Please note: Since the "Novelty" theme appears to be more challenging than I expected (and since there have been so many other contests/parties/tributes in the blog world this week), I've extended the contest deadline.
May Book Contest #3 - Deadline: Monday, May 26, 11 pm Eastern
Details here.
Oh, shoot. I also meant to update the Prize options. But I don't have my list handy. Sigh. Procrastination strikes again.
And one more thing...in case you need more direction, how about...
Write about something a mundane object or event that someone sees as novel. (This is NOT the required topic...just one way for you to think about the theme and get going.)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
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6 comments:
I don't normally play these kinds of things. But why not. 358 words.
This story begins on a train platform. I’ll set the stage for you the way I let it play pornographically in the back of my mind, a movie I only watch by myself. The platform is crowded with schoolchildren, perhaps as many as forty or fifty of them, mostly huddled in apprehensive clumps, indistinguishable in their matching tassels, ties, skirts, trousers. They are almost perfectly quiet. It is twilight; the world has gone ash and sepia, a silent stuttering two-tone reel. Kitchen windows have begun to blink awake, pock-marking the facing mountainsides with hints of the human mundane, but the warmest, yellowest light on the horizon is the lantern in the conductor’s cabin of the approaching train, listing left, right, left.
On the far left of the platform, amongst the squad of rustling schoolchildren, sit a boy and a girl on one of the three platform benches. They are separated by a careful meter’s distance. They do not speak—whatever words they had to say to each other we’ve already missed. The boy’s face is utterly expressionless, his eyes as flat and fixed as a store mannequin’s as he stares straight ahead. The girl looks at the platform in front of her; her face does not move, but large tears slide steadily down her face, guttering in her nose trenches and off either side of her cheeks, mingling with the clear snot that tumbles, undignified, over her lips.
The train pulls toward the embarkation point and the uniformed students, with subdued and preternatural order, bump themselves into loose lines where they know the doors will open. The boy on the bench stands suddenly and the girl swings her head to watch him. She understands what is going to happen but does not let herself believe it; instead, she encourages herself to hesitate. In the moment of hesitation he makes his move. His execution is flawless, his timing precise; his feet leave the platform in a convex arc that swings him perfectly into the nose of the train.
This story begins on that train platform; that moment, the moment he jumps, is where it ends. Everything in between is fiction.
Wow, Moonrat...
If I get to vote, I think you just won.
Precie,
I'll enter on my blog, probably over the weekend... though don't expect anything as significant as moonie's :-)
OMG, not only did moonie enter, she's fantastic! I hope MomRat and DadRat are proud!
Thanks for the extension, Precie - I've been trying to get my feet wet with this new job, balance it with the kids, Oscar's schedule, etc. I will get something up this weekend!
I think one of the prizes should be a plane ticket to see you.....*big silly grin*....
Okay, Precie, I had a little inspiration...
A Novel Contest is up at my place.
shucks. i'm glad computers don't show blushes.
OK I finally got round to writing something. Having read Moonie's (soooo goood!)........
Ah well here it is!
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