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Iron Henry UnzipsIt was the early hours of the morning when they arrived at the castle Ferris called home. He was glad to see it--Henry could tell from his face.

Henry was gladder still to have Ferris home. His heart was still like a sledgehammer in his chest, still painful with every beat, and he knew that as soon as he had some downtime he would have to open up and adjust his settings. Not that he expected downtime anytime soon, what with a wedding and all scheduled for the upcoming day.

Henry extended his hand to the princess first, and she shyly took it as she descended from the carriage. He made her nervous--he was used to that. He did his best to smil
PromptA man stood by his window, all crossed arms and tired eyes. His dreams of flying like the birds had disappeared long ago. The night was swallowing him whole, but so was nonchalance. It was a suitable escape.

The cars ran down the street, their lights distorted in the post-storm puddles on the asphalt; the water spewed by their wheels rained on umbrellaed youths. It hurt to look at the vehicles crashing down the highway, crazy and epileptic and dancing in the rain. They were nothing more than a force of nature, he assured himself, suddenly cold and mechanical. They were machines with people trapped inside and what they did was uncontrollable.
Nano Day 02******

He grew like a young tree, like a pig fed on milk and molasses. Anwen watched him, unaware of her own growing, unaware of the maturity that was fed into her with this new, helpless thing in the house.

Her mother and father called him Idwal. For those first few weeks Anwen's time with him was limited. Her mother kept to her bed, and, once the midwife was gone, kept the baby close beside her, persuading her husband to move the Moses basket into their bedroom so that she could lie near him, could sleep when he slept and wake before he awoke. When he cried, his mother picked him up, wrapped in his wrappings, and nestled him to her breast
Yellow Brick FrontThe bakery at the end of the block had a yellow brick façade, so you could always pick it out as soon as you turned off the main drag onto the cross street, and it's what made the street famous. Between the rows and rows of look alike houses with slanted roofs and same-old red brick fronts, there stood the bakery like a golden gift wrapped box waiting to be opened.

It had everything you possibly could have imagined; the gooiest chocolate chip cookies, the sweetest pizzelles, and the fluffiest, richest bread. Half a block away you could smell you were coming up on it, and every Sunday the baker who owned it would bring his trays out to t
The Cloud BookThe last time I learnt to read, it was from clouds.

They hung on the bald horizon, and I could feel what they were saying without suddenness or ceremony. They lowed like cows on the slopes of my home which was not my home.

My country lay spread out behind me. I blinked and it was gone.

They lowed goodbye –

I did not weep.

*

"Are you cold?" Anna asked. Slap-slap-slap went the sea on the edge of the boat, trying to pen a letter. I stared out across the water.

She tried again. "I'll get you some bread."

"You asked me if I was cold."

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Impossible ExistenceMine is an impossible existence.

Every day, I do the impossible. I get up, eat Cornflakes, go to work. I work in an office. It is quiet. I like that.

I walk through the park on my way home. The birds are singing. The boys are playing football between the trees. Brown, crackling leaves are thick underfoot.

When I get home, I kiss my warm, flustered wife as she hurries past me out the door. She is heading to her shift over at the hospital. She works the evening shift on Wednesdays. She does impossible things there.

The kids - Annie and Michael -  are playing in and out of the hall, chasing each other. The TV is on in the front room. Tom is
True StoryThis is my story. I wrote it. With my own two hands I have crafted this tale, right from my own imagination. I created it from nothing, or rather, from scraps left over from a dictionary. It starts with a guy whose name escapes me. He does something that you wouldn't believe, (or maybe you would. You can be kind of like that sometimes.) Bad things happen, and he loses faith a few times, and just when you think life could never be good again, it is. He doesn't live happily ever after, but the problem he was facing is resolved to your satisfaction. I just wish I could remember the details.

You'd love it; it was just your kind of story. It had
Of Idiocy and InevitabilityIt is a generally acknowledged law amongst those who devise and create mechanical contraptions that, if there is a way to use a device for something other than its intended purpose, someone will invariably find it. There also exists a second law, related directly to the first, which, in plain English, states the following: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And (though this is generally not mentioned around paying customers) there is a third.

'Never assume intelligence on the part of your client.'

A good mechanic, holding to these three principles, might flatter himself that he could create a mechanism or machine which would be, in c
Dying WishThe little boy came to her as she died. She lay flat in a hospital bed, was surrounded by hospital machinery, hissing and beeping the way hospital machines do.  The boy was nude, and glowed faintly, as if he were a poorly matted special effect.

"Are you an angel?" she gasped out.  It was hard to breathe, even harder to talk, and she was certain it came out slurred.  But he smiled just the same, shook his head.

"No.  What's an angel?"

Despite herself, she chuckled… an awful sound.  He moved in close, took her hand, waited for her wracking cough to subside.  His hand was small
The Fossegrim's BrookIt was an old village that stood near the forest. However, it was not pristine in its age; it had been burnt down, rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt again, bombed, then rebuilt yet again through the centuries, so the village that stood there was old, yet new, with modern buildings and sensibilities.

