The Red Hot Pawn Prose Competition 3

THE RED HOT PAWN PROSE COMPETITION ROUND 3 HITTING YOU WITH A BRICK WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT

Congrats to Ragnorak for winning Round 2,

http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=22910

The SUBMISSION rules for the Red Hot Pawn Prose Competition:

1001 word limit; no profanity (stick within forum rules please); if a writer publically discloses which piece he/she wrote then that writer will be immediately disqualified; one entry per person; write about anything you want; you will remain anonymous, unless you win; once the prose has been posted YOU MAY VOTE UNTIL 20 MAY when I shall tally the votes and anounce the winner; don't vote for yourself; I won't post your prose anywhere but in this forum; prose must be EMAILED to redhotpawnprose@gmail.com with the following text in the subject: "REDHOTPAWN PROSE"; I will not disclose your email address to anyone; it is preferred if you mail your prose to me in a .txt document attachment; include your RHP username for me to verify the authenticity of each writer; I will post 5 entries per competition, unless otherwise stated.

The VOTING rules for the Red Hot Pawn Prose Competition:

Please read all of the entries; note that I have included the number of words so if a writer breaks the rules then you may use your own discretion in your voting decision; choose three of your favourite entries and rank them eg: (1)TITLE A (2)TITLE B (3)TITLE C; rank 1 = 5points, rank 2 = 3 points, rank 3 = 2 points; voting closes on 20 MAY 2005 at 11am GMT, and I shall tally the scores and announce the winner then; DO NOT REC A POST IF YOU LIKE IT; I take no responsibility for grammatrical and spelling errors; comments on the submissions are welcome!

If you haven't yet sent your submission for RHPProse Competition no.4, the topic is [/i]Life Story[/i], entries close on 20 May, hurry the hell up and write something. I'll be posting all the legitimate entries, do not exceed 500 words! See the Red Hot Pawn Prose 4 Announcement Thread.

Here are the entries for round 3 for you to salivate over:

Final Round
(582 words)

It was the final round of the chess tournament. The elderly former world champion, wisps of snow white hair trailing over his ears, sat at board number one in a ‘winner takes all’ game against the young, confident, (some said arrogant) current title holder. The young champion was not at the board but strolling around the auditorium watching the progress of the other games, occasionally curling the corner of his upper lip in what looked like a sneer of contempt. His agent had been at pains in the past to explain that this was just a mannerism, an involuntary twitch, an idiosyncrasy which did not imply any disrespect for the players concerned. The fact remained however, that he was not a popular champion and if the truth be told the majority of those present were willing the old man to pull something out of the hat – he had the white pieces after all.

The round had been in progress for about 40 minutes and the silence was punctuated only by the occasional cough, the scrape of a chair or the pressing of a clock. The old champion was sitting motionless, a half smile playing across his wrinkled features. His sagging cardigan and old tweed jacket looked too big for his ageing frame and contrasted markedly with his opponent’s sharp looking, perfectly cut Italian suit.

To all appearances the old man was deep in thought, which was true but he was not thinking about the game. His mind had wandered off, as it tended to do these days, and memories of past triumphs flooded his consciousness. Reluctantly he dragged his thoughts back to the task at hand and a small, inaudible sigh escaped his lips.

He looked at the board. He had had this position many, many times before of course but what move to play against this young man who seemed to have the answer to everything? He had several options but he quickly discounted most of them and had narrowed it down to two possibilities but which one was the strongest? He knew exactly how his opponent would respond to either move but this gave him no succour because he had not kept up with the latest wrinkles, the nuances in the variations which would ensue. So he sat and pondered and came to the conclusion that it was impossible to decide because neither move was good enough against this young buck, so he began to contemplate the embarrassment and ignominy of defeat. His mind was overloaded and rebelling against such thoughts drifted off once again into the infinitely more pleasurable world of the past. He recalled the day he had become world champion with a crushing defeat of the former holder of the title and the smile on his face broadened a little as he pictured the board and ran through every move of that fateful game.

He was unaware of the small crowd of officials gathering nearby until the chief arbiter approached and placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “I’m afraid you have run out of time”, he said in a kindly almost apologetic tone. The old man rose slowly to his feet “But don’t you see?” he said, “It’s impossible, what move? what move?” He continued his protestations as they guided him gently away to the waiting ambulance, “Nobody knows any more”. His voice trailed off but as he left he could still just be heard muttering, “ e4 or d4, which is the correct first move?”

