Messages

Fancy seeing you both here! Hehehe. Also, I think I broke whatever the record was for least words per line of text averaged out over the whole story.

BLIND UNDER THE ALL-SEEING MOON

I heard some people say there has never been as beautiful a moonlit night as this one is supposed to be tonight. I've also heard somewhere that blood looks black in the moonlight, but I've been blind since birth so I cannot confirm that. Not the only reason for that, though. There's also that one other issue. I'll tell you about it later.

But wait, just so you fully understand my condition: I am a serial killer. And blind as well. The serial killer bit means that I have killed three or more people. Can you even imagine how hard that was for me, given the whole "blind" thing?

Well, you probably can see my point a bit, being blindfolded and all as you are.

But at least I'm just sightless and not bound to the back of this van like you are right now. Only mentioned that in case you were wondering what those handles are poking against your back.

Let's go for a drive, shall we? Oh, don't worry, I can feel my way around to the driver's side door and get in all on my own.

What was that you were struggling to say out through that gag? Were you kindly trying to call out for someone sighted to come to my assistance and drive in my place?

Hmmm, I'll take the thrashings of your bound limbs to mean yes to that. I won't be able to hear you once I'm behind the wheel.

But, don't worry. It won't be all that long until we are off on our way.

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footstep.

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rustle. footsteps.

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open. grunt... slam.

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vibration. thrumming though your back. swaying. shaking.

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SHAKING FROM SIDE TO SIDE.

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shaking stops now. sweat trickles down the side of your nose.

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an engine revving.

vrrrr. vrr-rrr-rrrr. bruuu. vrrrRRRR-rrRRR. bruuuUUUU-uuuUUUU.

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acceleration.

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BRUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMM.

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acceleration.

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swerve.

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HONK! HONK! SCREEEeeeeeach.

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HOOOOOOOOONK!

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WHEEEEEAAAAWWW-WHEEEEEAAAAAAWWW-SCHREEEeeeacccchh!-WHEEEEEEAAAA...

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rapid deceleration.

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red and blue light flashing in turn through blindfold.

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open, slam. open, slam.

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rushing feet.

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OFFICERS ARE ASSISTING YOU, MA'AM! Stop struggling!

Jesus, she's tied to the back of it!

APPROACHING DRIVER-SIDE DOOR! Draw your weapon and cover me, Kev!

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click. clack.

On it, Jeff!

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SIR! STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE AND... WAH DAaaa FUUuuuUUCK?!

open. rush of noise.

BLAM!!! BLAM!!! ArgH! OH, FUcK, NOOoo! BLAM!!!

JESUS! Jeff! What the FUCK is even... SMACK! THUD! NO! OH, GoD!!! No, PLEASE! UGH! nO... Don't!... oHgH... betty... GGGggguUUurggg.

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gnashing.

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chewing.     

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swallowing.

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footfalls padding.

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Sggee? Thggris iggs whchat I dtho.

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smell of raw meat in your flinching face.

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Jusggst sggo we undgerstgand eacth ojther.

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Moon'sg segttingth soognn. Gotha hitg tghe roajd asgainm.

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padding footfalls. open. hefting gasp. slam.

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VrRRrRrrR... VRRRgrrrRAaAAchaaacchhhh. Greeeaaschhhg... VrooOOooooMmmm.

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shuddering acceleration.

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OooO--OOOooooo...

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OOooOO--OOOOOOOooooooo...

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(It was around about this point when you thought back through your terror and started to remember what had happened when the nerdy-looking blind guy had tapped his way up to you in the carpark after you'd done your shopping and asked why you thought you blacked out sometimes and then had tilted his ear when you started to reply and then had let go of his cane with a clatter and dashed in and covered your face with that nasty chemical-smelling rag and then you woke up immobile with your four limbs splayed out in an X shape with him going on about how he was a blind serial killer and all and...)

SWERVE. sway to the left and then...

SCREEEECH.
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open... slam. footfalls padding closer.

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HELSHLO! Yush've figshured outsh I'ghm a'gh w'gherewh-ghwolf by'g now, r'gight?

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I'ghll takghe tghat noighse an'gd thgrashigng asg a yeshg.

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OHgh! Hu'gh'mans comgshing outsh ofg th'ge ga'sh st'shand... B'e g'right backsh...

