Doug

Thanks again Dragon for picking my story. It may have been something out of a horror story. Well as luck would have it, it seems Halloween is right around the corner so I think a Halloween theme word list is needed.

Spider
Centrifuge
Poltergeist
Ghost
Black
Angel
Talisman
Viridescent
Platform
Hall oween

And lets end this one on Devil's night Oct 30ish. All stories must be 366 words exactly!

giraffe

Good list, Doug. One teacher wouldn't let us count a, and, or the. Do you?

mouse

Doug
A good theme , a challenging list and a lot of words but,hey,I'm talkative. LOL. Will think on this one a few days. You know, I actually like this writing more than the drawing.

Doug

All words count. I'll copy and paste your stories into "word" to get a word count from the actual story and title unless you specify "not including title". I love this writing part of Thinkdraw! I haven't written in years, but I used to be quite the writer in my younger years. Yes, I was writing dark and stormy things then too. Good luck with the list. I can see a lot of good stories. They don't have to be Halloween type stories either, any will do. The word count may seem to give a lot more lattitude, but it still takes intense editing to make a "great" story and that's what I'm looking for from the next torchbearer.

maddyjean08

Wow. I'll have to do this later. I love writing, but I'm not a morning person. I could totally get my scare on. Nein, I won't be too scary. But maybe I look to scare some kinder!

giraffe

I count 366 w/o title.

DARCY

"Twinkle, twinkle, spider web. Save a bug for Uncle Jeb." That was one of them.

Darcy was only 7, and she would sit on the platform above the steps and sing endlessly. Actually, she had one for each member of the family. She had "Mary dies on Halloween. Halloween, Halloween. Mary fries on Halloween and that is all I know."

It was upsetting at first, but eventually, we'd find ourselves sitting on the veranda on cool evenings, staring out at the pasture while Darby sang her rhymes. It was calming - except when she got to YOURS. Mine was "Daddy's in the bathtub - falling down, falling down, broke his crown. Daddy's in the bathtub - falling down. He's bleeding on the floor." Now that's one I never sang along to.

She was a strange but lovely child. Very fair of face, freckled, and sweet to us all. And it wasn't like a mental illness. It just seemed her brain was caught in a centrifuge - one that wasn't working right and couldn't separate the thoughts you SHOULD say from the ones you should keep to yourself.

Her Mama thought she was wonderful and talented. She bought Darcy that first talisman. It was supposed to protect her from any evil that might come her way. The thing was beautiful and well crafted, but it was the image of a snake wrapped around a heart. Not the kind of thing you'd expect a little girl to be wearing. And this viridescent glow it gave off sometimes, well that made me worry a bit. My angel Darcy was starting to seem like the little girl in 'Poltergeist' or something.

Then comes that terrible day on October 31 when Uncle Jeb was over. Darcy and her sister Mary are getting ready to go to a party and Mama gets this black feeling. She looks like she is seeing a ghost. She's attempting to rip the talisman from Darcy's neck. Darcy screams, runs into the bathroom and slips on the wet floor - cracking her skull. Dead as a bug.

Now I'm singing:

"Baa baa, Darcy. Why'd you have to go?

Bless her. bless her. Darcy didn't know."

Doug

giraffe: A very menacing well spun tale. I got a 364 count w/o title so we'll call it 365. Close enough for me. I think it is an outstanding start to our Halloween ThinkWrite spectacular! The songs were very age appropriate and how she really didn't understand what she was actually singing about made the story more disturbing and delightful at the same time. A job well done.

mouse

Giraffe
A very intriguing story, I was caught with the first rhyme. I really liked this one a lot. Perfect for Halloween.

maddyjean08

That's real creepy. Bloodcurdling. I'll see if I can beat that...

