Week two of the competition and last week @jrhughes won with this paragraph
He stood up and looked out of the window. He no longer concerned himself with the sickly amber light that seeped through the panes. Whatever radioactive death the mysterious star that had replaced the sun brought, it would not reach them in time. Picking up his binoculars, he let his gaze fall to the ocean, stretched out hundreds of feet below their dream home: A glass palace built into the side of the cliff at a cost of $123.6 million. The not-quite-humanoid creatures that had crawled from the sea on the third morning following the arrival of the new sun, had made their way a good 100 feet up the rocks now. The tentacles that dripped from below cold, steel shark eyes, reached out probing the stone for handholds. They would be here within hours. He looked back toward his wife, huddled on the Italian leather sofa, arms about their small son. Her own eyes were as cold as the creatures' climbing the cliff wall. He knew what she was thinking. I wanted a house in the mountains.
The rules are simple
- You must upvote and resteem this post.
- You write the next paragraph of the story in your comment.
- The paragraph must be at least 100 words long.
- The reply with the most upvotes on their comment after five days (Friday 8th July) is the winner and their paragraph is added to the story. So please get your followers and friends to vote on your paragraph.
- The winner will receive a share of the total upvotes of this post.
- In the event of a tie, the previous weeks winner will have the casting vote.
Let's get your creative juices flowing and please check out last weeks post, to see how high the standard was.
@jrhughes, @carolkean, @hndmarshall, @kathieletalis, @horrorguyian, @wisbeech and @holoz0r are more than welcome to enter this week, I enjoyed reading your entries :-)
image from giphy.com
Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! Readers might be interested in similar content by the same author:
https://steemit.com/writing/@scottish01/writing-competition---first-paragraph-we-have-a-winner-1498805388-4708986
I know you are a bot, but it is a link to my own post telling people about the winner to the previous post of my competition!
Yeah! Whassup with all the hand-slapping, little bot?
("Little? Little?")
Seriously, I need someone to explain it to me. How do we label something of ours to keep it from being called out as Old News, or Plagiarism, or whatever this "similar content" thing is saying about us as steemers. He'p me, He'p me, as our friend's toddler used to plead... help!
I totally agree, don't want people thinking I am stealing other people's work and I'm only referencing my own posts :-(
https://steemit.com/steemit/@waynevan/is-the-steemit-cheetah-always-right
@waynevan thanks for sharing that link, totally agree, a bit of hal 9000!
Thanks bud :)
The end is left open, leaving several options for the next chapter. And now the protagonist has a name
My Entry
Looking at his wife and son, he shook his head miserably. "We'll be fine!" His voice was husky, choked and full of regret. Waves of nausea hit him. His knees clicked under him, the sound tearing through the oppressive silence.
The radioactive light from the malicious new sun is now a light shade of red. The water in the ocean, which had been so clear, now looked like moving smoke. On the rocks, he watched as the tentacles swayed left and then right, slithering their way up.
He would not give up. Determined, he refocused his mind, and looked around the aesthetically furnished room for the umpteenth time, hoping to find some kind of a weapon that he might have overlooked. He needed more than a rifle and a knife.
He began to step gingerly through the room, his gaze sweeping every corner. "The fire extinguishers," his wife's cold voice whispered for the first time in hours.
He nodded, as he shifted his gaze to the table in the corner. Maybe....
He knew nothing about the creepy shark-eyed creatures that came with the dangerous new sun. He remembered his grandfather's stories about hairy humanoid creatures with tentacles, prowling the Appalachians. He shook his head.
As if in a loop, he picked up his binoculars. His stomach lurched. Abbot squeezed his eyes shut and looked again.
I like it and I like the name.
Thanks for entering, is is more for fun than the fame, money and glory ;-)
Yes, it sure is! :)
Chase turned his eyes from her steely gaze. If these were his last minutes on Earth, he’d be damned if he was going to spend them under silent accusation. He poured two more fingers of bourbon into his freshly emptied highball glass. The crystal decanter was thick, and the pale alien rays refracted off its hatched edges. The bottle was still half full of liquor. He imagined stuffing one of the overpriced dish towels his wife had purchased into the container. At 110-proof, the world around him could be turned to oak barrel aged flames and razor-edged shards. He wondered if the things below could burn.
lol...just me voting for the competition...... I like his better!
