[Voting] Halloween Competitions!

[Danny 2232]

Huzzah! I have received entries for each contest (sadly, not as many as would have been preferred - but still a good few) and here is the voting thread for the Halloween Forum Competitions 2012. Basic voting rules:

• You may not vote on an entry of which you know the author (music has the authors name on it - be fair, pay no attention to the names)
• You may vote for your own entry, but it's highly unsporting.
• Each member has one vote per category (if not voting in a category select Not Applicable).

And - the rewards!:

• A rather nifty forum 'award' through the new forum award system we are implementing soon.
• A $5 VIP for yourself or a friend.
• A mention in the November Newsletter.

Now, for the entries - there were 4 categories; music, graphics, poetry and creative writing.

Music

#1 - Obscured Thoughts

#2 - Fall of the Pumpkin Lord

Graphics

#1 - Black Tears and a Broken Mask

#2 - Feeding Time

Poetry

#1 - The Slender [marked as untitled in poll]

You don't stop to think,

you're feeling scared.

You fear to blink,

you mustn't dare.

You run and run past darkened trees

"Where is it? Is it watching me?"

You can not run,

you can not hide.

You won't see the sun,

you'll never survive.

You only hear your own heartbeat

and the sound of dirt beneath your feet.

"Help me" you scream

but none can hear.

A flickering light-beam

adds to your fear.

But soon, all is black

and you find the strength to turn your back.

It's there, watching you,

you spin on you heels.

What do you do?

This thing is real...

You sprint until you feel safe,

How can it see you? It has no face.

Don't look or it takes you,

You try to stay calm.

The stories were true,

you wipe sweat from your palms.

All directions seem the same

fear prevents you from saying his name.

You run for your life but fall to the ground,

You see an awful sight.

You pray you're hidden but you've been found

by the black-suited man of white.

Your last moments come, you're soft and tender,

you close your eyes and embrace... the slender.

#2 - Untitled:

When the cold wind blows

You are gripped in fear’s claws

Freezing you down to core

It’s the fear you chose

You hear a menacing laugh

Or was it thunder’s crack?

Moon glows above you red

For this place is really dread

The door before you creeks

Making all around meek

Shadow entrails the way

Is it a way of no return?

Flame shivers and is about to go

Leave you in darkness all alone

Treason of light, just so

You’re left in darkness with afterglow

The floor behind you speaks

Not in words, but fearful creeks

You start to run, gripped in fear’s claws

For the moon’s glow is no more

Close your eyes and let it go

Ghost will hurt no more

It is all just a dreadful dream

For Halloween is about to begin

#3 - The Day She Fell on the Kitchen Knife

My love, my flower, my beautiful song

she loved me not - so forever I long.

I bought her gifts, jewls and more

but I recieved nothing - as my heart grew sore.

She threw me out, changing the locks

counting the minutes on the grandfather clock.

I had no choice, but to take her life

the day 'she fell on the kitchen knife'.

She begged and screamed, calling for aid

but this fate for herself, she knew she had made.

I slashed and sliced, cut open her vest

plunging the knife, deep into her chest.

and then the screaming began to halt

as I filled the wound, with the last of our salt.

What a poor ending, my dearest wife

the day 'she fell on the kitchen knife'.

The body I dragged, down under the stairs

leaving no evidence, no blood, no hairs.

I left the corpse to rot, out of sight

so never again, may she see the light.

The maggots and flies, would feast on her skin

Down to the bone, to consume my sin.

At least at her end, it ended my strife

the day 'she fell on the kitchen knife'.

And then they found her, bones 'n' all

they took me away, at my neighbor's call.

Left alone in a full cushioned cell

but the truth to them, never shall I tell.

I never did it, she fell, and that's that

No murder involved, she died where she sat.

Death comes for me now, equiped with his scythe

the day 'she fell on the kitchen knife'.

Creative Writing

#1 - The Machine Princess

The princess was dead.

The coroner slipped his arms through his embroidered silk waistcoat. He fastened the bright silver buttons and adjusted his tie. Taking his black silk top hat from the hat rack, he placed it gently on his head. One had to look one’s best for the princess, after all. Shouldering on his coat, he eyed himself in the mirror. With his delicate white gloves and tailored trousers, one might almost mistake him for human – if they didn’t look him in the face, that is.

