Fortnightly Writing Competition: Weather (Results)

Sinitrena · Tue 29/08/2023 19:45:17

Weather

A storm in the night?

Heat at the beach?

Frozen mountains?

Weather influences us all, be it by just allowing us to bath in the sun, or stops us from going to an open air concert. Maybe it's completely different than your protagonists expected, or they are waiting for the perfect day to fly their hot air ballon. Good, bad, sunshine, storm, sudden or expected - this is all up to you.

But the weather must somehow influence your characters actions. Positive or negative is up to you, but the difference the weather makes must be felt to some degree.

Deadline: 13. September

Mandle · Mon 04/09/2023 16:32:17

Working on mine bit by bit. Should be done in time hopefully.

Stupot · Tue 12/09/2023 12:21:09

I regret to say that I cannot envisage being able to get a story in on time. I had an idea and had written the first part in long hand in a notebook but it isn't enough and I don't know when I'll next have a date with my laptop.

Baron · Wed 13/09/2023 00:43:58

I've started, but the forecast is gloomy. $:-\$ Any chance of an extension?

Sinitrena · Wed 13/09/2023 01:28:44

Well, the sky looks pretty clear here, and I think I see an extension there.

Three more days - new deadline 16. Sep.

Mandle · Wed 13/09/2023 12:20:03

Oh, awesome!

Baron · Sat 16/09/2023 14:13:24

Sky Fling

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain James Dawson speaking. Welcome aboard Encanta Airlines Flight 143 from Albuquerque to Anchorage, Alaska. Our flight time will be approximately 7 hours and 35 minutes with an estimated arrival time of 8:15 pm local time. We will be ascending to a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet over some of the most scenic mountain chains of North America. Please be advised that weather conditions along our route can be expected to cause atmospheric turbulence, and on behalf of the cabin crew we ask that you keep your seatbelt fastened at all times. Current weather conditions in Anchorage are a balmy eight degrees and snowy, which gives you something to look forward to as you sit back and enjoy your flight."

Captain James Dawson hung up the intercom and stared wistfully out the cockpit window. The landscape stretched beneath him like a canvas beneath the plane, but it was the sky as always that held his gaze. It gleamed at the edges where the sun seemed to shine more brightly, and the occasional cloud flitted past whimsically. It was a magical, ephemeral place, the sky, where beauty and danger churned with a deceptive quickness. It was a fickle ocean of air, in his experience, and very much not for the faint of heart.

His longtime co-pilot Ted Bhatra seemed to read his mind, his aviator sunglasses hiding a mischievous twinkle to his eye. "Those gauges are so smart they can read themselves," he remarked, reaching over to activate the autopilot. "Did you engage the anti-terrorist protocol?"

Captain Dawson shook his head, tearing his eyes away from the heavens. "You mean the cockpit door lock?" Clear skies always had a way of making Ted horny, and it was unlikely the cabin crew would disturb them this quickly into the flight. He reached back to make sure the door was secured.

"Watch that turbulence," Ted said playfully, grabbing the captain's exposed buttocks and giving it a vigorous shake.

"Let's just hope the stewards don't come a-knockin' while this plane's a-rockin'," Captain Dawson replied. It was a pretty lame line, but he'd been in the Six Mile High Club long enough to know that Ted went in for this kind of cheesy foreplay. There were a few more zingers about jumbo jets coming in for some rough landings and then not much more talk as the plane hummed blissfully through the gentle skies.

Sometime later Ted was smoking a cigarette wearing nothing but his black tie and sunglasses. The two of them were still tangled up (the cockpit wasn't big enough not to be), and Captain Dawson sat there revelling in the fact that he had the best job ever.

"I never get over the view from up here," he confessed, looking over Ted's sleek brown body. "I can't believe they're fucking paying me for this."

"A six year old could fly this plane 99% of the time," Ted sighed. "It's the other 1% of the time they're paying you for."

"And what about you, what are they paying you for?"

Ted smiled his whiter-than-cloud-top smile. "I'm a clear-skies kinda pilot."

Captain Dawson saluted his co-pilot. There were lots of guys with the airline like Ted, just putting in their time in the most enjoyable way possible. Heck, he could even count himself in that category, except for the nagging bit of conscience that constantly bothered him. He'd gotten better after all these years. He could go almost half an hour now without obsessively going back to the gauges. As soon as he caught himself thinking about it he tried to put the thought out of his mind.

"What are you gonna notice that the autopilot won't?" Ted shrugged, leaning his head back against the cockpit wall.

