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Frownland 05-09-2020 09:59 AM

Creative Writing Competition 2020 (Voting)
 
Time to vote for the best submission in this year's creative writing competition! For this round, we all used the prompt of the same title: Colossus.

I'll be posting the submissions of stories and poetry in the posts below then I'll be adding a poll. The order of the stories was randomly generated. I'd like to thank Occulthawk, rostasi, Oriphiel, WWWP, and most importantly, myself for taking part in the competition. All of the submissions are kept anonymous, so feel free to guess whose piece is whose during voting.

Enough rambling, here come the stories.

Frownland 05-09-2020 09:59 AM

Submission #1
 
There was oftimes arson in his eyes - even as a boy;
flames familiar to his face.
Orphaned at the hand of one uncle,
Fathered by the reach of another.

A model of sorrow, his mother
Understood too well
How many men soever you slay,
You will never kill your successor.

The men she had killed surely suffered.
Treasoners, rivals and loves -
There is no antidote
To politics.

When their insides burned
So too did hers!
As she seized in grief
Her victims followed suit.

He would take after her,
The boy with the fire in his eyes,
Matricide bellows from his throat,
And continues a family tradition.

Mother and boy
Died in much the same way.
No breath left to suck.
Decidedly fatal.

Frownland 05-09-2020 09:59 AM

Submission #2
 
Most of us assume that statues stay where we first saw them forever. The first time I noticed Colossus it didn’t even register.

Before then I was always wandering. It happened in phases. When I saw Colossus again and again, again I assumed that it was another kind of conformity. Sculptors laying stake in the latest brand of identity. The landscape didn’t matter, I just wanted to make my way. Focusing gives me migraines. The second time, on that same walk back, I didn’t fully notice it but assumed that I had gone in a circle and doubled back. “I thought I was past that.” The third, and this was a couple of days later and pretty far off in the distance, mind, it was out of place. Where a humble statue in memoriam of some significant ancient stood, seated, a new, gaunt statue weighed. Stones cascading into the scenery behind them, you wouldn’t recognize it as a statue unless you glared at it. I turned around again, each heartbeat thudding into my heels, sending me further away from where I saw the statue again when I realized that the wall alongside the path was jutting miles into the sky, forming legs and chests and arms.

Trying to normalize my pace to avoid attention, muttering “Everything’s fine. Just ignore it.”

I kept seeing them. Sometimes I could have sworn that I saw marble eyes gliding towards me when I spotted Colossus again, larger each time, again decided that it was just a defect drawing dreams in the corner of my eye, down by the crease, not anything worth my time. Plagiarism, repetition, confirmation bias—all sound more reasonable than being followed. I had to stay reasonable.

*********

The bus stank. The windows fogged from the air clogged with the stench of plaque-riddled breath, piss, and sweat. I leaned on the glass, window pulled a full four inches open, closing my eyes, drinking up the intoxicating exhaust, ready for a breath of anything other than the bus’s repulsive drizzle clinging to me from all directions. I’ve been on this bus so many times, it’s plagued me. I can lean out of the window and breathe, at least.

I must have dozed off reveling in my reprieve, or so I thought when the light flickered from the underpass. As I opened my eyes, the bronze wall outside the window reflecting sunlight’s needles into my sight, the bus driver slammed on the brakes. Myself and the driver’s more conscious audience continued travelling out of spite, no matter what was in our way.

Again I opened my eyes, expecting the side of my face to be filled with shards of broken glass, broken-cheeked, ready to see other passengers devastated, but only found another passenger’s and the driver’s eye contact. Looking but not looking until they realized that I was looking back, they took interest in a divide on the panel behind me. The bus slowed to a stop and I stayed on while everyone else got off.

“Last stop.”

“I’m taking it back, I didn’t pay attention and went further than I meant.”

“You gotta buy a pass and take a different bus to get back.”

Midnight would be scattering the day’s ashes on us soon. I was out of money so I left the bus and I stayed.

*************

When I was tired of staying I wandered. Some number of miles fell underfoot until I found my way home.

When the door slammed shut, the small entryway draped a blanket of echoes around my shoulders. I almost fell stumbling forward, rising, haphazardly flinging my head back to counteract the unwieldy mass of planet sucking my center to its smouldering, rotten core. Having broken the lamp that sold demons and obstacles to pillars of light many years ago without fixing it, I briefly found my balance and waded through the black pond toward some inkling of safety, hoping that muscle memory had paid more attention than me.