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loping sounds of claws digging in across pavement.

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Just shut the fuck up for once and listen, Jesse. The new mortgage will pay for all we nee... WHAT THE... A WOLF! SHOUT AT IT!

FUCK! GET YOUR GUN, ROB!

NO TIME! THREATEN IT WI... AAAaaaGGHHHthudGUrgle... Ripteargnash.

stalking footpads.

Oh my god, ROB!... Okay... you're a good boy. STOP coming closer. Gooood boy, wait NO! FUUUUC.

Thud. SCREAM cut off! Ripping sound. Gurgle.

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sound of gas stand door slamming open.

BLAM! BLAM! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THEM!

UGGFH!! skidding sound of a body hitting the ground.

What the FUCK!? OH! Oh no! FUCK!

sound of feet dashing away.

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sound of gas stand door slamming shudderingly shut.

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gruntreaching, smacking of hand on pavement, gasping, grasping, dragging sound.

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gurglebreath.

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smack of palm. gravelly scraping sound. gasp. grunt. dragging noise.

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I cgh-can't see you ashg-anymore.

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I'm sgh-shot thghruu. Go-gh to tghe.

coughing. splattering liquid sound.

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AR-GHHHH--

sound of thrashing of limbs and cracking of bone.

ARRRGGGUUGG--

Turning b-ghack KAK KAK SPLAT.

KAK!

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heaving in of a last shuddering water-down-the-drain breath.

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the-moonlit-th-uhr-rone. Go-

expelled breath gurglestillness 
 
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wweeeaaawww.

wwweeeeeeawww.

wwwwWWWWHHHEEEAAAWWW.

flashing red-and-blues again through the blindfold.

SCHREEECH.

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open. open. slam. slam.

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OH, SHI-ET! Trev, call backup!

On it!

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approaching footsteps. 

kicknoise of shoe against flesh.

This one's out. Gonna check the others down over ther...

SHIT, TREV!

WHAT?!

THERE'S ONE ON THE BACK OF THE AMBULANCE!

WHAT?!

LOOKS ALIVE! CALL IT IN!

WHAT?! ONE WHERE?!

RIGHT THERE! LOOK!

gas stand door opening sound to your left.

scrunch of gravel under spinning bootheels.

FREEZE! DOWN ON THE GROUND!

WAIT! I'M NOT...

DOWN ON THE GROUND!

thud of knees. OKAY! DON'T SHOOT! flopsmack.

rushing feet.

PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK! NOW!

okay! okay! Just don't...

click-clack.

rushing feet.

Trev, hands under his armpit!

Yup, got it.

And... LIFT!

haulscrape.

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scrape.

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Agrh! Comeon guys! My arm! ARhhhhh!

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grunt. open. shove. tuck. slam.

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step. step.

step.

Is she alive?

You start to thrash within the confines of your bound wrists and ankles and vocalize through the cloth of the gag cutting painfully across the corners of your mouth.

"Call more ambulances!" you hear the man you will only know briefly from time to time as Officer Steven Calrudd yell over his shoulder to the equally-doomed Officer Trevor Finney, who will himself outlive his partner by a matter of bare minutes when they both die five years later.

Blindfold off, it yanked roughly up crosswise across your forehead, you yell, "FUUUUCK! BE CAREFUL! FUCK, THAT HURT!"   

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Nancy awoke. The industrial-green ceiling of her cell in Starklight's Mental Care Institute was the same as always. Not a single crack or divot in it had changed. And neither had she.

She had pretended to change though. Not all that successfully at times. Which was why she was still here.

It had been pretty easy to dupe Dr. Jerran, maybe a year ago, maybe more, into accepting that she had stopped believing the events of the night when she had been found by the police, helplessly strapped to the back of an ambulance slewed sideways at the end of the skid marks behind its tires in a gas stand's parking lot.

Easy to convince him that she had stopped believing that a blind man had drugged her in a carpark and then bound her to the ambulance's back doors and that he had turned out to be a werewolf who had spoken to her of a lot of stuff along the way.

Dr. Jerran had believed that she had let all of that go as just a fantasy and was now lucid.

Then there had been that fateful outing that the doctor had signed off on for her to go on as a supervised shopping spree. And that had got him fired.