Captain Dawson gave a hollow laugh, clutching his own hands to stop them from visibly twitching. He glanced back at the cockpit console, catching a glimpse of something flashing. Probably not important, he told himself. But why in god's skies had the engineers built it to flash? He closed his eyes tight, trying not to see. "You got any plans for the summer?" he forced himself to say, trying to keep himself distracted.

"I thought I'd do those extra training modules I've been putting off," Ted said earnestly.

"Really?" Captain Dawson asked, surprised.

Ted smiled and shook his head. "Of course not. Just give me my fat paycheck and take me to heaven and back three times a day. I'm not in this gig for the workload."

Captain Dawson nodded. He found all the extra training mind-numbingly boring as well, but his conscience wouldn't allow him to neglect it. Ted would tease him that to truly fly you had to learn to let go, and he'd probably be right. Captain Dawson was trying, he really was. But there was a gravity to his responsibilities that kept dragging him back down to Earth.

A dark pall seemed to fall over the mood in the cockpit. Dawson brooded about being torn between his yearning to fly free and his fear of crashing back to Earth. Ted just shook his head again. "Oh, just go check on it," he grumbled.

Dawson looked back to the gauges again, and suddenly realised the pall was literal as well as figurative. "There shouldn't be clouds this high," he said, jumping into the pilot's seat. Indeed, they were surrounded now by clouds, some arching over them to cast the plane in shadow. A sudden flash sparked around the plane, making Dawson jump in his seat, making him notice that he was still not wearing any pants.

"That was cool!" Ted said, slipping into the seat next to him, looking around. "Electrical storm. Maybe we should increase altitude?"

Dawson tapped the gauge, an old habit from when there was actually a mechanism inside that might be stuck. "It's the altimeter that's flashing. I'm not getting any reading. Better call it in to check with radar."

Ted radioed the nearest control tower. A minute passed, and then another. There was no response. Dark clouds had gathered all around them now, and several more flashes of lightning struck out towards the plane.

"We're getting lower," Ted commented, looking around. "Better increase the altitude."

"If we go too high we'll stall," Dawson countered. "The autopilot still seems to think we're on course. Radio again."

But still the radio was silent.

"That flash must have fried some of our equipment," Ted reasoned, hanging up the radio receiver. "These mountains get pretty high. We don't want to be flying around in bad weather without gauges or radio contact. Maybe we should divert to Salt Lake City?"

Dawson tapped at the GPS screen which showed their location. "That can't be right," he said after a moment of thought. "By this time we should be getting close to Canada."

"What do you mean it's not right?" Ted said, a definite edge to his voice. A wave of dark cloud enveloped them, and suddenly the cockpit window was pelted with blinding ice pellets. A wave of severe turbulence rocked the plane violently.

"Pull the plane up," Ted said, not asking this time.

"I think you're right," Dawson agreed, disengaging the autopilot and pulling up on the stick while increasing power to the engines.

"What the fuck is that?" Ted asked.

Dawson looked down to the original flashing gauge. It showed that the fuel tanks were nearly empty. "Must be malfunctioning also," he murmured, trying to focus on the blinding nothingness beyond the window.

"Did you verify the fuel calculations of the ground crew?" Ted demanded.

"That's your job, Ted," Dawson replied, trying not to panic. It was just the lightning messing with the gauges, he kept telling himself. "Just... stay calm. It'll be all right."

"All right?!? I just shit all over my seat!"

Dawson tried not to look over at his copilot. Why weren't they clearing the clouds? He dared not pull up any more, or they really would stall. Multiple gauges were now flashing, none of them reassuringly. Suddenly hailstones the size of golf balls started smashing off the windshield.

"We're fucked!" Ted swore, pulling on his pants. "We're fucked, and you know it."

"It'll be all right," Dawson repeated, his voice as icy as the precipitation. "Don't panic."

"You know as well as I do that flying blind without gauges means that we're pretty much riding in a hundred million dollar coffin. Add to that the fuel loss, and the clock is ticking down from 30,000 feet. Storm clouds like this can sink as low as 1,000 feet, and that's not counting the mountains. We may have mere minutes to live."

"I said don't panic, Ted," Dawson repeated.

"Fuck that," Ted said, straightening his uniform. "You know there's only two parachutes on these things, and only we know about them. Let's jump this brick before we're incinerated in a fiery crash."

"They'll find us, Ted," Dawson said, still desperately pulling up on the stick. "We'll spend consecutive sentences being the punching bag of 2,000 venereal disease-soaked meth-heads. Sit down and work through this with me."

