Messages

[Three's a Crowd]

Three's a Crowd

Garaghan checked his watch to see 23:56, and immediately looked away.  That was the time that his brother had died.  He couldn't afford to get choked up, not now.  The drop was only minutes away, and having gone rogue to hunt these bastards down there was no cavalry to back him up this time.  This was a desperate move on his part, and he well knew that desperation could make people do stupid things.

He checked that his gun was loaded and ready, just to take his mind off his emotions.  Long experience had taught him that there was nothing to gain going into this kind of situation full of hot rage.  Leaning his head against the corrugated iron of the shipping container helped take the edge off a bit, and checking his other gun took him the rest of the way.  In his years as a police detective Garaghan had dealt with enough cold-blooded killers.  He noted with some bemusement that the mannerisms had started to rub off onto him.

The loading bay doors began to rumble open.  He clenched his two pistols and waited.

*    *    *    *    *

Lunaro gratefully accepted the hotdog from the street vendor, paying cash and tipping generously.  And why not?  The back-pack he was carrying was stuffed with over a million dollars in hard currency.  No one was going to miss $20 bucks, and it was hungry work being a mule.  If he was going to get robbed, busted, or shot, he sure as hell wasn't going to do it on an empty stomach.

The crowds were thinning this late at night.  Good natured people were getting tired and paying their bills, leaving the streets to the more adventurous rougher sorts.  Lunaro checked his phone as he crossed the street, waving casually to the drivers that honked their horns angrily.  It was 23:57, and he was supposed to be somewhere shortly. 

Lunaro took out a cigarette and crouched on the sidewalk, taking a few moments to watch the world churn by.  He was never one to rush at the best of times, and certainly not into this kind of dangerous deal.  If only Mama didn't need another surgery, he might be able to leave this kind of work behind.  If only.... 

Lunaro subtly flexed his arms, feeling the reassuring solidity of the guns carefully concealed up each sleeve of his jacket, and enjoyed the last of his smoke.  Fate would decide what came next - all he could do was face it with a clear conscience.

*    *    *    *    *

Bartek slammed on his brakes as the pedestrian wandered out into the street right in front of him.  He honked his horn angrily, shaking his head at how trusting some people could be.  Like the world would just watch out for you!  In Bartek's line of work, that was the kind of attitude that got you killed.

He checked the consol clock as he turned the last corner, noticing it flick to 23:58.  Right on schedule.  Bartek liked it when things went like clockwork, each cog in the machine clicking into place at exactly the right time.  That's what kept his daughter in that expensive school his ex-wife raved so much about. 

The laneway was dark but for his headlights.  Nothing seemed amiss or out of place.  Bartek hit the button on his sun-visor and a loading bay door began to open behind him.  Everyone said it was paranoia, but he insisted on backing into every deal.  He figured if things went sideways it was a smart idea to be able to peel off quickly, and Bartek was nothing if not meticulous when planning for contingencies.

He felt his pockets for the two contingencies of last resort, each one loaded and ready to use at a moment's notice.  And then he began to slowly back into the warehouse.

*    *    *    *    *

Garaghan jumped a bit as the iron door slammed.  Didn't these hooligans have any sense of self-preservation?  If he were a scummy drug-dealer he would tip-toe about, not slam doors that might draw unwanted attention.  But that's probably why he was the ex-cop and not the ex-con. 

From the shadows behind the shipping containers he peeked to see the silhouette of a youth carrying a large backpack waltzing along the catwalk and down the stairs to the loading docks.  As he crossed into the light of the reversing car, Garaghan could see the youth's goofy smile and friendly eyes. 

God, he hated it when they were this young.  Kids full of hope and dreams shouldn't be caught up in this kind of business.  The youth reminded him a bit of his nephew, barely out of highschool, looking like a deer in headlights as true adulthood steamrolled towards him. 

Garaghan swallowed hard, willing himself to take the next step.  It was because of scum like this that his nephew was orphaned, he reminded himself.  His right foot moved, and then the left, and suddenly this was happening.

*    *    *    *    *

"Are you the guy?" Lunaro called out, reaching the bottom of the stairs.  The car had just stopped, turning off the back up lights and casting the whole warehouse into darkness.  Really he should have stopped to turn on a light or two, but it would be suspicious to peel off now.  Instead he just stood there, waiting.

A man peeked out of the driver side window and shouted about the lights.  "What is this, a sleepover?  I don't trust what I can't see!"

"Okay, okay, be cool man," Lunaro called back.  "I think I see a switch by the side of the loading bay door.  Imma walk over there slowly and turn it on."

"Fuck you, you will," the man in the car replied.  "You just fucking stay right there."  The trunk to the car popped open, and then the man dashed unexpectedly from the car towards the switch.  Something popped and fizzled on the ceiling, and then slowly the warehouse lights flickered to life.

Lunaro squinted as the bright light briefly blinded him.  He heard the other man swear, and before he could really see anything he heard the unmistakable sound of guns being drawn.  Instinctively he shot his arms outward, the guns up his sleeves flinging themselves into his hands as he had long practised.  And then his vision adjusted to the threat at hand.

*    *    *    *    *

The three men stood in a circle, maybe twenty feet from each other, each with two guns drawn, one pointing at each of the other men.

"What the fuck?!" Bartek was the first to speak.

"It looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff here boys," Garaghan announced.

"Why d'ja gotta be all hating on us Mexicans?" Lunaro asked.  "This is just a gun triangle, plain and simple."

"I think that's gotta be the stupidest term I ever heard," Bartek said, keeping his guns trained on the other two men.  "Now who the fuck are you, and what do you want?"

"I'm the mule," Lunaro told him.

"I know who the fuck you are!" Bartek barked in annoyance. 

"Ex-PD," Garaghan said calmly.  "I traced your network's movements to this location.  You son-of-a-bitches killed my brother, and now I'm here for revenge."

"Whoa, man!" Lunaro cautioned, backing away.  "I didn't kill no one, let alone a cop's brother.  I'm just working a job, man."

Garaghan knew in his heart this was true, and he instinctively turned towards the other man.

"Hey, I don't know nothing about no network," Bartek told him.  "I'm a one man operation, and I'm just in it for the money.  There's no money in killing anyone, let alone cop's brothers.  You got your shit mixed up, and now you got me mixed up in your shit."

"The hell I do!" Garaghan shouted, although the seed of doubt was beginning to germinate in his mind.  He'd barely slept in the week since his brother was shot, and it was beginning to take its toll.  "Where were you last Thursday at 23:56?"

Bartek thought a bit.  "That was the night of my daughter's violin recital.  My ex-wife would murder me if I missed that.  It ran late, with so many fucking kids showing off.  I took a fucking video and everything, just look at my phone."

Garaghan considered the idea.  He had several ex-wives who would behave the same way.    "Show it to me."

"Fuck you I'm dropping my gun," Bartek told him.

"I can see you guys got a lot to work out," Lunaro said, taking another step back.

"Don't move another step or I'll shoot," Garaghan commanded.  "You're still a god-damn scummy drug dealer."

"Mule," Lunaro corrected.  "Just a mule.  Fell behind on my mom's medical bills, and got caught up with the wrong sort of people.  I'm not a bad guy, and I can see you're not a bad guy either.  But you know what, we don't have to do this deal here tonight, if the drug thing bothers you.  We can all just, you know, walk away." 

"Yeah," Bartek agreed.  "I think that'd be best for everyone."

"No," Garaghan said with all the authority that 20 years on the force had given him.  "No, you're just going to deal another time, and eventually someone else's brother is going to get shot.  This ends here, right now.  Drop the backpack, and take whatever that is out of the trunk."

"Fuck you," Bartek spat.  "You're not a cop anymore, you said so yourself.  I'm not going broke because things went south for your brother.  I got school fees to pay for, and spousal support.  Either I'm leaving here with the goods or the money, but you might as well shoot me now if you think I'm leaving without either."

"My man, it's not worth it," Lunaro said, partially dropping his gun on Bartek.  "I had a cousin what got shot over these drugs, and it's just a senseless waste."

"What, the guys who fronted you that money are just going to let you walk away if you don't come back with the goods?" Bartek asked.  "The fuck they will.  They will nail your ass to a freeway overpass as a warning to anyone else that thinks they can walk out with their money."

Lunaro thought for a bit.  "You know, that's probably true.  But that will be tomorrow, not right now.  As I see it, either I die right now, or I take a bit of this here money for Moma and spend one last night with her in the hospital."  With that he lowered his guns and let the backpack slide off his back.

"Shit kid," Garraghan said, impressed at the youth's noble gesture.  He lowered one of his weapons.  "All right, you take a stack from the backpack and go help Moma."

"The fuck?!?" Bartek said, waving the gun that was not pointed at Garraghan.  "He gets to walk away to save his Momma?  The cartel is going to come after both of us, and probably you too.  I'm serious when I say you might as well shoot me here.  I'd prefer not to be nailed to an overpass, but I'll do it ten times over before I give these people an excuse to come after my daughter."

Garaghan holstered his one gun.  "Give me your phone," he said, reaching with his free hand towards Bartek.

Bartek lowered the weapon that had been trained on Lunaro.  The youth promptly began rummaging in the backpack.  Bartek wouldn't really miss a stack of bills, not if it got him out of this situation, and the kid did seem to have a good excuse.  But he needed the rest of that money, and the cartel sure as hell needed the drugs he had cooked up in his trunk. 

"How is my phone going to change anything?" he asked the ex-cop.

"It'll prove to me you're an honest guy," Garaghan shrugged. 