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You are in a shopping mall. It is wonderful to your eyes after all the months of seeing the same industrial-green chipped ceilings and walls.

Everything is bright here. The shopfronts are colorful and young people walk by unaware of you sitting here drinking your third coffee.

Dr. Jerran sits across the molded orange table from you. He smiles and says, "See? It's not all that bad out here, right?" as the froth from his weird Italian coffee coats his mouth-hiding moustache. He sees your eyes go to his upper lip and chuckles and wipes away the stuff.

You say, "Yeah, this is pretty nice." and he nods back to you.

He says, "You can do this all the time if you want. I think you are ready."

Such wonderful words to hear, but the feeling of pressure in your bladder has been growing since the second coffee and so you say, "Excuse me, Larry. I have to answer a nature call."

He excuses you from the table, smiling, his face confident that you will return in a few minutes and that everything will be fine.

You enter the ladies' room and go into a stall, closing and locking the door behind you. As you are pulling down your slacks and panties, you hear someone else groaning fitfully in the next stall over. Poor them. Must be a big one, you think.

You sit on the toilet seat and start to pee.

Sweet relief. 

wssshhhhpddddidlpddddlllpdddl but when you are almost done a mottled hand reaches under the gap between you and the occupied next stall over, clutching a piece of non-toilet paper, and the voice from next-door says, "ReAghd IghT!".

Clenching off your urethra, you reach down and take the paper. The hand withdraws.

fluuuushhh. open. SLAM!

You uncrumple the paper that was passed to you.   

washing basin water sounds. step. step. hand-drier whhhiiiirrrrr. open. swing shut.

Looking back down at the paper, you see that it reads "The Moonlit Throne" in a clear but jagged scrawl. That's what that kidnapping asshole had tried to tell you about while he was busy dying on the asphalt of that gasoline stand!

You stand up, foregoing the wipe, and yank both your pants back up in a single tug. You fumble with the toilet stall lock for an instant but manage to get it open. You make it all the way across the tiled floor and smash your way out through the restroom door into the restaurant proper but start to stagger as your slacks fall down around your thighs.

Where is the buttwipe asshole that had handed the paper under the stall wall and taken back all your progress?! There he was, ducking out the diner's door!

You go after him. Your unbuckled trousers fall to your knees and you look like a crazy person as you crash face-first onto the edge of the table of a family just about to blow out the candles on their six-year-old son's cake, tipping it over back on top of you.

You roll around quite a bit screaming with your hair on fire and it takes about three quarters of an hour for the ambulance to arrive and take you to the emergency ward.

You are there under constant observation for days and by the time you are back home at the mental hospital the paper you received has vanished and Dr. Jerran has been fired and you are back to square one.

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Another three-and-a-half years went by for Nancy and then, one sudden evening, she was sitting in the public room of the institute, putting together the border of a new jigsaw puzzle of Munch's "The Scream", when Officer Steven Calrudd came in to ask her some more questions about the ongoing case. The case that had become known as "The Gas Stand Massacre" in the mainstream news media.

He sat down across the table from her, tucking his winter coat around the sides of the simple plastic chair, and said, "Hello again, Nancy."

She glanced up from her puzzle at the man. He saw recognition in her eyes. Then she looked back down and dispassionately slotted another piece of red sky into place.

"Nancy, we can help you." he opened with, but his words did not even put a dent in her furrowed, downward-turned expression. "Nancy, listen to me."

Nothing.

"Nancy, do you even remember us?"

'Us'? Nancy looked up and, through the frazzled, unkempt fringe of her wiry hair, she saw Officer Trevor Finney pulling in a chair on her left.

The corner of Nancy's mouth quirked up and that one incisor of hers that had always eluded the constraints of childhood braces slipped out from between her lips. "You're bald." she said clearly, the first words she had uttered in weeks that sounded like her voice from before, and then laughed and turned her attention back down to the as-yet-not screaming man on the jetty. Half of that other bald man's face was still missing, and the vital pieces making up his mouth had eluded her for days.

Officer Calrudd glanced over at his partner, trying not to smile or grimace, and they locked eyes for an instant. Calrudd saw the twitch in Finney's hand wanting to place itself back on the police cap on his lap. He'd worn that thing in and out of the station for a year and months more back when his once-glorious head of ginger had started to recede from forehead and crown. Even at his desk. Finally, he took it off one day, and the entire unit had breathed a collective sigh of...

