Prediction Winner

A light week - can't work out whether:

•  interest is waning
•  people have a life and have been very busy :)
•  I let you down last week by not summarising

Probably just pure coincidence!

Anyway, there is still a plethora of dark fictional delights to judge, and I am already hard-pressed to make a final decision...

• Sandra made every woman tremble with the horror of a Boob Job gone wrong. Don't do it girls; you don't ever know who you can trust.
  
• Mimi reveals the dropped stitch that lost the resistance's fight as her character is left to contemplate the revolution in Last In Line.
  
• My graveyard tale, She'll be Spinning sees childhood sweethearts daring each other to kiss a skull, all for a wish.
  
• Aidan spins us through a Beatles revolution, an ambling journey through beauty and harmony with the dedication, Nothing Is Real.
  
• Chris's mechanical creature comes to stuttering, humming life; all stitched up and raring to bite in the vampire/golemic Ma petite homunculus.
  
• Antonia's flapping flesh makes our skin crawl as her lucid zombie sits and waits in A&E, in Mistake.
  
• Asuqi scares us first with the drama and tantalising words of the desperate and Functional Liar.
  
  In If I Stand On A Rooftop In Brooklyn And Throw A Coin It´s Bound To Hit A Writer the pretentions of literary world lovey-darlings have them wailing with woe.
  
  
• Melenka/Reba, questions the superstition surrounding the frothy wedding dress in Patterns when surely a solid relationship and friendship should seal the knot?
  
• Ally's flipping car provides the backdrop for a terror-flled scenario where a little girl sensibly tries to sew her decapitated mother back together in Mending The Broken.
  
• Pixie's fairy realm spirals again in a world where punishment is harsh and prisoners fall by the wayside in Flight of the Arrow.
  
• William has Frank carousing around rest homes doling out chemical delights to the supine and sad in Frank's Games. But what happens after the party?

My winner this week is Mimi with her proud tale of hopelessness Last In Line where even courage of conviction counts for nothing. Congratulations Mimi.

Runners-up are Chris Allinotte with the bizarro Ma petite homunculus (best title this year) and Reba with the fabricious (yes, I know I made that up) Patterns. Well done both.

There's too much talent here. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

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Matthew Hopkins - would you let him interview your mother?

'Imps' from Malleus Malificarum

Bigot and misogynist? Clever sadist? Or both...

Matthew Hopkins is a vicious yet mysterious figure in English history. No record exists of his birth or death though he is said to have expired from tuberculosis around 1647 in the eerily named village of Mistley in Essex.

Rampantly declaring hundreds of women (as well as a handful of men and children) as witches in the tumultuous years building up to the English Civil War Hopkins granted himself the ominous title of Witchfinder General. And he made it his mission to live up to his own job description. Over 300 women were hanged on Hopkins' dubious findings, and magistrates up and down the East of England paid him a handsome fee to do so.

Hopkins wasn't the only Witchfinder of the time - witchcraft had first been outlawed in 1563 and then established as a far more serious crime in 1604 when a Witchcraft Statute was raised. But Hopkins' dubious methods of skin pricking and ducking, stooling and sleep deprivation - none of which came under the illegal practice of torture - gained him a reputation more feared than the fabricated crimes of those he accused.

I truly believe in the innocence of Hopkins' victims. They were often widowed and elderly, perhaps cantankerous and opinionated. Healers and midwives too, would of course have been at risk.

And so I got to thinking, what if one of Hopkins' 'witches' was more than he anticipated? What if the (unsubstantiated) perverse means of sexual gratification practised by this son of a Puritan evoked a darker power than he really believed in....

HOPKINS' CONFESSION

One long quill to save a life. One signature in ink.
One young wife possessed, accused. One ducking stool to sink.
Bright shillings from the sheriff’s purse weigh heavy in my pouch.
I juggle, jingle, fondle them, my methods for to vouch.

She favours me with pleasures sweet but calls them tortures, sick.
I twist the pen in my fine hand; which signature to pick?
The one to tie her thumb to toe and toe to thumb again?
Or single pricking, clever knife to hide her lying pain?

