midnightpoet

With ThinkWrite Challenge 87, it returned here to the forums on ThinkDraw after a hiatus on its own site. A big thanks to ladyhwin for passing the torch to me for TW 88.

Before I present the list though, I feel like I should explain what the ThinkWrite Challenges are – it’s been away from here for so long, many new users may not know what we’re talking about.

Here is a forum thread containing all the challenges up through ThinkWrite 49 – I apparently started slacking after that one - http://www.thinkdraw.com/forumPosts.php?topicId=603 – so you can see how it began and examples of past challenges.

Basically, I’m going to provide a word list of 10 words, and a word count. The requirement is to write a story using all of those words, in any tense, and to make the story meet the word count exactly. I will “pass the torch” to a new writer at the end of a specified time, based on a purely subjective judging method in which there is no real winner, just a new torchbearer as the challenge goes on.

Without further ado, the list:

Rainbow
Scorpion
Gasp
Chagrin
Shoelace
Silence
Crush
Anxious
Glitter
Pensive


Please make your story exactly 351 words. I’ll pass the torch in about 2 weeks, on Monday, July 2, 2012.

mdawrcn

Thanks for the explanation midnightpoet. You writers are so talented and I am glad TW is back here. I am enjoying your stories and while I don't think I write well enough to enter the challenge, I do have a question. Can the words you have chosen be used in any tense I want and also in other forms of the word? For example would glittering or anxiously be acceptable, or do they have to be used just as you have written them.

mdawrcn

? Thanks.

midnightpoet

Sometimes the torchbearer will specify that the words need to be exactly as they are given in the list - but for this, any tense or form is acceptable, as long as it is still the same root word. Hope to see you write something! ^_^

chelydra

Last wisps of a rainbow fade in the east window. Like Elizabeth’s smile, fading out. Dusk descends, dark silence deepens over my dusty attic room. I have to get out of here, even with nowhere to go, nowhere at all. Ah, those two pound coins I set aside to feed the electric meter. They’ll buy a pint, perhaps alleviate this pensive, anxious state of mind for a while, who needs light anyway. Can’t go out like this, though. No clean laundry, but the stink might have evaporated somewhat from the socks at the bottom of the pile. Ah, the good gray woolen socks Elizabeth gave me on our first Christmas together, and then kept darning and darning over the years. Hold them. Inhale her love. Involuntary glance at the dark corner where she dries quietly and wonder again if I should dust her off and shine her up a bit. Not too much. She wouldn’t want to glitter, never looked cheap or flash, just enough oil to dampen a rag, a light touch, very gentle, take care not to crush her delicate skin. Elizabeth, Elizabeth, why, why, why. And why of all things a scorpion, not a razor, noose or pills. So out of character. I was writing at the time, concentrating, didn’t notice until she was gasping her last breath. Distracted, all I could feel was chagrin, and tried to stay focused on the task at hand, a letter to the council analyzing the deficiencies in their care and feeding of street trees. But it was a losing struggle, and shortly before dawn I admitted defeat, moved Elizabeth to the corner, and fell into an uneasy sleep. And so it’s been ever since, never quite awake never quite asleep, days nights years crawl past. A pint will help. Oh my God, now my shoelace breaks, tail lying limp in my fingers like a drowned worm. Can’t go out now. Finish the letter then, go to the postbox barefoot, midnight, nobody will see. Wait, wear the wool socks. Yes. Walk softly in her love.

mdawrcn

Wow Chelydra, wish we could vote on the writing. That was very eerie and well written.

midnightpoet

Chelydra, you captured me from the first line and your words carried me through the story easily and gracefully. Beautiful and sad.

bluemoon

Cheldrya, That was excellent. I loved it.

chelydra

Thanks, all.
Here's a word counter for those of us who don't have Microsoft Word: http://www.wordcounttool.com/

danila

wow Chelydra, I have been deeply taken into this little but intense story, it is like moving in a darkish old oil painting, I've been touched by the human solitude and desperation.

chelydra

If you substitute a beautiful sad little mummified frog for Elizabeth, or maybe the even sadder baby pigeon skeleton that turned up later... it's a pretty straight autobiographical sketch... I know how the pigeon got here, becuase pigeon sneak in and lay eggs in corners of my attic room... the frog, I have no idea (on the fourth floor overlooking a busy street, no less)... I thought while writing that it was fiction, then remembered I too have dead bodies in dark corners of my attic... This is probably one of those "TMI" messages I'll wish I hadn't sent, so I'd better send it quick before I think better of it...

chelydra

Somebody else better send in a contribution quick... I feel like when my name got called first and I had to stand alone on a grade school stage for a while in front of 200 kids before the rest of the class joined me... Please hurry! Thanks

midnightpoet

At least you look awesome while standing up there alone. ^_^

I do plan on writing something - but everything I've tried has sucked. I have a serious case of writers block.