BASH!

The entire rec room floor looked around at the sudden, violent sound from the row of wire-reinforced windows that ran along its length. A large grey, shaggy form swung back up and away on the outside of the third-floor room, and then swung back down again and its huge dog-padded feet hit the window once more.

BASHSPLINTER!

Jagged cracks spread out through the diagonally cross-threaded window and it caved inwards just a bit and...

BASH!

Another at the far end and then BASH! BASHSPLINTER! BASH! BASH! SPLINTER! Attacks on the windows ranged out all the way along. Holes were already crashing through here and there with showers of safety-glass cubes spraying into the room around the screaming, fleeing inmates and staff.

Hairy clawed hands reached through the broken gaps, the fur on the backs of them outlined in silver halos of moonlight as they gripped the remaining wire mesh and then powerfully ripped it back, tearing it apart.

BLAM! Calrudd was on his knees, firing.

SMAAASSH! An entire pane of glass gave way, and in through it leapt a werewolf, landing skidding on its hind paws briefly across the tiles of the pink-and-cream checkerboard floor. It slipped and fell on its back, the only thing saving it from a second round from Calrudd's pistol snapping by over it and impacting on the plaster above the broken window with a thud and puff of white.

Nancy was already down on her hands and knees, scrambling in under the scream-puzzle table, when Officer Finney stepped out in front of Calrudd's line of fire and took the third round in the right side of his back just as he was aiming down the barrel of his own sidearm. His shoulder blade shattered into pizza slices and he fell forward with a grunt, turning his surprised face away from the floor at the last moment of his deadweight fall.

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You scramble out from under the other side of the table, panickly pushing aside the chair recently occupied by Officer Steven Calrudd. It falls and clatters. You continue past him, picking your knees up from the floor and going into a slouching, scrambling hands-and-feet run, as he fires off his fourth shot wildly as a bulk of muscled fur leaps on him. You keep scrambling, a fleeing inmate knocking you to one side as you hear Calrudd screaming through ripping and tearing sounds, equally cloth and meat.

You slide a bit, but manage to keep going. Your right wrist sings a little song of pain. It's probably sprained but that's something to deal with later, your brain tells you, as, in front of the jutting viewpoint of your wide-open eyes, you see the rec room door. Your escape route. The two brown, wooden doors are still wide-open inwards. The stainless-steel cylinders of the door-closers bolted to their top edges shudder a bit in place as people dash through the opening, bashing in fright and collision up against the doors.

But the doors are still open as you hand-and-foot dash towards them but then a massive grey hairy form slides across in front. It rips its wiry, rope-muscled arms back behind it and the doors slam shut as it whips its elongated canine head to one side and tears out the throat of a man you only knew as Dennis as the poor guy smacks up against one of the wooden panels and falls twitching to the floor, spraying an artwork of blood across the door and one of its inset windows as his twitching body goes down. 

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Nancy gasped and slid to a halt. The werewolf in front of her tilted its head and growled. She looked around to both sides and behind her quickly, but there were only the pale-skinned, grey-tufted haunches of other members of the pack closing in from all sides.

Calrudd lay dead in puddles of blood and flesh, his knees still up but starting to spread apart. Finney thrashed around on his front beyond the legs of the table where she had been peacefully piecing together her puzzle only a bare lifetime ago. He couldn't get up. Even trying to with his left arm, the shattered right shoulder blade dug its pizza slices together on every attempt, and he fell back down onto his front with screams. His pistol lay out of reach several meters away.

One of the werewolves saw the last desperate expression of hope on Nancy's face dashed away. It grin-gnashed a smile at her and then leapt onto all-fours and crouched down above the back of Finney's head. It looked up one more time into Nancy's eyes with its unearthly yellow ones. Then it slowly, very slowly, turned its head, stretched open its long jaws on either side of Finney's hairless scalp above the ginger band of hair ringing around above his ears and, eyes still locked on Nancy's, bit down and through in a cascade of crunch, blood, bone, and brain.

Nancy wished she could just pass out, but that doesn't happen in real life. She only received the blessed but brief gift of unconsciousness when the door-blocking werewolf padded forward and punched her in the back of the head.

