75 WORD CHALLENGE - December 2011 -- HareBrain Victorious!

[Ursa major]

Shrovetide Fair​

I’m born to drumming, to the smell of oil. Entranced by Ballerina’s steamy beauty, I dance.

I’m thrown into a dismal cell. Ballerina follows, but she rejects my entreaties. She loves Moor, his riches.

He shall die!



Moor’s too big. To Ballerina’s deafening screams, I escape. Revellers, bears and gypsies, all flee my clanking and hissing.

One blow from Moor’s scimitar. Not a day old, I expire in a pool of my own boiling water.


.

 

[mosaix]

Steam Me Up Scotty…


Bubbling, hissing, grating gears, clattering valves, a whiff of naphtha.

“Doris, can’t you keep the lad quiet? Not much to ask after a shift downt’ pit.”

“Your own fault, getting him that Mekkano set, and if you’d just stop reading and give him some attention…”

Clanking, rumbling, a barely audible ‘pop’, then silence…

Pa lowered his paper. The wall of a crater cut across the bright orb of Saturn hanging in a black sky.

 

[The Judge]

NURSERY CRIME


Rag doll wept.

In the shadows of the nursery, steam hissed, cogs whirred and span.

The train had been first to transform – the thrill of real motion too beguiling to refuse. Then the tin soldiers, marching to the motorised drum. Rocking horse, jack-in-the-box, even teddy – all now automatons under his control.

He wouldn’t rest till the world was covered in machines.

Softness, comfort, love. All would be lost. Unless...

She picked up his clockwork gun.

 

[Ursa major]

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