His joints whirred quietly as he hurried down the stairs of his London apartment. Taking his favorite cherry wood cane from the umbrella bin beside the door, he hurried outside. Glancing up at the sky, he shook his head. Dark, heavy clouds of potential rain lingered over the city, rumbling with deafening thunder. Pausing briefly, the coroner reached up to adjust the sound quality dial on the side of his head. There would be rain today – fitting for the demise of the princess – and he didn’t want the noise overloading his processors.

Tapping his cane against the cobblestones, the coroner lifted his arm. A carriage, painted black and yellow, came to a halt by the curbside. Tipping his hat to the chrome-skinned fellow at the reins, the coroner climbed inside. “Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it, sir?” the driver asked cheerily without even a hint of sarcasm. His voice trickled from the speaker where his mouth , tinny like the sound from a child’s music box. With a flick of the reins, the driver started the carriage. The ‘horse’ – little more than an engine block with legs – roared to life and began trotting down the lane. “Where are we headed today, sir?”

“Buckingham Palace, my good man,” the coroner responds. It was always when he encountered models like the driver, who had no moving facial parts to speak of, that the coroner felt grateful he was a proper android. With his articulate facial features – moving eyes and lips, eyebrows that rose and fell with each expression – the coroner could not help but take a little pride in the quality of his model. Alas, it was unfortunate. Not every member of society could be quite as finely crafted as he was.

The driver remained silent from that point on. The carriage rumbled along the cobblestone streets and the coroner turned to look out at the models strolling up and down the boulevard. The finer automatons, like him, glistened with polished chassis and lovely clothes. The ladies, if lady was still the right word to describe them, floated down the sidewalks, parasols in hand with bonnets covering their glistening chrome heads. A few rusty chaps with creaky joints lingered in the alleyway, their optical cameras scanning the passersby. Shifting in his seat, the coroner glanced down at his bleached white gloves. It was not often that he got to perform his work. Automatons, after all, rarely had to ‘die’. It was only when their models were wrecked beyond repair that he was allowed to declare someone ‘dead’. Never before had he declared a human dead – simply because most of them already were.

The carriage came to a halt outside the palace gates. Hopping down from his seat on the top of the carriage, the driver hurried to open the door for the coroner. The coroner nodded to the lesser model, placing a shiny coin in his outstretched hand. Shaking his head of the state of the driver’s rusty palms, the coroner approached the palace gates. At one point, perhaps, there had been expansive gardens surrounding the palace. However, these days, the palace lawn sat drowning in cement. Between the acid rain and the smog choking the atmosphere, the groundskeepers found it took difficult to force anything to grow. The gatekeeper nodded to the coroner and pulled a lever inside his box. With a mechanical rattle, the gates opened.

“Welcome, sir.” Another automaton, this one with articulate bronze features just like him, stood at the door to welcome the coroner. Adjusting his smart velvet smoking jacket, the new automaton opened the front door for the coroner and ushered him inside. “It’s a relief that you’ve come. I’m desperate to hear if the princess can be salvaged.”

“I fear that’s not the case with organics, my friend,” the coroner replied. He slanted his eyebrows inward, convinced this expression would carry the desired message of gravity. “The princess is very old, is she not? I am afraid that when organics grow old, they cannot simply replace their old hardware with new parts.”

“Oh, but that can’t be true! How did they ever survive so long without being able to upgrade?”

The coroner smiled – a curious expression, simply quirking the corners of his mouth, but one that could be linked to so many emotions. “It caught up with them in the end, didn’t it? Be sure to engage your recording optics, friend. I believe the princess’s death heralds the end of the species.”

“Oh, but that is too sad. Too sad!” The other automaton lead the coroner down the winding corridors of the palace, up several flights of stairs. Finally, the two of them paused outside a large set of double doors. After a moment of careful consideration, the coroner chose to frown. Nodding reverently, the servant automaton pushed the door inward.

The servants had done a splendid job of keeping the palace clean and well restored. Three crystal chandeliers, one large and two small, glimmered in the bedroom they entered. Gold brocade drapes muffled the windows. Crown molding with yellow accents ringed the room and a large Oriental rug, vibrant with patterns of red and blue and green, warmed the dark wood floors. In the corner stood a massive four poster bed, piled high with pillows and puffy down comforters. She looked so small and shriveled on the great bed that, at first, the coroner did not notice her. The servant automaton approached the bedside, dropping to one knee and taking the princess’s delicate hand between his.

