Arthur’s
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(group member since Oct 25, 2008)
Arthur’s
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from the Short Story Contests group.
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Instructions: Please do not use a story previously used on goodreads. After the week's contest, you are welcome to put it on your profile writings, but please refrain from using stories you have already put on there.
You have until Saturday afternoon to post a story on here. Please post it directly onto this topic, rather than posting a link. Also, please do not discuss stories on here. You must go to Weekly Short Story Contest Discussion http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6... for that. This will avoid any clutter and confusion, so that people can simply come on here and read the story, without having to read comments on the story.
This week's Topic is Lost. We haven’t lost it…it is this week’s topic. If anyone has any objections to this topic, please go to the Objections post. The rules are pretty loose. You could write about a closet toy, something to be found, using properly, lacking in or preoccupied, destroyed or people who lived in a tribe or your story could have just the word in it.
Weekly stories must be at least 500 words long to 2,000 words long. (if the whole story won't fit in one post, divide it into two)
Good luck!
~Arthur, [acting for Clare:]
P.S. PLEASE say if you would like to have your story on Short Story Galore, if you win. This way it wouldn't take me ages to get your consent afterwards. This includes adding a link to your stories. If you want to have your story on the Short Story Galore, but not the link, just say so.
Luke wrote: "Where can I suggest topics for the 19th through the 25th?"In the Updates topic, it's in a folder Weekly Topic Suggestions
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6...
You have until Sunday afternoon to post a poem on here before the Topic changes. Please post it directly onto this topic, rather than posting a link. You're welcome to discuss poems on here also. This week's Topic is Horse. If anyone has any objections to this topic, please go to the Poetry Topic Objections post.
Poems can be as long and short as you want them to be. This is not a contest, it's just for fun and to show off our own poetry.
It's that time again. Please no more stories for this topic. Monday there will be a new topic. These stories this week was really awesome. Now you can go to the poll to vote for the one you most like.
Evening SetKitty Hayward had sat next the window. She was sitting suicide cross seat from her mother. Which meant in nearest the window away from the other passengers where behind her she could hear someone’s sitting which gave the sounds of a rubber duck being smothered to die. Kitty only grimaced her fate which left another line building in her face of the humility.
Why oh why not did her mother choose the bus to travel? Kitty didn’t even want to swim. She begged her mother not to go. She didn’t like to swim. But her mother herself learned to swim late in life. Kitty had to learn that was all. It was with that galling attitude Kitty herself had swim practice to attend. Ever since she was eight years old her mother and Kitty boarded this same public transit bus towards swim practices every week.
Her mother was a source of ethics of well learned upbringing. Kitty wouldn’t dare demean her mother now twelve. She would just like to kind of forget about those awful laps around that dingy pool week after week.
Kitty had the advantage of the window to see the people crossing the streets. She could watch them board, she just couldn’t touch them, smothered as she had been by her family and their love.
She couldn’t be called anything else than Kitty. Her rightful way to pronounce Catherine. She couldn’t accept Catherine or anything remotely like Catherine. She even dovetailed Anne or Annie’s. She wouldn’t want to be called those shortened names that sounded like Catherine. Her favorite book in school had been Anne of Green Gables but still she hated the sound of those names. Kitty Hayward had been very alliterative and her teacher had promised if she would join the school literature group she’d give tickets for her family to see Anne of Green Gables which was touring this month.
That was what had been on Kitty’s mind. The tickets to see the musical play. The fact her family had little interest in Kitty as a person of her own was proven to her like the time her kissing cousin had come to stay a week at the summer’s beginning. He had insisted she kiss him. He had threatened her. She finally did give in. He kissed her back. But it was nothing more than it. It was not something she needed to report. But still she knew her family had little notice of her unless she was under their wing. A wing that needed broken.
Her father had been tall, handsome and white. A normal role model in the conservative world in a small town with ten thousand people. She and her mother got to swimming practice riding the only bus which carried passengers across a route through the ever growing town. A normal route of stops but through the town one single bus and circle’s again around only for a daily route. It stops at the spa and shopping center for the early afternoon lunch for an hour.
Her mother had been half black by birth which made Kitty a quarter black. She felt it too. Her hair had been a mashed potato of lines that she hid in her hat. Her face had a complexion she knew nothing about. But this year her father spoke about braces for Kitty’s teeth. This led Kitty to believe she had been a mutant by birth.
On top of the swimming lessons Kitty attended the only midtown school in town, Normal School. A school she deemed midindustrial and inartistic. The name says it all, the founder was Ed A. Normal a once town police chief who retired in 1878 to become the towns first educator. Built somewhere after the first world war and dedicate to Ed A. Normal who would have been proud had he known its completion, it then was the most advanced building in the town.
Kitty spent many of her summer in summer school and can name bugs she had seen in field trips to the country. She especially liked the tourist attracted duck ponds and petting zoos. At least the animals had an exotic sense of humor to live in the wild while surviving the destruction of nature in the hands of man was her opinion. She loved birds and insects and often saw boys throw sticks after raccoons. She would hurl her own unsanitary remarks warning the boys touching animals that had been tricked into playing by boys was a dangerous past time.