The death rattle light flinging itself into the infinite chamber of silence that encased the room⁠—it could be infinite⁠—muffled when I found and flicked on the lightswitch. Home. Night plunged and battered the world around, but it can’t touch me when I’m home. All that was left was the memory of what happened before the light hanging in the air, just out of reach.

In exchange for my attention, the light awarded me with the gift of exposing every surface it could reach. Terror drained down my skull and pulsated through my limbs as it dawned on me that nothing had changed. Anxiety rained on homes all around, flooded the community, reigned on minds, maybe like mine. I expected…something when I turned on the light this time. Some kind of infestation, disgusting or disheartening disturbance lingering, waiting for me. Closing and opening my eyes again and again, desperate for something so horrific that it bordered on enlightening, but it was just the same again. All I saw was the same fucking room. That fucking room, mocking the tranquility of security that shelter brings.

The light was hiding something, something that promised doom and better yet, something new. Disheartened, I jammed my hand, flicking the light on and off, again and again, again waiting to see if the new cadence of darkness and light summoned the secrets into some new kind of anything I can consume. Anything. But again, all I saw was the same room. Nothing had changed this whole time.

I followed through the entrance, both arms spread out for balance as I got closer to the hallway. Going directly down the center, touching both sides, it began to feel as if they were closing in on me. I deflected through the kitchen to the back door, leaving for something new and adjacent to the indoors. The unchanging, oppressive, damning indoors.

When I pulled the back door open there was only stone.

No way to get past the rock face, no gap between stone and wall. In fact, the room felt smaller, there was a sharp warp in the wall from the stone’s obstruction outside. I turned back, nearly stomping from my weary legs. Back to the front.

I wandered back through the room to the entrance, never stopping. Stumbling for what felt like a mile through this tiny room, when I finally saw what looked like the entrance doorway before me, I lifted my head to see Colossus in the doorway.

The air spun a thickness of molasses as I struggled to catch my breath, remembering Colossus always lingering in the background, my lungs filling with sticky sweet stuffy panic that stabbed and pulled at my chest.

Colossus stood on a marble base as high as my chest and was hunched over, back pushing up on the ceiling. The floor was sinking under the weight of Colossus forcing itself upright, the head nearly severed by the pressure from the top. Arms outspread, keeping the door impenetrable.

It seemed so obvious. There was no getting past Colossus. I glanced back toward the hallway and it wasn’t much better. Still unrelentingly similar. My fate of being trapped in this reprieve wrapped its arms around me and squeezed until my pulse quickened and my skull began to throb.

I had to get out at all costs.

*********

Colossus never looked at me when it was obvious. I would catch glances from the corner of my eye as I paced back and forth, plotting. If I could just remove the arms I could escape, but the base held the statue together. Taking the path of least resistance, I attacked the base with any object I could find. I bashed every book on my shelf on the base until they were torn to shreds, threw coins at it, broke my typewriter to bits, ruined every device, speaker, and screen of my entertainment system pounding it on the base again and again. The marble’s sheen smirked, unfazed.

Thinking more, Colossus waiting, I inspected the base for weak spots when I noticed the chain locking Colossus to the marble. Colossus may have been keeping me in, but it seemed like it was just as trapped between what supported it and the ceiling above.

I almost began to feel sorry for Colossus before going back through the home, looking for something that could break the base. Aimlessly dithering through the hallway, on the right I noticed a closet so infrequently used that I had forgotten about it. The door clung to the frame and groaned as I pulled it open to find an old shotgun and a loose collection of birdshot shells scattered on the ground of the closet. I loaded the gun and pocketed the shells.

I raced back to the front door, my pulse surging and the sweat from my hands running down the barrel. With no hesitation, I aimed the shotgun down the hall and fired directly at the center of Colossus’s marble base. Reload. Fire. Reload. Fire.

Putting the shotgun on the shelf where my books once laid, I went closer to see if it helped at all. In any case, I had nine shells left and knew that at least five of them would work as expected. I rubbed my hand on the pockmarked marble base, bits crumbling off into my palm. The birdshot was wearing it down. It was working.

