The Elements' Writing Contest Entry Thread Only

[Shiro Mezidoria]

Welcome to The Elements' Writing Contest.

This is the thread for the entries for the contestants.

To visit the official contest page, click here.

Please do not post anything but entries in this thread.

Thank you.

And good luck to everyone!

[OriginalSooshi]

Star of Silence

Written by OriginalSooshi, May 23, 2012.

Footsteps echo harshly; breaths fog up the shiny surfaces; reflections distort until they become twisted versions of themselves.

Silver eyes flash with terror.

Cables entwine together, forming vine-like structures, sparking with bright electricity. White smoke wafts in coils, like a snake preparing to spring. It drifts upwards, obscuring the vision of the upper levels of the lying, superficial company buildings.

The jagged point is in sight, surrounded by several people. Only, they aren't people - they are monsters. Press the button and they all fall down. Like ring-a-rose's, only they wouldn't get back up; these monsters hated what was permanent. The doors slide open smoothly, with a light ring of metal upon metal that was the only detection of entrance.

Soft whirring sounds in the air - the Galeans become tangled in white hair, tugging desperately. Little winged boxes, flashing, always flashing, sending out messages. Pale hands whisk around them, removing the nuisances. Here, in the front room, the footsteps are silent and calculating, although the solid, plasma-padded floor didn't impede any movement. Well, except when trying to avoid the acid-jettison release capsules embedded in the granite flooring. Grace is what is needed.

The glass walls show nothing of joy - crumbling bridges, pulled under by weight; lopsided towers, creating shapes that could barely be seen across the dimly-lit sky. Flickering lights, whizzing and buzzing, flying crookedly; their senses hindered by the lack of technological radiation. The closest Radaitheora Eadrom Tower was too far away. They were clinging to scraps of energy, floating, struggling. 

The destruction of the world was stopped only by the glowing silver walls. A silver dome, shining, stretching to the ends of the city. It touched the earth, stopped the havoc. It contained the chaos; we mustn’t destroy the world, they said. The world was so peaceful, unharmed, they said. Watch as another building is taken, falling in slow motion. It crushes another like dominoes - what happens in one place always affects another. 

There is a crack in the glass - it has begun. They will fall soon. Their fault. They started it. They didn't know the virus destroyed - they only thought it created. Those monsters released it into the world - technology couldn't save the city, it was too contaminated. Buildings are graves, now, so many people gone, their lives taken so suddenly. They were unsuspecting, innocent.

Remove the jagged point - that is the final goal. Tell the secret. They can't hide any longer - the rest of the world must know about the virus. They can fix it. They have to. They're our last chance.

Finally, a scanner, flowing over a face like a waterfall. You can change your eyes to get through - machines can always be tricked with a little help. All you need is the Marlait Suil, the eye changer. Then, a little p***k - the needle paralyses you if you are contaminated. Take several uncertain steps forward - slow, heavy steps.

 Turn a corner, and see the Edalian's standing stock still beside a pair of onyx doors. The Edalian’s are silent and lethal. Pull a box out of your pocket quickly and flick the switch. The switch sends a shock, but it renders you camouflaged. You can walk through the onyx doors easily, with no trouble. The corridors seem endless, but there is, at last, a door of dull silver.

You click a number. Loud noises, everywhere. Hands clench over ears, clutching to rid yourself of the blinding pain; the cacophony leaks through the gaps, thudding - overload of your senses, overload. They have heard, and they are coming. You must go.

There is a corner. A bright corner, edges meeting sharply. There is nowhere else to run. Machines pointing, attached - melded - to flesh; they threaten you and tell you to surrender. You realize that it is time. Waves, buzzing, fizzing. Twitch and the thudding slows. The bright room spins, and you know the city is doomed. Silver walls cannot protect them forever.

Watch in pain as the triggers move. A lone tear falls - you are the last of the species, the only one who can save them all. The only one who can return the world to normality, and they want to destroy you for it. Intruder, they call you, monster. In a whisper, you reply that they are the monsters. That they have ruined everything. You close your eyes, count to three, and take a deep breath. Finally, it is over.

The pain is like fire, burning through your veins, but as cold as ice, freezing you in place. The poison makes its way to your heart, where the thudding slows to a stop. The shell of you falls into the corner.

The monsters look down on you with ice cold stares. They have destroyed the last human being on earth.

[It is not about me]

Lies

If today was your last day, what would you do? That is a common question, but around here, you have to live like that every day. It's do or die, eat or be eaten. Since the apocalypse happened, I've been on my own. It has only been a few days since the viral break out and everyone is either dying out or turning insane and killing the healthy. The sane people call them, 'The Maniacs.' My mom was murdered by a maniac in our own home. I was too late to save her.
That was only two days ago, now I am about 300 miles away from my house, moving toward the safest place, the top of the empire state building. To be up 1,454 feet in the air. Even though I am starting out at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the building. The only thing I would need is supplies, and that I am collecting along the way. I've only stopped once at a Wal-mart about 30 miles back. I got a couple of water bottles and 4 bags of family-sized chips. It should hold me over until the next stop.
Walking down the road I am only about 180 miles from my destination. Another day, maybe two and I will be there. I'm missing my mom, but there is one piece of information I left out. I figured out I am not supposed to be alive. My mom didn't know either, but my dad did, he knew everything. My dad, Hector, was an assassin and was running from the government. When they found him at the house, they tried burning it down, not caring who was inside. I was only an infant when they tried.
Now, not only am I running from 'The Maniacs,' but the living government as well. I can't stand it, being chased down. I am usually the one hunting animals out in what little forests Pittsburgh has. I thought about hiding in there, but with those random people out trying to kill everyone, I wasn't going to take my chances. I really didn't want to have my face hacked into pieces by a beefed up lumber jack. Right now, I am a few miles away from a gas station, and I have to use the bathroom.
I walk the few miles and get to the station. I check every corner and crevice to make sure no one was waiting to chop me to pieces. They don't like guns, they aren't messy enough for them. I cut off the security cameras in the area and bust open the bathroom door, the last place I haven't checked. No one was in there so I close and locked the door. By the time I finish and walk out, I am surrounded by the officials. They come at me like animals and then I notice the tell-tale signs of the virus.
They all had bleeding red eyes and rotting, black skin. They moved at superhuman speeds. I was in trouble. I knew I shouldn't have stopped. I pull out my guns as they close in fast. I'm shooting as fast as possible, but the one thing I forgot to get, was extra ammo. I run out with only two of them left. My mind flashes back to the night of my mother's death. The rage I felt when I saw her awkwardly positioned, dead, bloody body on the floor. The look on her face, of pure terror and helplessness.
She was all I had left in the world after my dad died. Now, there is nothing left,why did I even try to stay alive? I have nothing to live for. I outstretch my arms and let them come toward me, I knew I was done for. I flinch when they slice the axes into my arms and legs. I regretted my decision as soon as I made it. I was about to fight back when it happened. I am dead and the last thing I see is the final ax connecting to my face. I guess they got what they wanted. They killed me with their own hands.

[Shyania]

....le monde des insectes
POV - Ally Scade

Once upon a time, the technology was a great thing. It improved rapidly, more rapidly than anybody could have imagined. Everyone was happy, and the wealthy lived a fantastic life and the middle-class lived a decent life. The lower-class lived a rather frustrating life, filled with invigorating labor, but nobody thought to lend them a hand. The others were too immersed in themselves and their family.

Meanwhile, the technology emitted pollution and the air got steadily worse. Then the insects, instead of dying, changed. The humans were oblivious to the change at first, as it happened gradually and over a course of many years. The once-harmless insects became parasites, and the already-harmful insects became something not unlike monsters. All of the insects now either carry new, incurable diseases more drastic than the Black Death from centuries ago, or they secrete venom that instantly kills. Worst of all, the majority have developed an immunity to insecticides. They come in large swarms, and they're practically what one would call invincible.

Over seventy million people have died in this country alone. That leaves about one to two million people, but there is no way to be sure. Technology has been severed, and most of those who haven't been murdered by insects die from hunger... and suicide. A lot of people have been spotted, necks in nooses, no longer breathing. France was once a glamorous country, filled with pride and beauty. Now it is but a shell, victim to the insects like most of the other countries in this world.

"Le monde des insectes," mutters a voice from behind me. The world of insects. I turn around in shock, but I soon realize it's only Grandpa.Our family is now an extended family, as we have been living together with our grandparents on Mom's side. Our cousin on Dad's side also lives with us, because both his parents have died. Even so, our family has been amazingly lucky, and we have witnessed the death of only one - our oldest sister.

"What do you mean?" I ask him, but I don't get a reply. These days, Grandpa doesn't often talk to us. Instead, he is stuck in a world of delirium. He remembers the past days best among us, for he has lived the longest. Sometimes, it is as if he actually believes that he is decades into the past. I pity him, and I frown upon him when I'm alone, yet I also understand him. I understand him because I remember the past too, although not as well as he does - and not as far back as he does. I understand him because I, too, wish I lived in the past.

Even eight years ago, when I was nine, this was a pollution infested world. Too many people died from emphysema, lung cancer, and other generic pollution-related disease. It was a world with two groups of citizens--the urbaners and the ruralettes. It is said that, decades ago, the urban areas held the wealthy while the rural areas were frowned upon. Well, that wasn't how it was then. Only the rich and fortunate could live in rural areas, for it was where there was least pollution. Children, of course, didn't know that. Technology was known to be great, and all the kids, myself included, would beg to move to the urban areas.

There was gossip about insects, like mosquitoes, spreading malaria and such. But rumors were rumors, and few, even among adults, believed. Everything changed when, one day, a guard entered our community with a heaving chest. It was a disease that wasn't malaria. No, the disease the guard had been struck by was much worse. He had walked miles in to get to our community, desperate to live. But of course he died - with little technology, we had even less of a cure to disease than even the urbaners. All rural towns were good for was the prevention, and not the treatment.

About two days after the guard died on our property, more guards started trickling in, and eventually even urbaners... and insects. And that is how even the rural towns became plagued by the insects' wrath. The prevention method of not using technology never worked; it only delayed the catastrophe by about a year or so... but in the end, the situation was the same for both groups.

Currently, this extended family of ours is stationary. We've been in the same house for what seems like forever, and while we occasionally go out to harvest our crops, there aren't much to pick once the insects are done with them. Our house is completely covered with those small, tiny-tiny metal net things. I don't know what they're called, because my parents say the word is "cursed". They were never very superstitious, but everything changed after the insects' domination.

Grandpa opens up his arms wide, and starts running around. He says, in a childish voice, "Mommy! Daddy!" while he runs around in circles. While I don't understand just what he's doing, I'm rather used to his eccentricity. He's just a little crazy.

"Dementia," Grandma states as she enters the living room. "He's not crazy, he just has dementia. It's a disorder of sorts, sweetie."

I flush as I hear her. She wouldn't have said such a thing if I hadn't put on a disgusted face. Or a pitiful face. I don't know what I was doing with my face, but it must have been quite ugly. I must have been rude. I look down in shame. With a sigh, I tell my grandparents that I'll check up on the plants. As I go out, I fear for my life. There is no doubt that I'll be abandoned if I get bitten.

The insects are all over the plants, and I can't help but cringe. There's no point in checking up on the crop anymore. The insects always, always, always get to them first. Then I notice a file of sorts, lying on the floor. I pick it up, but there's only a small half-sheet of paper inside. The other sheets of paper are either missing or non-existent. With no further ado, I take the sheet of paper into the house.

Issue : Truth of Merzetta Pestis
Approx. Time : 05192092
True Specimen : Earth
Monetary Worth : NULL
Status: The insects are getting out of hand., as planned. To quote co-director Nicholas Argenosehole, "This was an excuse to distraught [sic] the lives of the unworthy, annihilate them without further complaint, whatever the consequences may be." The Merzettans - named after Argenosehole's deceased daughter - seek destruction. And no, we don't "seek distraught".

We have created a virus, easily transmitted by infected insects, called the Merzetta Pestis. The Merzetta is like the Bubonic Plague, just worse [...] and incurable. There is a safe haven, France underground. Through technology, people in the area thrive. The people in the area are chosen to live. When comes the bombings, the underground will thrive under new rule. We are the pure, the Merzettan [our new religion] men of French Blood.

As I read the paper, I'm more than a bit confused. The whole half-sheet is very vague, and while the jist of it is formal, it seems as though the scribe is making fun of this Argenosehole more than anything else. At first, I don't believe a word of what it says. It's probably the act of some crazy man who's hallucinating. But if there really is a safe haven, I don't want to lose this chance. I need to take my family there. Even if I don't believe in this little sheet of paper, I'm still going to look for this safe haven. I live in France, after all, so it shouldn't be so hard to try.