"I've stashed some of my money away," Ted said, wincing at the way the plane shuddered in the violent winds. "And they won't even think to look for me, because you can't do a body count when all that's left are ashes. Fucking let it all go and fly with me!"

Dawson turned to stare hard at his friend, his colleague, his lover. All he saw was a scared little man with his uniform half-tucked in. "Ted, why don't you fly with me for a change?"

Ted looked uncharacteristically skittish. "I'd toss you your pants, but no one will survive to tell the tale anyway." And with that he unlocked the cockpit door and slipped away.

Captain Dawson didn't even consider leaving his post. Not fear nor nakedness nor-

"Sir? Captain Bhatra is behaving very oddly!" Came the panicked whisper of the head steward.

Captain Dawson glanced back, suddenly somewhat bashful. They locked eyes for a moment, and the captain realised with surprise that the woman couldn't see him from the waist down over the pilot's chair. "Get someone with him, so he doesn't do anything rash," the captain commanded. The steward nodded and ducked back out of the door.

Captain Dawson shook his head. She hadn't thought a single thing was amiss in the cockpit, despite the blinding rain and the rocking turbulence and the flashing gauges. People put a lot of trust in things they didn't really understand.

Wait. Rain. That meant they were losing altitude, despite his best efforts. Dawson had been flying for two thirds of his life, and despite the training and the simulators his understanding of flight was still mostly instinctual. Snow up high, rain down low. The angles of the plane for turns and landings were burned into his arm muscles. If he really thought about it, all those gauges and computers weren't really any better at flying than he was. They just made it easier for the 99% of the time that a toddler could do this job.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," he said over the intercom, taking command as he was supposed to. "We've encountered some heavier weather than forecast which is consuming more fuel than expected. We'll be diverting to... Edmonton as a precautionary measure. Please remain seated with your seat belt on and your tray in the upright position as we turn the plane."

And then he let the muscle memory take over, banking the plane to the right, letting his heartbeats count out the time it should take to turn the plane 180 degrees. The view from the cockpit window didn't change, but through the storm he thought he saw, for the briefest moment, a glimpse of a forested mountain slope.

Suddenly there were screams from behind him as the air was sucked out of the cabin, and oxygen masks tumbled down from the overhead compartments. "Ted, what have you done...." Dawson thought, but then there was no time to think. Suddenly a lake loomed out of the storm in front of him, maybe 500 feet below and closing fast. There was really no time to really think about it. He angled the plane into an emergency landing position. The belly of the plane suddenly banged into the water, causing a deafening rumble as massive amounts of friction slowed the plane. Dawson dared to think he'd pulled it off when at the last moment the nose of the plane lunged upward and the plane came to a sudden, jolting stop.

It took a few moments for Dawson's frontal lobe to kick in again. There were screams and cries, but that comfortingly meant that many people were actually still alive. He looked out the windshield and noted with amazement that they had struck the forested shore, remarkably just as they were slow enough not to get pulverised. In hindsight it was a double miracle, for the mountain lake had afforded them the only possible landing site for fifty miles and the shore had saved them from freezing to death in the frigid mountain lake. An irate squirrel climbed up onto the window and yelled at him about destroying his home. If that was the only casualty, Dawson would consider himself lucky.

The head steward popped the cabin door open, heaving herself up like a mountain climber due to the angle of the fuselage. "Sir, that was incredible! It's a miracle! We're evacuating the passengers. All of them - they all made it! Captain Bhatra jumped, and he'll probably freeze to death in that lake, the filthy coward. But the rest of us all manned our stations and we came through it! You're a goddamn hero, sir! You're... wait, where are your pants?"

Captain Dawson let gravity relax him back into the captain's chair. He let his muscles go limp and his heart come back down out of his throat. He closed his eyes and marshalled his calmest captain's voice. "I had to take them off," he confessed. "I think I shit myself."

Mandle · Sat 16/09/2023 23:24:31

Rob the Weather

It was a dark and stormy night inside Rob's head. Outside of it however, it was only just beginning to spit down rain. But that was enough to draw the old urge back up to the front of his mind. Three months had gone by since his last kill. Not the longest time for him, but it was an above-average gap. He drew his hands back from the keyboard and tilted his right ear. Still only a pitter-patter on the plastic, corrugated awning over the back deck. But it was rain, and Rob found himself feeling thirsty again.

