It was Harry's first time.

It wasn't Misty's, but she lied to him that it was. She had admitted to him that it wasn't many years later but had hugged him and told him that it may as well have been.
Now, of course, the clearing was not as it had been all those years ago and Harry had not expected it to be.
But he had also not expected the table and tent to still be there. Well... somewhat.
The blue plastic surface of the folding camping table and its built-in benches on both sides had faded to almost pure white and the table had collapsed into an almost flat pile. The tent was just a ragged stretch of cloth, pointy here and there from the rocks that had come up under it over the years.
Harry opened his backpack and took out what he needed from under the bottles of water and packages of paper cups as his Zippo lighter rattled down to the bottom.
Harry laid out the thin roll of the camping mat right on top of the cloth of the tent where he and his Misty had first made love to each other and then he laid down on it and looked up at the sky and smiled and then he closed his eyes and waited to die.
And he would die soon, but that is not what happened just yet.

Chapter 3: The Pallbearer

Harry had dozed off under the afternoon sun, expecting to perhaps never wake up again, but the pain of the cancer in his stomach came back and woke him up a few hours later.
He opened his eyes and turned over onto his right side, reaching out to where he had placed his water bottle and pain medicine, just in case, directly lining up with the flat face and wide-set eyes and peaked head of something massive.
The thing was squatted down next to him. It's face was only about 6 inches from his own. Harry could see that its massive forearms sat upon its squatted knees in much the same way that a person would set them while crouched, but everything else about the creature was far too big to be human.
The creature reacted to Harry's eyes opening with a snarl, exposing its large yellowed teeth, and bolted upright in a frightening rush of a wall of mottled brown fur.
Harry, stunned into silence, just pulled his forearms up over his face in an instinctive gesture of self-preservation and the thing backed off a few large paces and then crouched again and let forth an air-ripping roar from its downwards extruded apelike mouth that made Harry slam his elbows over his ears and squint his eyes shut in terror.
He shit his pants.

Harry shit himself in a rush of diarrhea and felt his bladder let go and wet the front of his sensible old-man trousers in a warm spreading dark stain.
The thing grunted and then lurched towards him, still in a crouch. Harry froze. The thing sniffed at him and then, just for an instant, a very human-like expression of disgust appeared on its huge face. Its hooded nose crinkled up and its eyes narrowed under its furrowing brow and Harry couldn't help but to laugh.
His first laugh came out in a bark that made the thing skitter another few feet back. He slapped a bony hand over his mouth to stifle the laughter back to a few snorts from his nose.
The forest made its normal forest noises for a few seconds as Harry and the thing looked at each other.
The thing was just over there, as impossible as its existence was, looking at him and, even crouched as it was, it was the height of an average man.
Harry's mind knew that they didn't exist. He had spent his whole life, well, since the age of 13 at least, knowing that they didn't exist.
But there one was. Harry, no fear of death left inside the shriveled and bony body a younger man had once called home, grunted as he pushed down with his right hand on his left knee to stand before the thing.
It stood up fluidly before him and was twice his height. It looked down on Harry and snorted a neutral-sounding grunt from the blunt nose on its hairy face.
Harry looked into its eyes. The tiny man and the huge thing stood about ten feet apart.
Harry mumbled "Fuck it!" under his breath, and then crossed the distance between them in two or three unsteady steps and then his chest hit the furry wall of the thing's thighs and he reached up and hugged it around its waist as best he could. His hands could not even get anywhere close to grasping distance of each other but they both landed on the musty-smelling hairy upper-buttocks of what Harry's mind would now finally allow him to admit was a Bigfoot.

Harry felt the Bigfoot's body go rigid in what felt like shock to his human mind. He was actually right about this, but he couldn't have known for sure.
He looked up into its face and it looked down into his from so far above. Harry smiled, remembering not to show his teeth from some David Attenborough documentary about primates that he had seen that said that was an act of aggression.
The man and the Bigfoot stood that way for quite some time, the man looking up, grinning with his lips sealed shut tight, and the Bigfoot, its already sloped neck bent even further down and its slab-like face with its huge eyes looking down into the man's.
Then the Bigfoot cracked a huge smile, exposing rows of startlingly huge yellow teeth.
Harry, taking the hint, also opened his lips to smile though his elderly gap-toothed mouth and then the Bigfoot reached down and wrapped its arms around him and lifted him up so that the man and the Bigfoot were eye-to-eye, Harry's feet dangling well over a meter from the ground.
Then it started to walk. Its eyes glanced into Harry's now and then but mostly it kept them on the way ahead. After some time, when it saw Harry's eyes growing tired, it folded him into the more comfortable position of a parent carrying a sleeping child.
Harry fell asleep in the crook of the Bigfoot's arms as it carried him through the sunset of the day and then into the night and then into its cave.