But wait, the bombing? I have no idea what that's about, but if that's true, I need to find the underground haven before we get bombed to our death. The Merzettans... I have no idea what that religion is, but we can just pretend that we're a Merzettan family in hiding.

POV - Jesse Argenose

I have the stack of papers in my hand. But the brown file folder thingamajig is gone, and so is the cover-up sheet. The file folder I couldn't care less about, but the cover-up sheet is a different story. That dumb cover-up sheet is more important than the stack of papers, since the unworthy are more willing to read a small sheet of paper versus the stack that actually has all the data.

I backtrack, and try to figure out where I left those things. It would be bad if they got into the unworthy's hands. Everything's supposed to be kept a secret from them. Then again, most of them are dead - and the living are too scared to come out. We, as the chosen Merzettans, are not afraid. We are immune, for we have been injected with the vaccination. The vaccination is the gift from our deceased goddess, Merzetta.

I stop walking as I see a brown folder. Oh, that's definitely it! I smile as I walk towards the folder. I walk slowly, knowing that there's no hurry, when a girl comes out of the building near it. I hide instinctively, knowing what savages the unworthy are. They're willing to kill people with their bare hands! How savage. This is exactly why they must be bombed.

I close my eyes and count to ten. When I open them again, she is gone - and the folder's still on the ground. I breathe out a sigh of relief as I go to grab the folder. Of course, I should have known. The unworthy do not know how to read nor write. As I open it, though, to stuff the stack of papers, I notice that the half-sheet is gone. I'm furious. What a little thief!

I knock on the door with a smile on my face. There's a small device that I'm hiding behind my back, something called a... taser. It's a small device given to the best of the chosen, the few who get to venture outside for missions. These tasers always come in handy, and I'm so glad I have it.

For some reason, the door won't open. I knock again. It remains closed, so I lean towards the door to eavesdrop. I know people are in there, so why aren't they answering my plea for entrance?

POV - Ally Scade

I show everyone the little sheet of paper. They frown, which is so not the result I've been expecting. I ask them why they don't seem pleased, and they call me selfish! Me, of all people! If I were really selfish, I would have run off to find the stupid underground haven and never turned back. If I were really selfish, I would never have stood my ground, comforting those who cried when I was scared myself.

"Ally," says my younger brother, "what about the others? The ones who'll be bombed will still be bombed, even if we somehow manage to infiltrate this underground place. And chances are, we won't. Seems like a hoax. Even if it were real, and it isn't, it would be hard to pretend we're something we're not. We don't even know anything about this Merzettan religion!" The others agree with him, and I don't know what to say. I know he's right, but I don't want to believe that he is.

Suddenly, we hear a knock on the door. Tap, tap, tap. The knocking ceases for just a bit, before continuing. Our family's frozen. Rooted to place. We know that the person across the door is not a friend of ours. Unless there are multiple people, in which case I must say that they're not friends of ours. Most of our appreciated neighbors are dead, and the alive are too scared to come out.

Somehow, Mom finds the courage to click the button near the door. The monitor blinks on and shows us our little guest. He seems harmless enough, but none of us recognize him. Besides, he has something to his back. We don't trust him. We can't. Time seems to tick slowly, and the boy doesn't run. Isn't he afraid of the insects? Instead, he waits for us to open the door.

We pretend there's nobody inside, and are careful in case we should even breathe too loud. The knocking gradually increases in both tempo and power. It's like a distorted music of sorts, to be frank, and our family's the audience, just waiting until he finishes. Only then can we applaud with our relieved sighs.

He does stop knocking at one point, but he doesn't go away. Instead, he's pulling his arm back, and nobody's prepared when he lunges. His strength is abnormal; he manages to knock the door down with a single punch. Of course, his knuckles are now partially white and partially red. The colors, too, are abnormal, but our family's way too scared to think.

"Ally...?" he says as soon as he sees me. I look at him in shock. How does he know my name? Is he from the government? I, for one, don't recognize him. It's obvious that nobody else near me does, either. "Ally, it's me. Jesse."

Great, he's given me his name and I still don't recognize him. Before I can reply, my brother comes in front of me with his arms outstretched. It's rather ironic, since Tim's about two heads shorter than me. "He's tricking you," he whispers. I have to agree, since that's the only plausible explanation.

"Nosehole said you died..." the guy, Jesse, mutters. Nosehole? Sounds a lot like Argenosehole, the name mentioned in that little half-sheet of paper. All of a sudden, the entire family's even more on guard than we'd been a second ago. After all, we've all read the sheet by now. Well, Grandpa's still a bit too distracted, but he doesn't count. "I.. don't know what to say."

Whoopie doo. I don't know what to say either. While he bites his lip, obviously either thinking through things or trying to trick us, our family backs away to look for potential weapons. Just as I find a frying pan, perfect for hitting him with, I remember a boy named Jesse Argenose from my youth. I don't remember him too well, but the knowledge that we've been friends stays. He disappeared one day, without a possible explanation. Maybe he's not trying to trick us, after all, but I don't know if I should gamble on it.

He tosses me something, and I manage to catch it. It's a small package filled with pills. He looks at me solemnly, and I'm more than a bit confused. I count the number of pills, and there are seven--it's perfect, each member of the family can each have one. But it could be poison, for all I know. I look back at him, scrutinizing his eyes for an answer.

"I... those are immunity pills. They only last two days, while vaccinations last your entire life, but... You should come with me, all of you, to receive the vaccination. I bet Merzetta would want you guys to." he states, stuttering for all he's worth. "The only thing is... you guys will have to have your memories erased. That is, if you read it. If you haven't read the little half-sheet of paper, because you can't, then you don't. But there's no way we can know, so you'll have to, uh, er, have your memories erased anyways."

Just as he finishes his sentence, he collapses. Behind him stands Grandma with a device I have never seen before. She opens her mouth and says, "He had a taser to his back. Take the pills and run, sweetie. We'll take care of him, but you, you need to get the word out. I don't know how you'll do it, but you must. And oh, sweetie, take Tim with you."

I don't understand how Grandma always manages to think of others before herself, but I nod. I ask her about the other family members, but she shakes her head and adds, "We'll manage somehow, now go."

I take out two pills from the package. I give one to Tim, and chew one for myself. Then, I grab Tim's hand and do as she says. I walk out at first, Tim besides me. Grandma then hollers for me to run--and she doesn't feel it necessary to omit her swears. I accelerate to a sprint, now dragging Tim along. I don't know if we'll manage, and I don't know if I'll ever see the rest of the family again--but a girl can hope, can't she? The first thing I must do is find the underground.

I mustn't be cowardly, especially since my family's staying behind. While it seems like they're simply abandoning me, I know they're not. The pill supply is just limited, and they want to save this world so that Tim and I will have a better future. Honestly, I sort of want to save the world, too. Currently, this is the world of insects--le monde des insectes--and that's not something I want to accept as a home.

[xX Ducky Squadron Xx]

~~I Wish To Join~~

Username: xX Ducky Squadron Xx
Nickname: Ducky
A little about you if you want:

I'm from Reading, PA, I love to write, and I am completely stoked to be a part of this contest. If you want to know more, I don't see the need. This contest is about talent, not personality profiles. sweatdrop

[Shiro Mezidoria]

xX Ducky Squadron Xx

~~I Wish To Join~~

Username: xX Ducky Squadron Xx
Nickname: Ducky
A little about you if you want:

I'm from Reading, PA, I love to write, and I am completely stoked to be a part of this contest. If you want to know more, I don't see the need. This contest is about talent, not personality profiles. sweatdrop

Wrong thread, honey. Also, join requests ended June 9th. I'm sorry.

[AndreaHarper]

First off, a couple of disclaimers.

One: I'm not trying to make light of mental illness. The way I've written it is based on my experiences with family members and close friends with varying diagnoses (manic depressive, bipolarism, and a mild and a severe case of OCD), and is not meant to accurately show what the experience is like from the inside, as my only personal brush with it has been a cycle of severe to mild depression that I went through several times over my highschool career, which is quite different from what I've written here.

Two: my sister, who proofread this for me, pointed out that parts of this bear more than a passing resemblance to the show Firefly. This was unintentional, and I've done my best to correct it, but I'm not entirely sure how successful I was. No copyright infringement was, or is, intended.

Third: Evidence is inconclusive as to whether The Call of Cthulhu is in public domain or not. Either way, as the quote is properly cited for the opening of a fiction work and is readily available both online and in most libraries, and also because this is very clearly a non-commercial work, no copyright infringement, as far as I know, has occurred.

Fourth: The title comes from Dylan Thomas' very famous poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which is still in copyright. However, as the quote is exactly six words long, and does not represent a significant total of the work's total length, and again, this is a non-commercial work, I believe it falls under the fair-use clause of copyright law. Should I be informed otherwise, I will gladly change it.

Fifth: There is a distinct and hopefully recognizable reference to The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy somewhere around the middle. Again, non-commercial work, fair use, word-for-word copying under six words and not a significant percentage, no infringement.

Against the dying of the light

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

- H. P. Lovecraft, 1926

where? the sky-

twist inside outside crack break shatter water gushing bloody out of once rock entrails rich as birth as death as something in between as nothing as-

x plus z to the twelfth minus fourteen k minus x end parenthesis times six divided by four b equals- equals-

the universe is absence is loss is mother's heartbeat missingmissingmissingwherethere- there-

NO!

brother mother self other-self not-self outside-self why why whywhywhywhywhywhy-

stop. start. one-

His sister's eyes stare blankly at nothing again. She's frozen, head tilted at something he can't see, and they really need to keep moving. He can feel her, whatever state she's toppled into bleeding into the back of his mind, jumbles of letters and numbers and words that probably wouldn't make sense even if she were sane. Prodding her shoulder does nothing; experience says she probably can't hear or see him, lost somewhere in the dark. She'll come out of it eventually, sooner rather than later if he's lucky, but they don't have the time to just stand here. It's catching up.

She's already wearing their pack, so it's a simple matter to hoist her over his shoulder, and she's lighter than she was a week ago, easier to carry. His sister steals the thought away and turns it over inside her, twisting it and pulling at it and changing it, and she tips the image of luminescence eating away at the inside of her skin until she ceases to exist back into his grasp. He takes it, like everything she leaves in him, and locks it up in a box under the sooty floor of his soul, where she doesn't always know to look, and starts walking.

-

[When they were children, babies, really, three years old and Suzannah already synthesizing nitroglycerin from chemicals under the sink, Simeon watching her with wide eyes, understanding and incomprehension spinning through his face in turn as she worked miracles with little more than spit and ingenuity, their mother looked at them and turned to their father and told him that they were going to need more than anyone could give them. This was true when their father died, wasting away from a disease Suzannah didn't have the means to cure and Simeon didn't have the will to close his eyes to. It was still true when their mother threw herself on the altar and told them to run.]

-

They settle for the night in what was once a house, and he settles his sister into a chair, where she starts, grabbing at the air for long seconds until he can find a pen and paper to put in her hands. Today, despite her falling out of time in the middle of the road, has been an unusually good day, and even this goes well, because there's a notepad on the counter, abandoned when- In the back of his head, his sister shies away, spilling ink spots and musical phrases into him instead. He lets the thought evaporate.

There's cans of soup and beans in the cupboard, dried milk and emergency candles under the sink, silver knives and votives in the drawers. He lights the candles, one by one, until his sister is surrounded by light that doesn't pour out into the blackness outside their limited sanctuary. He takes one upstairs with him, leaving her to scribble tangles of equations and quotations and stanzas of symphonies never written in an ever spiraling mess, stepping over the bodies that are little more than dirt now, one here, on the landing, another in the doorway, guarding the cradles that hold little lumps of discarded flesh.

Everything in the cabinets is clean, sheets and towels and blankets and a heavy shirt in a pale blue that would have matched Mother's eyes. He takes it.

There's water in the bathroom, jugs of it, cloudy, but there isn't anything harmful in it yet. He steps carefully, avoiding the blood on the floor, oily puddles of ichor and crumbling stains of more ordinary stuff, ignores the bathtub and whatever's in it, leaves again. It doesn't follow. He doesn't look back.

motherlookmotherlookmotherlookmotherlookmother-

black ice and broken glass and mirrors mirrors everywhere and and and and-

mother?

mother?

wherewherewherewherewherewherewherewherewhere-

mother

mothermothermother

mother is mother ismotheris-

bye baby bunting daddy's gone a hunting to fetch a little-

skins

brother skin sister skinskinskinskinskin-

cracking peeling bleeding gone where?

oh

-

[Here's what happened. Somebody made a stupid decision and left two books too close together, and Suzannah took the pieces of a puzzle that no one knew existed and broke them until they fell into the right solution. A week later, the world as anyone knew it had ended.