Bartek squinted.  "You let me toss this duffle bag full of drugs to the kid so that the gangstas don't kill him, and I'll do it."

Garaghan frowned.  "I don't want those drugs on the street."

"You know fucking well that they'll just be replaced by other drugs," Bartek shot back.  "What you gotta think of is what you want most right now.  You want the drugs off the street, or you want to find your brother's killer?  It seems like you've got too much conscience to kill an innocent man in cold blood."

The remaining gun in Garaghan's hand began shaking ever so slightly.

"That's fucking right," Bartek said, putting his second gun back into his pocket.  "Okay kid, you robbed me of a stack for a good cause.  Toss the rest of the backpack over here."

"I didn't agree to this," Garaghan said, the gun now shaking more.

Lunaro tossed the backpack, and then raised his hands innocently.  It landed right behind Bartek's car.

"Okay, here comes the duffle bag," Bartek said, reaching blindly into the trunk with his free hand.

"Stop!" Garaghan shouted, his gun now shaking out of control.  "I don't want to shoot, but I will."

"Of course you're going to fucking shoot," Bartek said, raising the duffle bag up.  "What, did you think we were all just going to walk away, get a beer maybe?  These things always end with people getting shot, either right here or tomorrow, or the day after that.  It's a hard game we're playing, and in the end everyone always loses.  That's the way it's always been, and the way it's always going to be." 

Bartek tossed the duffle bag, and Lunaro caught it deftly.

The gun in Garaghan's hand was suddenly deadly still.  Life was a real shit show, with a series of rational decisions ending in almost certain death for three men who had never met before.  Three men who were all here illegally, but all for the best reasons.  Three men with so much in common, but no way to bridge the gap that could save them from each other.  Garaghan closed his eyes, willing himself to put pride aside and choose a different path.

"So... that beer's definitely off the table, then?" he asked calmly.

Bartek and Lunaro shared a long glance, no doubt thinking of the inevitable carnage that was just a twitchy finger away. 

"Uh, yeah, well I guess I can make a bit of a detour on the way home," Lunaro conciliated.

Bartek shook his head and laughed at how unpredictable life could be.  "What the fuck, sure.  Let's go get a beer.  But you're fucking paying!"

I'm still tri-ing. 

Congratulations, Stupot!

For the win and for the nose.   

[Oh 'Chute]

Holy alarmism Batman!     At least our "dying" competition got a lot more votes, although I'm afraid of losing Mandle as a contributor when he gets his forever job as a headline writer.   

I vote Oh 'Chute.

Spoiler

@ Sinitrena:  I liked the poetic approach, and the contrast between the dutiful pigeon and the shallow swallow was satisfyingly reflected in their respective fates.  Some slightly imperfect rhymes (note/load springs to mind) and grammatical lapses ("it weren't her wings" - "wasn't" would be more appropriate, don't ask me why) detract slightly, but honestly my biggest reason for not voting for your work was just the brevity.  What is the pigeon's motivation to risk life and limb?  What is the whimsical sparrow doing fluttering about in such an obviously dangerous milieu when he could be off frolicking anywhere but?  How does this parable of the virtues of loyalty and self-sacrifice affect the outcome of the siege?  In the end this feels like just a fragment of a story.

@ Stupot:  This was a good story.  The hook sucked the reader in like a vacuum, and the twelve second mystery kept the reader guessing until nearly the end.  I thought the ending could use a bit of rework - it becomes so obvious that it was Chyles that it spoils a bit of the build-up, and it's a little unclear (although perhaps it is supposed to be) how Tre improbably survived while Wachowski perished.  A little proofreading is always a good idea ("film them watching them").  Overall it was an exciting read, though, and I really liked the moral of friends watching out for friends trumps petty jealousies.  Well done!

[close]

[The Book of Jim]

A bit of a rushed job this fortnight, unfortunately.

The Book of Jim

   This being the book of Jim, a true account of the story of my brother Josh.  There is a lot of disinformation out there, and I want to set the record straight.

   First I'll get into the lineage which is typical of this kind of account.  Josh was the son of Joe, who was the son of Jake, et cetera and so on.  Most accounts gloss over the fact that I was his elder brother, and thus was witness to the entirety of his short and tragic life.

   We weren't well off, with Papa Joe being just a menial carpenter.  The gentile occupiers had dictated that everyone had to return to their hometown to pay taxes and be counted, so I remember as a small child being dragged along on the long road back to Bit-Lahmi and staying in the most menial hovels along the way, all while my poor mom was pregnant with my little brother.

   By the time we got there Papa Joe was so poor we had to lodge in a barn, and that's where mom gave birth to Josh.  It was the funniest thing to observe as a child, for the baby literally floated after birth, giving rise to all kinds of vicious rumours of miracles and witchcraft.  In the end the family had to flee to Egypt for a while, till the buzz died down.

   Well, it turns out Josh was afflicted with some kind of allergy to the surface of this world.  It seemed to repel him, unwillingly, in the opposite direction.  There were a few close calls where we almost lost him to the ether (one time his swaddling cloth was only just snagged by the branch of a high tree). 

     But in time he learned to live with his affliction, hovering just a fraction of an inch above the world.  We moved frequently, so soon no one was the wiser, for who really looks for a tiny space beneath a man's feet?

     Indeed, the affliction was beneficial in some regards.  He could move so silently as a shepherd in his youth that his flock was never bothered with the slightest fear or worry.  Later, in Papa Joe's carpenter shop he could plane a plank to perfect flatness merely by strapping two planers to his feet and skating a hair's breadth over the surface of the wood.

     Josh was, I can attest, a gentle and well-meaning soul.  We formed a kind of social help group, looking after the poor and advocating peaceful resistance to the barbaric ways of our gentile conquerors.  It was fulfilling work, but honestly no one paid any of us much heed until the incident.

     I will remember it until the end of my days.  The young maiden drowning out in the lake, the fear and anguish of those on the shore, for there were no boats at hand and in those dry lands not one of us had learned how to swim.

     And then in a fateful moment there was Josh, walking across the surface of the water to rescue her.  People went nuts about it.  Tongues wagged all over the land about the miracle that had occurred, and soon people started to follow Josh, believing him to be some sort of promised saviour.

     And Josh didn't really see the harm, for it added weight to our cause.  He even began turning miraculous tricks in order to raise money for the poor.  My favourite was when he rode a small dog around the streets of Nazareth, hovering just above the beast's back so that its spine was not crushed.

     Unfortunately his message of peace and service made the authorities suspicious, and they hounded him for his disobedience.  Josh began to make mistakes, the worst being when he shot up two feet into the air in anger at the capitalist usurpation of a temple and tipped over the money changer tables in the process.

     And so Josh was arrested and crucified - they had to nail him down to keep him from floating away.  But this only enhanced his fame among the poor and meek. 

     When at last my brother was laid to rest in a crypt the people were so enamoured with his legend that they rolled open the stone that blocked it, and out my brother's corpse floated, all the way up to heaven.  And of course that only set the tongues wagging further.

     Well, these stories have a way of spinning out of control, so as I said I just wanted to get the truth out there.  Apparently some folk are publishing a compendium of accounts about my brother's life and mine is in the running to be included, so wish me luck!

                                Jim Josephson

I'd like to give Mandle 10/10 for his voting deadline. 

[Mandle]

Ah, official voting time.  And everyone knows official votes carry more weight. 

Spoiler

Surprise, surprise, I vote Mandle.

It's a well-deserved vote, despite it being my only option.  The building suspense and bizarre twist at the end suck the reader into the story.  There's more mystery here than closure: who is Robert Hill exactly, what exactly is his relationship with the rain, and how on Earth did poor Justine escape?  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, especially if your intended format is a longer novella, but it is a bit awkward in a short story format.  Jumping around a bit with the timeline (at the vigil, then before it, then back at it) seemed to needlessly complicate the narrative, and I'm undecided on how believable the teenage girl characters were (all the side-distractions, emotional hairpin turns, and swearing seemed over the top, but the sad fact is that's probably exactly how a subset of teenage girls behave).  The writing, however, was smooth and polished, and the dripping out of information kept the reader constantly lapping it up.  Good work, Mandle!

[close]

[Sky Fling]

Sky Fling

   "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain James Dawson speaking.  Welcome aboard Encanta Airlines Flight 143 from Albuquerque to Anchorage, Alaska.  Our flight time will be approximately 7 hours and 35 minutes with an estimated arrival time of 8:15 pm local time.  We will be ascending to a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet over some of the most scenic mountain chains of North America.  Please be advised that weather conditions along our route can be expected to cause atmospheric turbulence, and on behalf of the cabin crew we ask that you keep your seatbelt fastened at all times.  Current weather conditions in Anchorage are a balmy eight degrees and snowy, which gives you something to look forward to as you sit back and enjoy your flight."

   Captain James Dawson hung up the intercom and stared wistfully out the cockpit window.  The landscape stretched beneath him like a canvas beneath the plane, but it was the sky as always that held his gaze.  It gleamed at the edges where the sun seemed to shine more brightly, and the occasional cloud flitted past whimsically.  It was a magical, ephemeral place, the sky, where beauty and danger churned with a deceptive quickness.  It was a fickle ocean of air, in his experience, and very much not for the faint of heart. 

His longtime co-pilot Ted Bhatra seemed to read his mind, his aviator sunglasses hiding a mischievous twinkle to his eye.  "Those gauges are so smart they can read themselves," he remarked, reaching over to activate the autopilot.  "Did you engage the anti-terrorist protocol?"