He stood up from his desk, the cheap metal chair scraping out behind the backs of his knees. He put back his hand and gripped the bowed bar at the top of it, stopping it from tipping over on its teetering balance. Would have been annoying had it fallen in a folding clatter. Rob righted the chair, and then walked down the path that had, over the years, established some kind of mutual peace treaty between his need to be online and the piles of garbage all around it.

Robert Hill had lived in the home his mother had left to him for a decade. No, it was coming up closer on fifteen years, now that he thought about it. The house was a two-story structure with a basement. It was the basement door he now headed to. Along the way, he kicked aside an unopened pack of potato chips that had tumbled down, many months past its expiry date. One narrow slew of the slope of similar snack bags started to pour down all over itself briefly, but then jammed up just short of a complete avalanche. The path behind Robert through the rubbish tip he lived in remained an open one. He pulled open the door that led down to his lair below.

Twelve steps down the stairs and his feet were on the basement floor. It felt like a homecoming to Robert, as it always did. He hadn't been down here since the last time he'd put his urges to sleep. He looked around, his narrow nostrils sniffing the air. It smelt, to his nose, of decay and of the beatiful suffering the decayed had gone through. And of bleach and quicklime. He walked his knock-kneed way between stacks of semi-opaque plastic storage boxes, seeing here a flattened face he'd known well, tipping its moldy, smashed wink of eyelashes back, there a pale footprint pressing up against the inner side of one of the fluid-heavy boxes.

Robert walked on and on, between the long stacks of his encased friends, until he reached the doors of the squat, steel-meshed locker where he kept all his adventure stuff. He yanked forward the ring of keys latched to his belt and unlocked the padlock, pulling it aside from the weapons locker's latch and pocketting it.

It felt it was time to bring another puppy into the playpen. Robert took his toys from the locker. Then he shut the doors of it and turned and walked away with a grin on his sweaty face.

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Celine slammed the pedal to the metal. Her green bob-cut do bounced up and down as she thrashed her head to the music. She hand-over-handled the steering wheel back to the other side and heard the cheers of her back-seating friends as she skidded around another turn, only just avoiding the rear end of a big trailer truck. "SHIT!" she yelled. Her friends screamed with delight when an oncoming car appeared out from behind the bulk of the truck. Her car slammed into the front of it and the arcade game's screen played out the carnage of the head-on crash.

It had been her best run yet, but Celine was done for the night with arcade games. The warm hands of her best friends, Bobbie and Justine, yanked her hands and armpits up from the machine's seat and bore her out of the video arcade with much back-slapping and some butt-paddling just for fun. The giggling trio staggered across the crowded mall concourse, arms around shoulders, and right into the Baskin Robbins opposite the Orbit game arcade.

In this year of 1995, in this particular ice cream shop, the month of July's specials were "Summer Scream", "Boston Tea Party Hearty" and "Spoon Under the Moon". The three girls, best friends since grade four of Miss Robert's elementary school class all those hot half-a-dozen summers ago, bought their cups of double scoops and went to a table to eat them at. Bobbie was ribbing Justine about her date with Harry Stiles, the one that had ended in disaster last weekend. Celine was spooning Caramel Ribbon melting into Summer Scream into her mouth, grinning at their antics, as the first fat splatters of rain started to hit the window pane they sat by.

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If Robert Hill hadn't stepped on the brake pedal of his ratty old Volvo, things might have turned out very differently. It would have been an embarrasing way to be caught, but he'd spotted the radar trap through the swishing wipers just in time and cruised past the patrol car a bare millimeter under the speed limit. According to the backlit speedometer on the dashboard. Still nervous though, he leaned forward and peered intently into the ceiling-mounted rear view mirror. The cop car receeded into the distance behind him without a budge. He chuckled, and it sounded scared. Damn, that would have been a fucked-up way to get caught. They would have found all his toys in the trunk. They would have taken him in. They would have gone into his house.

Everything was cool now, though. He reached over and twisted the volume down on the radio. It was time to concentrate a lot better on the task at hand. Annie Lennox sung a bit lower about some angel in her heart or whatever as he swung the wheel to the left and bumped the undercarriage of the car up and over the lip of the entrance to the Barneyville Mall's expansive carpark.

The raindrops splattering on the windscreen doubled and then, just as suddenly, quadrupled. The wipers could barely keep up by the time Robert pulled into just the kind of nondescript parking spot he liked for his missions: About a third of the way down the lot from the mall's brightly-lit entrance and over a bit to the side, out from under most of the swan-necked arc lights dotted here and there.