Here's a truth: It's all Simeon's fault.]

-

burning

safe

never again

i want i want i want we-

we-

i-

mother?

hello?

Downstairs, his sister has come back to herself, as close as she can get these days to existing. She's got both hands pressed against the table, breathing steadily, and her eyes, when she looks at him, are haunted but aware.

“What have I done?” she rasps, breath stuttering in her chest and she's weeping and heartbroken but so alive he can't gather the will not to tell her.

It goes the same as it always does, the pieces settling back together in her head until the picture flashes in front of her, whole, and she starts screaming and blood drips from every visible orifice until is shatters again and it's all she can do to keep breathing, and after a while she creeps back inside her skull. She sits at the table, silent as the grave, as he puts today's papers safely away in the pack and heats some soup over an awkward arrangement of candles and half of a hot plate, responding blankly to the food he puts in front of her, but eating it with only a little provocation. He lights the rest of the candles and washes her hair in cold water with the dish soap, wraps her in the shirt, then curls up beside her in the blankets. It's been a good day.

Upstairs, the thing in the bathtub climbs out to check on what's leftover of the children, walks a circuit of the floor, checking rooms he hadn't bothered with, then climbs back in. His sister sighs in her sleep, her breaths counting out the one-two-three one-two-three of a waltz never written, something from outside seeping into her while she's soft and broken, her heart slowly settling to keep time, and it's to that he falls asleep.

-

[In another universe, one where Simeon hadn't handed Suzannah the keys to what happened knowing that it would and the number 42 was merely a joke and not an answer, they would have died in their late teens, Suzannah from forgetting to eat or to sleep or to breathe as her work became more intricate and Simeon couldn't learn fast enough to keep up, Simeon from the sudden lack of everything he had ever known. Friends and relatives would have consoled their mother, who would have lived quite well until she was a frail old woman and died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 92. This universe, unsurprisingly, would have turned out worse for the world at large than what actually happened.]

-

In the morning, his sister's eyes are clear and unseeing, and he shoulders the pack and takes her hand. The house burns as they walk away, the children screaming as everything they've ever knows falls to ash. They don't look back.

Further notes:

The idea of 'bleeding' between the twins, and, in fact, the twins themselves, are based on a pair I knew and was friends with as a child. Jo and Joe (their mother had a strange sense of humor, and they were actually Johanna and Joseph) were half identical; even after Jo grew her hair out and got her ears pierced and started wearing dresses all the time our teachers confused them on a regular basis, so eventually she stopped trying. Some things I remember clearly about them is that they were very entwined, personality-wise, and that they sometimes knew things that only one of them should have known, and also if you knocked Joe down on the playground, Jo tended to get bruises. What I don't know, or don't recall, is if that was the result of extremely good playacting (they enjoyed playing 'bait-and-switch', where they would trade identities for an afternoon or what have you), or some sort of psychic tin can telephone.

Telepathy is science, or so says my Psychology textbook. It doesn't work quite the way I've written it here, but it does actually work. We did the experiments ourselves in class; it was remarkably freaky watching people guess the right cards out of a deck from behind a blind a dozen or so times in a row. (Incidentally, I am a terrible telepath except with people in dedicated relationships, and even then I'm not very good. Why, I do not know.)

The idea of ancient and terrible forces beyond our comprehension but scientifically explainable, given the risk of going quite mad, is another Lovecraftian idea, which appeared first in the story Dagon, I believe, which is out of copyright.

Finally, I am very very fond of commas, if you haven't noticed.

[DayhawK68]

"Hallow"
by DayhawK68



“Run damn it!” Diana yelled to Kate.

Four of the cyborged men raced toward them both. Kate, watching the fifth cyborg pull it’s hand out from her brother’s back, froze. Luckily Diana, having out-ran the Cys before, pulled Kate to her feet. Both women could see the cottage. The flatland desert exposed everything for miles and miles around. Running, at this point, was second nature.

“Give me the gun!” Diana commanded as Kate shoved the KX-95 into her friend’s hands.
Turning, Diana crouched low, just low enough, to aim for the Cys’ necks. Their necks, the only exposed human flesh, were the easiest to target. One after another the Cys fell, save one, who aimed his spear-shaped arm right for Kate’s throat.

As the Cys dove forward, Diana quickly aimed, but the Cys’ neck wasn’t exposed from the rear.

Thrusting her father’s hunting knife upwards into the Cys’ throat, Kate tried to find any humanity left in the brown eyes staring at her. She saw none. Whoever the man had been before the Laul had changed him, perverted his body with their technology, she couldn’t say. He bled like a human, sweated like a human, but as his body dropped to the ground Kate only saw one thing. A dead machine.

“Kate...” Diana’s voice quivered.
“I’m alright,” Kate answered, “Jason...” her expression saddened. Kate looked to where her brother laid. He wasn’t standing up. Dirt-red surrounded him.

“He’s dead, Kate,” Diana said.
Kate shook her head. She looked over at Diana, whose dark brown hair caught the wind, and smiled vacantly.
“I had to have known,” Kate cried, “I should be used to this by now. Everyone dies. Everyone becomes a Cys.”
“Not us,” Diana said, stood, and walked to where Jason’s body laid. Jason had always been the more intelligent of the three. Ever since the three of them left their ransacked neighborhood, their constant escapes from the Cys had made them slightly legendary among the 800,000. The 800,000 people, human people, that were left on the God-forsaken earth. She managed to lift him, dragging him with her as she made her way back to Kate.
“Promise me we’ll burn him,” Kate wept as she held her brother’s face, “ashes to ashes,” her face composed before Diana’s eyes.
“When we get to Jackson’s,” Diana answered as she pointed to the cottage several miles away, “we’ll burn him. Send him back to God.”


The cottage was a wasted dump. Kate thought. Just like most of the buildings in the world. If Jason had been right, being that he had been their guide, this should be where Washington DC had been 50 years ago. There was no sign of great white buildings. No roads. No American flags. Nothing like the textbooks her parents had showed her. Everything was like this cottage. Dead.
Sand spread itself all over the cottage roof. The wood was sun-dried and the bits of metal surrounding it, what ever they had been, were scraps of rust. Kate could tell no one could live there for very long, and if they could it wasn’t because of nature. Nature seemed to have betrayed the human race. Just as much as the Laul had betrayed humanity. When one human decides to play God, she thought, he ceases to be human anymore.

“Wait here,” Diana said as she stepped closer to the cottage. She kept the gun by her ribs, making sure as not to let go if she were to be attacked.
She came to the door, but didn’t knock. Instead she blew loudly. One long whiff followed by two short guffs.
The door opened.
“Jack,” Diana smiled. She pointed the gun at him.
“Let me see all of you.”
Jackson smiled back and opened the door completely. He revealed that he was just as human as she was. The site brought unexpected tears. She grabbed his shirt, and jerked him into a hug. Her arms wrapped around his neck, so tight, that she remembered the first time he had hugged her the same way. The night her parents had become Cys.
“Is Kate...” Jackson said, pulling away and searching for Kate.
“Oh,” Diana laughed, “Kate!” She whispered loudly as she stuck her head out the door. She waved for her friend to join them.
Kate ran inside as if the Cys were on their tail. Luckily, they hadn’t seen Cys since that morning. Before she stepped into the door she looked at her brother body. She had left him. She hadn’t thought about running with Jason. Only to run.
Jackson met her eyes. He looked out of his window and saw his friend’s body. Lifeless.
“Jason died...?” He asked.
“This morning. Cys,” Diana replied. She took Jackson’s hand.
“He’s with the Lord now,” Jackson smiled as he pulled out a small half-torn Bible, “he suffers no longer. We’ll burn him,” he looked to Kate and laid on a hand on her shoulder, “we won’t let his body become Cys. He was too good for that.”
“Everyone was,” Diana said somberly.
Kate forced a smile.

That night, with the little firewood he had left, Jackson created a fire. It wasn’t as big as he wanted it to be. However, it was enough to burn Jason’s body. The three of them sat in the dust and sand and watched as their friend ashed before them. Kate was speechless. Her eyes watered as she recalled all the memories she had with her brother. Being the older sister, her guilt succumbed her. She was suppose to die first. That would have been the right order of things. But Earth, especially now, never aligned with order.

“Myea,” Diana said as she lifted her head from Jackson’s shoulder.

“Don’t sing that code,” Jackson said.

Diana looked to Kate and then to Jason’s corpse, “He had loved that code. It was our language. Shame on you for forgetting it.”

Diana stood and walked to the very edge of the fire. She was close enough for the smell to overwhelm her. Close enough to feel the blistering heat. Close enough to see that Jason was eroding away towards dust. She smiled.

“Myea, Myea,” she sang, “Los yeo mi firrea dosee gleiin. Tria-ya Myea, Treyen Myea. Viar glayy westa nahtraeo masca brecreo. Dosee mi firrea gleiin. Myea...Myea yettree yeo.”

After a few moments of silence Jackson asked, “I only remember a few words. What were you singing?”

“God, God,” Kate said, “why have you forsaken us? Please God, Oh please God. Your world is decaying and the people dying. You have forsaken us. God, God come back.”

“Hmm,” Jackson said meeting Kate’s eyes, “our parents survived the Apocalypse. WWWIII turned America into this wonderful radiated dust bowl. The Laul rose to power after Russia and China won the war. Then came the creation of the Cys. Everyone who survived the bombings and the poisoned food are now becoming extinct. No, I think the only relief now,” he looked to Diana, “ for our generation, is to die. God just wants us to be with him already. No more sorrows in heaven.”

“Of course death is the answer,” Diana turned and looked at them both, “but I’d rather spend eternity in Hell than have my body become a Cys,” her eyes focused on Kate, “promise me you’ll burn me.”

“Of course,” Kate gloomed.

Diana sat back down and resumed her position with Jackson. As the night wore on the two of them left Kate alone with her brother. They huddled together in a corner of the cottage and watched Kate through a window. Diana smiled when she saw Kate holding the KX-95. Diana had told her to hold it while they were inside. Despite her grief, Kate looked so much like a heroine in the books Diana used to read as a child. Tall, dirty blonde, and an expression executing preternatural courage. This comforted Diana.

“Let me see it,” Jackson said as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

“It’s in the left pocket,” Diana said referring to her jeans.

With his index finger Jackson searched through Diana’s left pocket until he felt the metallic bumps. He pulled out the chip. He raised it high enough for both of them to see its simplistic beauty. It wasn’t a sunset on the beach, it wasn’t a Russian model, and it wasn’t even in appealing colors. It was green and spotted with brown and yellow bumps, but it was the most beautiful possession they ever had.

“I cant believe,” Diana said, “the Laul don’t realize it’s us who took it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There were only five Cys this morning. They would have sent more if they knew we had this. Either that or they really underestimated us. No, I bet they think it was Braeden Collins or something. He is the biggest terrorist right now. To them we’re just annoying mites,” Diana looked out the window again towards Kate, “she’s now our only hope.”

“So then,” he sighed, “we’re going through with this then?”

“Yes,” she met his jade eyes, “we have to Jack. Kate is the only one who can reprogram the chip, much less become a Laul. She’s fair haired. White. Beautiful. And if you remember she was the one who refused becoming a Laul. Because of Jason, because of me and you. No,” Diana nodded her head, “she can kill as many Cys as she wants. They’ll still want her as a part of their sick society. She’ll be one of the elite, and she will destroy them.”

Jackson smiled, “Well then here,” Jackson pulled out a handgun from the back of his jeans, “I don’t have the heart to shoot you first.”

“Coward,” Diana smiled, “no worries,” Diana pulled a smaller hand gun from her jacket, “I was prepared.”

“Write her first,” Jackson suggested as he stood and went to find paper and a pen. Dirt stained sheets and a badly chewed pen was all he could find.

He handed them to Diana and sat back down in the corner with her.

“Can I speak it to you,” Diana said, “as I write it? I want to pretend that I’m actually telling this to her.”

“Go ahead,” he mused.

“Kate,” she said softly as she wrote out Kate’s name, “when you read this I know dread and anger will come over you. Don’t let it sink in. Cry if you have to over me and over Jack, but you’ll need to get over it. We’re happy. We’re with Jason and your parents, my parents, Jack’s dad. We’re better off than you. We did this so that you won’t have any baggage. So that you can become a Laul.”