Blister
(762 words)

My alarm hits me like a 5am snare drum as I sell my soul by getting out of bed this morning. Another week day. I haul out of bed into winter, I can't bear to look at my face in the mirror, I fight with consciousness, I dream and blink and try to stretch and breathe.

Here we all sit as though we are prisoners in our unmade beds. At the office you can tell that everyone else has gone insane. We make up little games to keep ourselves entertained, we play practical jokes, construct worlds where our imaginations are free, umbilical cords to the outside. I hoard paper clips. I fight the developing yawns. The receptionists are gossiping. The receptionists have new haircuts. They're quaint in a sad way. They're insane from the stench of their own perfume. I think about the end of the day. I think about lunch. I think about getting away and doing something weird like sailing or making a birdhouse. This boredom plugs me with a salary and I am almost drowned by the stench of hypocrisy. Look at the paintings on the wall, they're almost thirty years old, watercolour landscapes of swamps. Seriously.

So, fidgeting, I attempt to work. No luck. The bosses are arguing with their telephones, they argue so much that I don't even hear their voices anymore. The printer is churning out pages of correspondence about who did what to whom when. It's a soap opera. It's a drama. I couldn't care less. I'm on a first name basis with the overweight security guard and if you look him in the eye he tries to get you in the bear hug of his insatiable desire for conversation.

Looking back… ever since I was expelled from the comfortable womb of my mother I've had this problem with everything.

So I went through stages. First there was denial. There was no problem. Then self loathing. I was the problem. Then denial again. Then anger, damned stupid world. Then I was onto acceptance, but that felt too comfortable so I started looking at things a little more closely again and found the little roots growing into hedges and walls with thorns to keep the neighbours out. Then I came around and nose-dived into the realisation that I had squandered so much time on trite little inane imperfections abounding in, well, basically everything. All this time, stressing about something beyond my control. This worried me deeply.

My mortality crept up on me with a knife in the dark.

So I ran away like a little kid scared. I began to throw all my cares into oblivion in the pursuit of a full-time career in hedonism, but it didn't pay very well, and pretty soon I needed food and shelter so I went to school and I learnt how to write and spell and read and learn and during the course of my scholastic voyage into the abyss of assimilation I learned how to manipulate the rules. The best things in life are free. All you need is luv. Hello, good morning, good morning, hello, good evening, goodbye, cheers, bye, cheers, good evening, good night sleep well, see you tomorrow.

I lifted up metaphorical rocks and found poisonous scorpions spitting cobras at my eyes, I looked at the horizon and dreamt the beautiful flames of inevitable nuclear war Armageddon, I began to cradle extinction, praying to be absconded from this bondage of science fiction movie analysis and office politics.

I shook my fists at materialism, I gave my possessions to blind people, I donned a coat of detachment and piety!

This impressed women tremendously.

In my subsequent adventures I happened upon such a woman of purity with flames for hair and eyes of sharp ice, she was unimpressed by me, so I sobered up and smiled shyly.

Next thing you know she led my wandering mind up the steps to her place, my eyes following the subtle curved outline of her long coat which was wrapped around her body as I wanted to be. All sounds became distant impossible echoes as my ears delved towards a loyal slavery to her voice, she opened the door and pulled my hand with hers, the winter chill eradicated.

My poor stomache ached from an evening of laughter and adrenaline, my jaw was stiff from telling life stories, my ears rang from listening and my head was filled with fluff and smoke, and as I prepared myself for polite patience I just forgot everything that had ever happened before then.

The Blank Page
(491 words)

It sits there, an A4 sized piece of malevolency, staring up at me. It taunts me from the desk, daring me to try and fill it up, yet I cannot. As soon as I confront that yawning emptiness, I clam up; it freezes my creativity and binds my imagination.

I reach for a pen, flick it’s lid off and hold it, poised above the paper in an attempt to complete the circuit between brain and page. Somehow, the flow of inspiration must start; surely I cannot go on like this forever?

Closing my eyes, I can see the story unfold, but then I open them again and it’s gone, retreating back into the recesses of my brain as if it too is fearful of that terrible Blank Page.

This confrontation is played out all too frequently. So many times have I come up against the Blank Page and so many times have I failed. Too often have I sat there, late into the night, desperate for some inspiration, desperate to plumb the depths of my mind and confer the results to paper.