Captain Dawson shook his head, tearing his eyes away from the heavens.  "You mean the cockpit door lock?"  Clear skies always had a way of making Ted horny, and it was unlikely the cabin crew would disturb them this quickly into the flight.  He reached back to make sure the door was secured.

"Watch that turbulence," Ted said playfully, grabbing the captain's exposed buttocks and giving it a vigorous shake.

"Let's just hope the stewards don't come a-knockin' while this plane's a-rockin'," Captain Dawson replied.  It was a pretty lame line, but he'd been in the Six Mile High Club long enough to know that Ted went in for this kind of cheesy foreplay.  There were a few more zingers about jumbo jets coming in for some rough landings and then not much more talk as the plane hummed blissfully through the gentle skies.

Sometime later Ted was smoking a cigarette wearing nothing but his black tie and sunglasses.  The two of them were still tangled up (the cockpit wasn't big enough not to be), and Captain Dawson sat there revelling in the fact that he had the best job ever.

"I never get over the view from up here," he confessed, looking over Ted's sleek brown body.  "I can't believe they're fucking paying me for this."

"A six year old could fly this plane 99% of the time," Ted sighed.  "It's the other 1% of the time they're paying you for."

"And what about you, what are they paying you for?"

Ted smiled his whiter-than-cloud-top smile.  "I'm a clear-skies kinda pilot."

Captain Dawson saluted his co-pilot.  There were lots of guys with the airline like Ted, just putting in their time in the most enjoyable way possible.  Heck, he could even count himself in that category, except for the nagging bit of conscience that constantly bothered him.  He'd gotten better after all these years.  He could go almost half an hour now without obsessively going back to the gauges.  As soon as he caught himself thinking about it he tried to put the thought out of his mind.

"What are you gonna notice that the autopilot won't?" Ted shrugged, leaning his head back against the cockpit wall.

Captain Dawson gave a hollow laugh, clutching his own hands to stop them from visibly twitching.  He glanced back at the cockpit console, catching a glimpse of something flashing.  Probably not important, he told himself.  But why in god's skies had the engineers built it to flash?  He closed his eyes tight, trying not to see.  "You got any plans for the summer?" he forced himself to say, trying to keep himself distracted.

"I thought I'd do those extra training modules I've been putting off," Ted said earnestly.

"Really?" Captain Dawson asked, surprised.

Ted smiled and shook his head.  "Of course not.  Just give me my fat paycheck and take me to heaven and back three times a day.  I'm not in this gig for the workload."

Captain Dawson nodded.  He found all the extra training mind-numbingly boring as well, but his conscience wouldn't allow him to neglect it.  Ted would tease him that to truly fly you had to learn to let go, and he'd probably be right.  Captain Dawson was trying, he really was.  But there was a gravity to his responsibilities that kept dragging him back down to Earth.

A dark pall seemed to fall over the mood in the cockpit.  Dawson brooded about being torn between his yearning to fly free and his fear of crashing back to Earth.  Ted just shook his head again.  "Oh, just go check on it," he grumbled.

Dawson looked back to the gauges again, and suddenly realised the pall was literal as well as figurative.  "There shouldn't be clouds this high," he said, jumping into the pilot's seat.  Indeed, they were surrounded now by clouds, some arching over them to cast the plane in shadow.  A sudden flash sparked around the plane, making Dawson jump in his seat, making him notice that he was still not wearing any pants.

"That was cool!" Ted said, slipping into the seat next to him, looking around.  "Electrical storm.  Maybe we should increase altitude?"

Dawson tapped the gauge, an old habit from when there was actually a mechanism inside that might be stuck.  "It's the altimeter that's flashing.  I'm not getting any reading.  Better call it in to check with radar."

Ted radioed the nearest control tower.  A minute passed, and then another.  There was no response.  Dark clouds had gathered all around them now, and several more flashes of lightning struck out towards the plane.

"We're getting lower," Ted commented, looking around.  "Better increase the altitude."

"If we go too high we'll stall," Dawson countered.  "The autopilot still seems to think we're on course.  Radio again."

But still the radio was silent.

"That flash must have fried some of our equipment," Ted reasoned, hanging up the radio receiver.  "These mountains get pretty high.  We don't want to be flying around in bad weather without gauges or radio contact.  Maybe we should divert to Salt Lake City?"

Dawson tapped at the GPS screen which showed their location.  "That can't be right," he said after a moment of thought.  "By this time we should be getting close to Canada."

"What do you mean it's not right?" Ted said, a definite edge to his voice.  A wave of dark cloud enveloped them, and suddenly the cockpit window was pelted with blinding ice pellets.  A wave of severe turbulence rocked the plane violently.

"Pull the plane up," Ted said, not asking this time.

"I think you're right," Dawson agreed, disengaging the autopilot and pulling up on the stick while increasing power to the engines.

"What the fuck is that?" Ted asked.

Dawson looked down to the original flashing gauge.  It showed that the fuel tanks were nearly empty.  "Must be malfunctioning also," he murmured, trying to focus on the blinding nothingness beyond the window.

"Did you verify the fuel calculations of the ground crew?" Ted demanded.

"That's your job, Ted," Dawson replied, trying not to panic.  It was just the lightning messing with the gauges, he kept telling himself.  "Just... stay calm.  It'll be all right."

"All right?!?  I just shit all over my seat!"

Dawson tried not to look over at his copilot.  Why weren't they clearing the clouds?  He dared not pull up any more, or they really would stall.  Multiple gauges were now flashing, none of them reassuringly.  Suddenly hailstones the size of golf balls started smashing off the windshield.

"We're fucked!" Ted swore, pulling on his pants.  "We're fucked, and you know it."

"It'll be all right," Dawson repeated, his voice as icy as the precipitation.  "Don't panic."

"You know as well as I do that flying blind without gauges means that we're pretty much riding in a hundred million dollar coffin.  Add to that the fuel loss, and the clock is ticking down from 30,000 feet.  Storm clouds like this can sink as low as 1,000 feet, and that's not counting the mountains.  We may have mere minutes to live."

"I said don't panic, Ted," Dawson repeated.

"Fuck that," Ted said, straightening his uniform.  "You know there's only two parachutes on these things, and only we know about them.  Let's jump this brick before we're incinerated in a fiery crash."

"They'll find us, Ted," Dawson said, still desperately pulling up on the stick.  "We'll spend consecutive sentences being the punching bag of 2,000 venereal disease-soaked meth-heads.  Sit down and work through this with me."

"I've stashed some of my money away," Ted said, wincing at the way the plane shuddered in the violent winds.  "And they won't even think to look for me, because you can't do a body count when all that's left are ashes.  Fucking let it all go and fly with me!"

Dawson turned to stare hard at his friend, his colleague, his lover.  All he saw was a scared little man with his uniform half-tucked in.  "Ted, why don't you fly with me for a change?"

Ted looked uncharacteristically skittish.  "I'd toss you your pants, but no one will survive to tell the tale anyway."  And with that he unlocked the cockpit door and slipped away.

Captain Dawson didn't even consider leaving his post.  Not fear nor nakedness nor-

"Sir?  Captain Bhatra is behaving very oddly!" Came the panicked whisper of the head steward.

Captain Dawson glanced back, suddenly somewhat bashful.  They locked eyes for a moment, and the captain realised with surprise that the woman couldn't see him from the waist down over the pilot's chair.  "Get someone with him, so he doesn't do anything rash," the captain commanded.  The steward nodded and ducked back out of the door.

Captain Dawson shook his head.  She hadn't thought a single thing was amiss in the cockpit, despite the blinding rain and the rocking turbulence and the flashing gauges.  People put a lot of trust in things they didn't really understand.

Wait.  Rain.  That meant they were losing altitude, despite his best efforts.  Dawson had been flying for two thirds of his life, and despite the training and the simulators his understanding of flight was still mostly instinctual.  Snow up high, rain down low.  The angles of the plane for turns and landings were burned into his arm muscles.  If he really thought about it, all those gauges and computers weren't really any better at flying than he was.  They just made it easier for the 99% of the time that a toddler could do this job.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," he said over the intercom, taking command as he was supposed to.  "We've encountered some heavier weather than forecast which is consuming more fuel than expected.  We'll be diverting to... Edmonton as a precautionary measure.  Please remain seated with your seat belt on and your tray in the upright position as we turn the plane." 

And then he let the muscle memory take over, banking the plane to the right, letting his heartbeats count out the time it should take to turn the plane 180 degrees.  The view from the cockpit window didn't change, but through the storm he thought he saw, for the briefest moment, a glimpse of a forested mountain slope.

Suddenly there were screams from behind him as the air was sucked out of the cabin, and oxygen masks tumbled down from the overhead compartments.  "Ted, what have you done...." Dawson thought, but then there was no time to think.   Suddenly a lake loomed out of the storm in front of him, maybe 500 feet below and closing fast.  There was really no time to really think about it.  He angled the plane into an emergency landing position.  The belly of the plane suddenly banged into the water, causing a deafening rumble as massive amounts of friction slowed the plane.  Dawson dared to think he'd pulled it off when at the last moment the nose of the plane lunged upward and the plane came to a sudden, jolting stop.

It took a few moments for Dawson's frontal lobe to kick in again.  There were screams and cries, but that comfortingly meant that many people were actually still alive.  He looked out the windshield and noted with amazement that they had struck the forested shore, remarkably just as they were slow enough not to get pulverised.  In hindsight it was a double miracle, for the mountain lake had afforded them the only possible landing site for fifty miles and the shore had saved them from freezing to death in the frigid mountain lake.  An irate squirrel climbed up onto the window and yelled at him about destroying his home.  If that was the only casualty, Dawson would consider himself lucky.