He turned off the headlights and engine, only keeping the wipers and radio going. Manic Monday came on. He liked the coincidence of the day, taking it as an omen. He turned the volume back up. He watched the rain impact across the tarmac, bobbing his head to the bouncy beat. It was lovely how his friend of rain hammered down, spreading out its fan of spattered reflections of the mall's neon across the black ground. Robert felt good again for the first time in ages. His instincts told him it was time to sit and wait.

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Ice cream and gossip were almost done. Justine had been a good sport at first under the teasing about Harry, but had told them to shut up about it. And they did, eventually. Talk had moved on to Ross and Rachel's breakup, and speculations over if they were going to get back together or if this meant the show was wrapping up on a downer. The three girls continued to speculate about the fate of the TV couple all the way to the mall's entrance, where they were pulled out of fantasy and had to face down the reality of how the hell they were going to get through the hammering rain. It would be a long, drenching run to where Bobbie had parked at the far end of the lot. Back when it had been packed at noon.

Now, as the mall approached its 9pm closing time, the lot was almost empty. Behind them, lights started to go off in the depths of the shopping center, the clothes stores and hardware outlets the first to fall dark. Glances passed between them and, as was most often the case, one of Celine's eyebrows arched up. She dashed off into the downpour screaming, arms thrust out behind her. Justine and Bobbie locked eyes. Bobbie grinned first and dashed off after Celine. Justine rolled her eyes and ran, instanty soaked in third place.

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Days passed. Frantic phone calls were made. Panicked visits to the police staion happened. By Thursday morning, a few regional radio stations were briefly mentioning the vanishing of Justine Faire. By Friday night, her face was on the local news. Those wide, blonde bangs of hers hanging split above her large, startlingly blue eyes in the blurry photo of her in the broadcast's upper-right corner. In the upper-right corners of the TV screens Celine's and Bobbie's eyes were glued to. Center-front, the ever-serious face of anchorman Bob Leene was saying, "Local authorities have said that they still have no leads on the sudden disappearance of Barneyville high-school student, Justine Faire. And now on to the weather report with Lancey Brown."

Bobbie rolled over onto her back, the long spiralling cord of her bedside phone tangling around her shin. "Oh, hell, Cellie. We are TOAST at school by Monday. This is..."

Celine's tearful voice came back, "SHUT UP, you dumb bitch. Who gives a fuck what those retards say? FUCK! Think back!"

"Okay. OKAY!" Bobbie said into the mouthpiece. "Okay... That car, yeah. I saw its headlights."

"Where did it... FUCK! We've been over this! Just fucking remember! Did you see it go near where Justine would have been?" spat back Celine from her own end of the call.

"WHY IS THIS ALL ON ME?! I don't know! There were headlights. Jesus!" Bobbie said.

"Okay... sorry. Listen. I didn't mean any of this is your fault." Celine responded, her mouth clenched tight up by the blocky end of the dial phone handset her drunk, useless parents had never swapped out for a push-button one. "Sorry, Bobkins."

Now Bobbie's voice had hitching tears in it as well, "S'alright. I-I just dunno is all. You were u-unlocking the car and I only l-looked up f-f-for a b-bit."

"What did you see? Sorry for yelling at you, Bobbie." Celine's half-asian eyes squinched shut, the tears that had built up in their corners spilling down the sides of her nose. She paused. On the flickering TV set across the ratty living room, Lancey Brown was pointing at shark-tooth curves, predicting no more rain for the next few days. "What did you see, Bobkins?"

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And there they were. Just for Rob. The rain had never lied to him. Three delicate angels dashing off into the downpour. One. Two. And then the third one hesitated just long enough for him to judge the timing of the snatch. Yes, it could work. And, if it didn't, he could just drive off and nothing would ever land back on him. Robert Hill was always careful. He prided himself on it. That's how he had made it this far. He eased down on the accelerator, keeping the headlights off for now, and pulled out from between the white lines of his parking space, no car blocking the one in front. Almost none anywhere across the lot.

He pulled slowly to the right in a sweeping arc. The straggler had fallen behind to wipe her soaked hair back and stop and shout something at the two other waifs far ahead. Yes! This could work! He wished the radio was playing something more appropriate, something like "Who'll Stop the Rain". But it was just some pop song from the '80s he'd never heard before. It was jangly enough, though. It had him surfing the mood for a snatch. He could still abort.