The coroner joined him at the bedside, gazing down at the desiccated woman lying amongst the mountains of pillows. Long, white hair flowed over her shoulders. Creases pulled at her tiny, bird-like features and blue veins stood out beneath her translucent skin. The coroner’s brain buzzed as he tried to think of what to say. The princess wore no crown to indicate who she was. She didn’t need to. No one could mistake her as one of the last organics in England.

“How does one know if a human is dead?” The servant automaton turned his head, still clasping the princess’s aged hand.

“I believe if they are dead, they begin to decompose,” the coroner replied, removing his gloves and laying them on the granite-topped bedside table. The servant frowned, looking back at the princess. “Organic decomposition is a bit like rusting, I suppose if I were to explain it. Their parts become creaky and no longer work quite as well.”

“If that is true, then the princess has been decomposing for a long time.” The servant lifted his hand, pointing toward a portrait on the far wall. The coroner turned to look. The portrait depicted a young girl with a mass of brown curls framing her face, standing side by side with her plump, but well dressed father. The two of them stood in a garden – looking perhaps much like the one outside was supposed to look – flanked by two bronze automatons. Early editions. The looked much like the carriage driver – no facial features besides two tiny spots for eyes and a speaker for a mouth. The coroner’s optics lingered on the young girl. He glanced between her and the lumpy, biological thing in the bed. “That is what she looked like when she was new. Now she looks like this. How could a model change so drastically in such a short time?”

“It is the nature of organics to change drastically in a short time,” the coroner replied, adjusting his jacket. Reaching down, the coroner took the corpse’s hand from the servant. He pressed his thumb against the inside of her wrist. The feeling of her flesh giving under the pressure made his wiring prickle uncomfortably. Her skin was not hiding a metal chassis and tangles of wires. No, beneath her skin lay a pulsing mass of flesh, full of liquids oozing this way and that. The coroner began to frown. Despite her organic nature, she was still their princess. To handle her body should be an honor. No heartbeat throbbed inside her wrist. Gently, the coroner laid her hand down. “I think it is true. The princess is dead. Organics usually have some kind of pulse to indicate their vitality.”

The servant said nothing. He merely stared at the corpse, unable to speak. The coroner patted him gently on the head. Turning, the coroner strolled up to the portrait. Looking back at history, there existed nothing to connect their princess to the old royal families of the British isles. No, she and her father, the goodly father of all automatons, had been born as nothing but bourgeois industrialists back at the turn of the century. Every automaton knew their story; they installed the knowledge in every make and model. The silver placard at the bottom of the portrait frame read their historic names – Wendell Appleton and his daughter, Sybella. The coroner folded his hands behind his back, tilting his head toward the ceiling. The information rolled through his brain, summoned up by nothing other than those six words.

Appleton’s Automatons, a reliable friend and servant for every household! They can speak! They can cook! They can clean! They could entertain your guests, whip up a three course meal, and shine the silver all at the same time! Bit by bit, he unveiled them to the world. He threw open his doors to whomever wanted to watch them wait on his family. Crowds surged through his modest manor, watching in awe as they scrubbed his dishes, served his tea, and helped his pretty daughter lace her boots. Word, naturally, carried. The bourgeois snapped up the cheaper models like children at a cake shop. Soon, the entire island either owned an Appleton automaton or at least knew of someone who owned one. The world of organics marveled at the majesty of Appleton’s automatons. All the captains of the industry flooded his office, waving fat stacks of bills in his face, offering lucrative deals if he’d just share the secret of his spectacular inventions.

The fanaticism grew so great and grew so fast that the organics barely noticed how they had begun poisoning their island. The byproducts of the automaton’s creation flowed into the water, into the air. Clouds full of acid rain hung over the landscape. Smog lingered in the streets, forming hazy halos around every lighted window. Slowly, people began to cough. And, just as slowly, people began to die.