“ I know it’s the most disgusting thing, becoming a part of a race that believes that they are the “fittest” of the world. But when we went to bomb the Laul gathering, Jason and I weren’t completely truthful with you. Yes, if we killed a few Laul officials that would have been the best outcome, but while you and I were setting the traps, Jason stole this chip. It’s a part of what powers the Cys. You can reprogram it to shut down the entire Cys network, but to do so you have to become a Laul. Blend in enough to use their technology.”

“Jason taught you everything there is to know,” Diana breathed deeply, “about making tech viruses. By the morning the Laul should figure out that the chip was taken by unknown terrorists. Make sure you kill your way to the Laul registration. They wanted you before, they’ll want you again. Your genetic code is exactly what they want to make their perfect perverted world.”

“And Kate,” Diana allowed herself to cry, “if you have to join us after you complete this, I won’t blame you. I would want you to live out the rest of your days in peace. Have a family. But that maybe that’s a luxury our generation can never have. Still, that’s my hope for you. I love you. You and Jason were the brother and sister I didn’t have. Don’t be angry with Jack either,” She looked up and smiled at him, “this wasn’t his idea it was mine. Again, I love you. See you on the other side.”

She placed the chip in the middle of the paper and folded the paper sideways. In one hand she held the note and in the other her gun. She leaned forward, letting Jackson hold her face, and kissed him as hard as she could. Once they parted, she looked outside at Kate once more. Dawn was approaching and the sky faded from navy to grey-blue. Jason’s fire was lit though it had dulled down. Diana took a deep breath and met Jackson’s eyes with a grin.

Two shots were fired, but Kate only heard one solid boom.

The sight of her two best friends laying dead didn’t sink in at first. Kate stood over them, unable to move, until she realized that bullets had gone through each of their heads. Her knees gave way. She could barely feel the tinge of impact when she fell to the floor. It took her several moments to face reality. When she did the first thing she noticed was the note in Diana’s hand.

She read it, catching the chip when she opened the letter.

“How selfish,” she whispered, but then she felt guilty for saying something so hateful. If anything their deaths were a sacrifice for the sake of humanity. There was no choice, she had to become a Laul.

Finding the matches they used to burn Jason, Kate lit the last three and threw them at different areas of the small cottage. She tucked the note and chip inside her shirt, firmly gripped the KX-95 and ran out of the cottage. She kept running, hoping that if she ran fast enough, hard enough, that she could escape the horror she felt.

Once she came to the point of exhaustion, did she turn around to look back. It was just a dotted glow on the horizon. The burning cottage looked like a star against the grey morning.

“Your deaths won’t be in vain,” she degreed.

With that she wept. She sat in the sand and allowed for all the emotions to escape her. She wept in fear, she screamed with anger, and she wailed through her sorrow. Her dreams of being together with Jason, Diana, and Jackson in some safe haven had to be purged from her hopes. Her only hope now was to become a Laul and to destroy them from the inside.

As she sat she saw travelers in the distance. They were running. Screaming. Dying. The Cys had found them and were shooting them down like they were pests.

Kate stood and focused her sights on the Cys. Taking off in an even trot, she prayed that God would allow her to avenge her friends. To avenge her parents. To avenge the millions of lives that were lost to the Laul. For the first time in her life, she felt reassurance that He listened. And answered.

“Thy Father,” she said as she neared the bloody scene, “to art in Heaven, Hallow be thy name,” she raised the gun, “thy Kingdom come,” she aimed for a group of murdering Cys, “thy Will be done. On Earth,” she cocked the gun, “as it is,” she pulled back the trigger several times, “In Heaven.”

The thirteen Cys were dead. More would come, Kate knew, and it was a miracle that any of the travelers survived. But as she watched the remaining travelers care for their dead, she herself felt like a miracle.

[Tahpenes]

Author Note: I've taken some historical liberties. The Black Plague in 1348 actually reduced populations by something like 1/3, whereas in this story the population is reduced by more like 90-95%. Most of my research was done via the book Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies.

-----Story-----

By the tenth morning after, Isota woke to an unaccustomed silence. There were no dogs barking, no children laughingly chasing them through the commons. Most of the pigs, horses, cattle, sheep, and chickens had been taken by those fleeing the pestilence, and raiders had taken any surviving animals a few days later. By that time, Isota had been too busy nursing her dying five-year-old son and cursing her absent husband to care that the family's sow was being taken by skinny forest bandits.

This morning, dead priests tolled no church bells. Her infant daughter was not crying to suckle. Even the carrion birds had finally fallen silent, stilled by a thick layer of ash and char. Isota did not know which of the empty-eyed survivors had begun the process of tearing down the homes where all had perished and setting the remains alight over the mass graves. For her own part, Isota had carried her children to the plot where her parents and grandparents lay, and spent a day with a cloth of peonies over her nose to dig graves. When every inch of their boil-encrusted, blackened bodies was covered in dirt and stone, Isota went back home to die.

Ten days later, and she was still here. The village had settled down under its heavy weight. She had foraged idly and capriciously, as hunger took her, through the unweeded vegetable and herb gardens. She had ignored the few other souls in the village, people she had known since childhood. Her husband Amandus still had not returned from his annual summer trek to his home village of Abbotsbridge, and Isota supposed she must assume him dead, as well. Now it seemed that the Heavenly Father would not take her. She would have to plan for winter, after all, though to what end, Isota did not know. She made a prayer to Mother Mary, who had lost her only child, and got out of bed.

From the doorstep, she could still smell the char. The ash and soot from the pyre over the mass grave had scattered lightly over the cutilage, and Isota wryly thought that perhaps she had cheated death twice - the thatch could have caught from a stray spark and burnt the wattle house to cinders. A southerly wind mixed in the distant smell of rancid death, and Isota had no doubt that the foul odor came from the Thames, less than a mile away. Someplace upstream - Oxford, perhaps - was dumping bodies in the river. She turned to the north, where her husband's fields lay full of standing wheat. As far as the forest, nothing but the wind moved across the rolling land.

Isota and Amandus had always worked together with the villagers for the plowing, harvesting, and threshing. She had no idea how they would manage this year, with the horses and oxen gone. She had no idea why she should want to, other than because she must have been saved for some purpose.

She began walking, looking at the houses and fields surrounding them, wondering how she would survive the winter. Even the shared village oven was cold as death this morning. The sickness must have carried off Johan Baker. There would be no bread.

By the well, a small crowd had gathered around a tall man with a long, pointed mask and a road-stained cloak. Isota joined the group, and was welcomed by a brief pause in the stranger's speech. The village had boasted several hundred residents. Barely a dozen stood here now. One of Isota's distant cousins, who had been a godmother to Isota's older sister, grasped Isota's upper arm and squeezed, her wrinkled face sporting a grim smile. "I'd heard someone say they had seen you about. And the little ones...?"

Isota shook her head wordlessly, and the older woman's face sagged further as she stepped closer to Isota and linked their arms together. "He is a learned man, who studied in Rome," she whispered to Isota. "He says the plague passed through the Holy See earlier this year, and that it is devouring all Christendom."

Isota felt a shudder go over her body, and she leaned into her older cousin's comforting nearness. The others called out for news from other villages or larger towns, where they had relatives or past acquaintances. "And Abbotsbridge?" Isota called out during a lull. The beaked man turned to her. "Have you any news of Abbotsbridge?" she continued. "It is four days northeast of here, in the midlands, and holds the abbey of St. John."

"I met a traveler to the south some six days past, who said that he had come from near there," the man said with measured response. "He said there was no sickness there as yet, but that the hedgewoman had begun telling the women to drink tea of marigold flower, for the disease would come within a sevensday."

Isota nodded and several of the others looked at her with varying degrees of sympathy or appraisal. Her husband's annual return to Abbotsbridge for the summer months had been a curiousity, but as he always made the venture profitable there were few who gainsayed him. Several of the village's best workhorses had accompanied Amandus back from his summer treks, and each year Amandus typically reserved one for the reeve, who then annually "forgot" to report Amandus's absence to the lord. Isota's cousin whispered, "We will pray to St. John that Amandus will not be struck down, that the Holy Father would not take so much from you," just as the blacksmith's oldest son loudly asked if Isota knew whether Amandus had planned to bring back horses this year.

"I know not," Isota answered. "He rarely made advanced plans of that nature."

A few mutterings, and the village's hayward thanked the beaked man for his news, politely suggesting the village would not keep him longer from his rest at the manor house. Taking the hint, the man adjusted the contraption over his nose and turned west, where in the distance the stone manor house rose up beyond the vacant, ghostly turning, water mill.

The first person who spoke was again the hayward. "Adam Reeve is dead, as is his son. There is no one to report an absence to his lordship." Isota bowed her head, not quite numb to the loss of yet another friend. Adam had only been chosen for the position this past Michaelmas.

"What are you suggesting, Elis, that we leave?" asked one of the others.

"Nay, William. The women have laid down the ale. The summer wheat is standing. We can manage for one year as our own miller and baker, so why leave the food to rot in the fields? But we cannot manage without ploughteams to lay the furrows for next year's barley, and we cannot manage without ewes for milk and wethers for wool. No, we must stay." Here, he paused, and turned to Isota. "But we must have horses, oxen, and sheep."

"You wish me to go to Abbotsbridge and fetch home my husband, with whatever livestock he has procured," Isota supposed.

Cicely and Goda argued that sending one of their number off alone would not be borne, while Isota wondered madly if abandoning her children could be excused if she left to bring home their father. But by the time they sat down to eat a shared meal together, seeking comfort, the beaked man had returned and pronounced that the entire manor household and familia were dead, so he would travel on to Abbotsbridge. As he said, the village there might be suffering as "the very idea of seeping marigold leaves to ward off disease is the product of an untutored mind."

So it was settled that Isota would accompany the doctor. While several of the villagers, bereft of a priest for mass, prayed at the church for Isota's success, Isota packed a few supplies for the journey and took her rest for the night in the church's nave, within a stone's throw of her children's graves.

----


The trip to Abbotsbridge was a trial. They passed by bodies sprawled out by the roadside, some in clusters and some alone. To Isota's eye, most seemed to have died of the same pestilence that swept through her village, though occasionally there were signs of those who met a more violent death at the hands of bandits. They saw scraps of torn cloth, areas where the ground and grass were covered in dried blood, and bent vegetation where the wolves had scavenged the corpses off the road and into the fields or underbrush. Isota lacked the learning to know whether wolves were of God or of the Devil, but either way it seemed they left the bodies of the plague victims alone.

She made herself examine each body to see if, perhaps, it was Amandus. A few times, the body was too bloated or degraded to tell. Isota began to appreciate the doctor's face mask, particularly once she saw him stop by some wildflowers and refill the beak with their petals. The fetid smells of rot and pus haunted her sleep.

Upon reaching any dwellings or villages, the doctor always asked her to wait outside. "I shall see if they are untouched, or if any within require aid. Perhaps we shall stay the night here," he would say. So Isota would gather berries or greens by the roadside until he returned. Then each time he said nothing except to ask how the berries fared here, and if they were tart or sweet, and cautioned that they should not breathe deeply until they had passed on.

Once, Isota queried upon his return, "Is there truly no one left? No survivors?"

And the doctor replied, "Oh, of course, there are often some survivors. But they have no food or strength to spare. If I am not bringing horses, food, a midwife, or stout men, they would just as soon I pass on." Isota frowned slightly, and the doctor hastened to add, "I do not assume a personal insult."

On the fourth day, as they neared the end of their supplies, they reached Abbotsbridge.

----

Abbotsbridge, much larger than Isota's home village, sprawled out in both directions from the small river and stone bridge which gave the village its name. A church tower stretching up on a nearby rise marked the abbey. Yet as they walked through the fields towards the village, Isota knew by a now-familiar silence that the plague had, indeed, come through.

The two walked amongst the houses unchallenged. Between two homes, several dozen shrouded corpses piled up by a half-dug pit, shovels still laying abandoned in the dirt, maggots and flies swarming over all. Still, most of the bodies seemed relatively intact. "The sickness must have come through only recently," mused the doctor, echoing Isota's thoughts.

At the village well, a half-dozen well-dressed men stood amidst the quiet village, arguing over something. Isota and the doctor continued towards the well, and the men's voices fell silent as they turned to watch the duo's approach. The doctor bowed, introduced himself with illustrious statements about his past work ministering to the ill, and asked if there were any to whom he might bring aid. The men seemed to listen with politeness, discomfort, or disgust, but none appeared interested or hopeful.