The only thing that remained unchanged was the location and the forest. It was untouched by the modernity of the village, as if the only reason the village's location had not changed was the grip of the forest itself.

Like all places with history, there were stories about the forest. Old grandmothers still told tales of the Fossegrim's brook, hidden d
Esther's IlluminationOn her twentieth birthday, they burned out the sun.  Morris said that since the sun was broken and night no-longer turned to day it meant that she'd be twenty forever.  She didn't quite know what to think about that.  Her birthday was the beginning of a new era, one that everyone whispered would be ceaseless subjugation.

Perhaps all this time without sunlight was driving her mad, but she could almost admire their conquerors.  The invading army had to tunnel down through solid rock just to reach the outer defenses.  The siege that followed lasted ten years…half of her lifespan.  The evil other lie outside, waiting with malicious patience
Sun on a Rainy dayHave you ever seen the sun rise on a rainy day? It would be a Sunday, and you would be blinking the sleep out of your eyes and stumbling down the stairs to go fetch the morning paper before it was soaked through and the soft rays of dawn would sneak around the clouds and make the day worthwhile.   You would be chuckling sleepily as you shook the rain from your hair, victoriously wielding the paper above your head like a trophy as you plopped down in your favorite seat in the kitchen, right next to mine. You would be laughing with me, talking with me and stealing bacon off my plate like the child you were inside. I would be giggling, smacking your hand away. We would be blissful, peaceful in the soft drum of raindrops on the rooftop as sun beams filtered through to us, illuminating what  would be a perfect morning.
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Toccata and Fugue: CauchyToccata

Augustin-Louis Cauchy was born in Paris as the French Revolution began to stir. Politics would flavour the rest of his life as his strongly held views swung him in and out of favour with the succession of authorities who took over France in the wake of the revolution. One colleague went so far as to declare that Cauchy was "mad and there is nothing that can be done about him." Nonetheless, nobody denied his mathematical genius. Cauchy published more papers than any mathematician but Leonhard Euler, covering nearly every topic in mathematics and applied mathematics.

Two of his most famous results are vector inequalities. Vectors can
To Repeat
Half a year before the crippling of Crown Prince James III.

Prince Oswald, even at fifteen years of age, was a fidgeting child. One of the things he more greatly despised about himself was his inability to stop moving even when the situation called for it. As it was, the most he could do was clasp his hands and hold them in his lap, squeezing them together in an attempt to soothe the impulses that assaulted him whenever he became nervous.

Oswald was nearly a man, and his teacher should not have made him so nervous, yet he did.

Oswald was simply not good indoors. He was certain that if his teacher had taken him out to the grounds for his le
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1613 words

Written for the Campfire Chills contest run by =Cassildra

You still have time to enter.

Is this a traditional ghost story? I think so. Maybe you don't think it's particularly scary, but then I think, when you walk into a pub at 11am and see a load of old men sitting on their own in individual booths already half-pissed and staring at their beer mats, those are ghosts too. I think that's a pretty scary thing to become.
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:icontheskaboss:
=TheSkaBoss 2 days ago  Hobbyist Writer
Niiiice.
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:iconosric90:
~Osric90 Jun 3, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Yes, it does have the feel of a ghost story... not outright scary but just creepy and eerie and with the right dose of mystery on what is actually going on, all of it quite reinforced by the apparent normality of the story. It's very good and holds a lot of content especially for being this short word-wise. ^^
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:icondailylitdeviations:
=DailyLitDeviations Jun 2, 2012
Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by :+fav:ing the News Article.
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:iconnonculture:
`nonculture May 30, 2012
interesting, and quite a unique take. I like it.

Maybe showing an additional (desperate) step for those first coming in to the gym (heaven/purgatory/?), have Chris spend time researching what a proper workout is. That he knows to rotate from weights to lifts to running etc. is not something someone 'scared' of a gym would do, besides it would also help represent study (bible? buddhism? self-escalation?). Love the idea. A very slight more development would be great. If this is for a contest, it should definitely be a contender. I read it all the way through, on DA's odd-green screen, and I rarely do that - well done, regardless of your placing in some contest. This is complete and worthy of competition.
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:iconnonculture:
`nonculture May 30, 2012
To reply to myself - as a ghost story, this definitely works. Anyone who's been at a gym/studio/laundromat/store/empty restaurant/ and so on very late - can relate.
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:iconfutilitarian:
=futilitarian May 31, 2012   Writer
I like your other take on it, the purgatory thing. You're right there's a gap in knowledge that needs to be addressed for a gym first-timer. I will think on it.

Thanks very much for your thoughts.
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:iconsandstar12:
~Sandstar12 May 30, 2012  Student Writer
I read this before you removed the last paragraph, and I agree that the ending is stronger as it is now.

It's not scary exactly, but it's definitely creepy to think about. I really like this. Nice job. (:
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:iconcallerofcrows:
*callerofcrows May 30, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Wow. This was amazing.
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:iconamodestmouse:
~amodestmouse May 26, 2012
yeah, no last paragraph. this was fun
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:iconfutilitarian:
=futilitarian May 27, 2012   Writer
Last paragraph killed. Thanks.
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