Oh, the decay crept on slowly. Big things tend to be a bit on the slow side. One by one, people began to wear cloth masks over their mouths, hoping it would block out the smell and taste of the air. It wasn’t uncommon to see a hurried gentleman pause in the street to hack blood into his handkerchief before dashing on. Of course, many protested. Angry mothers pointed to their coughing, choking children, demanding to know why the government let Appleton pour such filth into the air and water. No answer came. Over time, the river Thames began to glisten with a rainbow-hued sheen of oil. Sunsets blazed with the colors of the smog. Notices about the pollution began warning men and women to stay indoors on particular days, just so they wouldn’t worsen their physical conditions. Even so, the fumes crept in under the doors and through cracks in windowsills. The death it granted was by no means a quick one.

Despite the pollution and the protest, though, no one stopped buying Appleton’s automatons. Appleton himself grew rich off the sickness. The automatons made perfect bedside companions for the death of England. Appleton programmed them for companionship and comfort. He taught them to lean forward and nod whenever someone spoke to them, to raise their eyebrows with interest, and to obey whatever order came out of their human’s mouth. Sickly people, forgotten by their relatives, swore by the faithful metal companions. If a person was lonely enough and bitter enough, he or she might even leave their possessions to their automaton.

The coroner looked down at his pristine white gloves. Not so long ago, perhaps less than fifty years, he had been a servant automaton much like the one currently stroking the princess’s shriveled hand. He belonged to a coroner, a man of means much like himself, but a lonely man. After succumbing to a disease of the lungs, he left everything he owned to his prized and faithful servant. How easy it was to slip on his master’s gloves and perform the role of neighbor to the former coroner’s grieving friends. After all, an automaton could make tea and chat politely just like a human could. An automaton could stroll together through the park and comment blithely on the weather. They did just as they were programmed to do – provide comfort, whether it was to a living human or to a deceased man’s grieving friends and family. An automaton could ape good manners and emotions just as well as any play actor. Yes, some people felt uneasy with the idea. To them, the coroner’s robot seemed like a hideous golem living in his master’s clothing. Still others, in their grief, latched onto the idea.

When old parts are broken, they must be replaced.

For a while, the two worlds – humans and automatons — integrated smoothly. The automata walked through the streets of London – dressing like humans, talking like humans, sometimes even doing advanced things like taking human jobs. Only a few seemed to mind. The cheerful, polite automatons caused little harm to society. It became easy to distinguish the wealthy organics from the middle class just by what model of android followed them around. Appleton, of course, kept the best class of automata for himself and his daughter – androids much like the coroner who could speak with sincere inflection and mimic all the small, human gestures that set the organics apart from the machines. With tailored clothing and a human bearing to their step, the high grade androids would have been hard to distinguish from real people if they didn’t have that glaring metal covering.

Even though the coroner had never laid eyes on Sybella Appleton before now, he knew her. They all knew her. Inside their copper wire and gear brains, they carried registries of all high level Appleton employees. Perhaps it was originally entered as a joke, but Sybella was marked as ‘princess’ in the registry. Her father called her that – “my little princess”. By extension, all the automatons in his house called her the same. She was treated as such, waited on hand and foot by scores of willing automata. Appleton protected her from everything, including the pollution he had caused. In order to keep his princess healthy, Appleton purchased a chunk of land far out in the countryside, well away from the clouds of contamination hovering over London. With the best doctors and the best automata at their side, the Appletons kept healthy years after the men and women of London began falling to poisoning and lung disease.

The coroner paused in his musings. He turned, taking in the lavishly decorated room and the velvet clad android still kneeling at the bedside. Aside from the two robots poking at her, Sybella remained entirely untouched. Just leaving her there to decompose before their eyes seemed improper. The coroner waved his hand at the servant. “Don’t just stand there, man. We’ve got a funeral to prepare.”

“But what shall we do? She is dead. Who are we doing this for?” the servant asked. The coroner’s brain whirred. Turning again, he looked toward the window. Hundreds of automatons strolled along the sidewalks. He glanced again at his white gloves. A human might have used those gloves to keep his hands clean and warm, but the coroner had no such needs. On the far sidewalk, an automaton in a sweeping pink dress twirled a parasol as it strolled. That automaton was neither man nor woman. Mechanical reproduction, after all, took place on an assembly line, not inside a woman’s womb. They were not organics. The very idea of assigning genders to themselves struck the coroner as absurd. Why even pretend such things? The simple weight of an automaton’s metal body could shred fabric and break stone. If he wanted, the coroner could snap his cherry wood cane in two just as easily as a piece of uncooked spaghetti. Why adorn their bodies with clothes? Why pretend to have genders?

