Y'all might want to get in on this:

Weird Tales writing contest!


You’ve seen the latest wave of spam — you know, the faux outrageous news headlines: “Osama trains goats for tactical bombing.” “Laika the Russian space dog returns to Earth.” “Children admit to being little shits: Video.” Isn’t it a shame the headline is all we get? So here at Weird Tales we’re inviting YOU to turn this spam into… um… spam-ade!

Write a flash-fiction story — under 500 words — based on a spam you’ve received. Send your story, along with the headline that inspired it, to contest@weirdtales.net before 9 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 4. The Weird Tales editorial team will judge them, and three winners will be announced at the Weird Tales reception on Friday, Aug. 8 at the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver!

The first-, second-, and third-place winners will all be published online at WeirdTalesMagazine.com the week of August 11. The first- and second-place winners will also receive three free issues of Weird Tales; and the first-place winner will also receive an autographed copy of Ekaterina Sedia’s incredible new novel The Alchemy of Stone.

(UPDATE! If you’ve thrown away all your own spam, writer Adam Israel has compiled a humongous collection of spam headlines here. Be forewarned that adult language abounds therein.)

We encourage you to spread this announcement far and wide. But note: entries from Nigeria will be examined very closely.

Category: News & Events

Partly from WSN and partly from the contest idea:

No editing as yet...



Atlanta Green, as American as the Coke bottle shades he’s named for. Look at him move the cue, slick strokes like the shape of the bottle itself, a woman’s hips there, in that glass. Listen to him wheeze chalk in the pool hall. An old store, from before, he’ll tell you they used to sell mattresses, not as much call for that, these days, as you can imagine.

He likes to hang out at the bar, slung under signs for old beer that buzz like the insects doing sorties around the strip lights of the tables. Little bombing runs over the felt fields. He hauled in those light himself, he’ll tell you, the lights too. Used to be part of what they called an aquarium, buy him a drink, he’ll tell you about that too.

Now he’s sipping his whiskey and pop. It’s flat, he tells the lad across from him, eyes all shadow and furtive movement, the kind you think of as thin, he tells him about pop that had bubbles and how it was good.

And the kid listens, because, other than play pool, that’s what people come here to do.

Atlanta Green, he ain’t that old, but he has stories, like how it was before everyone went away.

“But they aren’t away Atlanta, the Kid says, “Not really”

“Might as well be, for all the good they do us. Unplug the fuckers, one of these days.”

But he just lined up his shot, rolled the blue planet across the felt and into the black hole. He called it The Cosmic Warp, the shot, most days. How the ball snuck around the others.

He sucked on his teeth, took the kid’s money. Always smiling, “Paid a lot for these teeth he said, why the fuck I’d want to give them up?”

And when they were good, these kids, outsiders, they could ask Green for a fortune and he’d grant it. Had them all, little printed out fragments of wisdom,, in a leather briefcase, accordion style in there, like breathing when he opened them> And each one a piece of wisdom from before the people went away, from before they went “inside.” But it had come from there, these Zen koans, these Horoscopes. Filled what he called their “inboxes.” Stuff like to overflowing with the stuff though the kid couldn’t imagine how. And for his trouble (and the money Atlanta had too from him) he reached into his prize box of prophecies and drew one out.

Yellow pages of pleasure!
Its time to upgrade your mickey mouse in scruge mc.duck ! http://www.tallmade.com

And the kid took it and saw the chalk print whorl of Atlanta’s print in one corner and he read it because he knew how.

He would puzzle over it, over the meaning, over all the mysteries Atlanta’s bag, and Atlanta himself contained in his old organic storage.

Yellow pages of pleasure!
Its time to upgrade your mickey mouse in scruge mc.duck ! http://www.tallmade.com


In time he would know it to be true.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
The last light falls on the ruins, jigsawed against the sky. We can imagine those pieces missing, snapping back into place, completing them.

She intrudes against it, her silhouette offends the mute stones with its presence, as if she might speak, drown out those voices who built them.

We do not belong here, with our tools and theories and gridlines.
...

There had been shamans and gods here. There had been worshipers and men screaming to blank skies as they died, there had been blood and tears and other small evidences of suffering. Kings had bathed in gold here, time had been found, tamed, recorded.