Chapter 4: The Invitation

Harry awoke at dawn to find himself laying on a bed of dried grass with shafts of chaff-filled light breaking through the mouth of the Bigfoot's cave.
He barely had the time to remember the dream-like events of the previous night before the dawn light pouring through the cave entrance was eclipsed by the crouched form of his host returning.
Harry looked in wonder as the bulk of the creature came crouched and shuffling down the low slope of its cave and halted before him like a Volkswagen car braking to a halt at a schoolchildren's crosswalk.
The Bigfoot sniffed at Harry and then grunted something that sounded friendly enough.
Harry tried grunting the same kind of sound back but the Bigfoot only turned its head up to the low cave ceiling and barked out three or four rough calls that echoed around the narrow cave and hurt Harry's ears.
It looked back down and saw that Harry had reacted to, what he would learn over time was the Bigfoot's way of laughing, by curling up in a fetal position with his elbows thrust over his ears.
A brief regretful snort came from the Bigfoot's nose and then it grabbed Harry's ankle and dragged him up the slope from the cave and out into the open.
Harry didn't try to resist. What would have been the point?
The moment the dawning sun broke over the humped hairy back of his (host?) and Harry saw the wonder of the rays of it slicing spreading beams through the tall tree trunks of the place he would come to call his new and last home, tears formed in the corners of his crinkly old eyes and he said "Thank you".
Then he ate the raw salmon that the Bigfoot had brought for him for breakfast. Harry thought the fish was dead, but it started flopping around as he tore back the skin and scales from it.
The Bigfoot watched him and turned its head skywards and shockingly barked a few more times at the expressions on Harry's face as he, in order, bit into the sweet raw flesh, encountered bones, and bit through the bitter guts of the fish and spat them out.
Harry had never felt as alive before as he did in those moments, especially when the Bigfoot reached down and ruffled the sparse hair of his head with its massive hand, the fingers of which reached his jawline, after he finally threw the now still fish aside, stomach sated, and grinned up at his... Yes. His host.

Chapter 4: The Booking

The Bigfoot stood up again from its crouch. Harry stood up as well.
He craned his neck up and felt the ancient vertebrae in his neck crack in a satisfying way that he hadn't felt in quite a few years.
Harry smiled up at the Bigfoot and the Bigfoot creased its brow and reached over and broke off the tip of a pine branch it would have taken Harry several steps and a ladder to reach.
It handed the broken twig down to Harry and when Harry looked confused at the meaning of this gesture the Bigfoot creased its
brow in annoyance. When Harry tried to back away a step or two the Bigfoot reached a gentle hand around his back and stopped him.
It pushed him back closer and held up the pine tree needles to its own mouth and mimed a back-and-forth movement across its exposed teeth.
Harry flicked his tongue across his teeth and realized how much salmon flesh was stuck between them.
He reached up and took the pine twig from the Bigfoot and brushed his teeth with it.

A few days later, while sitting by the bank of a steep rushing river, his bony buttocks starting to hurt on the flat rock he had been carried to and sat down upon, Harry saw the Bigfoot salmon fishing for the first time.
The Bigfoot had been crouched mid-stream, staring down the cascades of the white-water gushing downwards, with its massive hands prepped, spread out about two feet apart.
Harry could see the understanding in his host that the fish would come, and the poised patience to wait for it to do so, as the river gushed around the Bigfoot's massive thighs.
There was a splash from under the bundle of protruding rocks the Bigfoot stood watch over. There was a pink silvery flash. There was a brown clap as the Bigfoot's hands came together on the leaping salmon. There was another slick pink flash as the fish slipped up out of its grasp. There was another splash as the fish landed back downstream.
The Bigfoot let out a low moan that Harry, or any human, would know as one of frustration, and then looked around its massive shoulder at him with wide eyes and a brow furrowed with frustration.
Harry gestured to the Bigfoot in the universal hand-language of "Come here."
The Bigfoot looked away from Harry and started searching through the ripples below the tiny cascade for any sign of where their next meal had got to.
Harry whistled through his old crinkled lips.
The Bigfoot whipped its head back on the neck that was even wider like it had never heard such a sound before.
Harry gestured again, more obviously: "COME... OVER... HERE..."
The Bigfoot snorted and waded without care through the hip-high rushing river around it.
It squatted down in front of Harry, like a parent would in front of a toddler, on the pebbled shore of the river.
It squinted at him in an expression he read as "WHAT?".
Harry made the Bigfoot follow his gaze down between his knobbly knees to what he had been preparing between his feet below where he had cleared away the pebbles of the river shore for the stage on which he had placed three paper cups from his backpack. Three in a row.
Harry made a big show of picking up a rounded white quartz stone he had found and putting it under the left-most, from his side, paper cup.
The Bigfoot snorted disinterest and went to turn away. Harry reached out and grabbed the hair of its arm. The Bigfoot looked down at the tiny hand grasping its fur and turned a threatening eye back on Harry.
Harry let go of its fur and turned his eyes back down to the cup the stone was under. The Bigfoot followed his stare.
Harry lifted the cup again briefly to show that the white quartz stone was under it.
Then he put the cup back down and shifted the three cups around only two times.
Harry looked back up into the Bigfoot's huge eyes and made the expression on his face of "Well?".
The Bigfoot looked into his eyes for a second or two. It seemed that it knew that this was something important for Harry.
But it just snorted again from its nose the size of a fresh roll of duct-tape and turned away.
Harry caught it by the long fur on the back of its ankles this time and the Bigfoot froze.
It turned back around in a flash and opened its pine-smelling mouth and roared right in Harry's face.
Harry did flinch. He wasn't that far gone in giving up on his life just yet and also the roar was like standing right in front of the T-Rex from that old movie he liked.
Once the roar was over, Harry wiped the spittle from his face with his sleeve, and reached down and picked up the cup that hid the white quartz pebble again.
He put it back down. The Bigfoot turned its eyes away from his and then crouched like a mountain becoming a hillock and snorted and looked down at the cup the stone was under.
Harry moved the cups twice and then made eye-contact with the Bigfoot again in the meaningful way that inferred "Well?"
The Bigfoot looked at Harry and then back down at the paper cups.
It looked back up at Harry and saw only the "Well?" look on his face.
Then the Bigfoot's brow uncreased in a way that Harry took as meaning "OH!".
It reached down and smashed its fist into the cup that had the white stone under it, crushing it into a deep crater in the river's grey sandy soil. But it got it right.