They had got what they came for and the only hint of normality left in the room after they left was Nancy's incomplete puzzle on its undisturbed table.

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Hello, Nancy. How are you feeling? Probably not all that good, right? Oh, don't try to provide a reply. I don't expect one, what with you being all so blindfolded and gagged as you are. HEY, BRAD... GIVE HER A BLAST OF IT!

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wwhhheeeaaaaw. WHEEAAAWWWWW.

That's enough!

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Yeah, you're back riding another ambulance. Not tied to the back of one, jesus that guy was an idiot. Did he give you his speech about how blood looks black in the moonlight? Blind fucker always thought he had a great line about how he couldn't see red even after he turned into a dog and could see again. It's bullshit. We can see colors pretty much fine even while enhanced. Glad he's dead to be fucking honest.

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Lay back for the ride. We are about twenty minutes out from the throne.

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sounds of traffic

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right turn

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left turn. thump. downhill slope.

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stop. open. slam.

We're going to be taking you out on the stretcher to where you're needed, Nancy. If you struggle even once, then you will be sedated. Do not do that, please.

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doors opening

pull. ratchet. thud.

feeling of on-your-back motion. spinning. motion.

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ding.

pushing.

swoosh-doors.

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descent.

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thud. swoosh-doors.

pushing.

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doors open. go through. doors close behind with a hiss-whoosh.

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footsteps approaching.

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step. step. step-step. stepstep.

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BOO!

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Just kidding. Sorry to make you flinch.

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Hello, Nancy. Nice to meet you. Hope you guess my name. I've been around many a long year... Stolen many a man's soul and fame. Aw, sorry for being a cunt like that.

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I'm not the devil... or Mick Jagger... who I probably misquoted. I'm just the original source.

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MuuuUURRpppPPHHH-MURRpppPHH.

Nancy, no. Wait. Don't struggle. Let me tell you everything.

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MUUUURRRMMMPPHHHH!!! mmmmMMMMRRRRPHHHH!!!

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Okay, then struggle all you like, you stupid bitch. But LISTEN UP as well!

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MRPHMMMmmmmm...MMfrmmm...

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Yes, much better. Now listen:

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We are taking over. We are about to make our move on the cuties. The humans.

sudden shouting in your face, spraying it with spittle

YOU are the only one that has never turned! Even when bitten! YOUR blood has something in it and it took us a very VERY long while to find you and then somewolf let that sightless idiot do it!

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You're the cure, Nancy. And that is why we have looked for you for so long.

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This has happened before though we think. There are texts. The cure was killed and eaten, and their blood went through the whole pack... that set us back a long, long ways. Many a man was wreathed in shame. Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my game.

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Hahaha, sorry. I love those guys. And, yeah, our 'game' is to put you right in... there.

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stretcher-trundle

wheeling. clank. slide. cold. instantly cold. very cold. feeling coldsleepy. coldasleep.

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The electrical power running the facility ran out.

Nancy's body started to feel warm again for the first time in decades, spreading from her core outwards, until her eyes fuzzed open.

She tore the blindfold off and took the gag from her mouth and screamed. The noise came back to her ears fast and hard and she screamed again at the pain of it and then, after a few screams more, slowly learnt to stop doing that.

She reached her hands up to the metal ceiling bare inches above her, pressed her palms against it, and pushed northwards from herself. There was a click and the thud of a hatch as her feet hit it and it slammed open. The trolley-tray she was lying on slid out into the bare, morguelike cryogenic facility she had been stowed away in.

Nancy tipped her legs off the side of the cantilevered drawer she had come out on. The floor stung her unaccustomed feet like bees until she rapped them against it enough times to get the unique blood flowing through them to move sensibly enough to walk again.

It was a large facility. She started to find her way through it. Along the way to the eventual exit, in a desk drawer, she found a handgun, and there, in the drawer below, were the bullets to load it with. 

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You walk out into the moonlit night, the bold metal wall of the Moonlit Throne facility behind you, half-buried in the rocky cliffs of the quarry-like hollow.

All around, on both sides, scrawny, desperate werewolves gather upon the brinks of the bluffs. They look down on you and begin to howl.

You put the handgun up against the side of your temple and they stop.