maddyjean08

366
No Title
Tap, tap, tap! Zoe sat up straight in bed. What was that? The door? She slowly walked over to her bedroom door. Something dry but sticky attached itself to her face. A spider sat on the end of her nose. She looked up to see half a spider-web attached to the ceiling. Grabbing her face furiously, she managed to pull it all off.
She opened the big door and looked down the huge hall sitting in the middle of her huge house. Did her parents get the door? Oh, yeah. Her parents were on a business trip in Canada! She heard the sharp tapping again. She felt her brain get caught on a centrifuge. It sounded more like footsteps. She, being a born ghost-hunter, thought it to be a disturbed poltergeist. " I mean you no harm", she explained," If you could just stop tapping so I could get back to sleep". She heard angry muffled ghost-like voices and took a step back. Knowing she must be brave, took a step forward. Then two. Before she knew it she was running down the hall to the livingroom, where the door was. The door to her house was framed with imported glass, which, as soon as she entered the livingroom, was shattered by a fist. The fist pulled back out and she heard footsteps running around the house. The was an angry sawing at the back door. She tried to open the door. Locked. She tried to undo the lock, but it wasn't budging. There was a needle in the lock! She had learned in safety class that a burglar will stick a pin in the keyhole to prevent you from getting out. She reached her arm through the hole the burglar had made and reached for the lock. Listening, she realized the sawing had stopped. Oh no. Something grabbed her arm and pulled. Her arm was being dug into by a piece of broken glass. The world around her went black. She looked down at her house as an angel. Crime scene tape had been placed around the house. She should've worn the talisman her mother had given her. The image, virdescent. Worst Halloween. Should've been at the Platform today.

maddyjean08

Not bad. At the end there is a bunch of short sentences. It's becuase I was running out of words.

mouse

Halloween Party-- 366 not counting title

There was a viridescence to the storm clouds that were gathering. Bolts of lightning lit up the sky. It was a night that not even a ghost would want to be out in. It was Halloween!

The mansion on the hill overlooking Talisman Lake was deserted. Max and I and a group of friends decided it would be a neat place to have a Halloween party.

The only way to get to the mansion was by water. Max used his dad’s boat to get us across. I took my cell phone for safety. We tied up at an old decrepit dock. From there we had to make our way up a dark, winding path. The lightning had become more intense and the thunder was deafening.

Just as the rain fell we scrambled up onto the rickety porch, a high platform of sorts, with gingerbread woodwork.

We entered a large cavernous room with an immense fireplace. There were cobwebs everywhere and the largest, black, spider I ever saw was crawling across the mantel.

Max set out candles we had brought and lit them. He built a fire in the fireplace. The warmth was inviting but the flames cast eerie shadows on the walls.

We set out the food we had brought. A scream echoed outside and then we heard an ear shattering crash. I got scared and I looked for my cell phone. I couldn’t find it. But then someone said “Oh the poltergeist must have taken it “and we all began to laugh.

Tina had been standing at the window and yelled “Look”. The clouds had begun to swirl, as though in a large centrifuge, and to take on ghostly shapes.

I clutched the angel charm I had around my neck and begged Max to get us home. He and the others thought I was over reacting until the fire and the candles suddenly blew out and a wail came out of the fireplace. Believe you me, we ran so fast to the boat that the devil himself couldn’t have caught us. We reached the opposite shore relieved to be safe. There on the dock lay my cell phone. How on earth did it get there?

giraffe

Very entertaining, Maddy. I liked the short sentences - like someone in a snit - thinking.

Thanks, Doug. I count by hand, so I wasn't too off. i could retitle it "Darcy Fair".

giraffe

Nice, Mouse. I especially liked the cell phone. Maybe they irritate spirits as much as they bother a lot of people - At least they were nice and gave it back. LOL

mouse

Doug
Thanks for the tip on word count. I am not too savvy with the computer . So much easier than counting by hand. Never to Old to learn LOL

Maddy jean-- I love CSI. This was like watching one of their programs--good story

Doug

maddyjean: I'm sorry but that story was a mess. It really was a hornets nest of misspellings, grammatical errors, and sentences that really didn't go anywhere. I know you're young so keep trying. Take one thought and expand on it instead of trying to fit everything into one story. You could even break it down into different stories, each with the correct word count.

mouse: (and I didn't know you lived "close to the burgh") I loved the general idea of the story, but although it was spot on the word count it too could use a lot of work. Editing and polish make an ok story a great one. Please try again! Also, thank you for all the positive comments you give on ThinkWrite!

mouse

Doug, thanks for the comments, I can certainly use all the help I can get, I will try to follow your advise. This is really my first adventure into writing ( outside high school many odd years ago LOL)
Yep, I live 12 miles outside Pittsburgh.

mouse

Doug
my original story was more descriptive but I was 102 words over the count so I did a lot of editing to reduce the word count . I think I will rewrite this one and try to spiff it up a bit--

maddyjean08

I write off the top of my head. If I'm writing a sad story I can be quite poetic. I'm beautiful writing sentences that describe sadness.

maddyjean08

You won't let me try again, will you...