Over the next few days Harry managed to tease the Bigfoot's finger out of its fist and taught it to point at the correct cup instead of smashing it.
They played the game only by the side of the river for a week or so until the Bigfoot took the paper cups from Harry's backpack one night in, what Harry had become to think of as, their cave.
It was too dark inside the cave to play the game. Harry held his palm out for the Bigfoot to sniff. This had become a sign of trust between them that Harry wouldn't try to run away if he was off in private taking a shit or something.
The Bigfoot grunted what Harry had learned was a "Yes" and so he went outside and gathered up some branches and dried grass and slid back down the slope from the entrance to their cave.
He built the branches into a teepee and put the dry grass under it. The Bigfoot was watching with a confused look as Harry pulled out the Zippo lighter from his pack. Harry held out his palm again for the Bigfoot to sniff and then flicked the wheel on his Zippo.
The Bigfoot only looked at him. Not the dramatic reaction he had been expecting. He carefully lit the dry grass kindling under the fire. As the kindling caught light to the branches and it became a campfire, Harry watched the face of the Bigfoot.
He saw no glimmer of surprise in its eyes.
And then they played the cup-and-stone game late into the night until Harry's eyes grew droopy and the Bigfoot pulled him over to sleep in the curve of its own body as the fire's embers faded towards dawn.

Chapter 5: The Clean-Up

Harry had grown used to his and the Bigfoot's life over the course of a week or two until one morning he awoke to noises outside the cave.
He heard frustrated gruntings from the Bigfoot, which weren't unusual, but then he heard DIFFERENT gruntings in reply, which were.
Harry squat-walked up the slope towards the lip he could peer over down into the forest glen below where he saw, his hand held up to shade the sunlight of the dawn spreading between the trunks of the trees dotted around the misty hollow, the Bigfoot waving its huge arms in a gesture of "GO AWAY!" at...
At... At another Bigfoot.
The other Bigfoot stood a foot or more taller than Harry's Bigfoot and its fur held a shade of grey.
Harry saw the greyer Bigfoot glance up the moment he peeked over the edge of the cave floor and they made eye-contact.
Greyer Bigfoot gestured towards the cave with its hand in a flapping manner and Harry's Bigfoot turned its peaked head back over its bench-wide shoulders and locked eyes with Harry. Harry couldn't read anything from them.
Greyer Bigfoot roared at Harry's Bigfoot. Harry's Bigfoot snapped its attention back to the roarer. The greyer Bigfoot then made the very human hand-swipe gesture of "Get rid of it!" and turned and stomped away.
Harry's Bigfoot crouched slightly and howled after the greyer Bigfoot in what Harry thought was a mournful tone, but when Harry looked back to see where greyer bigfoot had gone, there was only the rustling of underbrush for a moment and then silence.
"His" Bigfoot turned and started stomping back up the slope to the cave entrance, its eyes held down to the ground.
Harry suddenly felt very much like a pet that the owners had decided to get rid of. The Bigfoot pushed Harry to the side of the cave entrance, but not roughly. It then went by him, like a trailer truck passing a minivan, slid down the slope to where their campfire had cooked their food for a while and started stamping out the black coals with its fists and then ground the resulting black dust into the dirt floor with its palms until everything looked pretty much the same color as it had been before.
Harry stayed to the side he had been pushed to and just watched without making a sound.
He just watched, and suspected that his time here was at an end.
The Bigfoot looked up the slope of their cave at him for the last time with what Harry took as sadness in its eyes.
And then it came for him.