I stepped back again and reloaded. All nine shells dutifully launched upon command. Particulate debris slowly sifted through my field of vision as I checked the progress. The base was severely disfigured, but still intact. Still, the birdshot had chipped away a good deal of marble, the fringes having long fallen from the platform. I grabbed a sharp fragment of the fallen edges and inserted it into a crack that had emerged right where the chain met the platform. Using the butt of the shotgun, I drove the piece deeper and deeper into the base. Finally, the base divided.

Marble shards on the floor slowly began to rattle and spin and the walls began to shift and saunter as the earth quaked. The base shifted beneath Colossus’s weight and Colossus almost seemed to hesitate before falling forward, directly onto me.

************

I awoke under the weight of Colossus’s arms, shivering in cold sweat. Wheezing, I pushed the arm until it rolled off of me, sending knives into my chest once the compression was released. I looked over to where Colossus once stood to see that the base had entirely disintegrated.

A path of ruin and stone littered the walkway from where the base once stood and led to the head, which was the only part of Colossus that stayed intact apart from what was left of its arms. Mouth open in declaration to give way to a jade beard running up the length of its cheek neighbouring Colossus’s stern, confident eyes. As I was taking one last look, Colossus blinked.

Primal, uncanny panic took control of my body as I pulled the gun from the ruin and began attacking the head with the sturdy shotgun base. Each hit rattled the gunframe and bruised my palms. I mindlessly kept hammering away where the head once was, now more fragmented and crushed as the base.

My rhythm slowed as I began to fatigue, burning red hot, my headache coming back, needles reminding me of the depth of every one of my breaths. I turned, brushed aside the debris in the doorway and pulled it open. I’d done it. I’d escaped. I was really free.

I wandered out into the street with the cool early morning air nipping and scraping my skin. Serene. I carefully topped my shallow lungs with this fresh air, winds that promised change. Some chaos, but change nonetheless.

I crumpled under the first shockwave that rolled across the asphalt. I looked back at my doorway, still ajar, where I left the ruins of Colossus and where they will stay—I wasn’t going back. I saw the second shockwave rippling before me and braced myself.

The ground rollicked and sent me backwards before I caught myself. I could see how the shockwaves were starting to drive cracks into the walls of buildings. A geyser violently jettisoned from the sky down to where a hydrant once sat, waiting for crisis. When seeing how high the fountain rose, I saw what was causing the shockwaves.

Miles high and nary a few blocks from where I stood sat a set of eyes burning livid, looking right at me. Colossus, more gargantuan than ever, towered and took another step. Seconds later the third shockwave whipped me from the street. The hydrant rained down, soaking me and flooding the streets as Colossus kept coming.

I started back inside, the doorway still filled with marble dust and fragments. A fourth shockwave attacked the home’s frame and it gave way. A pathetic shambling heap where my home, my fortress, once held me.

Homes around had begun to collapse too, some as in despair as mine while others seemed to collapse in all but the hallway extending from the doorframe, as if held up by something inside.

Earthquake footsteps continued to pummel the ground, buildings, the people in their sleep. Colossus, still striding, crushing and killing everything in its wake, seemingly barely moved toward me in all of this time. The seconds between the steps—silent where they should be thundering—and quakes told me that Colossus was even bigger than I had thought. Now that I’d destroyed what was keeping me inside, there was nothing in Colossus’s way. I could run, but at that size and with no place to hide, any escape would be thwarted in no time. I could go back, but it’d take means and could only happen in a different space. Things I don’t have. There was just no escape. I laid down on the cracked asphalt and waited, closing my eyes shut, desperately trying to turn the violent shakes into soothing cradle sways.

Frownland 05-09-2020 10:00 AM

Submission #3
 
my sister: we used to laugh together

captive devotees

aflush with esprit

multiple TVs

milk chocolate nestlés

losing keys

late fees

ash and oak trees

gentle breeze

madweed sneeze

farts of bees

rank cheese

burning seas

prick tease

pouty pees

ass squeeze

ill at ease

false guarantees

oily striptease

on her knees

hot testes

isosceles

backbearing trapeze

dutiful hercules

shoot the breeze

catch some z's


venereal disease


my sister: we used to laugh together


CO-

LOL

SIS

Frownland 05-09-2020 10:00 AM

Submission #4
 
The Regular Genitals Appreciation Society was known as R-Gas.

