I'm sorry this is so late! If you'd rather not count it i get it. i don't even know if i like this anymore but *shrugs*

~

Tapestry

The house is a dust-ridden tapestry, faded and made of the past. And in that case I must be the warp threads, the one connection through everything else in this tattered existence.

Now, it’s in death that I wander the halls. No two days are the same. Still, the mind-numbing sameness of each moment hums through the air in this place, the distortion toying with my mind.

That's the only explanation for those thoughts. I'd never go back to living.

Currently, all is quiet. A  moon the color of rust gleams off of the polished, scuff-less floors. Just looking at them makes me freeze, urge myself to walk quieter. Don’t let them creak. But these days, I’m weightless; nobody can hear me. Nobody can find me. Nobody’s here.

I would have died for that as a child.

People are fickle beings - there only to hurt me, far away when I was hurt. When I needed them. So I suppose I can only thank the world that I’m alone. What else would I feel? Though the ache of longing in my heart is constant, yearning for someone to listen - they never have. They never will.

I freeze as whispers dance on my ears. They come from distant rooms, every word far too clear. But the closer I get to them the softer they become; by the time I open the door, they’re gone. 

Whenever there are voices, I do my best not to understand them. I focus on anything else - my weaving, the old journals I hid under my mattress, my shaking hands - to not understand them. And yet I do.

Sometimes they civilly discuss matters of the house or local news: a pretense that everything’s fine, as long as nobody disagrees. Sometimes there’s shouting, or sharp criticisms disguised as teasing so they’re easy to deny. This time someone's laughing.

Was something actually funny? Or were they just keeping the peace? 

The whispers dissipate. I allow myself to continue, though what I'm continuing I'm not quite sure.

My bedroom door is closed. It’s always closed, and it always has been. I only realize my hand has clasped the doorknob when the sweat on my hands nearly turns to ice.

A sliver of orange moonlight encroaches the room through the open crack of the door, tinting my grey stuffed cat with a toxic cadmium pigment. I blink. I had forgotten she was there. That cat was my best friend, my most beloved, my life. I couldn’t tell you her name.

I can only remember the parts of life that hurt. The rest is lost to time.

I have, in my day, seen many a tapestry. When I was young, I sought the ones of beauty - it was easier to deal in fakes, in pretenses that all was fine. Later I came to terms with the meaningless of life; haunted forests and cemeteries became my havens. The tapestry I’m stuck in is something beyond the scope of both of them.

There is nothing like residing here. There is nothing like surrendering to the curse that infests your body, eating at your mind’s cloth until only the darkest threads remain. There is no feeling like watching the last slivers of grey shrivel to pieces, knowing full well that there’s nothing you can do to stop them. No wool is black enough, no picture haunting enough to show this in its entirety. 

I may be the ghost, but it’s the house that haunts me.

Will this ever fade? Will everything dissolve like even the best yarn must do? And if it does, what’s to come next? 

Perhaps nothingness; perhaps someplace far worse. It’s sure to be worse. And maybe I’ll learn, when that happens, that everything was fine. That everything is my fault. That my whole life was spent crying over things that never should have mattered.

That I’m just weak.

And yet I still cannot help hoping. What else is there to do? Maybe someday, long after death, for the first time in life I’ll go home. 

just ignore my entry actually for all intents and purposes it does not exist

Sorry I'm late, I've been really busy this weekend. Anyway, have my badly-worded judgments /:

Honorable Mention—Hawkstar! The character growth in this was really well done. With a fairly short prompt, you managed to include dialogue that showed a transformation in Esa. Your ending was very funny as well :) good job!

Honorable Mention—Celine! First off, I liked the name in this one. Skyla Ever sounds exactly like your character—ghostly but strangely happy. I also liked the repetition. Some of the sentences were run-on in the best repetitive sort of way. Great job!

Third Place—Moon Wolf! I thought you set the scene really well in this one. It was cool how you added on more details as the story went on. I also think you ended it really well, with something that was satisfying to the reader but left more to be discovered. Cool story!

Second Place—Neverseen! I loved the mood of this entire piece, and I think you conveyed it really well. It’s intriguing and mysterious, which I liked a lot. “The night after you left” and other lines hinted at something dark and catching.

First Place—BB! Well, Celine said it better than I can, but this is amazing! I especially loved the little details—stuff like “tinting my grey stuffed cat with a toxic cadmium pigment” and your whole analogy of a tapestry. Congrats, and you’re the next judge!

ahhh sorry I completely forgot! I'll have the prompt once this tops. I look forward to seeing all of your stories! 

okay so I finally chose the prompt but then was trying to write an apology for this being so late and that was stressing me out and making later, so without further ado, the prompt. 

pigment 

Not inherently the same as color, though it can be of course. there are other properties you could explore. 