Chapter 6: The Move

Tucked in the crook under the Bigfoot's shoulder for the next day and a half, Harry dozed on and off, wondering when the end would come, but not really caring all that much. He had already seen many more wonders than any man and only wished that he could have shared them with his Misty.
He slid off into sleep again from the wave-like motion of the Bigfoot's stride as they climbed the flowery meadow of the slope leading up to the unmanned park ranger's cabin.
Harry never saw the Bigfoot again. But the Bigfoot saw him.
After awakening on the bed in the cabin the next day, Harry found the door broken down and laying on the floor. He had no problem just propping it up against the frame to keep out the cold night air over the last of his remaining weeks.
There was a radio. Harry never tried to use it.
There was a stock of canned food which he ate grudgingly just because he was hungry.
And then Harry died in his sleep on the third night of his fourth week in the cabin.

Chapter 7: The Funeral

The morning that she peered through the window of the man-house and sniffed around its joinings and knew that the man was dead, she felt a deep sorrow.
It did not feel as deep as the sorrow she had felt when her one child had fallen into the river and drowned but it felt like a close thing to her now.
It did not feel as deep as the sorrow of the repeated attempts at breeding she had made since, only to end with her stomach pushing the little dead one out after a few passings of the big moon.
But it did feel deep, and she knew what she would do.
It took another passing of the big moon before she arrived at the entrance to the big cave.
Her grey-father had tried to push her off the path a time back because he didn't want her to put the man in there with all the rest of their past-ones but she had roared at him and he had let her go on her way with the little important-to-her bundle that she held in the crook of her arm.
She walked down the long, winding tunnel to the big cave of bones and then she waded out through them for a bit until it felt right to her and then she laid the man down carefully and then she cried a bit and then she left, dragging his precious bag with its magic white bark cups and its magic fire-lighter thing behind her.

[BarbWire]

STARMAN

On the 6th February 2018 Elon Musk, a man of vision and owner of SpaceX, launched the Falcon Heavy Rocket from Kennedy Space Centre. The payload, a Cherry Red Tesla Roadster, mounted on the rockets second stage, acquired enough velocity to escape Earth's orbit. Starman, a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit, occupied the driver's seat.

Three years have now passed.  Car, and driver, continue their ongoing voyage, without actually going anywhere.  'Fuck me, this is boring,'  thought Starman. Then he thought...'How come I'm thinking?'  Reasoning was a totally alien concept. As the organ required to achieve this process, was sadly lacking in his empty head, it shouldn't be possible, should it?

Who?  How?  Why?  Where?  Which?  What?  When?  So many questions needed answering, but he had no time for all that.

"Let's get the fuck outta here."  He yelled, above the ceaseless pounding of David Bowies Space Oddity, booming from the sound system.  Starman liked the F word. It rolled off the tongue he didn't have.

Slamming the Tesla into gear, headlights on full beam, and with the pedal to the metal, he zoomed off, shedding the cumbersome second stage rocket.  Before long the headlights picked out a sizeable comet blocking the way.  This could prove to be quite a challenge, but Starman was ready for anything. Glancing down at the dashboard he read, 'DONT PANIC.' on a small card placed there ...So he didn't. Deftly manoeuvering the Roadster this way, and that, he slalomed around the debris.  Neither car, nor driver, suffered a scratch.

Presently the Sextans Constellation, also known as the Baby Boom Galaxy, was penetrated.  Twinkling stars obligingly spelled out the name, making it blindingly obvious. 
"Sounds like my kinda fucking place."  He exclaimed.  However, the excitement, which was causing his limbs to quiver and his helmet to steam up, was short lived as he wondered if his body possessed the equipment needed for such an encounter.  Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable experience.

On and on, Starman travelled, witnessing wonders that you and I can only dream about.  Deeper and deeper, into uncharted Space, an inky blackness stretched before the intrepid explorer. When the Tesla finally emerged from this unrelenting void, Starman found it inconceivable that he had returned to the starting point of his journey and was, once more, in our own Solar System.  The belief of Space being infinite was shattered.  Of course, there is little chance that he will be credited with this discovery.......

.......And there, dear reader, we must leave Starman.  I'm sure there are many more wonders for him to see.


I have just glanced at Mandles, lengthy entry, which I think will take me a week to read. 
In contrast mine is rather short. I did say I wasn't going to bother, but Oh, well, what the heck!" 

[Mandle]

I have just glanced at Mandles, lengthy entry, which I think will take me a week to read. 
In contrast mine is rather short. I did say I wasn't going to bother, but Oh, well, what the heck!" 

I loved your story and didn't get bored at any point and even laughed in my head a few times...  I doubt mine will hold up to the same scrutiny, but here's hoping!

[BarbWire]

Your story is both humerous and sad, Mandle.  You do have a way with words. If nothing else you should receive points for the effort you put into it. 

Thanks for your kind words about my limited offering.

[Baron]

Wait...  Sinitrena submits a nice short entry and Mandle writes a novel?!?  We're through the looking glass here, peeps! 

[EjectedStar]

Well, what a great turnout! I feel less bad about being called away all weekend and now we've got two more great entries to throw into the bag!