The head steward popped the cabin door open, heaving herself up like a mountain climber due to the angle of the fuselage.  "Sir, that was incredible!  It's a miracle!  We're evacuating the passengers.  All of them - they all made it!  Captain Bhatra jumped, and he'll probably freeze to death in that lake, the filthy coward.  But the rest of us all manned our stations and we came through it!  You're a goddamn hero, sir!  You're... wait, where are your pants?"

Captain Dawson let gravity relax him back into the captain's chair.  He let his muscles go limp and his heart come back down out of his throat.  He closed his eyes and marshalled his calmest captain's voice.  "I had to take them off," he confessed.  "I think I shit myself."

I've started, but the forecast is gloomy.     Any chance of an extension?

[@ Sinitrena]

Good reads, peeps.

@ Sinitrena

Spoiler

This story has so much going for it.  I loved the adventurous yet selfless Moon Flower, the moral of the promised land for the virtuous sufferers of this life, and the symmetry of the Moon Flower carrying the man in the end.  The way you used words to paint vivid settings made me drool a bit (the sunset that "cooks the waters in glimmering fire" springs to mind).  The bleakness of the living world was for me a bit of a turn-off: what kind of society can tolerate the murder of little girls in broad public daylight?!?  The shallow princess character was another example of this, but at least by this point the man has joined me by entirely rejecting this miserable world.  A bit of proofreading would have made this a stronger entry ("Food of the cliffs," "water's of the ocean"...).  One last thought, as a parent who has whiled away many hours with small children at the seaside: how is it that the Moon Flower bed at the border of the sea and the sand wasn't uncovered by little kids years ago?

[close]

@ Mandle

Spoiler

Cool concept.  I was excited by the prospect of a blind serial killer, and a post apocalyptic world run by werewolves.  The execution was... mixed.  As a native English speaker I was able to decipher a majority of the wolfish mangling of our language, but often only by reading it aloud.  A more intelligible way to relate how wolves speak would strengthen the story, in my opinion.  Add to that the action portrayed as sounds and lurches interpreted by someone blindfolded, and the story becomes difficult to parse.  Some run on sentences ("It rips its wiry, rope-muscled arms back behind it and the doors slam shut as it whips its elongated canine head to one side and tears out the throat of a man you only knew as Dennis as the poor guy smacks up against one of the wooden panels and falls twitching to the floor, spraying an artwork of blood across the door and one of its inset windows as his twitching body goes down.") add to the feeling that this is a story that needs deciphering more than experiencing.

[close]

In the end I vote...

Spoiler

Sinitrena

[close]

[Caterwaul in D Minor]

Caterwaul in D Minor


   Have you ever danced with the dew drops by the pale moonlight?  Most creatures just blunder through them, if they're awake at all in the wee hours, soaking themselves slowly like a witless dog in the rain.  But the higher order organisms on this planet move between the droplets as if to music, keeping themselves immaculately dry in the process.  I am such a beautiful creature! 

I walk the knife-edge of the fence top, gingerly picking my way over bits of bird poop that would be invisible but for my night-vision superpower.  The silvery moonlight glints off the tips of my tufty fur, giving me an angelic sheen, an aura of supernatural power that is as mesmerising as it is beguiling.  I am both an object of beauty and a finely tuned killing machine.  Even my roar is like vocal art, seducing my bipedal day-servants into utter submission to my will.

If you are not as intelligent as me, let me spell it out in simple words.  I am Calico, Prince of Cats.  I am lithe as a dancer, fast as a spark, cute as a button, and ruthless as a hawk.  Fear me, feed me; loathe me, love me!  But do it all from ten paces away, because I don't like anyone cramping my style.

The night air is chill, but I float through it like a wraith, leaving no trace but a quickened heartbeat and a rash of goose pimples.  I am on a mission of the utmost importance, requiring both meticulous planning and extreme stealth.  I am a professional, flitting from fencepost to tree branch with the agility of an acrobat and the silence of an owl in flight.  I am... dirty!  I stop mid-stalk, smoothing my lustrous fur with the multi-functional scrubber that is my own tongue.  Stop staring while I bathe, pervert!

OK, I am clean and sexy again.  The hunt continues.  Onward!  Stare at me now, if you dare!  Watch as I dart from tree branch to rooftop, and from rooftop to deck railing as smoothly as if I was poured like liquid.  Watch as I pose, statuesque, tensed like a tiger yet loose like a lion at the same time.  My intentions are as unreadable as the stars.  Will I zig or will I zag?  Will I do both at once and tie myself into knots?  Never!  The rumours about that one time are slanderous!  The past is cold and draughty, the future wet and murky: live in the now, I say.  See me, watch me, yearn to pet me!  And then curl up on a sun-basked pillow and dream about me! 

Except now it is night, so sun-bathing will have to wait.  Stop getting distracted!  I am about to perform the ultimate feat, the unthinkable coup, the immaculate pounce!  Soon my quarry will make a critical error and reveal his location.  A flutter here, a twitching blade of grass there, and slowly, unwittingly, he will draw the noose tighter.  And then, just as he realises the brilliance of my plan, I will spring the trap.  And by trap I mean myself, flying gracefully like a fuzzy missile to wreak beautiful destruction.  And the moon will watch my triumph with unblinking awe!

But now I must wait, still as death itself.  I am like a spider, and the lawn below me is my web, my every instinct attuned to its movements.  The moonlight is my spotlight, the railing my stage.  The grass is my canvas, my claws the brush.  But the dew drops are my kryptonite!  Their clammy dampness makes my skin crawl with the feet of a thousand fleas!  To avoid them I must be more perfect than perfect.  I must be more me than me!  I must strike as without body, like the lightning, like the wind.

Now is the springtime of my ambition.  I am positively frisky with anticipation, like a dog at walkies-time.  It is hard for a being of my sophistication to know true happiness, but this comes very close.  The crisp air, the pregnant silence, the moon-glitter spilled everywhere as if by an artistically inclined toddler!  I can positively taste the thrill, and it is as intoxicating as catnip.

And there it is, the very snowflake that will start an avalanche.  A gentle flutter of wings and a subtle reflection of the pale light reveals the moon moth, most elusive of the lesser yard prey.  It bats its wings with a whimsy that seems to defy the laws of gravity, teasing the eye with its plump dispassion.  With each jerky motion I want it more.  My claws long to pierce those careless wings, my teeth ache to penetrate its shivering body.  It is so close to being within my grasp that I can taste its forbidden juices already!

I launch myself into the air and time freezes to admire my technique.  We are both creatures of the air now, sailing the ether like spirits on a gentle breeze.  I slice through the air like a knife, but the moth twists like a corkscrew, avoiding my grasp like an hologram!  I bat at nothingness as if I am climbing a ladder without rungs!  And then my fur stands on end, for it senses the dew-soaked safety net approaching quickly from below.  Nooooooooooooooo!

The cold water sprays up at me like an icy geyser as I bring my feet beneath me.  I shoot up into the wonderfully dry air again, but the reprieve is temporary.  The more I jump to avoid the dew drops, the more wet I become!  I yowl in shock and anguish - it wasn't supposed to be this way!  I am wet!  I am muddy!  I am shocked!  I am shamed!

The moon watches my trials with cold indifference, like that neighbour cat in the window.  Dripping wet I reach the relative safety of the deck, where I shake like a lowly dog, my hair poofing out like a ragamuffin.  Don't look at me! 

How could this have happened?!?  What seemed possible in the magical moonlight has been revealed to be just a cruel fantasy.  Clearly I was duped by those silvery beams of enchantment!  This is how the cleverest of beings become jaded and bitter at the world.

Humiliated, I mope back to my kingdom.  Perhaps my bipedal servants can be roused to placate my wounded pride if I meowl incessantly at the top of my lungs.  Farewell, baleful moonlight!  Your deceptive, ghost-like illumination has been added to my long list of enemies!  I am not one to forget!  I am not one to forgive!  Watch yourself, you treacherous ...moony stuff you!  Fare thee well, and goodnight!

Two things:

1. Two more days would be great.

2. BABAR!!!! 

Ironically, I am typing this at work, where I actually have a moment to breathe occasionally.

I remember when my kids were young, I'd always joke about going to work to get a break.  The funny thing was, ironically, that it wasn't really a joke. 

Congratulations x 2, Stupot!   

I vote best improved story and best story this round to Stupot - 3 well-deserved points.

STUPOT FEEDBACK

Spoiler

Best improvement marks first, I really appreciated the added character depth for Simon/James and Philip.  There is the slight difficulty that the rewrite makes no sense without the original embedded into it, which makes this technically an expanded draft more than a rewrite, but I'm willing to let that slide due to the new moral analysis of bullying, the deepening mystery in that the plant tendrils entirely disappeared from whence they came, and mostly for the "pat on the head" zinger.   The implication that you have developed the clairvoyance to channel past crimes as a short-story writing hobbyist is surely the set-up for some sort of Miss Marple/X-Files crossover serial.

As for best story marks, I think the genius of your entry is its simplicity.  There aren't a lot of extra characters running around, only three main events (the bullying, the vine strangulation, and the discovery), and a setting that is vaguely English enough that it really demands no description to be entirely understood by the reader.  Obviously you were advantaged in this regard by choosing to rewrite a 144 word story where getting to the main plot points quickly is paramount, but I think your story-telling instincts served you well in this regard.  I, on the other hand, chose to rewrite one of my most unwieldy and bizarre submissions that bombed for good reason (which is saying something, given the number of unwieldy and bizarre submissions I've written that have bombed... ), with some rather predictable results.   