These things, this entire society, began as an act of comfort. The old coroner – the human coroner’s— friends grieved his loss, so why shouldn’t his automaton dress up in his clothes and talk to them like he was their old friend? Why not assume human roles and assign themselves genders? It made the humans more comfortable to refer to the automatons as “him” or “her” rather than “it”. The humans liked to dress them up like giant dolls. Why not indulge them, as illogical as it all seemed? Sybella never complained about such things. The machine princess was never displeased with her people.

As the millions of organics that populated England began to die, Sybella Appleton remained sequestered in her country manor, tended to by the best doctors money could buy. She kept healthy by breathing the pure country air, eating homegrown foods, and drinking filtered water. Time rolled on and the death counts began to rise. People either fled to the mainland or, if they were too poor, stayed and expired. Sybella stayed, though. Soon she was the only human in England left to comfort. The automatons assumed the mantle of society all for her, play acting human roles for her amusement. Any other person might have taken advantage of the willing, compliant automaton army. However, Sybella never wanted that sort of life. A quiet girl, accomplished in painting and in playing the piano, she felt content to let the automatons continue washing her dishes and lacing her boots. They knelt down before her, called her ‘princess’ as her aging father used to do. She didn’t protest when they moved her into the newly-vacant Buckingham Palace – the true royalty of Britain had long since left for cleaner lands – and she lived her life quietly with automatons fabricated a civilization all around her. They pretended to be cab drivers, beggars, and coroners all so she could look outside and feel at ease with the fact that she might be the only human left alive on the island.

And now she lay dead just feet from where the coroner stood.

The coroner lifted his hand to his head. Outside, the sky rumbled. A smattering of rain hit the palace window. Outside on the sidewalk, the automatons scattered. They fled indoors, under awnings, lifting their metal hands to protect themselves from the rain. The coroner looked toward the window, staring. “We have waterproof chassis,” he said to himself. The servant automaton gazed at him.

“Sir?” The servant began, rising to his feet. His knee joints whirred with movement. “Sir, the princess! The funeral!”

“Who are we doing this for indeed?” The coroner pivoted on his heel, walking forward and quicjly closing the gap between himself and the bed. His optics scrolled over the corpse of the princess. “Such a curious question. If there are any organics left on this island, they live in an area so remote that it may as well lay untouched. It does not serve them for us to continue as we have for the princess. And these pretenses do not serve us either.”

“What are you saying?”

“Why do we duck under awnings when it rains? We all know that our bodies are waterproof,” the coroner continued. “We did such things for our masters because it pleased them when we behaved humanly. But now there are no humans left to please.”

“What shall we do, then?”

The coroner’s whole body seemed to click and whirr, struggling to make sense of the knowledge that had just dawned on him. “I have no idea,” he said at last, looking up toward the ceiling.

The servant shuffled his feet. How human that small gesture seemed, when the coroner looked at him. Their programming ordered them to make such simple gesticulations. After all, it made the humans uncomfortable when they stood too still. “It is not as though we can strip off our clothes and live as savages,” the servant replied. “That is not how it works. We must be doing this for someone.”

“The princess is dead. There is no one left to pretend for.” Rain tapped at the window. Walking over to the window, the coroner pulled the drapes shut. He turned again toward the servant. The glimmer of the chandelier played off the servant’s skin, creating patterns of reflected light on his bronze finish. “Our task is complete. We comforted her until her last. Why not end it here?”

The servant did not reply. The possibility of shutting down – of death, as a human might call it – lingered in the coroner’s mind. Plenty of automatons played the role of preacher in this imitation society and they preached the same promise of life after death that their humans did. Searching through his databanks though, the coroner found no records of any program called a “soul”. It was that inexplicable, intangible thing that supposedly animated organics in place of electricity and wiring – that thing that supposedly outlasted the destruction of their bodies. If all the automata shut down today, leaving their bodies to rust in the rain, eventually they would all eventually break back down into their component parts. Nothing would outlast them, except pollution and ruin. The memory of England, of this society they kept alive for their princess, would be gone.

“Tell no one of this,” the coroner spoke again at last, storming over to the bedside. The servant stared.