You walk a few more steps, and then a few more, painfully, until you are at the top of the cracked asphalt road sloping back down into the compound behind you.

Topping the crest, you look around at the utter destruction that has been wrought upon civilization by the rise of the werewolves and the massacre of mankind.

All around you, a pack of thousands rapidly gathers on gravel-scattering paw-padding feet.

Keeping the gun to your head, you turn a complete circle within their claw-scraping boundary and say, "There's two ways we can do this."

Okay, I think I need to dip into your kindness some more. I might be able to finish the story over the weekend, but I'm far from sure. Two more days would be nice.

Yes, please! Me too!

We colab in a few games where I did graphics for his game... but boy did he annoyed me sometimes by requesting hard to do BGs (making me do more work on a BG that I couldn't see how it would possible look better) and then end up using a grab from an online reference pic in game.... or using an unfinished BG when I specifically told him I wasn't finished, and just wanted some feedback to improve it... or picking a sprite and distorting it to fit his "size" (instead of asking me to rendered it again at a bigger size)... but I'll still miss him and his horde of games.

HAHAHA! Yup, that's Les all right! The same kind of stuff happened during my copy editing of his game texts. He would sometimes just rewrite pieces of text I had already corrected and signed off on without running them by me again. And those monstrosities would show up in the released games that had my name on them as copy editor, making it look like I had overlooked them.

However, it was that slap-dash "meh-good-enough" attitude of his that made him able to get so many projects finished instead of tweaking stuff for ages, or forever, like a lot of us have done. Kinda the Roger Corman (and sometimes the Ed Wood) of AGS in many ways. I think he either assumed others had similar attitudes about their efforts, or he just didn't care. He did have a very "take me or leave me" outlook, the old bugger.

I nominate "Condemned" for the potential Slasher 10-Pack.

The one with the death-row prisoners fighting to the death on the island. That's the game of his I worked on that I thought was the most complete story-wise, still great wacky fun, and still represented his style while being quite beautiful at times.

Hm...
Well, rip.

One doesn't usually say a flippant-sounding comment like that upon finding out someone died. We pretty much know you are a rather aloof kind of fella but show some respect FFS.

I'm sure he didn't mean any disrespect. It's hard to show tone of voice in text.
The fact that he cared enough to even make a comment shows some level of respect in my humble opinion.

I'm in touch with KyriakosCH about my comment, which I'm quite ashamed of. I have apologized and I hope he accepts my apology. I totally agree with you as well. It was a stupid thing to say. I was drunk and emotional at the time and my words were misguided by those factors. Still, no excuse. I was a jerk.

RIP Slasher.

It has just been recently confirmed that Slasher is no longer with us. He passed away from a heart attack last year.

The man was a pillar of this community and a great and unique friend to many of us.

I created this thread separate to the thread that was looking into his sudden disappearance as a place where people could be more aware of his passing and add their comments if they hadn't known.

Have at it, and also be aware that the man himself wouldn't want this to be a solemn place, and for people to have a bit of fun with it all, and I'll start it off by saying:

Slasher, your grammar and spelling were atrocious, and I just had to contact you and ask if I could correct the whole mess, which led us down a years-long journey where I copy edited your games. When I finally had to leave that position, as I was becoming responsible for paid jobs doing the same thing, I was scared that you might be upset, but all you said was, "Go for it, mate! I understand. Go make a million dollars!"

Well, I didn't make a million dollars, but I never forgot how gracious you were.

Okay, goodbye, you cunt. Great to have known you.

Hm...
Well, rip.

One doesn't usually say a flippant-sounding comment like that upon finding out someone died. We pretty much know you are a rather aloof kind of fella but show some respect FFS.

Ah, shit. A great friend and great guy to work with on his quirky, ridiculous, charming games.

Quite the battler, having survived a large stroke that took away his ability to do basically anything, and then clawed his way back to the point where he could create games, store massive amounts of knowledge on the quirks of AGS in his head, and help newbies whenever he could.

Your spelling and grammar always sucked balls, Les, but you know that. Will miss just knowing you're around churning out your crazy stuff.