[close]

[The Price of Freedom]

Original Story: "The Survival Imperative" (For the "Shipwrecked" competition, August 2021). https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/competitions-activities/fortnightly-writing-competition-shipwrecked!-finished/msg636638564/#msg636638564

The Price of Freedom

    The Plutonic Angel heaved distressingly in the giant waves, causing gear and crew members to lurch out of their stowed position.  Xander, the old sea-dog with the glass eye that always stared askew, laughed at the land-lubbers as they flailed helplessly like toddlers let loose on a jerking subway car.  The assistant cook Viola, really just a girl, vomited into her plastic shopping bag and looked absolutely miserable.  Cora, a paramedic by training, rubbed her sympathetically on the back, muttering soothing words that she knew not to be true.  Jonah, one of the scientists, stared into space, his mind detached from the churning sardine can that was all that kept them alive in the inhospitable Southern Ocean.

    "This is nothing!" Xander bragged.  "We once had to sail through hundred foot waves off Wilkes Land.  Hundred foot waves!  They tossed this tub about like a rubber ducky in the Niagara Gorge.  One of the scientists would have been killed when he was flung head-first into the metal hull, except that his barf-bag acted like an air-bag on impact!"  The ship reeled again, as did Viola's stomach.  She heaved her guts wretchedly into the plastic bag once more.

    "I don't even know where you'd get a plastic shopping bag these days," Xander mused obnoxiously.  "China, maybe, because they don't give a shark's tit about polluting my fair ocean.  In the water they look like ragged white shits, floating at the surface.  Up here, in the dry with all that stomach soup weighing it down, it looks like a bull's scrotum."

    "What, are you trying to castrate me?" Viola spat, a bit of bile still dripping from her chin.  She offered the bag to Xander, and it swung in the air like a pendulum due to the rolling of the ship.

    "What's that guy saying?" Cora asked, trying to change the subject.  The man strapped in behind Xander, Roberto on his nametag, was talking a nautical mile a minute to himself as if in prayer.

    "Beats me," Xander said dismissively.  "I don't speak pidgin."

    "It's a Filipino dialect of Spanish, I think," Jonah spoke up for the first time.  "I can only understand pieces of what he's saying.  He's praying for mercy from the Invigilado, whoever that is."

    "Mercy!" Xander scoffed.  "Out here on the blue we make our own fate.  A sailor that relies on mercy is as good as drowned!"

    "Speaking of being a sailor, shouldn't you be up battening down the hatches or something instead of cowering down here with us?" Viola yipped like a small dog yearning for respect by nipping at the heels of the bigger dog.  Her little teeth found flesh, for Xander looked truly wounded by the question. 

"If you must know," Xander sniffed, "the captain assigned me to babysitting duty on account of a little misunderstanding over the-"  Xander never finished his sentence, for at that moment the ship lurched violently to one side and there was a deafening sound of metal twisting and tearing.  An alarm started ringing, barely audible over the surging roar of water flooding into the compartment.

"Bloody hell, we must have hit something!" Xander shouted.  "On your feet!  To the rafts!  Follow your training!  Don't forget to-"  His final instruction was cut off as the ship lurched violently in another direction, flinging the crewmembers against the far wall before half-drowning them in a surge of sloshing seawater.  After that nothing seemed real as they half-waded and half-swam through the churning flotsam of the compartment.  Breathable air came in patches, most of them too small to be useful.  Sound and light waxed and waned like a frantic tide.  Debris pounded them from all sides as if the hatch out of the compartment were now a gauntlet designed to weed out the weak.  Somehow through the confusing, angry, inverting torrent they struggled, more by instinct than design, into the corridor.  From there the frigid waters sucked their bodies away along with their consciousness.

*    *    *    *    *

Cora flitted in and out of self-awareness, like a drunk at the end of an epic party.  Slowly the world distilled itself into a gravelly beach, and she was vaguely aware of being uncomfortably cold.  There was the med kit, lying about a foot from her head, its strap still securely fastened around her arm.  She turned her head to see a plastic bag, washed clean by the might of the sea.  She struggled to raise her head and saw a mattress just beyond her grasp.  In fact, she realised, she was surrounded by miscellaneous detritus from the Plutonic Angel.  She heaved herself up into a sitting position, her head reeling like the ship had done the night before, and tried to work out where she was and how on Earth she had survived. 

The weather was typical of the antarctic summer, windy and grey and only a few degrees above zero.  As members of a scientific vessel they had all worn bright orange survival suits that were both buoyant and cold-resistant, although her bones told her not exactly cold-proof.  A few feet away the Southern Sea churned and roared, and she guessed a storm surge must have thrown her up onto the shore.  She shivered.  There was no sign of the ship, but judging by the amount of flotsam around her it was just possible that some of her crewmates had survived.

Cora stood on shaky legs, still trying to get her bearings, and was nearly blown off her feet by the wind.  She considered using the mattress as a shield against it, but she reasoned it would probably work more like a sail and carry her right back out to sea.  She slipped and stumbled, and noticed that the ground here was still frozen just an inch below the gravel.  In fact, all around her the land seemed to be composed of the most bizarre sculptures of frozen gravel, like the wind-worn rocks of some exotic desert, only without the heat and the relative security of nearby civilization.

"Cora!"  She thought she had heard a voice, but the wind had snatched it as quickly as it had come.  She stared around aimlessly, still disoriented.

"Up here!" Jonah shouted from atop a pillar of icy gravel.  "Thank god you've found a med kit.  Roberto is horribly injured, and needs help right away."

*    *    *    *    *

There were five of them who had survived, although four and a quarter might better describe their active roster after subtracting for injuries.  Cora and Jonah were unscathed except for minor gashes and bruising, as was Viola, although her soul seemed scarred by the fact that Xander had survived as well.  For his part, Xander had a broken arm and a severe cut that required Cora to stitch up as best she could.  Poor Roberto was by far the worst for wear.  Both his legs were broken, one with bone jutting alarmingly out from the skin.  Just as on the ship the whispered prayers never seemed to leave his lips, except for when he frequently coughed flecks of blood that belied his serious internal injuries.

"This man needs a medical evac immediately," Cora announced, stating the obvious.

"We ain't got no comms," Xander pointed out, ever the one to spoil a perfectly good shipwreck experience.  "There was a transponder on the ship, but that's gone now.  We're as good as fucked!"

"Our survival suits should have tracking devices," Jonah pointed out, "but they're only detectable at short range."

"They'll send a rescue mission, won't they?" Viola asked, shaking from the cold and the anxiety of their predicament. 

"They'll know the last coordinates of the ship, and they'll find us?"

Cora nodded.  "Except they'll probably wait out the storm, since it would jeopardise the rescuers."  As a paramedic used to extreme environments, she never let hope get in the way of practicalities.

"That's if our kit was working properly," Xander griped.  "GPS had us a hundred clicks from the nearest shoal, and sonar should have warned that we were about to strike a rock.  Lotta good it did our ship!  Damn Chinese tracking chips are probably junk as well."

"We didn't strike a rock," Jonah pointed out.  He waved around him, indicating the landscape.  "This is a till-laced glacier fragment"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Xander asked, his glass eye squinting suspiciously.

"It's a really dirty iceberg," Jonah explained.  "It's kind of my specialty.  There are parts of Antarctica that are cold deserts, too dry for snow to fall and thus free of ice.  Windstorms can pick up the sand and pebbles there and transport it hundreds of miles, where it piles up layer by layer along with the snow.  Over time it is all compressed together to create glacial ice with a lot of sediment in it.  Finally, when the ice melts, the sediment accumulates on top, like a snowbank in early spring.  This particular specimen seems to have calved off the main floe."

They all stared at him blankly.

"We're literally on an ice island," he explained using simpler words.  "Or a really dirty iceberg, if you prefer.  Which means when the rescue planes start flying by our last known coordinates we may well have already drifted dozens of miles away."

"Well for shit's sake, that's a comforting thought!" Xander barked sarcastically.  Viola cuddled into Cora for comfort.

"Be that as it may, they can't rescue us if we die of exposure," Cora remarked sensibly.  "We need to find or make some shelter, and then a heat source.  After that we should scour the island for food and a means of communication, like radios or signal flares.  Sitting around here talking, we're just going to end up as sediment in the ice ourselves."

Tired, hurt, and half-frozen, the survivors nonetheless agreed to her plan of action.

*    *    *    *    *

The sculpted gravel of the ice-island was as labyrinthine as it was treacherous, but it was also full of little caves and hollows.  They chose one relatively near to the shore, to minimise the distance they needed to drag their findings, of which there were a lot.  Soon the little cave was made into a comfortable nest full of blankets, mattresses, pillows, coats, and other clothing.  Unfortunately all this material was still wet, but even still it was more comfortable and a lot warmer than the frozen ground exposed to the vicious wind.  In terms of finding a heat-source they were much less successful, for they found little that was burnable except for fabric, and absolutely nothing close to dry.  Xander found a lighter, but its fuel seemed to consist entirely of seawater.  Jonah found some scientific equipment protected by a hard plastic carrying case, but the faint glow of its LCD screen did little to comfort the group.

"What does it even do?" Viola asked.

"It's a radiographic spectrometer," Jonah explained.  "When calibrated properly, it works a bit like an x-ray machine to measure the density of glacial sediments."

This produced a groan from the group, for they had dared to hope that it might be something useful.