After a moment, one of the men cleared his throat. "We do not minister to the ill in the village," he offered. "They are taken to the abbey, where the Abbot shrivens them to prepare for death."

The doctor bowed. "I thank you for your direction. I shall enquire there if my services are needed."

"Rather, you should leave this place," interjected another man. "Or put down your work as the Devil's fool and pick up a scythe for the summer wheat." Some of the other men looked away, but none contradicted the speaker. "The Abbot says the signs are clear, that this plague was sent by the Holy Father to cleanse the world of the Devil's work. To heal the sick is an affront to His plan."

"His plan?" Isota asked, quietly. When several heads turned towards her, she pulled up her courage to continue in a stronger voice. "My children died because they were unclean? I am not a learned woman, and accept that I do not understand all the Church mysteries, but I am now left without children and in search of my husband, Amandus, who came from this village. And I cannot believe that my children were taken from us because they were touched by the Devil."

One of the men grabbed her arm suddenly. "You cannot mean that you are the wife of Amandus Reeveson?" Isota pulled back in surprise, but the man continued speaking. "That cannot be. Surely Amandus would have married here."

"I have never heard him called by that name," Isota replied hesitantly. "He only said that he is from this village, where his family remains, and he returns each summer to visit. I only-" she swallowed. "I only wish to know if he is well. Or if he is not, to see that he is buried well."

"But if Amandus married, then-" one of the men whispered before another motioned him to silence.

"There is only one Amandus who is a member of this village," the first speaker answered Isota in measured tones, his face severe. "The house is on the road to the north - a large house of stone.

Though whether any still remain among the living, I cannot say." Without waiting for him to continue, Isota lifted her long tunic high and began running down the road, leaving the man to call after her, "No one has been seen leaving the house for several days!"

Isota breathed through her mouth as she ran down the deserted street, doing her best to ignore the stench and the ghostliness of the place. Though the run only took her a few minutes, she knew as she went that she would dream of those moments for years to come. Some part of her would always be there, running through the empty streets of a foreign village.

The stone house was easy to pick out. The building was large, surrounded by a fence, and boasted its own well. Though she was chilled by the loose-hanging shutters, and the sad bleating of an unmilked ewe, Isota relaxed upon seeing the dwelling. The family who dwelt here were assuredly rich freeholders, and there was little chance that her Amandus was among their number. He would not be dead in this house.

Still, this was her only clue to his whereabouts. She took a deep breath and approached the house.

"Pardon, pardon," she called out on entering. But the door entered into a great room, and there were no beds or people present. A thin dog, laying under the table, looked up at her entry and thumped its tail against the floor, but did not disturb her as she moved deeper into the house.

She found them in a back bedchamber.

The woman and child were laying together in the down-mattressed bed, her arms around the smaller body as if asleep. Slumped next to the bed in a chair was a man, his face hidden from Isota's view.

As she approached the seated corpse - for the man was clearly dead, as attested by the flies - Isota realized she was shaking, and was angry at herself for letting her husband see her in this state after so many weeks apart. She reached out to brush back his hair.

Yes, that was Amandus.

After that, for some time, she remembered nothing.

When the man came into the house, Isota was busy in the great room. At some point, perhaps pitying a kindred spirit, Isota had gone out to milk the miserable ewe. She'd poured the warm liquid into a wooden bowl for the dog, who was happily laying at Isota's feet. Isota had realized that the table in the great room was large enough to lay out all three bodies. She was sewing a shroud around the woman, trying not to wonder who she was to Amandus (a sister, surely), and why he had never told her of his family's wealth, when the front door opened.

The man stood in the doorway and stared at Isota, then at the table, then at the dog. Isota said nothing.

"What are you doing in this house?" he finally asked.

"I came for my husband," Isota replied, bending her head towards the still-uncovered body of Amandus. The tears threatened again. She choked them back. In this strange place, in a strange new world after the Holy Father's curse, she was too frightened to cry. The man entered and shut the door carefully, securely, and approached the table. Isota saw some resemblance in him to Amandus at a younger age. "Did you know my husband?" she asked.

"My brother Amandus had no wife," he said forcefully. Isota opened her mouth in protest, but the man continued. "And I do not care for you to repeat such statements. You must be mistaken. You should return to your own home, in your own village. There is nothing for you here."

"I think I should recognize my own husband," Isota replied softly.

"You are mistaken," he ground out again. "Now let alone my sister's body, and leave this place."

"I will see Amandus buried!" she retorted, before moving to her husband's body and grabbing the ends of the fine linen cloth she had chosen for his shroud.

The man grabbed her arm and began to haul her towards the door. Isota's other fist found his nose before she went limp and kicked at his knees. He responded by letting go her arm, knocking her across the jaw, and shoving her towards the door as she managed a firm pounding on his left ear. Their tussle continued until, bloody-nosed, the man had both of Isota's feet and dragged her from the house to the pig's midden, where he left her in the leavings. Before she could right herself, he had returned to the house and barred the door firmly against her.

Then Isota let loose the tears. She was thirsty, but concerned she could not trust the water where so many had fallen to a foul air. She was tired, hot, uncomfortably itchy, and stung by the embarrassment of being bested in the fight. Her husband was dead, far away from home, and she could not bury him. His brother clearly wished her gone, and she could not discern the reason why Amandus had deceived her and let the children live as villeins, bound to work the lord's demesne. As there was only one of those problems she could solve, Isota gave up her caution and drank from the family's well.

When she returned to the village center, the sun had noticeably dipped toward the west. Isota was considering begging a night's succor from the Abbey when she saw the doctor, who was peering into a bucket of water by the village's covered stone well. For lack of any other connection in the place, Isota approached, and watched as he dropped bits of dried leaves onto the water's surface and observed the results. He looked up as she drew closer.

"He is not here, then?" the doctor asked.

Isota shook her head. "I did find his body in the family home. But a man claiming to be his brother arrived, denied that Amandus had married, and shut me out."

The doctor nodded slowly. "Rude though it may be to say, this seems to be that sort of place. Rare are those towns where the plague is believed to have been sent by God Himself, yet here the priests are fond of such sermons. The folk here tell me the proof was a local knight who slighted the Abbot, and along with him the hedgewoman, were among the first of the victims." Isota, who had watched the personal intrigues of power in her own community, immediately grasped the doctor's meaning.

"As the townfolk and Abbot know Amandus to never have been married, the next of kin to inherit would be his younger brother," Isota said slowly.

"Aye, and not his wife." The doctor leveled Isota a significant look over the top of his beaked mask. "I dare say you have little chance to convince them otherwise. The brother seems to be a popular man, Amandus less so as he was rarely here."

Isota pressed her lips together and inclined her head. "Thank you, gentle doctor, for your counsel. I will leave my husband to the care of his brother. It seems there is little I can do."

The doctor nodded. He pointed vaguely to the bucket of water. "I would counsel you against drinking from the water here. The air has settled ill humors down into the well, which no doubt contributed to the spread of the pestilence. Gather your water from the Abbey on the hill above." He paused. "I will take board there tonight, then press onward on the morning to

Aushop-on-Everruns. Have you given thought to your own travels?"

Isota hid a smile with a slight bow. "I will return to my village, where the remnants of my family reside."

The beaked man let out a small sigh. Isota wondered if he was much younger than she had thought. "I will take leave of you, then," he said to her, "and wish you good health for long days."

"And to you, as well," replied Isota.

Then the beaked man turned his steps towards the hill, and Isota went to search the abandoned houses of the dead for rope, supplies, and a place to sleep a few hours.

Long after night had fallen, she quietly led her muzzle-tied line of sheep and horses back along the road to the southeast. Isota reasoned that curses laid on cattle thieves would not fall upon her, as she was only taking what was hers by right.

On the third day, she felt the first lumps under her arms. Still, she made it home in time.

[Crochet Hearts]

Freak Storm
by Crochet Hearts
Also found here, but posted in text in this thread.


Serena had been traveling for at least a week, only stopping to eat, sleep and rest as she needed to.  She wore casual clothing on her journey; simply a pink t-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of white sneakers.  Though her sneakers weren't quite white anymore from the dust and dirt.  She also carried with her a black backpack full of things she thought she needed like a hairbrush for her brown hair, one other outfit to wear, and even had a baseball bat sticking out of her backpack for quick use.  

Crime had risen greatly since a massive storm destroyed most of the country.  Her father had called her just hours before it reached them, with some vital information.  She was now on her way, alone, to coordinates he had given her before she lost all contact with him.

The city she had just passed through had a lot of casualties.  Many humans and animals alike lost their lives and many buildings were unusable.  The storm had produced freakishly high winds, hail and many tornadoes.  There hadn't been anything like it in history.

There was a rather odd smell in the air.  It was a smell Serena recognized from her hometown.  The people were most likely cremating bodies by bonfire.  The number of bodies must have been too much for them to handle as well.
Serena passed a church that had collapsed during the storm.  The building must not have been strong enough.  She stopped in front of it.  It must have been a modest building from the look of it.  She wondered about the church members.  Was their faith shaken?  Or did they still believe strongly?  Where would they meet now?
Serena simply moved on.

She traveled for about fifteen minutes.  She really couldn't tell the outskirts from the city by sound, but she was soon on her toes;  there was gunfire in the area.  She reached for the bat in her backpack and slid it out.  It wasn't long before she unintentionally found the source of the sound.

A unnaturally-red-haired woman in pig-tails and casual clothing was exchanging shots with some punk-looking men at a run-down gas station.  The woman was definitely a civilian.  It looked like only one of the men had a pistol while the other three were taking cover.  Suddenly the woman backed off into the building.  Serena debated about checking it out for only a minute as the men approached the building.  She sighed, and slowly made her way to the building, taking cover so that she wouldn't be seen right away.

Once close enough, Serena peeked in the window.  She saw pigtailed woman who had her arms up in submission, the three men and one more person, she could only see the person's trousers and shoes.  They were men's work boots.  She made her way to the door way, listening to them.
"You thought you were so brave, huh?  What the hell are you doin' defending someone like this guy anyway?"
"The right thing, I thought."  The woman responded, "I saw what you did to that couple an hour ago."  
"Oh like some strangers really matter that much to you."  the ringleader laughed, "Its every man for himself now, even the government has given up."
"So that's why you left your other member behind just now to die?  And the government hadn't given up, I know better than that."  the woman argued.
"Really?  They haven't sent any aid anywhere.  The president hasn't even said a word about the storm since it passed."
"I have more faith in the government than you do at least."  the woman responded, "This was such a disaster it only makes sense that it would take more than a week to really organize anything, and some cities were hit harder than others."  
Serena peeked in the room.  She mostly saw the backs of the three punks.  The one in the front had a pistol.  
"Oh will you just shut it?"  the guy laughed, "Anyhow, why don't you join us?  You shot and killed a couple of those other idiots pretty fast.  I could use an extra hand, and it'd be nice to have  a woman's touch around."  
"Not interested."  she responded, sounding dull.
"You're not getting a choice.  You're out of bullets and your friend here has a broken leg.  I can shoot him and you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."
"I don't know about that."  the woman smiled at the punk.

At the same moment, the pigtailed woman went after the gun barer with a knife and Serena charged in with her bat.  The unintentional pincer-attack was easily their downfall.  It left two men dead and one unconscious.
The two women locked eyes.
"Well, that was completely unexpected."  the pigtailed woman commented, "Pretty gutsy taking a bat into a potential gunfight."
"Like a knife wasn't much better?"  Serena responded, "More importantly, are you alright?"
"Yes, but this man here has a broken leg."  She lead Serena around the counter.
Serena looked surprised.  The man was in all black.  His outfit was very close to a common police officer's, but black with an added bulletproof vest.   "He's one of them."
"The Enforcers?"  the pigtailed woman smiled as she cleaned and put away her knife, "They're just trying to calm what chaos they can."
Serena could easily disagree with her, but he was human too.  "We should get him to a doctor."  
"Agreed.  My name is Risa Bennet, but he's out cold right now.  His I.D.  said his name is Jerome Young."
"I'm Serena Ward, its nice to meet you."  She cleaned off her somewhat bloody bat with a nearby towel before putting it back in her backpack with the small end sticking up.  
Risa began to hold the unaware man piggy-back style, prompting Serena to ask a question.
"You want some help with him?"
"Don't worry about it, I'm stronger than I look."  The woman smiled, "There should be a town a mile or so north from here, maybe we'll get lucky and find him some help there."
"All we can do is try."  Serena commented.  She preferred to travel alone, but she was becoming lonelier than she wanted to admit and she would feel bad if the injured man never got to a doctor.
So, the two women set off together.  