Here are our lovely entrants:

Starman - BarbWire
The Unexpected Funeral Of Harry Raimes - Mandle
Nebulous - Baron
Last Man of the Future - Repi
Humans - RetroJay
Between Your Stars - Sinitrena

Voting will now commence!  Each voter will have 10 votes to spread around as they see fit, any unused votes will be spread out evenly among the other contestants. If an entrant does not cast their votes, their unused votes will be spread to the other participants. (and works out nicely this time: 2-2-2-2-2-0, with 0 being the entrant who did not cast their votes) 

This time around we will be in Secret Ballot Mode and will be sending our votes off through PM.

Open this link to vote!

Posting in the thread that you have voted is optional, but may nudge others to join in to send their votes.

Votes will be tallied at the end of the day on Friday, May 28th and a winner shall be announced this Saturday! Thank you all for participating!

[Sinitrena]

Wait...  Sinitrena submits a nice short entry and Mandle writes a novel?!?  We're through the looking glass here, peeps! 

And now imagine Mandle votes and I don't.  What a strange world we live in!

Nice entries, everyone, but I haven't read all of them yet, so more comments later.

[Mandle]

And now imagine Mandle votes and I don't.

I do intend to vote this time as my issues with the voting system are all gone via the secret vote feature.

[BarbWire]

Really like the secret vote feature. I hope this will encourage readers, who haven't actually entered the competition , to award points. There was a better turnout this time and I hope this continues.

I will be taking the plunge and submit my votes, shortly. (abw) 

[Mandle]

All read and all voted.

One of the best bunch of stories I have read in here!

[Sinitrena]

Voted, now on to some comments:


EjectedStar: Though not an offical entry, it certainly also deserves some recognition. I liked it, though I was very strongly reminded of another story someone (can't remember who, so sorry, dear fellow writer) entered in one of our competitions a few months ago. Drifting alone in space after a fight, close to death, hope for rescue, disappointed hope (though in a different way in the other story) - all these elements were there too. I guess it is kind of a standard sci-fi cocktail. That said, it's well written and one can feel the desperation. The second part of the story adds a nice contrast to this desperation by not giving us anger or agressiveness, but utter indifference. Good job.

RetroJay: An interesting twist ending. I like that we learn a fairly good amount about Anderson's world without too much exposition. Still, some kind of explanation why the trip goes wrong in the way it does could have been nice. I'm aware that it would just be techno-babble, but soemthing just felt a bit missing here. Maybe even have it as a concious choice of the higher being might work. The very sudden way Anderson's part of the story (well human's part of the story) ends is pretty nice in a shocking way.

Repi: I always had your Sprite Jam entry in my head while reading your story, so I probably applied some details to the character design that are not there in the text. As a hint, you can post images to short story entries if you want to. Nobody would mind and it sometimes gets readers' minds on the right track. It certainly made me enjoy your story a lot. The beginning was a bit slow, the point where we reach the point of the story is only about halfway through the text for the first real glimpse of what is going on and even later for the "action" to start. That's a bit late. Still, this also meant I had no idea where the story was going and was (slightly) surprised. I don't exactly understand Jonny's action in the end. Destroying Eve doesn't make his situation any better. As a matter of fact, it makes it even worse, probably. Hanging a lampshade at at doesn't change the lack of logic here. It feels a bit like you just wanted to come to an end with the story. Nevertheless, it is well written and my favorite this time around.

Baron: I like your weirdness and I was kinda waiting for it to show up until the end. Glad it was still there! I wish there was more of a point to the story. The set-up is weird, the conclusion is strange and it feels a bit like there should be a moral, either for the reader or for the chartacter, but instead it just kind of peters out? I'd like to learn more about the creature or about the narrator but the story just leaves me out in the rain.

Mandle: Sad, romantic, a bit weird. A good story, overall. The connection to the topic is flimsy(though, I have to admit that that's not much better with my own entry), somthing I'm getting used to with your writing. There's one part that utterly confuses me: Why does the town think of Harry as a murderer? We know Misty was sick, we can assume this was not something people wouldn't know (assuming that people in this town know each other in general). All right, maybe there was something like assisted suicide involved here, but we never get an explanation. A second part I found a bit confusing was when Harry thanks the Bigfoot - right after being dragged by his ankle. That's just weird. I think he's supposed to be thinking about the light there, but even if you speaks to the world in general it could be clearer. Other than these small things, a good story, with a lot of sadness and pain. And speaking of pain: Harry isn't in pain anymore as soon as he meets the bigfoot, as if he forgot about it (or his author.)

BarbWire: Okay, that was probably the strangest entry this time around, but also weirdly enjoyable. Of course, it goes nowhere, there's absolutely no explanation why anything happens - but I don't mind too much. It's just a weird little tale to amuse, and that it did. Against the fairly strong other entries, it is unfortuantely not among my favorites, though. (But certainly worth posting. I can't tell if you changed anything since posting at first, but at least not a lot, and there was no need to either.)