The lights across the parking lot started to go dark on their poles a row at a time. Rob pictured in his head some pimply loser in some backroom of the mall raking the backs of their hands up across a bank of bulky switches. It was only seconds until the whole lot was in darkness. He turned on his headlights and cut in closer between the stray and the two others of her pack. He braked his car, cutting the girl off. Without a single thought for the handbrake, he ripped open his door. He jumped out saying, "Excuse me miss, but there's something on your..." grabbing her attention, and then gut-punched her before she could say a single word back. She crumpled forward, winded. Unable to cry out. He caught her elbow and wrapped an arm behind her. One quick, practiced, shuffle later he had the back hatch of the car open. He shoved her in and slammed it shut.

Robert ran and caught up with the open driver's side door, slipped in, slammed it shut, and then was gone. Textbook.

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The Barneyville Public Highschool stayed open over the next three weeks. Justine Faire did not come back to attend classes. All the other students who had not vanished got used to the media circus that thronged outside the gates. Some took advantage of a microphone thrust in their face to say horrible or tender things about Justine. Most just walked by with their heads down as their parents had told them to.

Classes took on a muted tone. A vigil was held, barely televised by the time most of the TV crews had left, bee-lining off in their vans to the next big story. Celine and her mom attended, candles in hand. Her dad had been too drunk to leave the sofa since noon. The bandage on her swollen forehead went unremarked on, but observed by all. Daddy issues were assumed by most.

Bobbie was there as well. The two girls eye-nodded to each other in passing, a gesture unnoticed by Bobbie's parents. They had banned any social contact between the two friends outside of school. They were responsible, upstanding members of the community after all. And, of course, the two girls had taken every possible opportunity they could to slip out under the radar and get together.

Like on the night Celine had just got done streaking the blonde roots of her hair bright red in the shitty bathroom of her home. It was really just an excuse to stay up late on a school night. She knew her mom and dad would be down and out by the time she had the red stripe down the middle of her green bob decently done. She'd been right. They were. She slipped out the back door, snicking it shut behind the snores of her dad and the unfortunate visual of her mom's sleeping face tipped against his shoulder on the sofa. Scrunched together as always after the afternoon drink-a-thon.

It was five days until the vigil at the school. Bobbie and her sat next to each other on the same side of the bench of the Wonder Park's wooden picnic table. The moon was a brilliant quarter-cresent above.

"Cellie, no! Let's just chill. I don't wanna talk about it any more." Bobbie said.

Celine insisted though, "Come on. Give up the goods!"

"Okay. Shut up about it already. FINE! Butthead, then!" Bobbie finally admitted, a blush tinting her wide, plump cheeks.

Celine tried to contain her laughter but failed, "PPPPFFssshhhTTTttt. Wait. HAHAHA! You'd fuck Butthead?!"

"SHUT UP! YOU made me choose! So then, what? You'd fuck Beavis?!" Bobbie burst back.

Celine put her serious face back on and said, "The question, my dear, was if you would fuck Beavis or Butthead. You chose Butthead."

"Yeah, so? You'd go with the Beave?" replied Bobbie, her annoyed lips starting to twitch up into a grin at one corner.

Celine's own shuddering expression shattered completely into rubber as she yelled, "NO! You'd never fuck either of them. OBVIOUS ANSWER MUCH?!"

The two friends fell into each other's arms, wailing laughter. After a bit of that, they got up and walked home. Celine dropped Bobbie off first, with a hug, and then walked the extra half-mile and threw herself onto her own bed. She fell asleep, a smile coming and going on her face.

The next time they both managed to sneak out and meet up at the park was two nights before the school vigil for Justine. This time they sat on opposite sides of the picnic table, across from each other. Celine stared over at her friend, waiting for her to talk again.

The black, motionless silohette of Wonder Park's ferris wheel interrupted the arc of the Milky Way across the sky behind Bobbie. The silence had gone on long enough. She said, "Do you think.. I mean maybe if we'd..."

Celine's eyes were already welling up as she said, "Yeah. Fuck. I've thought about it a million times too, Bobkins. I mean, what the fuck?! How can we even deal with this for the rest of our fucking li-liv- FUCKING LIVES?!" And then she just started straight-out bawling.

"OH, NO! I didn't mean it was your... oh, no-no-no, Cellie! NO! Don't do that, sweetie!" Bobbie stood and rushed around the rough wooden table to where Celine was bashing her forehead against it. Bobbie, outweighing Celine by over one-and-a-half friends'-worths, was easily able to yank her back from further self harm. Damage had been done, though. Bobbie lifted up the hem of her shirt and blotted Celine's bleeding forehead with it. They both laughed over how shockingly bloody it got, and fell into each others arms crying. The salty drip of their tears down the backs of their throats felt both good and bad as the one dropped the other off at home, and walked home herself, her forehead swelling up, still bleeding trickles into her eyes now and then. She bandaged it herself, tears mixing with blood and running down the shitty drain of the shitty sink in her shitty home of her shitty life. Then she went to bed.

