A Picture Tells 1,000 Words...[WINNERS ANNOUNCED]

[+ + Jewel Angel + +]

mudd37

+ + Jewel Angel + +

Yes, I have tried. >< It's nearly 500 words. You don't mind if I link it perhaps? Much more neat I say. http://www.freewebs.com/bishies_rule_me/stormymemoriess.htm

i really liked ur story alot it was great!

Why thank you! 4laugh heart

[Starving_Artist]

Word Count: 355

Painting and Pictures

I hate the hallway. It just screams my mother’s name with the sponge painted pastel wallpaper and the perfectly touched up banister. It was so like her to hang pictures of the ocean on the wall. Hadn’t we moved here to get away from the sunny beaches of California? Hadn’t she told me that I’d be much happier away from the smog and the surfers? She’d promised me that life would be a breeze here.

Here, the rocky and decrepit deserts of Phoenix. There was no water in Arizona. I hated Arizona and coming up those stairs reminded me of California, where I wished I was. I thought of my friends and my old high school. I imagined that they were all at the beach now, the boys would be throwing a football back and forth and the girls would be perfecting their tans.

I went up the stairs as quickly as my legs would carry me, trying to tune out my surroundings and the voice of my mother asking how my first day of class went. I flung myself onto my bed and buried my head in the pillow. Maybe if I just stayed there the world would slowly dissolve around me.

My first day had gone horribly. I’d gotten lost at least half a dozen times, my teachers were unfamiliar and not at all likable and not a sole aside from the lunch lady had spoken to me. I hated Phoenix more than I hated anything.

The insistence in my mother’s voice brought me out of my reverie. With a huff of annoyance I pulled myself up onto my feet and took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to stop asking until I spoke to her so I figured that I should get it over with. On the way back through the hallway that reminded me so much of home I grabbed the picture of the ocean off the wall.

My mother looked at me curiously as I got to the bottom of the steps, picture in my arms.

“I think we should paint the hallway,” was all I said.

[Mini Muffinxman]

Yay - more entrants!

Keep them coming folks!

[Mini Muffinxman]

Bumpity bump!

[Aeirwen]

Hello, I suppose I would like to enter. I think I can do it, it should be fun, I truley enjoy writing. First I have to find a picture but I also have a question or two, I'll send them through a pm, that way I can get to it easier. biggrin

[Mini Muffinxman]

Bumpity bump - 10 days left!

[-Seven-of-Coins-]

Word Count: 960

Dream

I’ve been told that just a single picture can say one thousands words. But what I want to know if those thousand words are true… or false.

My story takes place in a little town called Harbor. No, it doesn’t have anything special at the end like “town” or “village”… Harbor is Harbor so it doesn’t need anything to define it. Just, Harbor.

I love walking home during the evenings when I’ve finished all my errands and little plans for the day. I would walk along the small streets and stores during my short trip back to the comfort of my home. I still remember… Even now, I could still hear the small chit-chat of friendly neighbors and the old tunes being played on the radio. Even now, I long for those golden days at the Harbor Park... But those golden days are gone now. And that’s what matters.

I was walking to the park in the early morning one day to finish reading my most favorite book, “Alice in Wonderland,” when suddenly, everything went quiet. I thought to myself, “Now this is rather odd. Where are those wonderful sounds I love to hear each and every morning of the week? Where are those sounds?”

Everyone came running out of their homes and houses and shops to investigate what had happened. I looked at the children’s faces and the parent’s faces and I instantly knew that not one of them knew what happened.

The people of Harbor came to a conclusion that it was just a minor blackout and that everything will be all right after a few moments. But everything was not right at all.

A few days passed but nothing happened. Nothing at all… The people of Harbor felt that it was time to either look for a way to end this nightmare or to move on with our lives and leave Harbor all together. Many left this place and never returned. Those who stayed behind felt like it was their duty to bring back the wonderful sounds in Harbor. I, along with my mother, my father, and my senile little brother stayed behind. We couldn’t leave our little town to rot so everyone decided to search throughout the town to find the missing clues of the puzzle.

It was then when I climbed the stairs to my home in search of answers. The door to my mother and father’s room was wide open. Why was it open? Mother always told me to close the doors to a room when I leave for spirits always loved to wander in open rooms. My heart began racing. Why would mother and father’s room be open? Had they completely forgotten about their own rule?

I slowly walked up the stairs with the last bit of my courage while telling myself that everything was going to be all right. But suddenly, out of nowhere, the light in my parent’s room brightly flashed on and off… on and off… The closed curtains in their room were slowly pulled open and I could hear the footsteps of a stranger walking closer and closer to me. With each step I heard, my heart beat faster, louder.

It walked to the bottom of the stairs and I could hear it. I could feel it. It stood in front of me. With its invisible appearance, I could only imagine what was truly standing there in the room with me.

“I’m… going to be… late.” It said softly, quietly.

In my trembling hands, I held a camera. The one mother and father gave me for my birthday. Quietly, I asked it, “Sir? May… May I take a picture… of you?”