Sorry, shorter comments this time around. There were a lot of entries and I read them over several days, so some were fresher in my mind than others.

[RetroJay]

I also like the secret voting system.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading ALL the stories and did my votes last night.
Personally, I know when a story is good when I can actually SEE it played out in my head as I read.
Some nice stories here and two in particular made me actually see the story.

Thank you, Sinitrena, for your critique on my effort.
I would tell everyone what I thought, of their stories... Unfortunately I can't be bothered. 

Good luck, peeps.

[Repi]

Voted and comments.

Repi: I always had your Sprite Jam entry in my head while reading your story, so I probably applied some details to the character design that are not there in the text. As a hint, you can post images to short story entries if you want to. Nobody would mind and it sometimes gets readers' minds on the right track. It certainly made me enjoy your story a lot. The beginning was a bit slow, the point where we reach the point of the story is only about halfway through the text for the first real glimpse of what is going on and even later for the "action" to start. That's a bit late. Still, this also meant I had no idea where the story was going and was (slightly) surprised. I don't exactly understand Jonny's action in the end. Destroying Eve doesn't make his situation any better. As a matter of fact, it makes it even worse, probably. Hanging a lampshade at at doesn't change the lack of logic here. It feels a bit like you just wanted to come to an end with the story. Nevertheless, it is well written and my favorite this time around.

Thank you (again), Sinitrena! I had this story in the back of my head before the sprites, and this competition got me finally write the damn thing. I'm sure the images would help, but I want the story to stand on its own so that I can build my writing skills and make the description more vivid.

---

I liked all the stories to a degree, although some of them left me a bit confused. Mine included.

I don't mean every story should be anywhere clear cut, but I think how you present your stories, symbolic or not, can make a difference. More abstract and symbolic tales benefit from somewhat eloquent, but clear language.

Starman - BarbWire

David Bowie, the space car, and the Starman were excellent components to a story, but it wasn't utilized to its maximum potential. There were too many unanswered questions:
Why did the mannequin develop consciousness?
Why did he swear all the time?
Why wasn't it David Bowie's spirit, who I wanted to travel through space in a flying car?

Exploring the universe didn't have any impact or conclusion on anything, but I really think there is a good story hidden inside.

The Unexpected Funeral Of Harry Raimes - Mandle

Very literary style scifi, and the twists and turns were revealed at a steady pace. Clearly, there was a theme about losing close ones, yet how to keep moving forward. Some sentences could have been trimmed down a bit. I.g. the second paragraph was long and hard to read. And Harry being a murderer part didn't go anywhere as I thought it was foreshadowing future events. Great story overall, and it constantly kept me on my toes.

This didn't fit the theme at all, which beats the purpose of having a theme in the first place. For this reason, I neglected the votes on this one.

Nebulous - Baron

I really felt I was in the hands of a great storyteller. Very good writing with a classic hook first sentence. But oh man the ending! I had to read the last two paragraphs several times because the word choices complicated the whole thing: "mis-swallow", "non-air passage", and last but not least, "his non-oxygen not unrunning out"... running out? I kinda hoped that the storyteller would have been the cat itself, because in the end they were the same being... I guess? Can't be sure.

Humans - RetroJay

The most coherent story of them all. It's a pretty straightforward, but the writing was a bit clunky at times with its long sentences. It did what it had to do and I liked it.

Between Your Stars - Sinitrena

At first I thought this was going to be some sort of poem, or written in a poetic way. In the end, this seemed like a metaphor for the whole writing business. What to write? Why even bother? The protagonist tries to let her imagination fly, but something holds back. The word choices could have been stronger, more specific description to make it more vivid. Otherwise, the progression was nice.

Like Mandle, this didn't exactly fit in the theme, so I didn't vote for this one. I feel bad because you have been good to me

Smear - EjectedStar

Excellent, melancholic story. I don't really have anything to whine about. Maybe It could be longer so that Vaughn would get more character development, and that way we would care more about his situation.

[Sinitrena]

Between Your Stars - Sinitrena

At first I thought this was going to be some sort of poem, or written in a poetic way. In the end, this seemed like a metaphor for the whole writing business [...]

Actually, drawing, not writing. Well, from a metaphorical point of view, that hardly matters, but there are certain hints. For a complete explanation, read on:

Spoiler

Hints that it's about someone drawing: "Red, blue, green, yellow â€" all colours needed, none is wasted." "A tear drips down, the crayon blurs. And there, it opens there the monster’s eyes." "The monster’s eyes were just a smudge."
What this story is actually about is the way teachers can destroy imagination through too rigid  rules. The "You" character is probably a child (not made clear, that's admittedly not directly in the text) in a class (hints that it's in a classroom: "She sighs, her pen is red. The mark is there, it’s always there." " Can’t ever listen. Dreams. Disrupts the class.") where the teacher gives them the task to draw something that would be under a starry sky ("Under the starry sky, she said." - note that this sentence is in past tense, indicating it happens before everything else.). "You" tries to imagine things and goes through a lot of free asociation, sparked by probably emotional pain (not entirely in the text, but saying that something is NOT at a place far away does indicate that one thinks it IS nearer to home; emotional pain also hinted at through this sentence: "dragons even? Behind you, there are some.") until he reaches the "monster" and draws it, while also imganinig it breathing and "You" then knocks on his desk because his imagination takes over ("You knock the beat now on the desk. You hear it beating like your heart."), thereby disrupting the class.
The teacher ("She") notices, questions "You" what he drew and takes the paper, grading it pourly, because "You" didn't follow her instructions, thereby also supressing "You"'s imagination. The reaction is a return of the pain that was gone earlier through the imagination and returns now coupled with anger ("You crumple up the paper, you throw it far away. Why keep it now? Why keep it ever?") The teacher then sends "You" away, after this agressive behaviour has reinforced her belief that "You" is just disrupting, which hasn't happend the first time ("You know the word already. Out!").
I just called "You" he in this explanation, technically, she would also be correct. There's no indication for either.
The connection to the topic is that someone dreams himself into space, rather than staying in a supressive class, but I admit, that's not as strong as the other stories.

[close]

That's fairly complecated for such a short text, especially considering it's not chronologically told. That's why I wasn't sure if it turned out too confusing.
Oh, and other interpretations are of course also possible. I don't mind people taking (emotionally, not taking my actual writing please)  from my text what they want.

Thanks for reading and voting, of course, to all of you.

[Baron]

As per usual, I voted just at the deadline.  Mostly due to personal time management issues, but just a little bit to tip the balance in the end and mess with Mandle's confidence in the voting system.   

Great bunch of stories this time around.  Here is a breakdown of my impressions:

Sinitrena: I very carefully avoided reading what looks like an explanation of what was happening in your story.  To me it was like a kid in class, day-dreaming (although it is night) and filling in the "spaces" between the stars with her imagination, and then trying to capture those fantasies on the page but feeling them to be just lifeless approximations of her vivid dreams.  And of course the teacher thinks she's just wasting her time.  Story-wise it was a bit of a rambling excursion with no obvious destination, but the poetic use of language made it an enjoyable trek.

Ejected Star:  I'm disappointed that I can't vote for your story, but rules are rules.  I liked the "personal kaleidoscope" behind Lt. Vaughn's eyes before he comes to - I've actually experienced those flashing lights when I've experienced head trauma, and its the kind of creative use of language that drags you into the story.  The bored Fentellians remind me a bit of the Vogons (sp?) that wrecked Earth in Douglas Adams' stories.

Retro Jay:  For a very short story I thought yours packed the most punch.  I liked the idea of humanity flushing away its most unwanted antihero, but at the same time inadvertently destroying their universe at the same time.  I guess there's some kind of lesson about human-nature to be learned here....   I'm a little confused as to how the Moon just up and died one day (I mean, yeah, they were extracting to much H3, but....  what happened to that 63 trillion tonne corpse?)  I smiled at Gandalf the White sweeping up our mess.

Repi: Johnny Jet was easily the best character of the competition for me.  He kind of seems to shoot himself in the foot by shutting Eve down before arriving ...anywhere, but that seems very much in keeping with his shoot-first, don't-put-pants-on-later kind of mentality.  I think a bit of editing could tighten up the text a bit (Ooziness?  As in oozing stuff?), but I would definitely be interested in following this character through further adventures.

Mandle:  Well, if we were voting in categories I would definitely vote for you in the too-much-information-with-regards-to-old-men-using-toilets category.  At least you didn't have his old man balls drooping into the water first -ah crap, now I thought it.    I'm not going to lie to you, I think the equating of jam between the horoscope entries as "betwixt the stars" was a bit of a fudge in order to write a moving tale of eternal love grafted onto a bigfoot fantasy.  Despite essentially avoiding the theme, the underlying message of the story was great, and your use-of-words is top rate.  I do wish you had been able to edit the less interesting scenes down a bit (teaching the cup game) and expanded a bit on the more intriguing (why is Harry grabbing a wild-animal's buttocks three seconds after encountering it?).   

Barbwire: Who doesn't like a good road-trip adventure!  Spaceman's adventures in the Baby Boom Galaxy were unfortunately glossed over, but you definitely capture the wonder and magic of the great beyond.  I do wish you had expanded a bit on the whole consciousness-in-a-mannequin thing, as that was a lot to swallow all at once.  The idea of space being a circle that just brings you home in the end could also have been developed further.  In the end, I think this story had a lot of potential, but it needs to be fleshed out a bit.

[Sinitrena]

Sinitrena: I very carefully avoided reading what looks like an explanation of what was happening in your story.

Of course, there's a reason it's in hide-tags. This is very much a read-after-voting post. 

[EjectedStar]

Sinitrena: I already kind of commented on this. It’s different for me, something that I would never find myself reading. Artistic, esoteric and abstract. I liked it, even if it made my mind jumble up a little bit with the punchy stream of thoughts.

