Lily's Friday Prediction

Good morning world! It's all sunshine and sea breezes in Eastbourne today - which is how it should be in the middle of August. I'm off work next week so am hoping the weather will treat us kindly; if not I'll lock myself in a café somewhere and scribble the days away.

Congratulations to AJ Humpage for winning last week's Prediction Challenge with the stirring and poetic Resurrection. And well done to Tony Cowin, runner-up for his fairy-tale horror In Crystal Vapours. Both chilling in totally different ways.

A Question...

Before I post this week's words - a question. Does anyone read my Prediction Winner posts that go out after the challenge closes, or do you wait until the Friday to see who has 'won'? I'm just intrigued as there are often not many comments on the Winner post - and I wondered if everyone even realised it was there?

It takes a lot of effort to assess the entries and write up the Winner post, so I'm quite happy to drop it - or post it in the comments box on the Challenge beneath all the entries instead. Do let me know - I do it for you so want to make sure I am getting it right. Thank you.

Words for 19 August 2011

Note: the challenge will close on Wednesday 24th August (not Thursday)

• Gargle
• California
• Vandal (Vandalise is fine)

Rules

The rules are: 100 words max flash fiction or poetry using all of the words above. Please add your entries in the Comments box below. You have all week until 9pm UK time on Wednesday (not Thursday) 24th August to enter.

Winner will be announced next Wednesday or Thursday. If you can, please tweet about your entry, using the #fridayflash hashtag, and blog if you feel like it.

Suppose I'd better get up and go to work. Unless you can give me a reason to stay abed...?

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Prediction Winner

So glad everyone has been posting and commenting without me - what a great bunch of writing comrades you all are. x

I shall summarise by way of comments below:

• Sue, Books to the Future is an adventuresome delight. I have had some VERY important books fall at my feet from unlikely shelves in old bookshops. They do have lives of their own - or maybe a part of their author's soul lives on within the pages? I love what you have evoked here - and it needs to run, run, run into a full scale volume. 
• Chris, firstly let me apologise for unwittingly hijacking part of your title, Maman and in a roundabout way - some of your story. I must have subconsciously picked it up. Sorry my dear. Chercher le Futur - a spectacular image of pentagrams and mirrors against a desert background. What choice did Legris have? Tell, or be damned. Mon dieu indeed.
• David, Mr Cheeky Barber is back. Have you ever considered doing Spooky Stand-Up? I really liked how you turned A Watery Grave from a tale of concern to a wicked little murder.
• Aidan, Jailbird's Song is freakin' freaky. Your narrator's snarling voice growls in my ear, making me nervous, causing me to look for him over my shoulder. Gripping, and terrifying,
• Antonia, all the best for the counselling session. I do hope you will be on the way to recovery soon. Boudicca’s Last Stand chilled me to the bone, not least because I felt I was staring back from the scrying bowl (one of my preferred methods after the mirror). This is haunting.
• Phil, Oh knock me down and make me fear for my life! Beware the Soldiers - that would be enough to scare a man; you'd fear war, terrorism, a coup d'etat... but ants? Very, very clever. Lesson: never take a prediction at face value.
• AJ, an emotional discovery, poetically performed. My feeling is this is the result of a search for a near-ancestor, that the MC has taken a cruel journey to locate this man and incite his Resurrection. We need - on behalf of all the family - to know more about what really happened; why he was there, and why he joined the Legion in the first place.
• Kim, that told him. And what he doesn't know is that beneath every 'old hag' is a soul harbouring a beautiful and terrible wisdom. More fool him. I liked this atmospheric arrival in our mystical lands of a people who still occupy the heaths and mists. For the Romans, it was ultimately a Gloomy Ending.
• Anthony, I felt a very non-spiritual sense of satisfaction at Jess's revenge. As children we are entitled to believe in fairy-tale castles, though if we ever knew the original stories we'd never want to be mixed up in such horror. Maybe In Crystal Vapours represents the modern day reality of ancient myth. Chilling.
• Me, A la Recherche d'un Homme Perdu speaks of a woman who can't bear that her man chose The Legion over her, and her family. Papa's letter proves it was all for their sake, not his.
• Reba, so glad you're back. "The media was the polar opposite of scrying – only able to see the future in retrospect." is a fabulously innovative - and insightful line. What You Sow questions law, legislation, government... It's the way it should be. This is a conspiracy theory with legs.
• William, a beautiful gothic feel to Non Lossless Depression. A poem? Prose? I can't work out if the narrator is desperate for Love, or Death - because the subjects twist, and twist about. And I like that - a lot.

The entries are so diverse; the standard of writing excellent. I haven't been very good at making decisions this week but the entry that stayed with me, and is therefore the winner is AJ Humpage's Resurrection, closely followed by Tony Cowin's In Crystal Vapours as runner-up. Congratulations both.

I'm going to bed. In the morning I will be a different person - by a few skin cells only. But who knows the memories the new cells I've caught might hold; perhaps I'll be Cleopatra - like everyone else. Or maybe not - maybe I'll be your grandmother. Have you exfoliated lately? Maybe I'll be you - sssshhhhhhh.

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