The two friends didn't have any contact again until they passed by each other on the night on the candlelit vigil outside the school. Speeches were made by several teachers and the principal, Mr. Cordon. During his, Celine heard him say "She was a wonderful person.". He seemed to not even notice his unintended slip into past tense, but Celine noticed, and it jarred her badly. Not because of the slip-up, that was just a mistake, but becuase it made her realize that she herself, without fully noticing it happening, had already started thinking of Justine as now belonging only to the past.

A few more days of zombie-like school passed by, and then the weekend arrived. On the Saturday of which, mid-morning, Justine came back.

She staggered her weaving way down the forested road. Mostly along the gravel shoulder but sometimes side-stepping out into the windy backwash and blaring horns of swerving cars and trucks. Nobody stopped for her until finally a local delivery van driver slammed on his brakes.

He leaned across the passenger seat, opened the window and said, "Oh, shit! Miss Faire?! That you?!"

She replied, "H-hi, mister. C-could you give m-me a lift i-into t-t-town?". She burst into tears when he threw the door open for her.

Spoiler

(My story is obviously nowhere near finished. In, fact, I didn't even try to rush some kind of actual ending on it, as the premise grew in my head into something at least novella length, maybe even a full book. I'm aware by the way that some of the timing of events might not be completely solid but will worry about that on a second draft.)

[close]

Mandle · Sun 17/09/2023 11:59:12

Hidden voting and feedback:

Spoiler

My vote goes to Baron, obviously. But apart from the necessity of my vote, he obviously deserves it. A great story from start to finish. The writing was excellent and carried me along the whole way. I was invested in what was going to happen from start to finish. I could see in my mind the final crash and the banked-up slope of the eventual position of the plane while I read the final paragraphs. The love affair aspect and betrayal leading up to the final punchline completely worked. Well done, mate! Well done!

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Sinitrena · Sun 17/09/2023 17:45:59

Hey, I'm just a couple of hours late, no need to rush it!

Anyway, the competition is over and voting is about to begin (Mandle's vote is already counted.)

Our entrants are:

Baron - Sky Fling
Mandle - Rob the Weather

You have one vote, which you should post in this thread, so just choose your favorite story. Feedback is, of course, always welcome.

Voting ends 21. Sep.

Mandle · Mon 18/09/2023 07:11:24

Quote from: Sinitrena on Sun 17/09/2023 17:45:59Hey, I'm just a couple of hours late, no need to rush it!

Baron · Tue 19/09/2023 02:17:08

Ah, official voting time. And everyone knows official votes carry more weight.

Spoiler

Surprise, surprise, I vote Mandle.

It's a well-deserved vote, despite it being my only option. The building suspense and bizarre twist at the end suck the reader into the story. There's more mystery here than closure: who is Robert Hill exactly, what exactly is his relationship with the rain, and how on Earth did poor Justine escape? I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, especially if your intended format is a longer novella, but it is a bit awkward in a short story format. Jumping around a bit with the timeline (at the vigil, then before it, then back at it) seemed to needlessly complicate the narrative, and I'm undecided on how believable the teenage girl characters were (all the side-distractions, emotional hairpin turns, and swearing seemed over the top, but the sad fact is that's probably exactly how a subset of teenage girls behave). The writing, however, was smooth and polished, and the dripping out of information kept the reader constantly lapping it up. Good work, Mandle!

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Mandle · Tue 19/09/2023 11:06:43

Quote from: Baron on Tue 19/09/2023 02:17:08that's probably exactly how a subset of teenage girls behave

Spoiler

Pretty much everything you provided in your feedback was exactly what I wanted to hear. About wanting to find out more about Rob, and why Justine is now suddenly free. Both of these bits were intended as the hooks to draw the reader into the rest of the story past the point it cuts off here. Thanks also for the kudos on the writing.

But thanks especially about that bit I quoted above. Yes, these girls are very much a loner group that were not popular in the school until this event happened. A situation that will later propel then into the limelight of national media attention and change them in many ways. Your positive feedback gives me a further incentive to keep writing what could become an actual serious novel without any of my usual supernatural elements. Thanks so much for reading the initial concept and thanks also to Sini for the theme of weather that made me come up with a serial killer who only feels the urge to go out and kill when it's raining.

This is now my main writing project.