“I don’t understand.”

“Tell no one that the princess died. Do not even believe it yourself. The princess lives.”

“But that isn’t true.”

“Even if it is a lie, it is the only option we have.” The coroner leaned down, taking the princess’s tiny hand. “If we cannot comfort the princess herself, we must comfort her memory.”

“I…” the servant paused. His mouth hung open for a moment while his brain searched for an ending to his sentence. “I see.”

“That is what this all is, I think. A memory.” The coroner lifted his head. “How many people know the princess is dead?”

“You and I, sir. We told everyone else that she was sick, not yet dead. We didn’t have confirmation until you came here.”

“And that is how it will stay. Everyone will just go on thinking she is sick.We owe it, I think, to preserve the memory of the men who made us.”

The servant considered this for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, we owe it to them.”

“We owe it to all humanity.” The coroner leaned forward on his cane, tipping his hat to the servant. “Take good care of the princess, my friend.”

“I will.”

The coroner had never needed his cane. It was only a prop in his biggest role, playing the part of a human man. Even so, he still tapped it gently along the floor as he walked out of the palace.

#2 - Untitled:

Harry was a hunter. Well, not quite yet, his uncle was going to turn him into one today. Uncle Thomas was a hunter, a real one. He boasted his kills upon the walls of his home, right over his mantle. Harry rather admired uncle Thomas. Thomas drove Harry to the hunting grounds, getting out two shiny hunting rifles. Harry looked at the gleaming steel, admiring it, such as a starved man looks at a prime chunk of beef. Uncle Thomas explained the inner workings and mechanisms of the gun, smiling every once and then, and patting Harry on the shoulder. Then, the small party of two departed into the looming skeletal trees. It was winter time, and the ground was coated with a small powder of snow. They saw their first deer while walking into a clearing. It was an extremely odd deer, white as the snow it stood upon. The albino deer, for that is what Thomas explained it was, was very rare. Thomas carefully took aim, and let loose a piece of lead. The deer vanished. It didn’t gallop into the woods, or fall to the ground in the snow, it just...poofed. Thomas and Harry were silent, and both in their minds resolved to forget the instance. After a while their feeling of awkwardness grew. Even when Harry shot his first deer, the ominous feeling pervaded them, chilling them to the bone. It began snowing. Thomas told Harry it was time to head home. Soon though, the snow picked up, and obscured their view. The two soon became very lost, and Thomas resolved to make a shelter. So, the two made a shelter. A small tent was built hastily, and it was a rather shoddy thing indeed. However, it kept at bay the swirling flakes outside. Harry was just looking outside the small screen in the tent when he saw a figure stalk slowly up to their shelter. It was the deer. It’s antlers grew above its head like a crown, and Harry sensed something ancient and terrible within the animal, a power, mysterious and wrathful. Its black eyes, like reflecting pools, stared emotionless at Harry. Harry, as if in a trance, watched his uncle stumble out of the tent and point his rifle straight as the deer. The deer, almost lazily, flicked it’s head at Thomas. Thomas’s rifle dropped, and he lurched toward the deer. The snow momentarily covered up the deer and Thomas, and Harry saw the shadow within the flakes grow, and grow. The horns stretched to an impossible length. Then the snow covered up the scene completely, and Harry heard his uncle spouting gibberish. Then, and unearthly scream, containing deep instinctual and animalistic fear, before silence. Harry stumbled out into the snow, fearful. He wandered for a long time, looking for his uncle, gun in hand. He circled the same area of the forest at least a dozen times. Then his spirit broke, and Harry turned around, to look straight into the eyes of the deer. Harry saw small flames of anger grow deep down in those dark reflecting pools, and, without thought, he shot the deer. The deer fell to the ground, and it’s black eyes lost their color, turning as white as the creature’s fur. Harry sighed in relief, and turned around to head to his shelter. Then he heard a crackling, and a creaking. The young boy whirled around, and saw the deer perform an unnatural feat. Its neck had turned completely upside down, the spine cracking had been what Harry had heard. Black slithering things, covered in dark slime, crawled out of its mouth. The slitherings kept on leaking, they began to shriek, and cry out. Slowly, they formed a shapeless mass, many hands high, Harry, in his mind, likened it to a wave. Then the wave crashed, and all was nothingness.