“A picture of… me? Why… No need… I’ve already sent myself… to see the Queen.” It said.

“Alice!” screamed a voice from behind. “Who are you talking to?!”

My mother ran to my side and shielded me from the mysterious entity. I peeked from behind my mother and secretly took a picture without it knowing. But when the flash from the camera gave out, so did the ghostly being. Before it disappeared though, I clearly heard it say to my mother,

“My Queen, it is an honor for you to come to my home even though I am to be very, very late.”

My family did not say anything to anyone after that. My little brother started talking about how much birthdays there are in a day and in a year that it scared my mother and father. They thought something must have happened to him while we were searching through the town. After a while, everyone in Harbor moved out, each with their own goals in mind. Word soon spread out that the little girl who lived in house number thirteen saw the mysterious ghost who cursed the town… But none knew what had really happened. Not even me.

It’s been thirteen years now since that incident forced my family to move from our little town to the big city. I now live all alone with but a cat as my only companion. I still have that photo from when I was a little girl and I still have nightmares from when I still lived in house number thirteen.

When I close my eyes, I wonder to myself if everything that happened those many years ago were really true… or not. But it happened. And that’s what matters.

My small, orange cat with black stripes jumped into my lap while I sat myself down for the day to rest. It closed its eyes and slowly fell into a deep sleep while I pull up my most favorite book in the whole world and read gently, quietly, about a little girl who fell into her own dream.

[Mini Muffinxman]

Thank you seven of coins for your entry!

9 days left folks!

[The Flying Betta Fish]

Well it's taken me forever to put this up here from when I first became interested in the contest, but here it is:

Word Count: 701

Quote:

It was cautious steps I took up the landing. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the stairs so much; I knew them to be stable. Maybe it was a fear of the memories; fear of remembering. The wine-red carpet, plush as ever, still covered the stair way. The sixth step gave way to a moan as I stepped on it. Memories rushed back of sneaking out at night, carefully stepping over the trick stair. Of boyfriends who got me home so late I was awake before I fell asleep. Of falling asleep in class just to dream about the night before.

I continued my ascent up the stairway, my hand smoothly sliding along the wooden banister. As a child I had reviled the placement of the staircase next to a wall which hindered any attempts to slide down the railing like the children in movies so infamously did. I lightly fingered the wallpaper. It was one thing I couldn’t place. The wallpaper of my youth had been a bright green color, one I had picked out myself when we moved in. This pastel mixture was much more soothing the eyes than the lime sheets that had preceded it. It needed to be replaced too, even twenty years before when I lived in this house.

That same picture still hung at the top of the landing. When had I painted that? I think it was tenth grade. It had been a school project, and we were painting landscapes. I brought a picture from home to paint; it was a photograph of the lake of my childhood. Back when I was seven and my sister was nine we would go out to that lake as a family wearing our swim suit and carrying picnic baskets and beach towels on sunny Sunday afternoons. We’d eat watermelon and sandwiches till we could eat no more, and then my sister and I would run into the frigid water screaming with delight. My mother would come and stand on the beach, the small waves lapping at her bare feet, arms crossed, with a warm motherly smile playing across her lips.

My father would run up behind my mother, grab her round the waist, and twirl her around. Her straw sunhat would fly off her head onto the muddy beach and laughing she’s tell him how she’d never get it clean again. Ignoring her, my father would carry her, shrieking and writhing, into the lake. It was picturesque really, pardon the pun.

My art teacher and I got into an argument over that painting. I took it home with me to finish over the weekend, and when she found out she was furious. I don’t understand why she would care so much, but she always nitpicked over the tiniest things. The color variation in the skyline or the way I would choose to use a more abstract coloration rather than a realistic one. She and I never saw eye to eye, so I suppose that’s why I chose to drop out.

I tried to throw that picture away. But my father told me it was better to be reminded so that we feel like we can openly remember, rather than allowing something to haunt us inside so that we never acknowledged it. When I accused him of being insensitive, because he wasn’t the one who had to see it every time he climbed those steps, he yelled at me and told me that every time he crawled into bed alone he remembered. That every time he accidentally set out another place at the table he remembered.

She was lying on the beach while my sister, my father, and I all played around in the lake. She fell asleep in the sun and when went to wake her she wouldn’t. She suffered a silent death. It was a heart attack, according to the coroner.

I became conscious of the fact I hadn’t recently thought about the incident. I fled the house as a cold numbness came over me. I called me sister and told her, “I don’t want the house, you can have it,” and then quickly hung up. I realized that it wasn’t the remembering I was afraid of, but of finding out I had forgotten.

[Mini Muffinxman]

Thank you Flying Betta Fish - it was well worth the wait!

[Mini Muffinxman]

Bumpity bump - 6 days left, folks!

[Mini Muffinxman]

Bump!

Anyone thinking of entering needs to get their skates on - I'm not the sort of person who'll put back his deadlines!

[Mini Muffinxman]

Bump... cry

[Mini Muffinxman]

Bump - a day and a bit left!

[ewagan]

oook, i'll be back in about half an hour with an entry, i hope.