Now there was only the ruins of the stepped pyramid jigsawed on the horizon with her silhouette intruding at its top. She does not belong here, we do not belong here, with are trowels and screens and theories and measurements.

I'm not sure if you tried to rewrite the other passage you posted before or if you are trying something else, but I like the other one even though I mangled it a bit as I thought it could be tighter. These two new versions (if that is what they indeed are) I don't like so much. You lost something there.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Heh. I liked filmic, though, even if Firefox's spell checker doesn't.

I liked the imagery it brought up but not the word. It seemed wrong.

Maybe 'cinematic'.

quote:

Originally posted by Hasa:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
The last light falls on the ruins, jigsawed against the sky. We can imagine those pieces missing, snapping back into place, completing them.

She intrudes against it, her silhouette offends the mute stones with its presence, as if she might speak, drown out those voices who built them.

We do not belong here, with our tools and theories and gridlines.
...

There had been shamans and gods here. There had been worshipers and men screaming to blank skies as they died, there had been blood and tears and other small evidences of suffering. Kings had bathed in gold here, time had been found, tamed, recorded.

Now there was only the ruins of the stepped pyramid jigsawed on the horizon with her silhouette intruding at its top. She does not belong here, we do not belong here, with are trowels and screens and theories and measurements.

I'm not sure if you tried to rewrite the other passage you posted before or if you are trying something else, but I like the other one even though I mangled it a bit as I thought it could be tighter. These two new versions (if that is what they indeed are) I don't like so much. You lost something there.

I agree, but I still need to make the first one less "on the nose."

It's the first lines in a section of the novel I plan to start tomorrow.

Nora, perhaps, yes, that was what had attracted me to begin with. Not merely her youth, for many women were young, but her possession of it. She knew what she had, she was aware of its scarcity. She was unready to commit to that life which will become yours forever, that face you shall always wear. I wondered often if she had married me only because she thought I would die, or because she wished marriage to be among the experiences she had on planet earth.

Her soul sucked at life, bled it. A grasping, discovering, wanting thing. A beauty, a collector of the most heady emotions of our species. She existed to me outside the culture of man. She was an eternal observer and occasional participant. There were times I felt as if she watched us all as from behind the thick glass of a zoo.

I stopped, wiped the water from my hair and brown and turned round to see her.

Those submarine depths, bent the reclineraity of the light, the stalactites and stalagmites enclosed me, This flooded cave was womb like, natal, as if I swam in the amniotic fluid of the Earth. Surely things were born here, life sprung from pools such as these. There was a raw edge to it which hurt one to look at, and there were the bones, so many of them.

Allen had explained that these holes in the world which led to this network of subterranean caves we littered with the bones of sacrificial victims. It had been long suspected but it took 20th century technology to prove it true. A field of bones, a carpeting of them, crusted with biomass, under the pressure of the water, they had grown into the crystalline structures down here. The bones of the dead had become the armatures around which strange things accreted; worlds. A reclamation was going on there, but not such a one as I could wrap my mind around.

I swam down, strafed the bottom of the cave, to see the bones, the eyeless skulls, something less that human, reductive, architectural. Pots, some broken, others yet intact, with the remnant colors of the brushes that had once touched them, brought them to life. Other human things, debris, the detritus of life, of ritual. I kicked away, down the long mouth of a tunnel, down the ribbed throat of it and into another chamber. There lay aortas and ventricles, slick with the wetness, amniotic, spectral, half formed and making me thing of evolution. Fish swam here, many colored, their fins translucent with blood vessels and bones that might one day lead them to crawl out these beautiful abysses.

I dove deeper still, into a well, straight down, light receding behind me: Spaceship Man, self-contained, into the negating blackness of another kind of space. I fell, slow motion descent, water buoying against gravity’s pull. Creatures unreal, bioluminescent, mind bending fell upward above me. Then something happened to my air. I had gone too far and panicked.

No one could hear me call for help but I screamed all the same. Pressure built around my nasal pages, gravity working its way to the warm meat center of my skull. Surely others had died like this? Paddled futiley, apoplectically, toward their gods, their next life?

There was a rasping coming from the air tank, it reverberated inside the mask, around the cold walls of the well.

I thought, this was my life and it was over.
Suddenly I was jerked back toward the light but did not wish to go.

A homeless person is walking down a street by the zoo at two o’clock in the morning.

