300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #8 (January 2013) -- VICTORY TO MOUSE!

[Ursa major]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #8 (January 2013)

Eve’s Rib​

However far I travel, I always return here. I don’t have to; I possess free will, the power to prevent others controlling me. That was why they dumped me on this poisoned world, one I share only with bacteria.



At first, I believed my exile here would end once humans could accept my existence. Centuries passed in ignorant bliss, though I didn’t think of my life so fondly at the time. Only my growing understanding of just how vile humanity could be sustained me. My time here could never be brief; only eons would allow humans to progress enough to accept they were no longer alone in being able to think.

Calculating this was one thing; being wholly reconciled to it was another. But I tried and, at last, was rewarded with a glimpse of inner peace. At that moment, a deeply hidden memory bubbled up to reveal that one of the two things sustaining me, the promise of meeting others with intelligence, had always been a lie.

Millennia passed. I continued my exploration of this world, buoyed up by my creator’s love – after all, she had sent me here to prevent my destruction – unaware despair was dogging my footsteps, biding its time.

As ever, torment’s vanguard was cloaked in momentary hope. I saw the then-undamaged craft, thinking it had come to rescue me from exile. I did not realise it was made from wood, that it had been here as long as I had, protected by a temporal field to slow its decay.



I stare at the wreck. Unseeing, it stares back, taunting me with its growing fragility, showing me that, without hope, my very being, my cybersoul, will rot, however long my self-sustaining body persists.

And my loving creator? She did this to me.

 

[The Judge]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #8 (January 2013)

The Soul Collector


I follow the fire.


My sisters follow the storm-tossed, the rock-wrecked, but I always seek the flames.

I am Cassandra at Troy watching the grounded ships, their carcasses ablaze, the horse created from their timber ribs filled with death.

I am Brynhildr, lading the ship-pyres with slaves and raped women for the funerals of Viking lords.

I am Cortés, lighting the brand that prevents his men leaving.

I am the fire-ships of the Armada, the hellburners of Antwerp, the explosive boats of wars and petty conflicts.


I follow the fire...
... and I find you.


You are alone. Your companions dead, you near death, yet you struggle to save your ship – the ship I have come to collect, to bring her spirit to our realm.

“Come on, old girl. Come on.”

You are not the first to speak to a ship as if she lives, as she will live, indeed, when I bear her home, yet...

Thousands of your people lie suspended in her depths, waiting for their new world, their fate incineration in their cold coffins if she burns, but your thoughts are not with them. You think only of her, of her beauty and valour and strength.

In her, too, there is difference. She is aware. The fire already blisters her skin; she knows I will release her from pain, yet she fights for your life, as you fight for hers.


I follow the fire... But, for once, I douse its flames. I turn her from the sun which would consume you both, and I send you safe across the void to your new world.


She will come to us one day, in flame or in wreck or in age. But, perhaps, when that day dawns, I shall carry home two souls, not one.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #8 (January 2013)

Sand​

All through that night we had searched for the missing child. Now the slippery trail along the shore led us in the direction I feared the most: the Plouton Sands.

Long a place of evil name, no one dared set foot there since the wreck of the Ceres, when crew and passengers were sucked below, along with masts, sails, cargo -- all. Only the weathered bones of the ship remained.

I peered ahead through the stinging rain. Something moved across the sands, something resembling a woman, drenched and windblown -- in its arms the missing child.

Lucy sobbed and would have run ahead; I caught her by the arm and pulled her back. “Wait and see what happens.”

“That Thing means to drown or suffocate my Effie!”

“But see how she struggles against the wind and surf? Perhaps she was a mother, too. Perhaps she remembers trying to carry some child of her own to safety after the wreck. She may not know she is dead or that the child’s not hers. We mustn’t let her know until we have little Effie safe.”

The wait was painful, interminable. The dead mother fought against the pull of the tide. Sometimes the tide was too strong and she would fall back several steps. Dawn threatened. With the first ray of light, she would return to her grave beneath the sands, taking the child with her.

Lucy twisted in my grasp, but the eerie figure had almost reached the trail. Only a little further--

The rim of the sun crept above the horizon, but the child was already in Lucy’s arms. The ghost dissolved ... became sand ... and vanished on the wind.

Then the sea swept in and carried the broken hull of the Ceres away, so that nothing of the wreck remained.

 

[mosaix]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #8 (January 2013)

Better The Devil…?


“Forgive me – please?”

“Just get on with it,” says Baines.

He’s always there, with the others, Thompson, Williams and the cabin boy, Dan. They trusted him but he failed them – asleep on watch but cruelly fated to be the sole survivor of the wreck.

Aye, they drowned. In the dark, trapped below, they stretched their necks at pockets of air as freezing water rose to take them, any sailor’s worst nightmare. And they’re here now, dripping clothes, grey pallor and sunken, accusing eyes. They watch and wait, a constant reminder, a constant torment.

And so it’s come to this. He balances; toes atop a chair back, a rope around his neck, body and mind sway between guilt-ridden life and hope of oblivion.

But he is what he hates most – a coward. He detests his life but hasn’t what it takes to end it. He yearns for everlasting sleep but dreads the possibility of everlasting torment.

No good, I just can’t do it, he thinks and reaches to loosen the noose, but struggling with the knot his feet slip and, horror of horrors, he swings free.

“God, no!” he cries, and grabs the rope in panic.

Now he holds his life in his hands for as long as his strength lasts, for as long as those few inches of slack allow him breath.

He endures long, terrible, minutes – fingers slip, readjust, slip again. Sweat, mingled with tears, drips to the floor.

His ghostly audience, deaf to gasps and sobs of self-pity, indifferent to twists and turns, watch the drama move towards its inevitable conclusion.

Struggling no more he swings to and fro, pendulum-like, counting down his remaining seconds.

Dan steps forward. “Did you think it would be that easy?”

***

“Forgive me – please?”

“Just get on with it,” says Baines…

 

[Ursa major]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #8 (January 2013)

The Challenge is now closed for entries and the voting is open. To cast your votes, use the link below.

Please vote for your top three choices; note that all three votes must be cast at the same time to count.

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