Serena would have preferred to travel in silence along the empty road since she was very unsure about talking with strangers at this point in time, but Risa had other ideas.  
"So, Serena, where are you headed anyway?  You don't look like you're packed for a long trip."
"I'm looking for my dad.  He's the only one in my family left and he was off on a business trip."
"I'm sorry to hear about your family."  Risa re-situated her passenger, "So you know he's alive huh?  I'm glad for you."
"Well, I don't really know for sure.  Phone towers don't seem to be working anymore so the last I heard from him was where he was currently staying, but just before the storm hit."
"Oh."  Risa looked ahead of them, "I wish you good luck."
"Mmm, thanks."  Serena answered. "Where are you from anyway?"
"Me?"  Risa smiled, "I'm from the west."
"And you're all the way across the country?"
"Yes, I was on a business trip before the storm struck.  I can't seem to take a plane back to where I was before all of this."
"You know anything about your family?"
"No, I haven't heard anything."
The two women went silent for a while.

The two of them traveled for about a half hour before Risa decided it was a good time to take a break.  "We should be about there."  Risa stated, "But, boy he's getting heavy."
"I didn't think I was that fat, or maybe you're just too weak."  Jerome stated as he rubbed his eyes, "Oh."  he got a look at Risa, "Well, I'm sorry.  That was rude of me."
"Well, I guess you're not in a coma at least."  Risa smiled, "Good afternoon to you, Mr. Young."
"Well isn't that great."  he answered, "But I can't really do anything with my legs...and its pretty painful."
"Well, you'll be fine as long as we can find a doctor I think."
"Good, who are you two anyway?"
"The name is Risa Bennet, this is Serena Ward."
"Ward?"  Jerome paused a moment.
"Is there a problem?"  Serena sounded annoyed.
"No, just seems familiar, but I just can't put my finger on it."
Risa smiled, "Its a pretty common name, maybe it was the name of some old girlfriend of yours?"
"Maybe."
"Hey, lets get going again."  Serena suggested.
"So soon?"  Risa asked.
"Uh, I do have two broken legs."
"I just don't like sitting in one place too long."  Serena answered.
"Alright."  Risa sounded disappointed and went to pick Jerome up piggy-back style again.
"No no no no no!"  Jerome refused, "Don't do that!"
"And why not?"  Risa put her hands on her hips, "Its the easiest way."
"I am not going anywhere like that; its embarrassing!"
"Here."  Serena grabbed him by one arm and motioned for Risa to do the same.
"It'll probably be more painful this way."
"I don't give a damn, just as long as its not piggy-backing on a woman's back!"
Risa sighed and complied with Serena's suggestion.
As the day turned to evening, the three of them made it to a small town.  
"Welcome to Themistown."  Risa commented, "I grew up here, you know."
"Lets just find him a doctor."  Serena wasn't the least bit interested.
"I agree with her, lets go already!"

The three of them slowly made their way through the rubble and tree-limb filled streets quietly, listening to the sounds around them.  The town wasn't very active, that was a sure thing.  There was a chance of there being very few survivors.  

"Serena, I can't help but to notice the design in your irises."  Risa brought up, "Are those cybernetic implants?"
"Yes."
"Really bad eyesight?"
"No.  I was born blind.  I only received the implants a few years ago."
"Serena, I feel like I've actually seen you somewhere before."  Jerome spoke up.
Serena hesitated before responding, "Well I've never seen you before in my life so I don't see how."
"I just can't seem to remember where."  he really sounded like he was thinking hard.
"Well,"  Serena avoided eye contact with the man, "Don't try to hard, you suffered head-trauma, you know?"
"Eh, maybe you're right."
"There should be a clinic on this next street here, lets turn left."  Risa pointed the direction out, "We should be there in no time at all."

"Hold it right there!  Freeze, all of you!"
Serena dropped her half of Jerome to turn around.  They were surrounded by six other members of the Enforcers.  All of them wore the same black outfit as Jerome, with the addiction of a clear-shielded black helmet, and all of them had guns facing the group.  
"Hands up!"  One of them moved forward a little bit.
Serena raised her hands in the air.  Risa gently put Jerome down before the two of them also raised their arms.
"Young, go join the others!"
"I can't, sir, both of my legs were broken."  Jerome answered, "And these two didn't do anything to me, its okay."
"That's not the concern and you know it."  

Two other Enforcers joined them and ushered the two women separate from Jerome.  
They ordered Serena to remove her backpack, and had her submit to a pat-down for any other weaponry.  
"All clear, sir."  One of them stated.
The leading officer smiled, "Good."  He rested, but did not put his weapon away.
Serena appeared nervous.  
"We've been looking for you, Serena.  Have you told the "truth" to anyone at all?"
"I don't even know what you're talking about."
"Don't lie to me.  That phone call out from the lab was recorded."
"No.  I haven't told anyone."  Serena was irritated, but frightened.  
"Darwin."  the man looked at the woman who was suddenly at ease, "Did she say anything at all to you."
"No, not at all, sir."  Risa responded.
Serena whipped her gaze to the woman she had been traveling with.
The woman only flashed a smile at her, "She hasn't said a thing, actually she doesn't seem to like talking to me very much."
The man pulled a radio off the side of his belt, "We've found the target, but we've never received instruction concerning what to do with her, over."
A few seconds went by before a woman's voice came over the radio in response, "General, orders are to eliminate the target, over."
"Whoa whoa whoa!  Hold on!"  Jerome spoke up, "There is no way you're killing this woman."
"I agree."  Darwin crossed her arms, "She defended the both of us when we were outnumbered.  She brought a bat into a gunfight and won."  she left out a few details.  
The General looked at the radio, "I'm not too interested in killing civilians; none of us are."

"I have a solution."  Darwin brought up, "She just needs to forget about the phone call.  I've made some calls here at the office, and I've had something brought to the clinic here in town.  The original plan was to just wipe out the events from the last week or so, but for some reason the boss just wants her destroyed."  
"Yes, I think we should do that."  the man agreed.
"No!"  Serena shouted at them, "What right do you have to decide that for me?!"
"We don't have a right to, but its that or shoot you.  Which is it?"  Darwin sounded rather angry.
"Look.  Everything is going to be alright."  The man walked closer to Serena.  "Soon all the surviving civilians will be rounded up and relocated to a new residential zone."
"Why?!"  Serena was in tears, "So you can continue to decide who lives and who dies?!  Are you going to just weed out the weak and only keep the strong?!"
"Calm down!"
"I will not calm down!  My...our government manages to create some freak storm with the idea to reduce the population?!  And now you're going to just round us all up like animals?!"
The General nodded and signaled with a head-nod to a couple of the men, "Come get her so we can move on."

Two of the men put their guns away and approached Serena who started swinging her fists at them.  In the end it took four of them to pin her down and handcuff her.
Serena refused to walk and had gone silent with the exception of the occasional sob.  The men had to drag her a block to the clinic.  

"You know, I can carry her and it would be much easier."  Darwin told the General.
"If you keep doing that every time we have to pick someone up:  people are eventually going to figure out there's something wrong with you."
"I don't understand why we can't just tell them we have remote-controlled androids."  Darwin shrugged, "I seriously doubt it would hurt any."
"You really are too young for this job, you know.  Its common sense.  The people would lose trust in the people around them, its something we need to slowly integrate into society.  You can't just go around bragging about it and expect it to be accepted."
"Heh, yes sir."  Darwin shook his head and sighed.

The clinic looked like a mess on the outside.  A tree had nearly fallen on it from the storm, some windows were broken and there was various debris all around it.  Several mis-parked cars were near it as well.  
The group entered the building.  The inside looked better, but it wasn't really very clean.  Leaves, sticks and dirt had managed to come into the broken windows, but a handful of people were trying to straighten the place up to make space for the injured so they could be treated.

The general immediately asked for medical attention concerning Jerome and ordered the men to follow Darwin.  Jerome was complaining loudly at first but eventually calmed down.
"Its still experimental, but it should do the trick."  Darwin commented as they entered one of the offices.  

A large white and clear glass cylinder shaped machine stood at the back.  A white seat was built into the center of it, complete with straps.  
Serena fought back, screaming profanities at them as they secured her into the chair.  An equally white helmet was also secured to her head with a set of thin wires cascading from the top.

Darwin worked with a large white remote, pressing several different keys before the machine began to hum.
"I don't understand whats wrong with you people?!  Don't you have any respect for human life what-so-ever?!"  Serena struggled as hard as she could with the straps, but they wouldn't budge.

Serena continued to scream at them until two minutes into the procedure and she simply forgot why and just stopped screaming.  She spent five minutes total in the machine before two officers let her free.

She looked to Darwin, confused.  "Who are you?"
"Someone of authority, you were very ill but you're much better now."  Darwin smiled at her, it worked.
"Oh.  What was I sick with, and who am I?"  
"Who?"  Darwin went silent for a moment.
"Yes, who am I?  I just can't seem to remember anything."
Darwin looked at her, "You,"  she signed and then smiled, "are my best friend, we've been friends for a very long time.  My name is Risa, but some people call me Darwin.  So you need to listen to me and do as I say.  I'll keep filling you in on what you've forgotten over time.  Right now, we all need to go with the Enforcers to a better town that is clean and liveable."
Serena thought for a moment before nodding, "Okay.  We'll do that."  She really didn't have much to think about anyway.

[cherry144]

“Northern Fire”
cherry144



The town of Redsten was burning.

After returning to his hotel room at the base of the mountain, discovering all of his valuables—including any mode of transportation he could have used—stolen or broken, and finding the manager and staff either mysteriously absent or too disturbed to speak, the welcome desk phone rang. Lor answered it, not knowing what else to do, and was ordered to north. He obeyed. The hour-long trek up a steep incline, half of which he had to manage with a broken sandal, led him to the crest of the hill overlooking his childhood home…or what was left of it, anyway. He had almost managed to cope with knowing most of his friends had died in the first outbreak of the Aris-Saltomer virus. But finding the entire town up in flames? That would take a little longer to get past.

There was nothing Lor could do; the town was infamous for its utter lack of cell phone reception and unmanageable distance from every conceivable help. Even if he rushed, it would take him forty minutes at least to return to Marville. Most of the houses he could see were lighting up with the same speed as the brush on the hills, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of the town was ash and cinders, too.

The smoke blew away from him, over the town, fueling the fire and encouraging it to spread faster. If the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction, maybe he could have saved the town. The smoke would have spilled over the hill between Redsten and Marville, alerting him to the town’s fate. He could have found a phone, or jumped into his car—if it hadn’t already been broken. He could have even walked to the fire department, provided they hadn’t noticed the great plumes of smoke already. As it was, the northern wind pushed the smoke away from Marville, away from Lor’s hotel room. There was almost no chance the Marville fire department would know of the fire.

As he watched, flames licked the side of another building. The roof of what used to be a convenience store buckled and collapsed, shooting up a spray of sparks. With nearly every building in the town made of wood, and with the last rain storm several weeks past, the town would catch like tinder. It was the easiest thing in the world to start a fire in these chaparral hills, especially in the summer. He turned away. The heat seared his skin, and the sight was painful on its own.

Lor allowed him one second of guilty, fruitless hope: that maybe the fire would give them a way to fight the Aris-Saltomer virus, that Redsten would emerge a mighty phoenix in the face of adversity and grant them a cure. But that second was fleeting and only left him dismayed. He already knew there was no cure. The A-S virus was more destructive than the Ebola virus, which itself was worse than both the H1N1 virus and the bubonic plague. After it wiped out three-quarters of Redsten, it made quick work of the towns north and east of it, traveling with the winds. Anyone with the misfortune of carrying the disease with him on his travels inevitably spread it across the country, and before long, cities in every state experienced deadly breakouts of the virus. Everywhere it appeared, loud, painful, and agonizing death swiftly followed.

He had heard the reports, the symptoms and outcomes of the virus. Onset is marked by a five-day period of slight nausea, during which the victim is contagious, often without his knowledge. Then the organ failure begins, predominately with the liver and kidneys. If that isn’t enough to kill, the virus quickly infiltrates the nervous system, causing sporadic and intense aches up and down the victim’s body. If death still eludes one after the fiery pain, the virus elegantly targets the brain and heart, severing any ties the victim has to the mortal world. It is nearly inescapable, easily spread, and—as far as doctors know—incurable. The scariest thing about the virus was its speed: only six months and already projected population estimates showed a decrease of seventy-five to eighty-five percent. At least, seven out of ten people would suffer painful death at the hand of the A-S virus.