Also, please note that for this round and this round only, I am increasing the word limit to 1,500. This is to hopefully expand the amount of things you can write, and the amount of plot you can include :) It also connects to the other thing.

Last thing! (again this is only for this round that I'm judging) if you want, you can also write the opening chapter to a longer story. Please specify whether it's an opening chapter or a short story when posting; if you don't I'll assume it's a short story. I will be judging it with that in mind, obviously. 

I look forward to judging! 

Ahhhh I'm sorry judging date is October 15??? I keep putting off/forgetting to say this sorry

This isn't that good but oh well~

Second Chance

It was a cold, blustery evening. Wind blew across my face as I walked over to the nearby cafe, my coat wrapped tightly against my chest. I breathed out, and my breath made a small cloud in the freezing air. Hurriedly, I entered the cafe.

The fresh and familiar smell of coffee drifted towards me. I ordered a cappuccino, like always, and waited for my order. After they called me up and I got my drink, I went over to the small table and cupped my hands around the mug of coffee, trying to warm my hands.

When I finished my cappuccino, I put back on my coat and wrapped it around myself before plunging back into the outdoors. Suddenly, I heard a loud gunshot noise.

A small, shiny object—was it a bullet?

It flew towards me rapidly, and I had no time to react. 

I was frozen there. 

My limbs wouldn’t budge.

My lips couldn’t move to scream or shout for help.

And it struck me down, hard onto the cement. Pain raged through me, and darkness flashed into my vision. I heard footsteps running towards me, and a voice shouting. Hands rummaged through my coat pockets, and pulled out the dollar bills I had stored in there. After that, the footsteps left me.

Left me in the dust.

Scarlet red pooled out, and no one came to help. There was no one who could nor wanted help. My family had long abandoned me when I became a teen, and I was too far away from any friend.

I could hear the ticking of a clock, even though there were no clocks in sight. It struck one, single hard tick, and then stopped. Suddenly, I was in a meadow, filled with butterflies and flowers. A sweet breeze was in the air. And the choice was offered before me, clear as day. Go into that paradise of a meadow, or stay laying on this cold cement.

The answer was obvious. I chose the meadow. I got up easily, as if I had never been hurt. I leapt around the meadows, smiling. Butterflies danced around me, in all the colors of the rainbow.

But there was a sense of loneliness. There was no one else but me. I looked back at my body, still lying there on the cement. Maybe I should return.

Cautiously, I stepped towards my body, and emerged back into the world. However, something was wrong. I wasn’t in my body, but it seemed that I was in a transparent version of my body. 

Suddenly, it became really clear. I was a ghost.

A ghost! A real-life ghost! But I felt no real joy or glee from the thought of being able to walk through others. Instead, it felt sad. The colors in the world around me seemed a bit too bright, or was it too dull? It just wasn’t right. They weren’t real colors. They weren’t pigments.

I longed to go back to my body, still lying there. It was growing cold, but I already felt a dull coldness deep within me, as if reminding me that I was just a ghost, not a human.

A blurry flash of something caught the side of my vision. I quickly turned over, and saw it again. I began to run towards it.

More flashes appeared, until the flashes began to take a form. A form in the shape of a human boy. I waved at him, but he didn’t wave back. All he did was turn and stare at me.

After a long moment, he said, “You’ve just died, haven’t you?”

I nodded. “Isn’t there any way I can go back from being a ghost, though? I–I–I regretted my decision.” Tears slowly welled up in my eyes.

“We all do,” he said. “You are?”

“Lyn,” I said, wiping away my tears. “Evelyn. Who are you?”

He paused to think about it. Then he said, “I’ve long forgotten it. But you can call me Shadow, I guess.”

“Shadow…isn’t there any way I can return to my body?” Funny how I was so eager to go into the meadows. I never knew how much I would miss life then.

“You haven’t felt fulfilled yet,” Shadow said.

I nodded.

He paused again, for so long that I thought he wouldn’t answer. At last, he said, “There is a way.”

“There is?”

“If you haven’t died that long ago, you have one more chance.”

“When?” I asked, but Shadow shimmered out of appearance.

Then, a light flashed before me. There were two paths…one back into the meadows again, the other to the cement. Clearly two decisions, presented once more. A second chance. Even if I woke up paralyzed forever, I decided that it was worth living. I walked on the path towards the cement.

And the colors flooded my vision. Real colors. Pigments. Life.