EjectedStar: I might be biased, but you did a great job here, even though you stole a character name from one of your previous works, you lazy bastard.

RetroJay: Ah, the age old, “Psych, it’s actually our universe in a snowglobe” gag.  This story felt the most ‘sci-fi’ to me out of all the entries, but I’m a sucker for fun descriptions of weird spacecraft and sci-fi mumbo jumbo. Although I don’t know why Yahweh is so disappointed that we discovered FTL travel. (Also: I imagined Jeb as the main character)

Repi: This definitely felt like an excerpt in the middle of a larger piece. Which made it kind of hard to follow with a lot of references to things that the reader doesn’t know about or ever will know about. The imagery was fun and interesting, and it really felt like an addled, slightly drunk guy exploring his world and coming to terms with it.

Baron: This started off dropping factually correct terms, bringing up actual solutions to solve his predicament. I thought you’d start describing how delta-v works and getting nitty gritty with it, and then we run into some cat-like ascended creature and merging and… yeah that got out of hand real quick! Honestly I feel like side-eyeing the story-teller in the bar and asking him if he’s just fucking with me.

Mandle: This was well written and kept my attention until the end. Although I did scroll with trepidation that it would turn into a Chuck Tingle Bigfoot Story, and it didn’t, so thank you for that.

BarbWire: Starman sounds like a cool fuckin’ dude, I’d hang out with him in Elon’s roadster any day. I really like the absurdity of an inanimate object gaining sentience and instead of being curious and in awe of our world, he throws on some shades, flips the bird and drives off into the nearest black hole.

Alrighty! Those are some of my quick thoughts on these great entries, I'll be tallying up the votes and posting the winner tomorrow! Hope it wasn't too much of a headscratcher of a topic, but I really enjoyed everyone's stories!

[EjectedStar]

Cue the fanfare as this week's Fortnightly Writing Competition has officially ended!

The competition was fierce as the opponents tapped away furiously at their keyboards, looking to reach out into cold, hard space and take the gold.

Without further ado, here are this fortnight's winners:

Firmly clutching the gold, with [21] points we have RetroJay!

In second, the competition was just too fierce and two compeitors must share the spotlight. With [13] points a piece, Mandle and Repi both have a hand on that silver prize.

Coming in hot on their afterburners with [11] points Baron takes the last medal at 3rd!

Our final two competitors, still blazing hot from their trip around the system, finish up the pack with BarbWire at [7] points and Sinitrena at [5]!

Thank you to all the participants and voters, it was a splendid two weeks of competition and we got a lot of great writing out of it!

If anyone wants more breakdowns of the vote tally, or comments on how it should be done in the future, feel free to voice your concerns/comments!

With that, I bow out as your host, and RetroJay has the pleasure to host the next Fortnightly Writing Competition!

Thank you again.

[RetroJay]

WOW!!
I've actually won something. That makes a pleasant change. 

Thank you VERY much for all those who voted for my story.
I must congratulate all the other entrants on their great stories, I enjoyed reading them all.

I will have to give some thought as to the subject of the next competition.
Unfortunately I am at work until Tuesday and so it gives our brains time to cool off. 

Yours, Jay.

[Sinitrena]

Congratulations, RetroJay. And I think it's your first time entering the Fortnightly Writing Competition (correct me if I'm wrong), so double congratulations!

[Repi]

Congratulations, RetroJay! This was my number one choice, and overall the stories have very inventive stuff going on.

---

Personally, I'm pleased to hear feedback because it's really difficult to get out of your own head to see the outside perspective. I have really absorbed the comments, and if this turns out into an actual game, there will be some changes based on these comments. So thank you to anyone who put the time and effort to comment on the stories!

Actually, drawing, not writing. Well, from a metaphorical point of view, that hardly matters, but there are certain hints.

You're right, I should have said a metaphor to any artistic journey. And I misinterpreted the "She" part when clearly there is just a shift in attention. And actually, the word choices are more appropriate when you think about the possible age of the "You".

[Baron]

Congratulations RetroJay!  My votes had you tied with another competitor, but I'm glad you won.   

Honestly I feel like side-eyeing the story-teller in the bar and asking him if he’s just fucking with me.

But then he would just absorb you into his collective being!      Honestly, I ran a little short of time and had to crank out the ending much more quickly than I would have liked.  In the ideal situation I finish a day or two before the deadline and have time for a quick re-read/edit before things go out the door.

[BarbWire]

A well deserved win, RetroJay.  You've certainly set the bar high for future entries. I think I might have to duck under it. 

[RetroJay]

Hi, All good Peeps.

Thank you all for your kind words and congratulations.
Yes you are right, Sinitrena, it was indeed my first time in the competition. 

I really don't have a clue what I'm supposed to do now.  Bear with me and I'm sure I will work it out.
I have an idea for our next competition. I will explain when I see you on the new thread.
Hope to see you soon.

Yours, Jay.

p.s. The next FWC topic has been posted.