They were able to scavenge at least a little food, mostly granola bars that floated in their sealed packaging, but not enough to last more than a couple of days.  And they did find a hand-held radio, although it held more seawater than some of the clothes they wrung out to dry in the wind.  A mop and a broom sacrificed their sturdy wooden handles to create a travois to safely transport Roberto back to their cave shelter, but he screamed and shouted at the prospect of being left alone.

"No, por favor!  El Invigilado!" he cried through coughing fits.

"What's he saying?" Viola asked.

"Something about invigilating?" Jonah guessed.

"It's pretty clear he doesn't want to be left alone," Cora said.

"I'll stay," Jonah volunteered.  "Maybe I can splice the radio into the spectrometer?"

"Good thinking," Cora agreed.  "The rest of us will explore further afield, to see if we can't find more useful gear."

*    *    *    *    *

"So I said to the Harbour Master, just look at my hairy balls!" Xander laughed.  They were maybe halfway around the ice-island by this point, and Viola had had enough.

"No one's interested in your crude little testicle jokes!" she snapped.  "Of all the creeps in the world, why did you have to wash up alive with the rest of us!"

"Oh ho!" Xander smirked, apparently happy at any kind of attention from a woman, be it ever so negative.  "It's a live one I've reeled in this time!"

"Shut up!  Shut up!  SHUT UP!!" Viola screamed, throwing some of her scavenged items at him.  A vial of fingernail paint hit him square on the glass eye and he winced.

"Look at the fiery temper!" Xander joked back.  "That's good, cause I'll be needing to curl up with something warm tonight."

"I'd rather sleep with Roberto's cold dead corpse!" Viola screamed, this time finding a rock to hurl.

"Hey, cool it Missy!" Xander raged back, losing his temper.  "If I didn't have this here broken arm, I'd learn you some respect right quick!"

Cora felt obliged to step between the two at that point, although honestly she sympathised with Viola's predicament.  Xander stormed off in frustration, not along the shore but off through the maze of gullies in the interior, probably looking for a shortcut to the cavern like he had been crassly looking for a shortcut to Viola's bed. 

"Fucking dirty old man!" Viola called after him, but the wind stole the words before they ever made it to him.

*    *    *    *    *

"No success with the radio," Jonah said when Viola and Cora returned as dusk was falling.  "Where's Xander?"

"What, he didn't make it back first?" Cora asked.  "He took a shortcut through the middle of the island and should have beaten us here.  He must have slipped and fallen." 

"Good riddance," Viola grumped, trying to get comfortable in their nearly-dry nest.

"We should go out looking for him," Cora said, although her heart really didn't back up her words.

"It will be too dangerous at night without a light source," Jonah pointed out.  "This kind of ice can be riddled with dangers like crevasses.  We will have to try in the daylight when we can see better."

Cora knew this to be the best option, which was just as well, all things considered.

*    *    *    *    *

The following day Roberto was too weak even to speak, although the pang of distress on his face showed that he still feared being left alone.  Nevertheless, the group considered it safest to explore the interior of the island as a group, just in case there was an emergency.  Slowly, carefully, they picked their way through the whimsical shapes of frozen gravel sculpted by the wind, and in almost no time at all they summited the strange island to see more ocean in the distance on the other side.

"All these passages are a bit like a maze, but only an idiot could actually get lost up here," Viola remarked acidly.

"We should scour the passages on the way down to the other side," Cora decided.  "Unless Xander became disoriented, it's most likely that we'll find him down there."

"Hang on, what's this?" Jonah asked, and they were all drawn to his discovery.  It was a large boulder, scarred and pockmarked and three-quarters frozen into the dirty ice.

"Holy crap, it's an asteroid!" Viola gasped.

"I guess it's possible," Jonah mused.  "Realistically a meteor of this size would have melted through whatever ice it didn't shatter on impact, although I suppose it's possible that it ricocheted and ended up mid-ice elsewhere."

"Maybe Xander found it, got distracted, and then forgot which way he'd come from?" Cora suggested.  Jonah shrugged as if this were equally possible.  Viola didn't care, and just traced her hands along the meteor, entranced.

At length they were able to tear themselves away from the mysterious stone and continue their search, but despite scouring the larger share of the island they were unable to find even a trace of Xander.  Not quite sad, they trudged back to their cave-shelter fatigued and perplexed.  Nothing confused them more than their arrival at the shelter, however.  Roberto had also vanished.

"There's no way he walked or even crawled away in his condition," Cora judged.

"It must have been Xander!" Viola gasped.  "He was jealous of Roberto, and disposed of him!"

"Not even Xander is that twisted," Cora commented, although the how and the why of the mystery was baffling to her.  They spent the remainder of the day looking for either of their missing crewmates, but not a trace could they find.

*    *    *    *    *

In the night Viola woke several times due to nightmares, raving that Xander was going to get her.  Each time Cora and Jonah were able to console her under the light of the spectrometer's LCD screen, but as the night wore on and their exhaustion mounted their attempts became less and less energetic.  When at last the pale light of another cold dawn woke them, Viola was nowhere to be seen.

"What the actual fuck?!?" Cora asked as they looked around for even a hint of Viola's whereabouts.  "There's no way Xander could have kidnapped her in the night without us realising it."

"I think..." Jonah began, "I might have dreamt it, but I think I remember her getting up in the night.  She probably wandered in the dark and got lost."

"One person wandering off and getting lost is plausible," Cora said.  "Two, it's at least possible.  But three?  Despite debilitating injuries and an intense fear of being gotten in the night?  Something is seriously wrong here."

Jonah nodded pensively, and then pointed.  "Hey, what's that?"

"It's a little book!" Cora said.  "Do you think Viola dropped it?"

"Diccionario inglés español," Jonah read the spine.  "So it was Roberto's.  But it clearly wasn't here yesterday when we searched.  Roberto must have had it on his person, and dropped it in the shelter, and Viola must have somehow grabbed it when she left."

"Unlikely," Cora mumbled, grabbing the book.  "It's just as probable that the wind blew it here after it washed up."

"What are you looking up?" Jonah asked, bemused.

"That word that Roberto kept saying.  Invigilo?  Invigilidio?"

"Invigilado," Jonah reminded her.

"I don't see it here," Cora said, flipping through the pages.  "But here, look, 'vigilar' means to watch.  So 'invigilar' would be to... unwatch?"

"El Invigilado," Jonah said, repeating what Roberto had raved over and over again.  "The Unwatched?"

Cora froze, and not just from the temperature.  "He was petrified of being left alone, remember?  Think about it.  Everyone who disappeared was out of sight of anyone else!  Xander, when he struck out alone across the island.  Roberto, when we left him to look for Xander.  And Viola, when she sleep-walked out of the shelter!"

Jonah scratched his head studiously.  "You can't seriously be considering the rantings of some superstitious Filipino sailor as truth?  For starters, what's his back-story?  How would he even know about a mysterious floating island where people disappear when they are alone?"

"I don't know," Cora said, casting a random glance over her shoulder to see if she could catch a glimpse of whatever The Unwatched was.  "The thing is, it's the only thing that makes sense since we washed up here."

Jonah shook his head.  "We need to think rationally about this," he said.  "This is not a fruitful line of thought.  Look, I'll prove it to you.  I'll walk up there, through the gullies just out of sight, maybe fifty paces at most.  Then I'll come back, and you'll see this idea is about as scary as a ghost story in the light of day."

Cora nodded, but inside she had her doubts about the wisdom of the plan.  "Count out loud, so I can hear you," she demanded.

Jonah sighed and began pacing, calling out the numbers as he went.  By the time he crested the slight rise to enter the maze of gullies, however, the omnipresent wind had snatched his words away.  Cora waited with trepidation for the count of ten, and then dashed up to the gulley herself.

Horrifyingly, it was completely empty.

*    *    *    *    *

Cora rushed back to the cave-shelter, desperately looking for something to use as a weapon.  She was torn between the tiny scissors in the medical kit and the spectrometer that emitted some kind of radiation to take its measurements.  In the end she grabbed both, for she was determined not to go without a fight.  Turning on the spectrometer she carried it like a rifle, sensor out, its screen spitting out readings that might as well be Greek to her.  Cautiously she followed Jonah's route, hoping against hope that she might find him alive and not be alone on this cursed floating island.  She turned quickly to ensure that she wasn't followed.  Nothing but ocean.  And yet this caused her to marvel at the cleverness of whatever creature inhabited the island, for by floating away from the scene of its crimes who knew how long it had remained undetected.  A flash on the LCD screen drew her attention back to the apparatus, and she noticed that as she swung it back and forth there was something that set off the spectrometer in the direction of the middle of the island.  Cora was alarmed by this apparent presence on the island with her, but at the same time morbidly curious.  She moved by inches, constantly spinning to watch all sides for threats, creeping ever closer to whatever the spectrometer had detected.

The screen suddenly flashed brightly, and Cora looked down to see what all the excitement was about.  She never saw the tentacle that took her from behind.

I vote Sinitrena!