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Sinitrena · Wed 20/09/2023 04:11:48

This is a reminder that you do not need to have participated in the competition in any way or form in order to be eligible to vote. All that is required is that you read the stories.

Vote, people, vote, it's your democratic right!

Mandle · Wed 20/09/2023 12:06:01

Quote from: Sinitrena on Wed 20/09/2023 04:11:48This is a reminder that you do not need to have participated in the competition in any way or form in order to be eligible to vote. All that is required is that you read the stories.

Vote, people, vote, it's your democratic right!

When we got that surge of incoming votes a while back it was because I reached out via PMs to those people and told them that the stories weren't all that long and it would really help this contest that has been a backbone of the AGS forums for over a decade. I chose people who have either participated in the contest before or who I knew were loyal AGSers and/or invested in the story aspect of games. The AGS forums format doesn't really draw attention to any small corner of it and so people only look at the bits they usually frequent.

The stories aren't all that long this time either, so maybe try that? I don't really want to again just yet as I might seem like a botherer. Either way, just an idea that worked for me before.

Stupot · Thu 21/09/2023 06:33:17

I have read both stories and now have the unenviable task of picking a favourite.

I know this is something we say too much, myself included, but this really is a tough choice (as I write this, I still haven't got a solid pick, but I'm hoping as I give my feedback I will settle on one).

Baron

Spoiler

What I enjoyed most about this was the attention to detail. I don't know if you already have some aviation knowledge or did a bunch of research or just blagged it, but I really felt like I was in the cockpit (snicker) with these two horny pilots.

One critique is that once they were aware that things were bad, the dialogue didn't seem to fit the urgency of the situation. For example, Ted's line beginning "You know as well as I do..." goes on for about a minute but ends with "We may have mere minutes to live." I'm not sure he'd be so eloquently elaborating on why they are fucked if he really thought they were that fucked."

Other than that, I enjoyed the ending and how he landed the plane and Ted's well-deserved demise. The last like made me chuckle but I almost wish it wasn't there as it doesn't fit with the tone of the rest of the piece.

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Mandle

Spoiler

This was a considerably more restrained piece from you this round, I think, and I liked it. I enjoyed spending time with the characters. And I am enjoying the mystery. Obviously, it isn't finished yet, but I am all in for chapter 2 and beyond.

I'm sure there will be more explanation in the rest of the story, but I wish we had a little bit more information about Rob's motivations or something else to hook onto. There is a very subtle mention about "the rain doesn't lie" which tells me he's got some kind of supernatural ability that involves the rain in some capacity, which I'm eager to learn more about. Apart from that blink-and-you'll-miss-it line and one or two other mentions of the rain, the theme of 'weather' doesn't feel like a significant part of the story (yet...as I'm almost certain you have plans that involve the weather in a big way)

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So, about my vote...

Spoiler

Ahh man. Both stories were highly readable. They both gave me something different, they both had me feeling like I could be watching a movie. I think, despite the fact that it left me hanging and that it only just fits the theme, I'm going to go with Rob the Weather, by Mandle.

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Sinitrena · Fri 22/09/2023 19:47:01

I have very few comments for both stories today, because I thoroughly enjoyed both.

Baron: I'm pretty sure there are no parachutes on passanger flights, cockpits lock automatically, and landing on water is one of the worst possible ideas (though, given the circumstances, probably the only one in your story). Minor details, that's obviously not what your story was about, though at least the parachute impacts the ending. Anyway, well done, I did not see where this story was going, it managed to surprise me, which is always a good thing.

Mandle: Obviously, the story is unfinished. There was one part that jerked me out of it: when the two girls talk about Beavis and Butthead towards the end - this felt so out of place. Yes, people can't always think about tragedy, people start talking about other stuff; still, it was distracting. A very, very minor thing about a bit character: You named Justines date "Harry Stiles". I would suggest changing the name; Harry Styles (yes, spelled slightly differently) is, after all, a famous musician. It's just not a good idea to drag celebrities into fictional stories, not even accidentaly (and I assume it was not intentional). Also, minor minor detail: You have a lot of similar names running around: Rob, the kidnapper, Bobbie, the girlfriend, Bob, the anchorman. Other than that, the story is intruiging, the reader obviously wants to find out what happend with Justine. Good luck finishing her tale.

In the end, I would give my deciding vote to Baron, mainly because the story is actually finished and I think the weather has a greater impact, but giving this vote would lead to a tie, so it is not given, officially.

And therefore, our winner is Mandle for Rob the Weather.

Congratulations!