Lor ran a hand through his hair and turned away from the scorching town. Staring at it further would only grant him burned eyes. He left the town behind him, almost hoping that the towns to the north would let it burn. Burning all of Redsten would certainly be better than letting part of it survive; the survivors would only feel guilt when looking at the broken town.



“Why did you tell me?”

Silence. Lor had to admit, that probably wasn’t the best way to greet the potential arson who set fire to Redsten, especially since he or she clearly knew Lor's location and his ties to the town.

“I’m not sure why I’m impressed,” the voice said, ignoring his question. “I know your reputation. Tracking my earlier call must have been…easy for you. But still, that was certainly fast. I trust you saw the town?”

Lor frowned. The voice was genderless, lending him no clue as to the speaker’s identity. “Yeah, I saw it. Why did you tell me?”

The voice seemed to stifle a laugh, or a yawn. “Oh, Lor. Is that your only question? I’m sure you can do better than that. You’re not the premiere upstart programmer for nothing. You have a talent for asking the right questions. That’s not one of them.”

He clenched his teeth. Clearly, the speaker knew more about Lor than he was comfortable sharing with a stranger. “Fine. Who are you? Where did you get your information about me? My records are sealed by the university. And I’m not popular enough for you to know offhand.”

“Not yet,” the voice agreed. “But you will be soon enough. Why don’t you save this number and call back after you start asking the right questions?”

“I don’t know what you—”

The line went dead.



Lor pumped his legs, pedaling the borrowed bike up the hill as fast as his out of shape body could manage. Four days had passed since Redsten had burned to the ground, and he hoped the area was traversable again. The fire had smoldered until the vast majority of the buildings had crumbled to ash, and, as Lor had hoped, the fire fighters from the northern towns had elected to let it burn. The inhabitants had already moved away after the outbreak of the Aris-Saltomer virus, so why fight a raging fire when there was nothing to save?

He reached the hill overlooking the town, and even though he had seen aerial shots on the internet, the charred remains of his hometown made his heart sputter. Smoke still hung in the air, a black stain tainting the valley. He pulled his shirt collar over his nose and mouth, careful to avoid breathing the fumes, and biked down the road.

There was the barber shop his mother loved taking him to; the plastic barber pole had melted and crumpled in the heat. There was his best friend’s church, where the town gathered for holidays—pools of colored glass and light dotted the ground around its remains. And there: the gas station Lor used to buy candy from as a child. He had yet to call the stranger back, but he was almost certain his trek to the hollow town would help him “ask the right questions,” as the stranger had put it.

Lor stood the bike on its kickstand and approached the ruins of the gas station carefully. He had no reason to suspect the area was still volatile, but apprehension had aided him in the past. He wasn’t about to mistrust it now.

The words from the telecaster echoed in his head: Experts have examined the area of Redsten and have concluded that the gas station is the most likely explanation behind this tragedy. As you can see from the black scorch marks on the cement, the business appears to have suffered from an explosion.

He scuffed his toe—he was wearing tennis shoes this time, having learned his lesson from the cheap sandals—on the cement near a burned-out gas pump. The metal had warped and expanded, melting in the heat from the burning gas. It certainly looked liked a gas explosion had occurred, but he knew better.

The explosion at the gas station never happened. The newscasters—truly stupid people, they were—couldn’t have known that there was no gas at this station. Since the town had been declared a disaster area due to the A-S virus, people stopped coming to town. With them, the flow of gas to this station ended, too: what was the point of servicing a station that had no customers? The explosion at this station was manufactured. Someone had set it up to look like a gas explosion, when really that explanation was logically impossible.

Instead, Lor supposed, the make-up explosion was to lead the prying eyes of the newscasters away from the actual origin of the fire. Lor remembered the first newscast he had seen on the fire, which aired later on the first night: the southeast corner of the town was already burned out. Lor returned to his bike and pedaled east.

With every house he passed, memories flooded through his mind. Mark used to live there, until his mother got a promotion and had to move to a city. Then another family with three daughters moved in. They all died from the A-S virus…some of the first victims, the news said… Lor rattled off the names of people he used to know as he passed their old houses. Franklin, Bethany, Grandma Pear, Charlie, Alex, Melissa, Anthony, Lauren, Thomas, Lavender, Mae Ellen and more. All gone. Lor had left them himself when he went to college and then work for a computer company, but he had never expected the leave to be permanent.

He came to the end of the road and stopped his bike. Burned buildings cornered him on three sides. Golden hills dotted with low brush and evergreens faced him across a wide river. Smoke clung to the street and the buildings, light traces of campfire-smelling air infiltrating his nose.

Desolate as Redsten was, Lor had company.

“I see you’ve returned. The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.”

He almost laughed. “I’m no criminal,” he said through his shirt, “and I don’t have to defend myself to a stranger.”

“But I’m not a stranger. We’ve already had so many discussions.”

A man stepped out from behind a crumbled building. Lor recognized not his face, but his voice; it was the androgynous stranger who had told him to go north, up the road to Redsten. He was taller than Lor had expected. Lor was almost sure he had never seen the man before, but the stranger seemed to know him, and that was enough for Lor to be wary. The apprehension was back, and with it the analytical instincts he was known for.

He decided to skip straight to the burning question—hopefully the right question at last. “Are you going to tell me why the fire didn’t start at the gas station, as believed, and instead originated here?”

The man raised an eyebrow, set his mouth in a smirk. “So you figured it out, and in less than ten minutes, too. I’m a little surprised. How did you figure it out?”

Lor wanted to stay silent, but the stranger’s face was so expectant that he spoke. “I saw the footage from the first night. This section had already burned down while the rest was still in flames. Trust me, it wasn’t that difficult.” He hesitated, wondering if his next question would merit an answer or just a deflection. “Why did you warn me?” he asked, thinking back to the second conversation they had shared.

The man shook his head. “Still hooked on that question. I wonder, why does anyone do anything?”

“You’re not answering.”

“No.”

Lor frowned. The man’s existential retort marked him as unstable. The apprehension burned in his stomach, and he turned around, readying his bike.

“You’re not leaving yet.”

“I am. You’re not being cooperative.”

Then: “I created the A-S virus.”

Lor’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.” Creating the A-S virus? Impossible. A virus can’t be manufactured. It was ludicrous to claim creation of such a thing.

“But I am. I created it in my lab, right behind me.” He pointed to the burned out building behind him. “That’s why this area of the town was the first to burn. I set the fire myself, then made the gas station look as if it had exploded. My laboratory was in the basement of this house. I inherited it from my father, Thomas Miles.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I doused the basement with kerosene and lit it with a book of matches. I turned the gas valves on and let the house burn, destroying all of my father’s and my own research.” Lor wanted to pedal away, but he was rooted to the spot by the man’s wild eyes and fervent expression. Then: “I burned the laboratory because I found a cure to the virus. Found it, and didn’t want to share it. It was an accident: a chemical produced by bacteria that breaks the virus.”

“That…that’s not possible,” Lor stammered, thinking the virus wasn’t the only thing that was broken. “I don’t believe you.”

“You should. I’m telling the truth.”

No. It couldn’t be. Someone so malicious could never exist. A person who deliberately developed the most dangerous virus in history? A person who created a cure, but then purposefully destroyed it? No one functioned like that. Immediately Lor knew his assessment of the stranger’s mental stability was correct. Clearly, the stranger was either a sick, psychopathic liar who craved attention…or a mad scientist bent on destroying the world. Lor didn’t know which was more likely.

The stranger sighed, as if he were relieved of a heavy burden. “That’s better. I feel so free after telling someone my deepest secrets. I’ve only told one other person before, but they were so quick to judge….You’ll be different, won’t you?”

Lor decided to not answer that question. “I’m leaving.” And calling the police, he decided. Maybe they’ll know how to help this poor savage.

“No, you’re not.”

A gunshot fired into the air next to Lor. He jumped, nearly falling off his bike, and fell to the dusty ground. Ashes stirred in the heavy air as he scrambled backward, looking at the smooth pistol in the stranger’s hand. How did he overlook that? Apprehension turned to panic. He kicked the bike off his legs, then thought better and righted the bike before swinging his leg over the seat.

“I don’t think so,” the stranger said loudly, shooting twice. One bullet hit the bike, striking the tire; the other lodged itself in the building behind Lor. He glanced at the tire, deciding to at least try to escape, and pedaled. The bike strained, but it moved, the broken wheel bumping with every revolution. The stranger laughed at Lor’s struggles, watching as the programmer tried controlling the bike. After several attempts, he jumped off the bike and kicked it aside, settling for a panicked run.

“You know, the problem with telling people your secrets is that they want to tell others,” the stranger proclaimed, shooting at Lor’s feet. Another bullet kicked up ash on the ground in front of Lor, and he stumbled, changing his direction sporadically. A fourth bullet struck him in the leg; he let out a scream and toppled to the ground. “I don’t want you telling anyone else. But the only way to ensure that is to kill you. Ah, the price of a good secret…”

Lor scrambled on the ground, trying to stand. He could feel blood tricking down his leg. Panic turned to dread as he writhed in the dust and ash, covering himself in the remains of the burned buildings. “You’re crazy,” he gasped throguh clenched teeth, fumbling in his pocket. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed “9” before the other man kicked it out of his hands. He had approached the wounded with incredible speed; or had Lor been on the ground for longer than he realized?

“Can’t have you calling the police on me,” the man said, kicking the phone until it broke. He leisurely walked up to Lor, who twisted and grunted on the ground, hoping an extra burst of strength would heft him onto his feet and carry him back to Marville. “Now. I was about to kill you.” He pointed the gun at Lor, mere feet from his head.

Dread seized in Lor’s gut as sweat dripped down his face. The sun glinted off the barrel of the pistol.

“W-who are you?” he stuttered, wishing he hadn’t come to Redsten this morning.

The man grinned. “An odd choice of last words. But I’m in a good mood. My name is Anthony Miles.” He narrowed his eyes. “The knowledge of the cure will die with you, Lor Carson. Goodbye.”



The shot was clean, right above the eyebrow. Blood pooled beneath the body and reflected the sky above. Ash swirled in the puddle, reminding Anthony of the scarlet blaze four days before. He laughed, the guttural sound filling the smoky air, pleased with his work.

But then he stopped and sighed. “Ah, I need to stop doing this,” he said, voice breaking. “I didn’t mean to kill you, Lor. I rather liked you. Perhaps we could have been friends, under different circumstances.” A soft breeze blew ripples across the red pool. “I only wanted to talk to someone. It’s a sad thing that you had to die. I only killed you because I am afraid of death, and I would surely be dead if they knew…”

By the end of the day, the virus will calm and the death rates will slow. It will leave the country—the world, perhaps—with only twenty percent of its pre-virus population. Four in five people dead, many of them in cities. Anthony had been tracking the progress of the virus since he had released it on Redsten, and tonight was the night it would die, just like Lor. With the virus would die Anthony’s only pleasure in life: the suffering of others. There was no denying that he was truly a twisted individual, but that made life fun. Worth living. Without it, he was only an empty vessel, like the hollow buildings surrounding him.

He placed the gun to his temple and smiled one last time.

[Ysavvryl]

(judge's non-qualifying entry; Round 1)

shadows of light

His boots made hardly any sound as he ran across the carpeted floor. There was no dust anywhere, just polished clean gleams. In the finely made vases, there were clusters of silk flowers; he certainly didn't pick up any signs of life off them. The air was cool and scented like a clean sea breeze, but faint signs of chemicals pointed it to being the environmental control system. Light sculptures were still functioning, out of place for trying to be soothing. At the very least, the cleaning bots were working as regularly as always. At worst, this place was still being used.

Several years ago, he had come here for the first time. It had been very different, filled with the most powerful people in the city, all dressed to seem like the most important one there. He and his peers had been there to honor the new members of the Senate. As servants of the state, they were meeting those who commanded them. He had spent quite some time simply taking in the sensual luxury of the event: the ladies' perfumes, the textures of the lavish attire, the masterful sound of the live musicians, the duels of banter and gesture, the increasingly rare organic produce and baked goods that served as the snack buffet. The other members of his unit had teased him for getting swept away by it, but he knew they were only having fun.

But that time was of safety, seemingly far away. This place was deserted now. Why was it deserted? There was still the scream of the security system all around him and there had many of them chasing him on the levels below. Sure, he could move much faster than most, but the quicker ones should have kept up. They had overwhelmed the others of his unit... two of them had twisted their bodies into ropes to hold down their strongest member so that a third could impale him before he could be warned... he should have caught that, as it was his role. But this wasn't the time to be thinking of regret. He was trained not to falter like that (but they had never been caught in situation that had made so many of them fall). After all, they probably weren't dead. He knew that it would take an awful lot to kill an altadroid, a genetically and mechanically enhanced human. Especially them, the elite among alta, the Guardians.