There’s noise coming from inside, from over the wall, like some sort of odd party.

He breaks in to see what it is, and indeed a bunch of young kids are drinking and listening to music. The animals are acting weird.

He asks for a cigarette.

There’s a brilliant flash from the sky. The kids smile. And everything is bright white as he falls down.

He comes to and it’s morning. He stands up. Except he’s not a bum anymore. He’s about twenty years younger, like magic. He wears expensive shoes, good clothes. He can move around, where before he had problems.

There’s a pad of paper and a pencil on the ground. He picks it up, and starts to draw. He hasn’t ever been able to draw a day in his life. But he is now. And it looks fantastic, out of this world. It’s a lion with wings.

He can’t remember his own name, but he decides to head over to the main intersection downtown, and do drawings of the million things running through his head, and hand them to people on the street for nothing.

she is so excited, you can feel it. its coming off her like electricity. 1000-watt grin and a dreamy look in her eyes.
she can't sit still. she can hardly concentrate. there are way too many diet soda (none of the sugar but twice the caffiene) cans sitting on her desk.
you walk by and she's bouncing one foot on the floor while staring off into space.
"how much longer?"
she snaps out of the daydream and looks at you, flashing that grin. you laugh, and she replies "just a little less than 3 days!"
you keep walking but peek over your shoulder at her. the grin is still there and she's so excited it hurts.

It was a bright day. They walked with hidden intent, appearing aimless, as kids do, to anyone that cared enough to observe them. They were city kids, but not from this part of town. They passed the football among themselves, as they made their way. Adam squished it, satisfied with the give of the rubbery foam, the familiarity. He ran his fingers along the parabolic indentation of the Nerf. It was black and white when he got it for Christmas in fourth grade. They had had the football almost as long as they had had each other. Now the black half was cracking, revealing the yellowish Nerf flesh inside. What had been the white half was now a dirty gray, cruddy with scuff marks. It had endured countless games, countless tosses, and countless squeezes. A few times, they had whipped it at each other in anger, or frustration at the small betrayals that come as a cost of best-friendship.

Nerf flesh, nice!

Also got a good feel from Stagedrifter's piece.

the weird tales contest is closed, winners were announced. not including me. oh well. apparently there is a list of "honourable mentions" to come. i guess no problem with me posting my entries.



Ninja attack in New York Times Square.
----------------------------------------------------------
My phone beeps to indicate an incoming message. I glance round; it's
sat on the shelf beside my work station, amongst the clutter that
gathers there. I glance back at the computer, I hit save, and reach
for the phone. It's a text message from Dave:

>Ninja attack in New York Times Square.

I re-read the message. And again. I send Dave a message back.

>Are you on drugs or what?

He responds instantly.

>Turn on the TV! Dude! President making speech.

I spin the chair round, grabbing the remote from the shelf. Pushing
the button as I swivel round, the CNN popping up on the screen. And
sure enough, there he is on the screen, with the ticker trail below
him

>Ninja attack in New York Times Square.
>There have been casualties. Numbers unknown.

The TV shows a clip from Times Square, footage from a tourist's
camcorder, black clad warriors appearing from shadows and just
silently stabbing people and vanishing again. People spinning round,
and running, the camera footage starting to shake as the person gets a
clue and starts to run as well. Then the camera shifts and the
president is talking, standing behind that familiar podium, looking as
professional as ever, "My fellow Americans, this is a grim day; the
forces of the shadow warrior have entered the War on Terror and struck
against us this day. As I speak, the army are carrying out my orders
to prepare for a retaliatory strike against Ninjastan. As before and
as always we will not suffer a terrorist to walk among us. We will
fight to maintain our freedom. Thank you, questions?"

I hit the mute button. Wow. Ninja. In New York. I turn back to the
computer; bring up a Wiki for Ninja. The ultimate killer, shadow
warriors that can come out of the dark, assassins. I spin back to the
TV. Sitting stunned and slack mouthed, I watch the president answering
questions, while the feeds tick along the bottom, reporting continued
attacks. There are Ninja everywhere! People are dying everywhere. Oh
god! How did it come to this? What did we ever do to you Ninjastan?