It was a dramatic and emotionally charged piece, although I'm not sure a play was the best format for this story.  Staging challenges aside, so much of the colour and feeling came from the stage notes that I think a viewer of the play might miss some of the subtleties.  The strongest part of your story were the complex and layered characters, both good and evil/selfish and selfless at the same time.  This does raise some serious moral conundrums (Elvrin himself concedes the political necessity of having an heir to the throne, somewhat justifying the lengths the king went to produce and search for one).  It was sad that Liéne's vengeance against the man who tormented her for so long came to naught almost immediately after she died (and this after being consulted directly beforehand), but I suppose this is a life lesson that practicality trumps feelings.  In the end the king must live with the fact that his son is really more Elvrin's son, which is a petty vengeance itself (although more for Elvrin than the long-suffering Liéne).  This is a strong point in the story, but a liability in terms of this contest in that Elvrin acts as more of a parent towards Rhem than as a teacher (complete with tender cuddling moments, bickering, and stories about his mom).  Not only that, but the teaching bit of his role is entirely glossed over (what kind of abilities or skills has Rhem developed as an apprentice necromancer, aside from a sturdy moral compass?).  Besides not conforming to the theme, I think the biggest area for improvement is in pacing.  The first and second scene could be fairly easily combined without sacrificing much, and the Liéne consult added length without much substance (it was purely to demonstrate Elvrin's platonic love, since he entirely ignored her wishes) - in a non-play format this inner tension could be explored in more detail but less length as an inner monologue.

Sorry for typos, but I'm stuck on my phone atm.

[Nadir High]

So... this got a bit dark in a hurry, with an uncharacteristic expletive count.     If you don't like teen slayer flicks this one's probably not for you!


Nadir High

   Jalena Tyro took her seat in the back of the classroom and popped her bubblegum loudly, in defiance of both section 13c (banned substances) and 8e (improper noises) of the student code of conduct.  In trickled the rest of the students for another 75 minutes of torture in Mr. Colesen's math class.  There was Rebecca Walsh, the stuck up cheerleader that gave Jalena the middle finger as soon as she walked in (violation section 8d); Lily Phong, the spoiled rich girl who was gaming frantically on her mobile (violation section 9a); and Jason Speck, the obnoxious jock that liked to draw penises on all the desks (violation section 6b, section 9e, and section 12c).  Then there was April Moreau, dressed like she was going to work a street corner in the red-light district at midnight (violation section 3a); Jamir Kollandu, the greaser playing with a lighter (violation section 4b), and Sammy Benz, the fat kid who made profane jokes at the top of his lungs (violation section 8e and section 11f).  The only kid in the whole classroom trying to pay attention was Tina Brimmer, a shy mousy girl who sat anxiously in the front row after running the boisterous gauntlet of her peers.

   "Whatsup, my niña?" her friend Milenna asked as she plopped herself down in the next desk over, causing all her piercings to clink like a pocket full of loose change.

   "It's all steep," Jalena replied, bumping fists with her pal.  Somewhere in all the noise she heard names being called, and noticed at the last minute that Mr. Colesen had appeared in the room and was trying to take attendance.  She shrugged her indifference before continuing her chat with Milenna.  "You hear about Giddy?"

"Fuck niña, that was some heavy shit!" Milenna exclaimed, violating several more sections of the code of conduct.  "Fucking falling accident, I heard.  His family must be losing their beans over it."

"Some people are saying he was doing parkour while high," Jalena said, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe it.  She stared hard at the seat in front of her, left empty out of respect  for the fallen.

"The teachers aren't saying shit," Milenna remarked.  "If it was an accident they'd be calling it sad, and if it were stupidity they'd be calling it a tragedy.  They only say nothing when it's the big S."

Jalena couldn't believe it for one second.  Giddy was a bubbly bro, full of enthusiasm for life.  There was no way he would commit suicide.  Her thoughts were interrupted by her surname being repeated again and again.

   "Is Jalena Tyro here?" Mr. Colesen's voice repeated testily.

   "Hey, fuck you Teach!" Jalena barked, crossing her arms defiantly.  That violated section 8a and section 1b of the code of conduct, but barely dented the ongoing conversations.  Mr. Colsen merely continued down to the next name on the list without missing a beat.  The thing was, ever since the Department of Education had determined that students had the right to pass, the moral tone of the school had basically gone to shit.  Students couldn't get expelled or suspended anymore, for it was seen as hurting their chances to succeed.  They couldn't fail classes anymore, no matter how little work they did, for it might crush their self-esteem.  They couldn't even get yelled at anymore, for that would show a degree of unprofessionalism from the teachers that could easily get them fired.  The code of conduct still persisted, for it was a fine document to showcase on the school's website to placate anxious parents, but it was completely and utterly unenforceable.  Jalena popped her bubblegum and stewed over the death of her friend.

*   *   *   *

   The next day the students trickled into Mr. Colesen's math class again as usual.  Jalena as always surveyed it from the back, but something was off.  Mr. Colesen could be heard prattling on about numbers or something over the din of chaos, and finally she put her finger on it - she had never been able to hear an actual lesson from way at the back.  "Wait, where's Sammy?" she asked Milenna.

   "OMG, you didn't hear?" she gasped.  "They found him drowned in the pond at the park this morning.  Everyone's been talking shit about it.  Poor fuck."

   Jalena squinted at the empty chair where the joker once sat.  "Sammy was a tub of lard," she said, trying to make sense of the senselessness.  "He'd be more buoyant than a beach ball - the fuck he drowned!"

   "Fucking pictures online and shit," Milenna shrugged.

   Jalena brooded.

*   *   *   *

   The next day was even eerier, for not only could Jalena hear Mr. Colesen, but his words were beginning to make sense.  "The fuck is going on?" she asked, scanning the seats in front of her.  It was the bling-bling of Lily Phong's gaming device that was now missing.

   "Peeps be saying her house burnt down," Milenna said, shaking her head.

   "What are the fucking chances of that?" Jalena asked, suddenly rising to her feet.  "Yo, Teach!" she called out, storming up to the front of the classroom.  Mr. Colesen turned around, slightly surprised that anyone in the room had even noticed him there.  He was a slender man, balding in an especially unflattering way, and he wore thick glasses that made his eyes appear to bulge out from his face like a squeezed bug.  Honestly he looked to be about the least threatening person in the world, but Jalena wasn't buying any of it.  "You been killing us off, one at a time, Teach?" she asked accusingly.

   "I am the water boy for the football team, and then mark and do lesson planning all evening," Mr. Colesen sighed.  "When would I even have the time?"

   "Don't play dumb with me!" she yelled.  "First Giddy, then Sammy, now Lily - what kind of idiots do you think we all are?"  A few of the other students broke off from their own conversations to nod their agreement.

   "Learners," Mr. Colesen soothed.  "You are not idiots, you are just learners."

   "Are you fucking correcting me?" Jalena asked indignantly.  She walked over to the intercom system and paged the office.  "I need an administrator down here in room 216 immediately," she shouted.

   "I'm sorry, all administrators are currently unavailable," the school's office coordinator droned lazily before hanging up.

   "The fuck is this?" Jalena wondered.  "Ima get you fired before you kill anyone else.  Don't you fucking teach me one more thing!"

   Mr. Colesen pushed his thick glasses up his nose once more.  "Wait, one more thing?!?" he asked incredulously.  "You mean, you've actually been learning in my class?" 

   "Fuck you!" she shouted, and stormed off to the principal's office.

*   *   *   *

   The next morning Mr. Colesen was back at the front of the class, much to Jalena's dismay.  The principal Mrs. Henning was there with him at least, and Jalena made it her business to get a personal debriefing up at the front of the class.  There was an awful racket as this was going on, as Jason the jock had Jamir the greaser in a headlock, causing him to squeal in pain.

   "Quiet please," Mr. Colesen pleaded.  "The principal is trying to speak."

   "Colesen!" Mrs. Henning said in exasperation.  "You know very well that Jason has Disruptive Dysregulated Mood Disorder and cannot control his actions.  Leave him be and listen!"

   "What about me?" Jamir squeaked in pain.  "Doesn't this constitute bullying under section 5a of the code of conduct?"

   "Quite right," Mrs. Henning nodded.  "Jason, you'll have to swing by my office after class for ice cream and we can talk about restorative gestures."

   "Oh, I love ice cream!" Jason grinned, now grinding Jamir's face into Tina Brimmer's desk.  The shy girl recoiled fearfully in her seat at the wanton disregard for the safety of others.

   "Now, as I was saying," Mrs. Henning went on, turning back to Jalena, "we've opened an official investigation into Mr. Colesen's treatment of students.  This, coupled with his dismal performance appraisal earlier this year may well be enough for the Board to terminate his contract."  Mrs. Henning eyed Mr. Colesen sternly.  "However, this process takes time.  As for killing off students, this is a matter for the police, and there is simply no evidence that it's anything other than a series of unconnected tragedies."

   Jalena shook her head in disbelief, and then she spat on the floor.  "He also gave me a C on the last test," she complained.

   "Mr. Colesen," Mrs. Henning grated in an irate tone, her hands on her hips, "I thought we were clear at our last staff meeting about our evaluation benchmarks.  This is a Board Review year!"

   "All she did was write her name and the lyrics to some song," Mr. Colesen replied meekly.

   "Song!" Mrs. Henning exclaimed.  "You do know, Mr. Colesen, that mathematics is the very basis of music, and that your callous disregard for alternative learning styles has blinded you to this student's intuitive understanding of your lesson content?!?"

"We're studying coordinate geometry right now," Mr. Colesen tried to explain.  "I don't think-"

"-Yes, that's precisely the problem!" Mrs. Henning sniffed triumphantly.  "If it wasn't for the fact that for some reason we are having difficulty staffing substitutes these days, I'd relieve you of your job right here and now!  As it stands, you'll have to at least finish off the week.  In the meantime, I want you to change this student's C to an A+, as amends for your brutish misogynistic colonial attitude!"