But their fate could be worse than that: being controlled by the tyrant that had utterly destroyed life as they knew it.

The edges of his feelers tingled; the ends twitched from their curled up position near his shoulders. There were the monsters, out of sight but not out of sense: one large one blocking off a passageway and a group of smaller quick ones just at the edge of his senses. Closing his eyes and briefly stopping, he searched with his mind for the layout of the halls past this room. Once he went through the door, there would be a long narrow hallway with shield glass for the walls and ceiling. He wasn't strong enough physically to break them, and trying for a mental strike would not be good in this situation. Down the hall at fifty feet, there was a four-way cross: one went ahead to a tunnel bridge leading to another building, one went around back into this building, and one went to the landing pad. The large one was at the landing pad hall, while the smaller ones were waiting in the hall that turned back... and in the hall that went to the other building.

Ambush. They weren't intelligent enough to make a group tactic like that. Someone had to be around giving them directions, and that someone knew enough about him to know that he avoided taking on large ones. How much did they know? He knew for certain now that these things weren't real. They were holograms, illusionary monsters, shadows of light. But in the current era, every human was given a computer enhancement upgrade, putting tiny chips in their skulls so that they could interface with technology at a thought. This gave the hologram monsters the ability to do real damage to people, even killing them; other technology allowed the hologram monsters to appear anywhere, forming in less than a minute. Holographic technology was even enough to give them a physical presence, although they dissolved into nothing when defeated. Despite these advantages, they were still just holograms, only capable of carrying primitive programming that locked them into unchanging behaviors.

And being holograms, they didn't handle electrical, magnetic, or many other energy attacks well. He burst through into the hallway. Down the hall, the large holo-creature shouted and waved a large rifle arm like it was a club. As his eyes flicked over it, a large amount of information passed through his senses. It had no legs and was immobile, even more evidence that it had been meant to help trap him. This one also had an extra weakness to electricity, which he could manage if he tapped into his Guardian system.

Error: Command unit is inactive. Guardian system abilities cannot be activated.

Yes, that was the problem, wasn't it? That had been the major obstacle, the biggest headache, to their doing anything. The command unit was inactive even though he was wearing his own himself; the brown scarab band was on the upper part of his left arm. “Survival mode override,” he said, thinking through the lengthy pin code confirmation. Sure it had been for civilian safety; it was leading them into certain defeat and surrender now, to fall under the command of the city's new tyrant, whoever that was.

Checking status of unit members...

There wasn't much time. Another running stride took him that much closer to the large holo-creature. It had the look of a sphinx constructed of steel, with that rifle arm on its left and an oversized morning-star fist on its right. Through the cracks in its 'construction', the telltale wisps of black smoke proved its identity. It was ready to smash him if he got too close to its blockade. The others were all defeated, he thought, trying to make that clear to the obedience system. He had seen it and felt it with all of his senses.

Survival mode activation accepted.

With that, he felt a burst of extra energy. He increased static charge to his left arm, causing tiny green sparks to appear. After sliding under the initial bash attack from the metal sphinx, he found a large smoky crack and grabbed hold of that with his left hand. The electricity blasted through the sphinx, making it to howl in anger; his momentum caused him to swing around the human part of the holo-creature and land on its back. It had a spiky whip tail, but he sensed its motions and jumped past it safely.

How far could he push the survival mode? They had all done training under its influence, but the mixture of the obedience protocol and none of them ever being in it for long meant that even he had no idea how long he could keep himself in it. Or what its effects on his mind and body would be. But if he dropped it in this infested city, then he would probably fall too.

There was a door in his way, but it had an electronic lock. Any of the others might have opted to simply ram through the door or blast it off its hinges. On the other hand, he simply uncoiled one of his feelers, three foot long feathery tendrils that were like bronze tipped in gold, and slid that into the card slot. He was able to sense the appropriate key data and give that to allow the door to unlock. Behind him, the sphinx was screaming nonsense and turning its torso around to shoot at him. By the time it managed, he was through the door and that blocked the shot.

He was on a square landing pad three miles above the ground. At one time, the wealthiest citizens were said never to touch the Earth. A place like this, where the most powerful decided what would happen, would have at least two airships, and maybe a helicopter. There were no ships here now, not that that would stop him.

“Scarab!” a voice called out from a trio of loudspeakers around the platform. “Would you betray your city? The law must be obeyed; this is a command from the government. Stop and stay where you are.” Government authority code #LC-67458-TI.

Must be obeyed. Those words held him for a moment at the guard railing, but who was speaking? The code was in the proper format, but unfamiliar to him. The person certainly wasn't close by, because otherwise he would feel the presence of another person. However, there were only the holo-creatures trying to get past the sphinx and the door to reach him.

Command unit inactive, survival mode on. Command does not fall under obedience protocol.

He felt an immense relief and grief on knowing that. “You were right, but you failed to accomplish this too, big brother,” he said softly. Then he pulled himself onto the railing and called back, “I am Scarab, a protector of the citizens of this city. The city has become corrupted, so I will find the citizens and protect them.” Then he jumped off the railing and into the air with all his might.

The metallic back shell of his armor shifted, allowing his two wings to unfold and fly him further away from the skyscraper. Some of the holo-creatures could fly, but were greatly restricted in doing so. Moving through the air would be his safest option now. While the air currents guided his flight, they didn't control him like the flow of the obedience protocol had. All of his life, he had been able to do what he wanted unless someone had the command unit. Then their will would overcome his own and any struggle to do otherwise was futile. It used to be that alta commanders were chosen carefully, so that the alta had some autonomy. But this had been what they had always feared, and why they had broken into the Senate building to retrieve them.

Was he truly free now? No; even the most optimistic of them knew that they wouldn't be truly free until someone discovered how to remove the obedience protocol. He was free to choose a new master, though, now that he had his command unit. He was alone, though, and that terrified him. The other altas on his unit depended on his amplified and extensive senses to know exactly what was going on, and he depended on them for guidance and protection. Why was he the only one to succeed in claiming his command unit and escaping the tyrant? Would he have to fight against the others? Could he do so, knowing that they had no desire to kill him but their obedience protocol would force them to if ordered? Would he have to kill them? And where would he find someone to trust to be in control of his will, to be his commander?

Or where to find anyone. He flew close to other buildings, clean and sturdy as always. And now empty, as far as he could sense. There weren't even signs of organic remains, as the robotic cleaners would recycle whatever 'trash' they came across. The explosive expansion of the holo-creatures, coupled with their aggressive violence, had killed so many humans, altas, and animals. Nothing flew in the sky other than him and the holo-creatures in their limited paths; nothing moved within the buildings other than automated robots that didn't think. The state of the world outside the city? He had no idea.

But there had to be someone. Someone had called out to him, trying to control him through the authority of the city. Someone who had authority? He had to remember that code. And there were people who had once fought the holo-creatures as a game, so they had to know how to defend themselves from this invasion. It was a sport popular among the lower classes.

Lower classes. He had to fly lower to find any survivors. Hoping that he wasn't left truly alone in an empty city, he dove down into the dimmer recesses. Maybe even down to the long ignored streets that served mostly as an anchoring point to the lofty heights. He would find the survivors and offer his services as a Guardian. This was his duty; even the heartbreaking loss of his entire unit, his family, would not stop him from following through.

[Shiro Mezidoria]

I wrote this in like an hour, so...

Non-Qualifying Judge's Entry

The Death of Shiro
( xd Titled in Honor of Darkstarzz xd )

Shiro could only lay there. Her entire body ached. She felt as if her insides had been sucked out by an industrial vacuum cleaner. She felt like a shell. She conjured up enough energy to lift her right hand. It was covered in a thick deep blue liquid that dripped onto her similarly stained clothes. Her blood. The gash in her stomach was still bleeding. Why hadn't she healed yet? Usually her wounds were healed by now, even when her magic was gone. Maybe it had to do with the empty feeling.

She had to move. She was getting stiff and her energy was only draining further from her body. She put her bloody hand to the pod door and paused a moment. She could just barely see her reflection in the glass with the dim pod lights. Her hair was a straggled mess, parts of it sticking to her face, and every strand was black, stained with her deep blue blood.

Wait, her hair was black! Her hair was never black unless she changed it! She had no magic. Even vulnerable her hair had always been white. What was going on? She had to get out of here!

She pushed open the door and tried to crawl out of the pod, despite the deep gash in her stomach objecting to every movement. She clumped up her clothes around it, hoping there were still dry spots to help stop the bleeding. After several trying and painful minutes she finally managed to get up on her feet. She looked up from her surroundings and felt the color drain from her face.

She was in a city, or what used to be a city. Most of it was destroyed, and not by her pod. She could see the indentation where her pod had skyrocketed to the ground and traveled through the road, shooting asphalt everywhere before finally stopping.

The rest of the city, however, looked as if the whole place had been hit by a bomb. Even the trees were black and broken. There was no sign of life anywhere. Trash blew gently in a breeze. Cars sat abandoned or destroyed in the roads, wrapped around poles, or halfway inside collapsed buildings.

Shiro took a step and her legs tried to give out.
No! Hang in there! She thought to herself. You have to find help! You and-
She stopped and looked around. Where was Arkonee? Arkonee's pod had set off first, Shiro had made sure of that. And she had made sure their pods had the same coordinates. So where was the other pod? Where was Arkonee?

Her vision started to blur and she shook her head.
Come on! Stay conscious! Think! Focus! What were you doing in the pod?
They had been running away. From who?

Her mind started to fog over. No! Focus! Arkonee's.....Arkonee's people. They were being deceived! They had tried to warn the people! Arkonee had wanted to confront her brother! Wanted to know why he hadn't come to rescue her! It was him! He made a deal with those aliens and had his parents killed! He had them take Arkonee away! That's how I had met her!

She heard a moaning noise and looked up. The smell of blood had drawn out the few people who remained in this ash and debris filled town. The people were multiple colors, unlike Shiro's own people. Her people were all the same shade of pale blue. This group reminded her more of Arkonee's people or the enemy alien race that Arkonee's brother had sold out his people to in order to rule. These people, however, looked more green and ashen grey. Their cheek bones were sunken in and their skin clung to their fragile bodies, hanging down low in some places. Their clothes were torn, bloody, and burnt. Some of their clothes looked as if they had been taken from someone else much bigger or much smaller. They stared at Shiro with hungry eyes, arms outstretched, and drool running down their chins.

Shiro wanted to run, or at least defend herself, but she was powerless, weak, and unarmed. Arkonee would have to wait. She was about to be devoured.

A loud roar filled the air and a large two wheeled machine came flying through the air over a hill. It landed on the ground with a thud and the wheels spun as it tried to regain traction, rocketing down the road towards them at an amazing speed. The driver turned the machine sharply at the last second, skidding to a stop between Shiro and the hungry beings. The driver pulled out a long stick and pushed a button. A flame erupted at the end. He began swinging it in the air.

"Back! Back you heathens!" he shouted.

One if the females shrieked in fear but one of the men lunged forward, driven mad with hunger. The driver pulled out a gun and shot the man in the head. The others hissed madly and scattered back to where they came from on all fours.

He removed his helmet and brushed back his dark blue hair. "Are you all right?" he asked Shiro. Shiro could only stare helplessly. She didn't have the energy for speech.

Everything was starting to get blurry. She tried to focus on what he was saying.

"Aliens......destroyed.....people starving.....like animals...."

He moved closer to her and held up a hand for help, concern in his eyes. She saw his lips move, but the words didn't come out. Suddenly there was four of him, all concerned and looking at her, dancing around her vision.

Everything went dark.

[Shiro Mezidoria]

~*Judging*~

Original Sooshi

OriginalSooshi - Star of Silence

Character development- 08 * 15 * 05 = 09
Story Setup- 11 * 17 * 12 = 13
Descriptive Writing- 20 * 20 * 15 = 18
Topic Match- 06 * 15 * 10 = 10
General Enjoyment- 10 * 09 * 10 = 10
General Grammar- 10 * 09 * 10 = 10

Total: 70

[Shiro Mezidoria]

~*Judging*~

It is not about me

Character development- 15 * 12 * 15 = 14
Story Setup- 09 * 12 * 13 = 11
Descriptive Writing- 10 * 12 * 13 = 12
Topic Match- 15 * 10 * 15 = 13
General Enjoyment- 06 * 05 * 08 = 06
General Grammar- 07 * 05 * 05 = 06

Total: 62