I have had some victories, but even they have been bittersweet. On the rare occasion that I do take that first step and begin to fill the Blank Page, what I fill it with is almost exclusively awful. Something about the way the prose is put together simply doesn’t feel right. Somehow, between my mind and the page, it has been warped into something barely readable.

Some may say this is a battle I will never win, that I should give up before it drives me crazy. But I cannot simply quit. It would be akin to an asthmatic giving up breathing because it causes him too many problems.

If I quit now, I will be driven to madness anyway by the constant flow of ideas and concepts for which I would have no vent. All of that creativity floating around my mind with no outlet would tip me over the edge as surely as trying and failing.

One day I shall vanquish my nemesis, after all the pen is mightier than the sword, but it may take some time. Perhaps when life outside of writing calms down somewhat, I will be more able to devote my entire concentration the task of overcoming the beast.

Real life is the ultimate ally of the Blank Page. Relationship problems, financial problems and, of course, the dreaded Day Job - all of these things prey on my mind, stifling my creativity and slowly driving me to distraction.

But now it seems I have found a solution. How effective it will be, only time will tell. ‘Write about writing’ someone suggested to me. The fruits of that labour you are just about to finish reading. With any luck it will spur me on to new literary horizons. Like everything, practice makes perfect, and the first step is always the hardest.

Projection
(435 words)

The trees, oh the evil trees!
See how they taunt me, see how they try to make me feel small.
What do they want and why do they want it? What’s it to them how I feel today?

Tripping me up with their great bulging roots; shoving my face to the earth. Mocking me as I fly through the air, smirking as I’m forced to eat dirt. Do they get great enjoyment out of my obvious sorrow? What’s wrong with these great blasted beings, these actualities of bark and timber and wood?

Their branches up high so their leaves bar the sky, there’s nothing but shadows cast long and cast short and there’s nothing but gloomness and believe me, there’s no sunlight where I’m standing sonny! There’s no cool breeze on my face anymore. There’s nothing but shade and murky, dank smells.

Smacking me in the face with their branches, walloping my neck with their limbs. Whipping my legs with all that they’ve got and scratching my arms with their twigs. They’re hell bent on hurting me, steadfast at humiliating me and aimed at making my tragic life nothing more than pain and suffering, misery and anguish.

Making me slip on their fallen leaves. It’s a case for the courts, for it has not gone unnoticed that sunlight can’t creep where water yet drips. It soaks the floor and it moistens the ground and sets such a trap than my shoes cannot cope!

The trees, oh the evil trees!
How can I stop their haunted, twisted ways?
What do they want and why do they want it? What’s it to them how I feel tomorrow?

I know what I’ll do! I’ll get me barrels of Agent Orange and buckets of DDT. I’ll defile the bastards and ruin their leaves. I’ll bring in the sunlight and dance and I’ll sing. I’ll wake up the woods to a life bright and blue.
I’ll get me an axe, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll chop at their branches and I’ll hack at their barks. We’ll soon really see who’s right and who’s roughest and who scratches the deepest and who is the toughest!
I’ll purchase a chainsaw and make me a plain. I’ll cut at their forms and slash at their moulds, I’ll get my respect which I am so duly owed!

The trees, oh the evil trees!
How do they feel, now that I flaunt them?
What did they want and why did they want it? What’s it to me while they burn in my furnace?

What if it’s not the trees though? What if it’s me?

A letter for Anna
(948 Words)

Dear Anna,

I love you. Or at least that's what jumps into my head each time I see you, hear you, think about you. It's not a gentle warming feeling of comfort and puppy-eyed joy, it is a vicious piercing feeling which strikes me to the core. The desire is overwhelming and each time I am trapped between wanting to reach out to you and shying away from the forbidden. It tears me apart. I can literally feel my nerves twang as they fail under the tension. I wonder though, both whether it is really love and indeed what love even means. Thoughts of you are like the breaths which sustain me, constant, but fleeting, never staying, always a temporary effect which although nourishing, must be released for life to continue. That's how it is with me and you, little breaths of each other. And with each breath comes a smell, a taste, a sound, a pain, another hit for the addiction. But never a touch, never a surrender or a compliance, never a yes or a smile and a nod of that beautiful head. Always just a sensory affair.

What is love anyway? Care and lust? Bound up in a package of neurone stimuli and body language, tied with an elaborate bow of hormones and left tauntingly out of reach on the shelf of unrequited urgency.