"I'm actually half-native Cherokee and was born a woman," Mr. Colesen mentioned mildly, but the principal had already stormed off in a huff.  Shrugging, he turned back to the blackboard and began his droning lesson.

"Hey wait," Janela said, finally taking the opportunity to survey the class.  "Where's April?!?"

*   *   *   *

   The next day Mr. Colesen's math class was eerily silent, for by now everyone had noticed the pattern.  Everyone that is, except Jason Speck, who was mysteriously absent.

   "They say he snuck into some frat party at the college, and drowned in his own vomit," Milenna whispered.

   "How does that even happen?" Jalena whispered back, ever sceptical. 

   "They say he had his head stuck in the toilet he was barfing into.  You ever heard of a swirly?"

   Someone's water bottle fell off their desk by accident, causing a loud clanking sound.  Mr. Colesen turned around in surprise, and everyone sat bolt upright and quiet.  It was becoming apparent even to them that the principal's enforcement of the code of conduct with the teachers was about as effective as it was with the students, and nobody wanted to be next mysterious victim.  Nobody, that is, except Rebecca Walsh, the cheerleader, who asked snarkily "Is, like, all this shit going to be on the test?"

   Mr. Colesen pushed his glasses menacingly back up his nose.

*   *   *   *

   That night it was Friday, and Friday night in their town meant there was a highschool football game.  Jalena dragged Milenna along to the field, for she was certain Rebecca would be Mr. Colesen's next victim.  The first half passed uneventfully except for the six unanswered touchdowns from the visiting team (the home team was desperately missing Jason Speck's plucky pugilism).  Rebecca, as always, was the centre of attention as the cheerleaders took to the field at halftime, and that was when Jalena noticed that Mr. Colesen was missing.

   "He's probably refilling the team's water bottles, or some shit," Milenna shrugged.

   "Dammit, girl!" Jalena shouted.  "Don't you see?  This is the perfect opportunity, in a public place, with everyone distracted.  I bet he's going to hunt her down in the dark under the stands, right after she gets off the field.  We have to go save her!"

   Milenna shrugged.  "Save that bitch?!?  Honestly, if it were me going postal she'd be the first victim."

   "We gotta stop this guy!" Jalena scolded her friend.  "Think for a bit.  If he kills Rebecca tonight, who's next?"

   "...Jamir Kollandu?" Milenna asked, trying hard to connect the dots.

   "Us!" Jalena said, shaking her friend.  "Let's go!"

*   *   *   *

   The cheerleaders left the field and the players returned, but still there was no sign of Mr. Colesen.  Frantically the two girls ran along the shadows behind the bleachers, deaf to the roar of the local crowd who must finally have seen something worth cheering about.

   "Like, where did they all go?" Milenna asked, turning on the flashlight function of her smartphone.  Then she gasped.  Jalena followed her friend's line of vision to see a cheerleader's preppy skirt, soaked in blood, dangling from a loose nail under the bleachers.  "Rebecca?!?"

   The crowd quieted down, and they now heard gasping coming from deeper under the bleachers.  With trepidation they followed the sound, until they found Rebecca, or at least what was left of her.  Her clothes were ripped beyond recognition, and she had been stabbed multiple times.  She gasped and twitched and grabbed at Jalena's ankle with a blood soaked hand.   With her last ounce of strength she rasped her last words:  "Black.... Cloak.... Fuck....!"  And then she was gone.

   Jalena and Milenna didn't even think of calling the police.  All they could think of was to run.

*   *   *   *

   Saturday.  The two girls had slept over at Milenna's, considering that there was security in numbers.  They were up most of the night, startling at the slightest creak in the floorboards or clang from the street, but eventually at dawn they felt safe enough to sleep.  It wasn't until late afternoon that they awoke to feel the creeping terror of another night approaching.  That was when Jalena remembered Jamir. 

   "That fuck-wad chain-smoking skid?" Milenna grumbled.

   "Hey, one of us can escape while the killer is busy stabbing the other," Jalena explained, "or we can bring Jamir in and hope he gets picked off first."  That kind of logic made sense to Milenna, but despite phoning Jamir repeatedly all they got was his answering service.

   "This voice message box is full," droned the answering bot, in a voice and tone eerily reminiscent of the school office coordinator.

   "Where does Jamir hang out on weekends?" Jalena asked frantically.

   "Well, he's always carrying around that shit-painted skateboard," Milenna remarked.

   "The skatepark!" Jalena shrieked.

   But it was dusk by the time they got down there, and the flickering lights and graffiti everywhere made the skatepark feel more like a prison yard than a safe hangout.  The kids that hung around after dark all had their hoods drawn up to keep off the chill of the evening, which made Jalena imagine seeing black cloaks everywhere.  Different music jived and jangled from various speakers as they walked around, looking for their classmate.

   "Has anyone seen Jamir Kollandu?" Jalena asked a group of twelve year olds.

   "I think he's with your fucking mom!" one of them answered, and the whole group tittered like a pack of hyenas.

   "Fucking rude ass little shits!" Milenna barked back.  "They are going to be so dead when they get to highschool."

   "We're all going to be fucking dead in highschool!" Jalena shouted.

   "Hey, you guys Jamir's friends?" some guy asked.

   "That's right," Jalena said, trying to calm herself down.  "Have you seen him?"

   "Yeah, like ten minutes ago.  He just went to skate the back alley through there."  The guy gestured towards a gap in the skatepark obstacles.

   Jalena dragged Milenna down the alley, but immediately regretted it, for here the lighting was sparse and dumpsters smelled of garbage fire doused in hoodlum urine.  "Fuck this!" Milenna said, bolting for the comparative light of the skatepark proper.

   "We have to stick together!" Jalena told her.

   "Not for jaundice-teeth Jamir," Milenna shook.  "Not even for you, niña.  I'm fucking sorry.  Peace out!"  And with that she shouldered her way past another hooded twelve-year-old, running as if for her life.

   "Well fuck," Jalena muttered to herself.  But then she heard some kind of scratching sound coming from the alley, and turned to investigate.  There, behind the dumpster!  There was the shadow of something that looked like a man lying on the ground.  Forgetting caution, Jalena turned her phone flashlight on and rushed to what turned out to be Jamir's bloody corpse, his throat sliced cleanly from ear to ear.  Jalena screamed, casting about for help.  Her eyes fell on the shadowy figure of the hooded twelve-year-old.

   "Help me!" Jalena cried.  "My friend has been cut up!  Go get help!"

   But the shadowy twelve-year-old stood staring, his expression unreadable under the darkness of his hood.  Suddenly Jalena considered that it might not actually just be a hood, but rather a black cloak that he was wearing, and she was instantly reminded of Mr. Colesen's slight build.  "Holy fuck, it's you!" she whimpered.

   The hooded figure only nodded.

   Jalena ran.  She ran like she had never run in her life.  She ran through the streets, screaming for her very life.  At last, when she had screamed herself hoarse and her lungs burnt like cinder ash, and her legs felt floppy like dead fish, she stopped.  Her body shook and her mind spun, but there was suddenly one thought in her head.  Milenna!

   She called her friend, over and over and over again, but never was the call answered.

*   *   *   *

   Monday morning, Mr. Colesen's math class.  Jalena strutted in and defiantly took her seat at the back of the class.  She had decided she wasn't going to be afraid any more.  If she was going to go down, she was going to go down swinging!  But surveying all the empty seats in the classroom, she suddenly began to lose her nerve again.  Tina Brimmer came in to take her seat quietly at the front of the class - of course she'd been spared, the brown-nosed little teacher's pet!  But nobody else entered until she heard the gentle patter of Mr. Colesen's feet.

"Look's like everyone's taking a long-weekend," he joked lamely, setting his books down before plunging immediately into his lesson, back to the class, chalk writing furiously, calling out items of particular interest over his shoulder.

Jalena swallowed hard.  "I'm not afraid of you," she called out.

The lesson continued, as if there were no interruption.

"I said, I'm not fucking afraid of you!" Jalena shouted. 

Again, the lesson continued unabated.

"You think you can get away with this, you sick fuck?!?" she asked.  "You're the only fucking common element running through the victim's lives!  I know what you did this weekend, and I fucking wrote it all down and mailed it.  They're going to fucking catch you, and you're going to fucking rot for a long, long time!"

"A long time?" Mr. Colesen called over his shoulder.  "No, I was only gone the whole weekend to visit my mother in Tulsa."  And then he continued with the lesson, as if the interruption had never even occurred.

Jalena swallowed hard.  The back of Tina Brimmer's head slowly disappeared behind a black hood, and as she rose from her seat the black fabric continued down to below her knees.  Slowly, menacingly, she turned to face Jalena.

"It was fucking you the whole time!" Jalena gasped.

Tina put her finger to her lips.  "Hush now," she said in her tiny voice.  "Someone must learn their lesson." 

And then on silent feet she rushed at Jalena.

Please refrain from writing any saucy, inappropriate sexy stuff between a teacher and a student, unless it is a part of the story.

Uh... How do you write it if it's not part of the story? 

I say we vote on it, using a newfangled voting system. 

While I'm all in favour of random victories, it does take away somewhat from the lustre of winning.  Also, at some point an RNG is going to produce a result favouring a person with a conflict of interest, which has bad optics. 

I propose that with (theoretically) more submission we could have a second round of voting with the field narrowed to two in the event of a tie, kind of like the French presidential system.  Or, just a standing rule that in the event of a tie the person to have administered a writing comp least recently wins automatically, just for the sake of variety and fairness.  This rule would favour new entrants, which might be an incentive to join in. 

Just my two cents.