I guess for now the Chelydra stands alone.

midnightpoet

Secrets in the Trees

The ground is damp, puddles lining the path as I walk under a canopy of trees dripping water on my head from where their leaves have caught water. At a break in the green covering above me, I can see the sky – bright blue now that the clouds have passed – painted with a vibrant rainbow. I can’t see the sun, but warm light shines down on me through gaps in the branches overhead. My sneakers are damp, and some moisture has soaked through to my socks. My feet are cold, making the rest of me shiver.

I am a long way from home, with no hope of returning.

I pull my coat tightly around myself, pulling my thoughts away from home – no use dwelling on that now. My road lies ahead, not behind, and it is there I focus my eyes and thoughts. I know I am utterly alone – the silence around me only broken by the sounds of nature. No human foot but mine has been here recently.

I try not to be so pensive as I walk, but here, alone, it is hard not to lose myself in my thoughts as I pass tree after tree in solitude.

My shoelace has come undone, trailing wetly alongside my sneaker, and I bend down to tie it. An involuntary gasp leaves my mouth. Not two inches from the toe of my shoe is a scorpion the size of my foot. I’ve never seen a scorpion before – I thought they were found in deserts, not forests. I close my eyes and take two deep breaths, telling myself I’m imagining it. Chagrin fills me when I open my eyes and the path before me is clear.

I must be getting anxious. I’ve been here in the trees for too long…sharing my secrets with the trees when I’m tired of the quiet. Too long, too long alone – and now I’m seeing things. It’s enough to crush my soul – but I carry on, a smile on my face bright as glitter.

Maybe I am crazy, but the trees share their secrets with me too.

Nylecoj

Ooooo! Nice list Midnight! Both the stories so far are very good. I will try to get something written as soon as I can, but I am going to be out of town this weekend so we will see how that goes.

midnightpoet

I will likewise be out of town this weekend - I hope to see lots more stories when I get back!

marg

Well.. I don't think I can touch either of the first two offerings from chelydra and midnight, but I shall proffer my own in the hope that it will persuade others to throw something in as well - I REALLY am glad that ThinkWrite has returned

Here you go - 351 words I hope :

High in the Kala mountains, lost in the weight of the world beneath and the crushing silence above, he could almost feel himself the last man on earth but he knew that they had followed him here.

This high, the distant snow-capped peaks of the Punturas seemed remote and unreal; two miles below him, the spent clouds of a rainstorm blurred into the greyed rainbow hues of oily water; even further below, he caught a faint glitter of water falling in a tiny, endless stream towards some invisible pool.

He’d spent the last day watching from the ruins of the hut, pensive but also in some way anxious as he waited for some movement on the thin shoelace of track that snaked its way up the shattered hillside towards him. When he caught the first flickering shadows behind the boulders at the turn, the almost scorpion-like, barely detectable scuttles of sand as they eased the big Dachagrina gun into its placements, he allowed himself a smile.

It was only when he went to move that he realised how stiff he’d become – and how cold the day had become. Very gently, he stretched his shoulders and legs and then retraced his steps back along the hillside, his feet hardly making an impression on the dust and stunted plants among the rocks.

They had left a man guarding the gun, but no-one he recognised and he felt a moment’s thanks for that. In the end, there was only a stifled gasp as the knife blade slid in and in some way that seemed to make up for all of it, for Jaco and Fer and Sestino dying in silence and ignorance while they slept and for the rest of them, buried elsewhere on this deadly mountain.

He went carefully back down through the darkening evening towards the hidden world below, avoiding the track and the heavily shaded lights of their campsite, moving almost invisibly through the growing shadows. At the top of the scree slope he turned and looked back for a moment and then murmured ‘Blood for our blood’.

chelydra

So she walks into the ThinkWrite Snooker Emporium, kinda slouching and with an apologetic little smile so as we can't possibly take her seriously, like she's gonna flub half her shots... Trying not to be too obviously smirking and salivating, we place our bets... And then...

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... don't ever underestimate marg. A good, gripping opening to what could develop into a novel.

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Chelydra, you started so seriously and the dread crept in slowly, but when you decided to 'dust' the corpse ... well, I'm still helpless with laughter.