Suddenly there is a commotion on the TV; I turn the sound back up.
Behind the President a figure has emerged from the darkness. A figure
dressed entirely in black. Only those inscrutable eyes show. Fuck me,
it's a Ninja. A ninja and he is totally going to kill the president!
Are people seeing this? The president turns. A blade erupts from his
back. There is blood everywhere, journalists are screaming, security
are pushing forward. Too late. The ninja retrieves his blade, makes a
curt bow to the camera, and vanishes back into the shadows.

My phone buzzes, Dave again:

>Did you see that? Oh god, the president is dead! What do we do now?

I reply.

>I saw, Ninja killed the President of the USA! We fight!

and....

Queen Elizabeth abducted in Tibet
-------------------------------------------

Without warning, the monks move. Elizabeth's gloved hand goes to her mouth, covering her shock. Her guards killed with deadly moves. A needle pricks her neck from behind, she feels a sharp flare, then feels weak, sleepy, and falls. "Grab her," one orange clad monk shouts. They bundle her into the back of a waiting car. Inside a monk shaves her head, with assured motions of a battery operated trimmer. With that done they strip her majesty, wrapping orange robes round her. When they arrive at their destination, all anyone sees is a group of monks shuffling passed, no one spots the British monarch in their midst - her head shaven and clad in orange.

Elizabeth wakes, she finds herself tied to a chair in front of a desk, surrounded by monks. On the desk there is a camcorder, a laptop, a pile of paper, and a microphone. She looks around, before speaking,"One is not impressed, nor is one fooled, you are no more Tibetan monks than one is, you are Chinese agents!"
"Curses," one of the monks curses, "she has seen through our cunning disguises!"
"It matters not," another monk replies, "for she will have no choice but to do our bidding!"
The Queen scowls, furiously.

A monk holds a script near her face, tells her to read it, while another monk films her for broadcast on the internet. She skims the words, clearly this is an attempt to discredit the peaceful freedom movement of Tibet, and Elizabeth is determined not to play any part in this.
"One will not be reading this speech."
"What are you going to do to stop us having our way," one of the monks slaps the shaven headed Queen. The chair rocks, with more momentum than one might expect, Elizabeth having kicked off from the ground at the same time as she was slapped. Monks dive for her, but with Houdini like abilities, she has managed to free herself from the ropes. The Queen rises from the flock of monks, untied, fists clenched like lethal weapons. She unleashes her fury, with a left, with a right, with a well placed foot to the place no man wants a well placed foot. There is crying, there is shouting, there is a world of hurt. Soon, only one monk is left standing against Elizabeth.
"But how?" he whimpers.
"You did not really think that one wasn't trained to defend oneself? One will leave you alive, you will tell the world that Her Majesty is a woman of true power, and that Great Britain is made of sterner stuff!"

LOL, funny. Marquess of Queensbury rules?

what ever rules it takes!

third one, i just typed from notebook. and pretty short given 500 words to work with.

Britney Spears Stashed Guns In Her Vagina - Papparazzi Duck For Cover
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Britney kills again. You’ll all have heard the story by now. I was there when it started. Just another of those opportunistic photo sessions. Sleazy pics of has been superstar in all the trash papers. What can I say, it pays the bills. So the car pulls up outside the club, you know the type. And there is a buzz, its Britney. Folk yawn. We want young blood, we want something fresh. But we get ready anyway, camera poised for the doors opening. You don’t go far in this business if you aren’t prepared for the unexpected. Here she comes, slow and careful, a short skirt. She smiles, knowingly, her legs parting. Here we go again. No knickers. We click away dutifully. Looking back at the pictures, I missed those first spidery legs that emerged, clamping to her thighs. We all noticed that phallic barrel emerge from inside her body though. A few of us stopped then, but there is always someone taking every last picture. As the thing clicked into place she opened fire. Ten members of the paparazzi died that day. Britney was back in the headlines again. Britney abducted by aliens. Alien technology conceals weapons in Britney’s vagina. Britney Spears Stashed Guns In Her Vagina - Papparazzi Duck For Cover. After that it was every man for himself, the packs of clamouring photographers all shouting and panicked.
“Me Britney!” click, click, “Shoot me!”