RIP

[Baron:]

I have read both entries and here are my votes and feedback:

BARON FEEDBACK AND VOTING

Spoiler

Baron: I really enjoyed your story, and it reminded me a lot of the setting and paranoia of The Thing. The most exciting part for me was the shipwreck itself. I could see in my mind the characters fighting against the churning water coming in. Then it got a bit vague for me. I found I couldn't keep track of which characters were who during the middle section, although I could tell you were dropping hints as to who each were along the way. Might be more a "me" problem.
The story point that the island was alive with or embedded with some kind of monster was understandable.
I understood that the cast was slowly getting whittled down one by one but didn't really feel their absence until later when Cora found herself alone, and then the bleak ending which I liked. Yeah, it's kind of impossible to tell such a multi-character horror story in such a brief time and expect the reader to feel the impact of it. It would make a very nice outline for a sci-fi horror episode of a Twilight Zone kind of TV show where the viewer sees the faces of the characters and knows who is who a little better than I did.

I did try to read the original story and got partway through it, then skipped to the end, but formatting issues due to (I suspect) updates on the website made so many punctuation characters change into weird stuff for me and I had to give up.

Not for this reason alone, I am voting:

Best improvement: Baron 1 pt.

[close]

STUPOT FEEDBACK AND VOTING

Spoiler

Stupot: I loved the basic pun of "Faceplant" that obviously inspired the original 144-word story. Then I read the expanded version and, yeah, it added everything that a reader of the original would have wondered about. The little details like the bullies getting caught setting the grass on fire, and the over-the-top actions of the main bully, and his line "Just a pat on the head" already sold this for me, but then the bully going into the house and seeing the tendrils retract and everything... Horrifying very much in a "The Ruins" way, especially the boy's attempts to cut it all out of him. Also, it being a creepy pasta type story originally and you adding an extra layer of storytelling on top of that with the "this arrived in my email" conceit was a lot of fun.

For the above reasons I am voting:

Best story: Stupot 2 pts.

[close]

Another candidate for me would be The Thing from the Carpenter film.

I'd personally have to go with the werewolf in An American Werewolf in London. Also my nomination for best last scene in a movie.

I've managed to bash out a draft of something. It needs a heavy edit and I have more ideas for it if I can find the time, but in the worst case I feel I can submit what I've got.

Can't wait!

Welcome back, Mandle.

How's it going so far? Are you all busy writing or is it too hot to even move a finger where you all are as well?

It's like the air is about to catch on fire here. I'm catching up with some duties I had backlogged over my trip. Started writing a story that has been bumping around in my head for a while, but not a rewrite of a FWC entry so probably not gonna make it in this round.

Back from my jaunt over to Australia and, despite overexaggerated claims on the internet about how dangerous it is, only lost two limbs and my eyebrows in the process.

Congratz to Sini for the win on the last round. Never got the time to read the entries but I plan to soon.

New topic sounds great!

Though I can say I finally finished the game. A masterpiece game that one.

Great to hear. It is an amazing game! It was my honor to do the copy-editing on the text, and I was also the voice of Thrym the ice giant, which was great fun to do.

Oh, awesome, Baron! That will be all the entries, and I'm off to Australia tomorrow, so handing moderation over to the very moderate Stupot.

Seeyas in a couple of weeks, unless I get really high... erm... I mean "inspired" and enter the next round on the fly while there!

Cheers, Sini. Yeah, not gonna be spending much time online except for travel functions. To be honest though, Australia isn't really my home anymore. Feels like a foreign country I visit from time to time while knowing something about. Especially now that both my parents are gone. Got some good friends and some relatives (that I hardly know) there. The food and views and memories still speak to me, but almost like something from a different lifetime.

Awesome, Sini... I'm off back home to Australia in a few days for the first time since before the pandemic and it seems that Stupot will not have time to get an entry in so he will be taking over moderation during the voting stage, unless he DOES have a sudden boatload of time and gets an entry in, in which case the thread will just stay on lockdown after the deadline and I will start voting when I get back about halfway through next month.

Uh... How do you write it if it's not part of the story? 

Yup.

I'm gonna be hosting this round, as Stupot and I decided after our collective win.

As we are both teachers the theme is kinda a natural:

Write a story about a teacher.

The theme can be interpreted in any way.

Please refrain from writing any saucy, inappropriate sexy stuff between a teacher and a student, unless it is a part of the story. In which case, go ahead!