It wasn’t until abnormally sized genitalia became an anomaly in the post exceptionalized human crispr norms that they became radicalized and officially recognized as a hate group. Their target? The Colossus. Old men born in the early pre-regulated cowboy days of cosmetic genetic human engineering whose parents decided on above average penis size.

The Colossus we’ll follow in this story was given the name ICA, which stood for I Come Alive.

ICA’s penis was long and thick and so was his body. He had survived the waves of wildfires, the gas riots and the oil wars, and all the proliferation of bio-terror. Through it all he kept a kind disposition and an attractive undying sense of optimism that made him an enjoyable companion for all who came to know him. Men, women, and every hybrid between the two by the hundreds had enjoyed his large penis. Whatever his current companion’s predilection was he was fine with it. They could suck it, fuck it, yank on it, stick it with piercing needles, just look at it, pour hot wax on it - but R-GAS’s demand that he have it cut off entirely was taking things too damn far, even for an easy going bloke like ICA.

ICA liked to spend his days riding his horse around Los Angeles planting daisies. Sometimes he ran into a person or even a group of folks but not always. One day he ran into a group of R-GAS members and they stripped him and cut his penis off. He relaxed and looked at the daisies smiling while he bled to death.

Frownland 05-09-2020 10:00 AM

Submission #5
 
I picked up the hammer. Turned it in the light. The nose was chipped down to a dull spiderweb of scratches. The rest of the metal, shining as bright and stainless as the day I picked it out of that bin of a million identical siblings.

The red rubber grip was already starting to get that grainy black shit inside of the grooves. Dirt and sweat and whatever else people got on their hands when they were getting shit done. And that's how I always knew that I was getting shit done. By the black shit.

"It's kinda pretty."

I looked back at her.

She was feeling it up. And with a bare hand no less; she had slipped off one of her gloves and tossed it over onto my desk. That's just how she was. First she's asking about 'radiation' and 'toxic metals' and whatever the fuck a 'free radical' is (like, how can a radical even not be free to begin with?). Five minutes later, she's sizing the 'radioactive' shit up for a bra.

I think I laughed. Or maybe I just gave her that look. The one I used to give her whenever she started talking about assassination plots. "Spend a night with it."

She blinked. Paused. Like maybe she was starting to think that it wasn't such a good idea to touch it bareback. Or probably just entranced with the possibility of actual danger. God, as much as she went on about that shit, about danger, staying safe, about all the things and people that were out to steal our fuckin' souls or whatever, she really did love that shit. Or at least a part of her did.

And she smiled. I remember that. I remember because I recognized it.

A couple days after we first met.

A big fuckin' bonfire. Just starting to get drunk.

And I could tell that she was halfway there too, on account of her cheeks flaring up even brighter than the fire. Red and raw. Like they were about to start bleeding.

There was a slope past the chainlink, somewhere back in the woods. A couple guys found it. It had been snowing that night. Hard. Maybe not hard enough to postpone a bonfire, but hard enough.

One of the guys had this big, stupid oven. Fattest dutch oven I ever fuckin' saw. And it had this lid, just barely big enough for an ass to fit on. A small ass.

She had a small ass.

And she said no fuckin' way.

But there was a fuckin' way. There's always a fuckin' way, where alcohol's concerned.

And her small ass made it through just fine. Like always.

"Why? Something happen last night?"

I shouldn't have said anything. I shrugged. Tried to go back to my work. "Not really."

She didn't buy it. I didn't think she would. She had this weird sort of bullshit radar inside of her; couldn't detect stupid conspiracy bullshit for a piss, but she sure as fuck could always detect mine. Still don't know what the hell was up with that. How someone so smart could be so goddamn dumb.

"Then why should I spend a night with it?" Her hand found a carving of a woman as it passed over the relief; naked, of course. Ancient women were always naked, if the artistic renditions were to be believed. She smiled. Leaned in to make a pose beside it. "You planning a photo shoot? 'Cause I already told you, I don't work with other girls."

"Already snapped 'em." I slipped my safety glasses back on. Found the chisel. Made a few adjustments to the table clamp. Last thing I needed was for the goddamn bird to go flying off again. "This morning."

"Yeah? And? What'd they say?"

Another strike, right to the seam. No sparks from the metal this time. "They said they'll get right on it."