Kitty’s mother moved to the town and also brought both parents. Kitty’s grandparents lived near the school and Kitty made a stop everyday. Seeing her half colored grandmother who was the only colored person she knew often made her think about the other only colored child she knew, a boy she secretly had a milder than normal crush on. His father had some kind of Mexican-Asian mix in him and worked for the deputy station, but which left Fillip’s skin even darker than a tan. They had noticed one another but she didn’t give him notice back.
Kitty’s mother had the beauty that came from the mixed marriage. Kitty would remain in a fit understanding the blotchy complexion Kitty had from lack of sun and the misunderstanding from gaining summer tan hives.
She was looking out the bus window watching two running men after a third who obviously ran away from them. There was a woman screaming in a door way. But crime really rarely happened. Especially in this small town.
She switched on the power to her headset radio mp3 to hear a radio station that had news. Maybe it would concern the town they lived in. Maybe it was a crime that had been committed that threatened national security.
Crime reminded her of the time her mother’s brother Dell Culvert had been a mere passenger when he had to wrestle a hijacker to the floor on a flight to get his gun but Dell Culvert died. And the mention of crime reminded her of her Aunt who had been mugged but punched the masked man only to be slashed by his knife. Her aunt had died later before she could find help. Bad things had a way of happening. Her mother always said bad things happened in threes. But Kitty couldn’t think what was the number three.
The End
Instructions: Please do not use a story previously used on goodreads. After the week's contest, you are welcome to put it on your profile writings, but please refrain from using stories you have already put on there.
You have until Saturday afternoon to post a story on here. Please post it directly onto this topic, rather than posting a link. Also, please do not discuss stories on here. You must go to Weekly Short Story Contest Discussion http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6... for that. This will avoid any clutter and confusion, so that people can simply come on here and read the story, without having to read comments on the story.
This week's Topic is Suicide. If anyone has any objections to this topic, please go to the Objections post. The rules are pretty loose. You could write about indoor shoes, something slippery causing sliding, people who give the slip constantly or a person in your story having a difficult time holding something.
Weekly stories must be at least 500 words long to 2,000 words long. (if the whole story won't fit in one post, divide it into two)
Good luck!
~Arthur, [acting for Clare:]
P.S. PLEASE say if you would like to have your story on Short Story Galore, if you win. This way it wouldn't take me ages to get your consent afterwards. This includes adding a link to your stories. If you want to have your story on the Short Story Galore, but not the link, just say so.
The vote is done and it is a tie between monolith~Not His Time and Chandani~Undergound. Congratulations, enjoy the spoils.Visit the history of short story contest wins at: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
A new short story topic will be posted.
An allegory?
You have until Sunday afternoon to post a poem on here before the Topic changes. Please post it directly onto this topic, rather than posting a link. You're welcome to discuss poems on here also. This week's Topic is Kingdom. If anyone has any objections to this topic, please go to the Poetry Topic Objections post.
Poems can be as long and short as you want them to be. This is not a contest, it's just for fun and to show off our own poetry.
This week story contest is closed. Please summit story now. The vote will be from Saturday afternoon until Sunday night. This will give lots of time to any goodreads member interested in these stories to read and vote for their favorite weekly short story. And Monday we will have a new topic to begin to write about. It's been a good week. Let's begin the votes for our favorite story. Good luck everyone. See you again Monday.
yeah it was Androgen and Fabian, i feel guilty it wasn't clear, i don't want to imagine i wrote a turkey
yeah almost the same though.
Name: Androgen And The Painting By Ben Marshall
Words: approximately almost a total sum of 1375
Genre: Short Story Fiction
By: Arthur
** * ** * ** * ** * ** * ** * **
Androgen And The Painting By Ben Marshall
It was an extraordinary color just to see it. The walls are dull but an orange and only blank along the windows. Now I am close to it only to open it to allow a breeze. It is mild weather and anyway I look at this as it is best for now to have the air circulate. It’s a pastoral feeling which catches me instead of my usually bulldozing. I felt it modestly when my wife suggested we convert this unused den into the new baby’s room.
Androgen had a boy. I mean we had a boy together Androgen and I. It was a somber comfort to me to be with my family who adored my wife. They have forgiven me my troubled past. They no longer look over their shoulder at me when I come in. From my hoodlum days and nights till maturity they now have open hands and greet me with congratulatory smiles. I am a father and I believe they no longer feel I trouble them and have forgiven me. Such promises. Such a history to be forgotten and forgiven.
I thought back to the day, not the day of my baby’s birth, to that other day. Those days that still trouble me when I wake but are far in the past. There was one day I would relive again if I could.