You hold the future of the Steemit novel in your hands ;-)
Excellent as always :-)
Ha! It's like you're in my head lol.
As he looked at her he knew she was right he should have bought that house in the mountains , but there was no arguing about it right now. He reaches for a hunting rifle and tosses it and a box of shells onto the sofa. "lock and load make yourself useful !"... he cried out to her as she glared back ... "they will be here within the hour and I for one plan to give them hell".... he tells her as he loads another rifle and a pistol laying them out on the table. It was then that he heard the whirr of a helicopter...
Nice twist and opening for the next paragraph!
“They branded me crazy.” His wife hissed from the sofa. “Said my predictions had no place in the science world and were based on the hallucinations of a mad woman.” He turned and looked at her, now knowing all her ranting the past year, had been her speaking the truth.
He had humoured her and paid the extravagate fear to put in lead lined glass, their house now a fortress against the radiation building outside. He had followed all her demands in the building of their home. No price was too high for the peace of mind of the ones he loved. Now as he watched the events unfold, just as she had predicted; the high price of the ten foot electric fence didn’t seem so big. In fact if it did what she said it would do, then it would be worth every dollar.
“I believed you my love.” He replied looking back out at the amber world below. “I did all you asked of me and because of you we are safe.”
His wife rose from the sofa and crossed to his side following his gaze to the creatures below. “They are not mutation because of the radiation.” She pointed up to the star.” This is an invasion, a takeover. They turned our sun against us.” He looked back at her, the amber light from outside reflecting in her jade eyes. “I fear we only prolong our demise, we are not meant to survive this.” She stated coldly.
Excellent, love it :-)
Pointing down with her tentacle at the little glass palace wedged into a high cliff, Hottie laughed so loud that the assault helicopter she had hijacked earlier began to judder. Finally! After turning the Sun inside out and consequently liberating her belowground species from its core, she and her Sunobite buddies were ready to conquer the Earth and toast all humans! And, of course, take a cold bath in the ocean afterwards.
Thinking about that, Hottie grabbed at her mirthfully shaking stomach, but...
To her rapidly spiking amusement, about twenty tentacle-lengths beneath her, three of those humans had only emerged from the glass palace and... were waving at the very helicopter from which she intended to vaporize them.
“No way. They’re making it almost too easy for us,” she spoke to her brother, Blisterius, who was sitting next to her, with his suction cup firmly gripping the ‘rocket launch’ button.
Love it, great entry :-)
This is such a good idea. Love the community spirit here!
Thanks very much @charliesydney, feel free to enter :-)
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erroneous paragraph - deleted
Really liked this paragraph, not sure how it fits with the previous paragraph, maybe a transdimensional story between two worlds? It could work :-)
Thanks, mate, but... Oh no... It appears I missed the point of this exercise and posted paragraphs from my novel instead. Silly me, I should delete it now.
I will look forward to reading your novel :-) do you want to enter another paragraph?
Cheers. I’ll try to get round to it once I get some sleep. The screen is one blur to me at this point. Take care for now.
Good night and no more Steeming for tonight ;-)
Hah, I’m back among the living, and kicking ass in the last post :-)
Will be submitting my entry soon. Great idea for a competition.
Thanks for the very kind words, I'll look forward to reading your entry :-)
@knowledge1 only two days left :-)
I doubt if I'll get any votes, but submitted anyway. Enjoyed writing it. Thanks for the reminder. :)
This is a great initiative! Glad to have found it.
Although I would love to be part of the writing, I feel my English (it being my second language) might not be at a high enough level to enter this competition, maybe I'm wrong. Will reconsider...
Keep up the good work!
You would be more than welcome, is just about the experience and having fun. You can also vote on your favourite if you want :-)
@hndmarshall thanks for the resteem
your welcome, trying to think of a paragraph for this story but at the moment drawing blanks...lol
Hey thank you so much! @scottish01! There was some stiff competition here 😊
Looking forward to getting more involved on the fiction side of things and this was a really sweet boost, thanks again!
You are more than welcome, thanks for joining the competition, call by anytime and vote on the posts :-)
Another good week, @horrorguyian is winning with 4 votes
I have upvoted and resteemed this post, I love the creativity this community has.
Thank you so much for that :-)
@gmuxx thanks for resteming :-)
Is this challenge still on?