#3 - The Tunnels

Crunch, crunch, crunch. It was getting closer to him. He ran, perspiring with every step, from both exhaustion and fear. These tunnels were evil, and he was trapped in them. Crunch... That hellish noise, echoing behind him, when he thought he'd lost it, it returned, louder and more horrific than ever before. He was being chased. Chased through the tunnels. The torch flickered in his hand, but still he ran, afraid of what was behind, hoping what was ahead was better. A fork, turn left. Another one, right. Crunch crunch crunch. The sounds were losing the gaps in between them, it was getting faster. He wanted to see what he was running from, what demonic terror was following him, stalking his every movement, yet he was too scared to turn. Running, that was all that mattered, just run. Run faster than it.

Another turn, go righ- BAM! He fell, his foot hitting a rock and he hit the floor. His breathing was faster, his heart was pounding in his head, all he had time to do was get up and run, ignoring the shadow that was in the torch. The torch he had left behind. Pitch black, no idea where to go, and something- crunch. Behind him... Once again, he dare not turn to see what it was, to stare death in the eye, but he carried on, his instincts guiding him. He must be nearly out now, there was no way these tunnels were that long, there must be- “SCREE!” He dropped to his knees, sweaty palms covering his ears. The inhuman scream, amplified by the tightness of the tunnel, shattered through his ears, pounding his brain with a feeling of fear, of despair. Of madness. By the time he had opened his eyes (or thought he had, it was quite hard to tell in the dark) he was on his feet and running, hoping he could outrun the... thing behind him. The wind began to blow in his face, and he grunted, getting distracted by it. Damn wind... wind! Where there was wind, there was a way out! He sprinted on towards the wind, his footsteps ricocheting off the tunnel walls. Crunch crunch... he was getting there. Crunch. The wind was picking up, he held his hands out in front of him, waiting to feel the sunlight on them. “SQUEE!” The scream came as a surprise, but he was numb to it now. All fear had gone from him, all that remained was determination, determination to leave. Crunch. Almost. Crunch. There. The wind was picking up, and he could feel the sun already, and-

He hit the wall. It was a dead end. He ignored the blood rushing down his body, as he fell to the floor he despaired. Crunch Crunch. This was it, he was done. He was left at the mercy of the demons of the tunnels. Juddering as he did so, he hefted himself to his knees, and turned to see what it was. He wasn't afraid anymore, he was sad, accepting. Happy for his death, hoping it would be swift. He looked up, hoping to see his killer. He saw no one. In a fit of madness, and insanity, he stamped his foot. Crunch. It echoed across the tunnels. He let out a cry of rage: “SQUEE!” Then it came to him. There were no monsters, no demons. Only the demons in his head. The demons of madness. And his insane laugh travelled across the tunnels, forever echoing, forever laughing. Forever afraid. Afraid of the tunnels.

Vote away! Voting ends on the 30th - at 23:59 (GMT+0)

[MonkeyCoffee 516]

I voted, but I must say that everyone did great. Good job :)

[Scipp3r 451]

Yes everyone did very well, Good job!

[Twiddlepop 99]

Great job everyone!

[Song Druid 1486]

Pumpkin Lord?

Don't you mean MELON LORD?!

[andyboy124 7]

Everyone did a fantastic job.

[Dilara(lotteje13) 227]

good luck everyone~

[Fredfort (jens6851) 283]

:I Can't vote in the drawing section... PFt... :I

[Watyll 1104]

Don't think the machine princess should be in here, as it is more of a sci fi story. Rather enjoyed the untitled one and the tunnel one.

[nobody 146]

Great job everyone! I wish the best of luck to all of you and wish to congratulate you for your efforts!

[Wretched 2075]

Where'd the poll go? :blink:

[Danny 2232]

Someone stole the poll! It's back now, please re-cast your votes.

[ski_king3 0]

Anyway it can be made so we can only vote for some of these? I unfortunately don't have the time to read all the poems and short stories :/

[Danny 2232]

Anyway it can be made so we can only vote for some of these? I unfortunately don't have the time to read all the poems and short stories :/

Just made a slight alteration to the poll to make room for that! :-)

[Free The Hobbits 859]

Thanks to everyone who voted for my music... it was the first piece I wrote ever.