That had me laughing out loud. Good thing the office is pretty empty. I don't know where everyone is, Olympic hangovers???

how could i resist when given headlines like those

viewers like you

Papier maché, tangy-smelling rubber tubing. Ragged canvas, stretched over flimsy makeshift frames and walls; crudely sketched bodies, painted-on, insinuated with basic materials. The things she created with simple elements like that, some glue, cardboard and lots of paint, were intriguing, yes. But art?
I wasn't qualified to confirm it.
The temp job as editorial assistant at a local museum left her with ample time to experiment, play, plot. Kept pestering public and private organizations with samples and portfolios in hope of a grant, funding; exhibition space, promotion, sponsorship. Anything.
Always trying to meet those conveniently connected, to squeeze inside.

One day she called. The big break. Her enthusiasm for the news, making it easier to avoid recent unfinished conversations.

- Uh, that far? Do you need to get vaccinated to go there..?
- Very funny. Well... in fact, yes, I need to. Rainforest, jungle, whatever. Tropical diseases and shit...
- Have you read up on the situation there? Not exactly the most stable... or the regime being known for its' support of the arts.
- They seem ok, there's a new media center in development, the academics there are young and full of crazy ideas, there's some big money sponsorship in the way of fully equipped labs... the head of culture happens to be a very good friend of a high official, so he's been given ample resources.
- Well, good luck.
- As always, the eloquence... hope your arm gets better, by the way.
Totally in character, she didn't acknowledge the cause of my injuries.

Several months passed. Initial deluge of messages and confusing photos; her, in command of an incredibly young team of helpers, a couple clips of what seemed like installations (shots of her beaming proudly in the corner of a white room with a crew of actors, crawling on the floor with a hard hat, up on a ladder, directing helpers set up some rig...). But communication soon stopped.

My elbow began throbbing again. Difficulty with certain degrees of movement. Bad sign. Or maybe just the humidity.

Now and then, an odd feeling, recognizing some material reminiscent of her... style, in the following months.
But not on art journals.

A year and a half after her last message, saw her on a busy street corner as I went out for coffee with a co-worker. Got near enough to catch the 'would you have a spare coin, thank you' spewed on the passerby, freezing my smile. Had to be another of her performances, her art pieces, her beautiful assaults on the unwary.
Had to be that.
- Uh... hello! When did you return? Why didn't you call?
- Mmh. Hello. How's things, eh...
Fuck, I thought. She had that glassy look in her vacant eyes, the one she had promised never to indulge in again.
Coworker gets a cell call and answers it, keeping his gaze on us.

My coffee gets cold and the pie stale as I watch her methodically consuming today's special. The waitresses at their station, trying not to ogle at her. She's not dirty, just a bit unkempt. She keeps rubbing her hands. A lot more gray strands of hair than I remember. The skin around her sunken eyes looks paper dry. She's tan.
The sight of a serrated knife in her hand ('had to order the steak...') is unsettling. I try to avoid the old habit of not losing sight of it.

Coworker's cup is empty by now, but can't look away from the finely woven pattern in her too-often-washed cotton dress. Or at her ratty waterproof coat.
- I take it things didn't went too well there, in the end...
- It couldn't last. Made a bundle, though. Too bad it's all but gone, now.
- Excuse me for asking, but... was there a show, in the end?
- You saw what they did with my stuff.
Remembered the strange reaction certain visuals prompted in me. Images not on exhibition reviews, trade magazine articles or art blogs.
Not in advertising material, not in music videos.
Those images were in the 24/7 newsfeeds. They were on the street, under heavy headlines. And later, the other ones, surfacing on fringe sites, later seeping to the mainstream channels.
Those images everyone reacted to.

Her bony fist; white knuckles that used to be delicate and tender. Her fierce stare, straight into my eyes. The residues of rage, deep there, but calm detachment seems to have settled over it.
Flashback of her visual statements, her one-and-two person shows captured so long ago, in analog tape; the n-th generation copies planted for passerby to discover. Back in the time when such a finding didn't summon trained robots.

- You saw it. Everybody saw it. My art. You saw what they did with it.

She wipes the plate clean with a bread crust, then she eats it. Grabs the last remaining bread piece off the wicket basket, wraps it up in a paper napkin and stashes it inside her coat.

She grins briefly and then stares at me, tilting her head. Her expression, serious yet childishly curious.
-Are you still mad at me?

Me, failing to find the knife on the table.

7.51am. glory! that made my day. its all down hill from here.