Out one day I met with Dameon a dude that talks about his financial dispositions. In those days money meant a great deal, a hand full of cash could mean power or unknown oblivion. Without cash leads to being unpopular and means death. He leeks out to me what we are now to begin to be studying. I stood and concurring that, I, Fabian, was his partner in alleging to become sequence imposters. Imposters to impersonate people or to become John’s. What I as Fabian then concur was everything Dameon speaks of. Demeon becomes excited talking about burglaries as a living.
I had an older brother caught stealing whom had been imprisoned from everyone including his family and then his reputation was going to hurt.
He never returned my letters. His state prison was one we were never to visit. We lost contact with my brother. He could be in a fight, be hurt and we were just to pretend we didn’t know of him because he no longer really existed.
Demeon’s idea to split our booty was ingenious. He was a good friend. I met him in my youth. We were inseparatable when we was hanging out as teenagers. My parents haven’t really known of him or met his parents. After all he was just one of those faces in a crowd at a mall or on the corner.
I hadn’t met Androgen, yet I will. She hung out with her best-best-friend Astoria. They never went out to do things. If we had internet in those days that two would have been nerds in comparison. Instead I never knew her and she never laid eyes on me or Demeon.
Mr. Runcorn the department store inspector had closed and locked and chained the door which leads to an electrical maintenance room at the back of the local civic shoppers center. Demeon and I had another way in, and if we were lucky the chains meant there was poor security alarms inside.
We made our way through a vent on the roof. Demeon slid down first and called me next. The two of us looked around the department store. We were expertly quiet for sound and movement detectors and hadn’t expected they used them because they would likely set off every night like some of those other impossible security jobs. But still we were quiet.
We had a loot and went back up the vent. Once we were out, Demeon had the idea that we then put on masks when we leave because it wasn’t criminal after the fact, and to prevent being noticed carrying our loot to his apartment near-by.
He was quickly a professional when dealing with stolen goods. He would get top dollar. After all our theft was in the paper and our crime was a once done deal, because why would they not set up a new security after the big break-in.
I returned home to be surprised by my young brother, he’s a wimp, he has real friends though, and was talking about girls. All three of them, Olli, Wendell, Phillips my little brother Phil. Olli the boy with cool Elvis-Style hair when born. Wendell with the latest arcade game.
I had to take a corner and almost missed them before one of them caught the bag I was carrying with something exciting I stole protruding out. He had to know how it worked in real, real life, for real. Guys avoid these dudes, they don’t know.
I got through convincing them I spent money on it, tempted but didn’t attempt to sell it to one of them. Demeon was the master mind, would he sell a rifle to his little brother? Maybe not, but I convinced them there was enough birds out there on wires interfering with cable television.
Two years later I had a hand full of cash, I was almost the age to be finished school if I had remain in one. I was running fast past a block I hated because it stinks you know when I saw Waldorf
Out of nowhere pushing a girl out of his car onto the street. I went over and helped the girl to her feet. I apologized for Waldorf and told her he was nothing but a pimp. She shook my hand and thanked me for being a civil helper and understanding her story. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him, he just had been a boy she once knew as a boy and invited her into his car. She went but he asked her personal questions that frightened her and she demanded to be let out. So here she was on this block.
I knew she didn’t even know where she was so I offered her my arm. She took it. I made a new friend of her. I wasn’t vain like Waldorf who was nothing but a pimp. I looked presentable. I was even though I hadn’t changed in two years much except I now had hands full of cash.
I walked her to her home and she saw she looked haggard from being pushed out of her car. She wanted my name and number and asked me in. it was a wealthy home, and I should have known if I was judging her clothes.
Finding it less and less threatening I looked at the pictures in the hall. She ran up the spiral stair that led to Detroit somewhere. I was petting two tiny twin pooches that whimpered to strangers inside the house. Her mother was home somewhere, probably in a bath somehow. A butler passed me carrying towels to lord knew where.
The door bell chimed oh my lord. I turned quickly to a painting by Ben Marshall. Actually the only one I liked but was probably a copy even though it was a place of such wealth.
The butler hurried down the stairs and he no longer had those towels. He opened the door to welcome in Androgen. My jaw dropped a little. My hands in my pockets hung. I knew what love meant once I saw her. I knew I had no future. I knew I had to change.
The End
im still writing mine
nice to see you wrote monolith,(critiquing your work I'm not, maybe you are working hard on the story because you need some more feelings or knowing of Victorians. Her reign was more like 1837 to 1901, just as if you meant to say it was now in the middle of that century and of that era. I can’t help with history more than to know that, good work)
Carlie did you mean write a kind of header of the story you intend will grow bigger and publish just that portion to triond.com then finish it as a bigger story or even novel later?
What do you mean already published? there goes Carlie's idea about publishing the winner's story with that web's network publishing company. Thanks for finding that out anyway Chandani. But now you will need to share ideas with your other writer fellows before you write something original just for the published level.... Good luck Chandani with your published work.
There votes are in for last week's Short Story contest. A tie between Janelle and her story of Fishy and Paul's “Running Away With It”. Congratulations to both and to everyone who participated and enjoyed the stories.