When first we met I gasped, sucking in a breath and instantly hoping you neither noticed this nor my shaking hands, but I could not hold you in. I managed to control myself enough to avoid blushing or stammering, but I think even then you knew I adored you. And now it is undeniable, unavoidable and impossible. Your beauty is choking, your eyes exude a wanton intensity and it hurts to know, each time I look at your lips, that I will never touch them. You walk like the ebb and flow of a gentle tide at sunset, the shadows playing gently off your figure as you glide from foot to perfect little foot. Your waist calls my arms to hold it, your neck whispers promises to my fingers and your hair offers your pale face up to me, like parting clouds revealing the moon. I dream of drowning myself in you, of meeting oblivion in the depths of your churning sea, or being smashed to pieces on the rocks of your unreachable shores. Sweet relief it would be when compared to this torture, this endless desire to hold my breath, to keep one small bit of you inside me. When we are with friends I sit and watch you. And as the alcohol closes in on my spatial awareness, all that is left is us, like a bubble has closed in and shuts the rest of the world out. Sound, time, necessity, all are removed. It is just us. My head swims with your intoxicating presence.

Sarah knows. She pretends to dismiss the issue as if she is as scared to admit it as I am consumed by it. I know she knows, but to bring it up could end us and so she turns away and holds on to the fact that I cannot act upon my desire. In some ways she uses it against me, this deference. She has become close to you, your friend, as I am. You talk together in hushed whispers, you make jokes and gang up on me in conversation. I find it both erotic and infuriating, entertaining fantasies of having you both, and at the same time feeling inadequate that I cannot be happy with just her. It adds to my torment.

I can see you reading this now, wondering what it is I want from you, what I would have you do with this letter. Truth be told I do not know. That isn't fair I know, I should not tell you these things without knowing what might happen or being prepared for what you might say, but I cannot feel otherwise. Perhaps I want an end to this, to have it all out in the open, whether I end up with you, Sarah or nothing, at least it will be done. But once again I am left with my addiction and cold turkey is not easy when you have no control over the administration of the drug. I am strapped down, unable to escape and fed you by a drip, tell me how should I overcome such a thing? I cannot live with this pain, you are eating me up, slowly turning me rotten and I am helpless to avoid it.

In some ways perhaps this letter is doomed to fail then, perhaps it will never even be sent, perhaps I will realise my foolishness and screw it up in a fit of rage. But then I never did get angry did I?

I will spare you the begging, you would find it no more appealing than I and I shall not lower myself to relinquish all my pride. Instead I will ask you this once; be with me my little Anya. I will protect you and give myself to you unconditionally, I will love you with all the breaths of my life and I will not allow a single one to escape my lips without using it to proclaim you wondrous existence to the heavens. You are the terrible beauty of a winter dawn, the sigh of a summer breeze, the arousing smell of spring rain, the golden allure of autumn's caress and through all seasons I will love you.

I shall hold my breath once more, for either death or you shall take me.

Alexander

1) Blister

2) Final Round

3) The Blank Page

'... prisoners in our unmade beds ...'
what a great line!

1) Projection
2) Blister
3) The Blank Page

Much harder to pick this time, good high standard of stuff here, well done everyone.

1.Blister
2.Projection

I could not find one I liked for number three. Please do not take offense but this is just an observation. Mind you in no way am I a writer and perhaps I am not qualified to make such criticisms but the other stories for me held little interest. Many of them seem to be searching the thesaurus for the university word and I, for one, am more drawn when someone writes from their mind and how they speak as when they tell a story. I think the other nominees had interesting ideas but after I read the first paragraph I felt the subsequent paragraphs were just repeating themselves essentially. Again, I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone by this and perhaps the consensus is that I am way off based as to how I feel.

Originally posted by Joe Fist
1.Blister
2.Projection

I could not find one I liked for number three. Please do not take offense but this is just an observation. Mind you in no way am I a writer and perhaps I am not qualified to make such criticisms but the other ...[text shortened]... aps the consensus is that I am way off based as to how I feel.

You're of course entitled to your opinion, but you still need a third vote as per the system. I suggest having another read.

EDIT: Perhaps another coffee first?

Originally posted by Starrman
You're of course entitled to your opinion, but you still need a third vote as per the system. I suggest having another read.

EDIT: Perhaps another coffee first?

Drinks a gallon of coffee

Very well. To abide by the guidelines of the system, here are my three choices

1.Blister
2.Projection
3.Final Round

I am curious though, does anyone else concur with this opinion?

1. Blister

2. A letter for Anna

3. Projection

1. The final round
2. Blister
3. The blank page