"'Get right on it,' like, me at work? Or 'get right on it' like actually get right on it?"

"The kind where they don't give a shit."

She nodded to the carving. "Me at work."

"You're a Preschool teacher."

"Yeah? And you ever met a preschooler? They're the fuckin' worst."

I gave her a look.

"What? I love the little fuckers, but come on. Every goddamn teacher in the world, stay in long enough, you stop giving a shit. You have to. And you've also gotta be a little crazy. Or at least it helps, 'cause, you know, you'd have to be crazy to think those kinda wages are actually liveable in the first place."

"Remind me never to let you teach my kids."

She finally pulled her fingers from the carving. Stuffed her hands into her pockets, wearing that goddamn 'oh-reeaally' smile. "You're planning on having kids, then?"

"If I have kids."

"Funny. Aren't you the guy that tried to kill a kid that o-"

"He wasn't a kid. Teenagers aren't kids. And I didn't kill him."

"Tried to kill."

"Shut up."

She had me laughing again.

She walked over to me. Craned her neck over my shoulder. "Fuck is that thing, anyway?"

"A bird."

"Mm. Stone bird."

"Metal bird."

She gave me a look.

I gave the carapace a few taps. "It's covered in barnacles or some shit."

"Lovely." She leaned in further. "So whatchya doin' to it?"

"Opening it. There's a seam down the middle. See?"

She snorted a laugh. "Priceless work of art. Let's stick a chisel up its ass!"

"Oh fuck off. The fuck else am I supposed to do?"

She shrugged. "Sell it for a million bucks?"

"Like I'm not trying?"

Another shrug. "Try harder."

I nudged her back a few steps, giving the bird another hit. A good amount of sparks that time. I remember 'cause a couple of them licked the back of her hand. "Tell you what. Soon as I find an academic or a collector or whoever-the-fuck that isn't sick of getting burned on fuckin' bullshit 'lost civilization' hoaxes, I'll just get right on that. Till then, I'm opening this fuckin' bird."

She moved right back in beside me, even as she sucked at the tiny burns she had just gotten on the back of her hand. Fuckin' things hadn't even gone red yet and she was looking for more. She popped her hand out long enough to ask "Why?"

There was always the truth. About last night.

I went with bullshit instead. The kind I hoped might actually fly, so long as I didn't linger on it too long. "To see how many licks it takes. Who gives a fuck? I just wanna open it. It's supposed to be opened. So I wanna open it."

She raised her free hand with an innocent look. And gave the other a few shakes in the cool air, trying to dry off the saliva. "Hey do whatever you want. It's your bird. I just wanna make sure you know you're a fuckin' moron."

Another strike. It still wasn't loose yet, I don't think. Not just then.

"And I mean come on." She turned back to the block of stone, two and a half fucking tons of carvings just sitting there on that cheap-ass green tarp she lent me. "You gotta fuck around with something, may as well fuck around with the big thing. shit's way cooler than that fuckin' bird." She moved back to it. Pressed her hand back to the stone. Probably cooling off those burns. "Gah this thing's Fuckin' huge though. Regular goddamn colossus."

"Pretty big."

She laughed. "Pretty big." And she said it in my voice. The best she could imitate it, anyway.

Her hand was up in the battlements, gliding out over the bloody skirmish. Humans and demons. Naked women with swords. A winged soldier with a trident, plunging it through one of the many eyes of a massive heraldic insect; in perfect symmetry, each of the beast's spearlike legs was plunged through an identical string of corpses. Fuckin' ancient art.

She smiled. Maybe to the picture. Maybe to herself. And gave the stone a pat. "You didn't send the pictures."

That goddamn radar.

She looked at me. Read something in my face. Almost laughed. "You didn't take the pictures."

I didn't answer.

Another strike.

And that, I believe, was when it did come loose. Maybe just a centimeter. Probably less.

Less was fine.

Less was something.

WWWP 05-09-2020 02:25 PM

Bump!

Guess: #5: ori

Marie Monday 05-09-2020 02:40 PM

I tried guessing too and found it surprisingly hard. I came up with:
1.Rostasi
2.Hawk
3.Frown
4.WWWP
5.Ori

Oriphiel 05-09-2020 05:02 PM

Omg numbers three and four are some next level shit.

OccultHawk 05-09-2020 06:13 PM

Should contributors refrain from voting?


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