She mewls, a cat – the evidence, her breast is wrought in sin.
I dip my pen, stroke at the page and scratch her name within.
Goody Blithe forgets herself, reveals her nipples three.
“One for master, one for Pan and lastly one for thee.”

Her voice is of a nether world. It spits fire from dark hell.
Black eyes glow a burning red, “I’ll have this tale to tell.”
From moles and warts a seeping slime erupts and bursts and drips.
“Curse on you, priest of false God.” Her words spill from torn lips.

Wet walls hum with spectral mist, their faces I remember
from hangings at the crossroads tree from May to last December.
Their innocence I did not doubt, no ugly beauty fooled me.
There is no witch in Charles’s fair land but simple neighbours feuding.

Booty stashed and power raised Blithe saw straight through my ruse.
A demon, raiser of the dead she announced my abuse.
Her harridans swept swiftly forth, tore at my black-cloth’d chest.
Froze their breath inside my lungs and laid me down to rest.

Your chronicles bare not my words. No sullied, deviant ink
recorded how she stole this man to Hell, his soul to drink.
But now, my reputation rot, my name a curse ephemeral
I rise once more to seek you out, signed, your... Witchfinder General.

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Eight Days of Madness - now available as a free e-book!

Chris Allinotte, host and editor of the marvellously dark Madness In March over at The Leaky Pencil has gone one step further. The seven stories plus the excellent bonus tale by Mr Allinotte himself have been gathered into an e-book at Smashwords, retitled Eight Days of Madness.

You can download the e-book in all formats - and best of all, it's free:

Download Eight Days of Madness here...

Featuring:

• Paranoia by Laurita Miller
• Blister Pack by Richard Godwin
• Mad Dash by Angel Zapata
• The Giver, The Taker, The Monster by Benjamin Sobieck
• Heart Shaped Hammer by Sean Patrick Reardon
• Still Alive by Erin Cole
• Living In A Box by Lily Childs
• The Dollmaker and the Rat by Chris Allinotte

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Bestowal

A small indulgence. Talkback - the online forum for the UK's Writers' News and Writing Magazine - runs a monthly 'One Word Challenge'. They give you one word (funnily enough) as a theme and you can write 200 words of fiction and/or 40 lines of poetry.

Last month's word was the delicious 'Ink'. My fiction entry didn't get short-listed but I have to say I really, really enjoyed writing it. I may have to expand on the idea...

Do let me know what you think. Thank you.

BESTOWAL

It’s an obscene stretch of vellum that extends to touch the walls of his cell. Thin to the point of transparency the gift of skin lies flaccid beneath his clumsy fingers. Yet as soon as his quill is dipped into ink – a turgid shade squeezed from oak cankers – a new world evolves.

Liquid towers strut across still rivers, defined and desired by the hungry pen. Humble houses open onto bacchanalian gardens; fresh water springing from fertile wells. The canvas rambles in the wake of his caress. He flicks the surface – welts raise as troubled mountains.

Plucking with the nib he labours at molehills, he pokes at craters until – no more. The drying brown powder refuses to emulsify with his pitiful spittle.

With darkness comes familiar blindness. The light has abandoned the skies, no longer seething through the single hole above his head. For this night only the prisoner wraps his art around his naked flesh and sleeps in its caress, soaking in the dreams he has made.

In the morning she will come to release him from the wondrous cloak. And he will wait as long as last time – maybe less, maybe more – for her next bequest.

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Spinetingler Awards - Voting Now Open!!

I am still stunned that my mean little tale Carpaccio has been nominated in the coveted Best Short Story on the Web category for the 2011 Spinetingler Awards. I've read each and every one of the other nine in the nomination list and they are all - without exception - excellent.

I've voted for my favourite (not telling - and no - I didn't vote for myself|). And now you have your chance to vote for your favourite at:

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2011/04/01/2011-spinetingler-award-voting/

Simply choose one per category (you don't have to vote on all categories). Note: you can only vote once as the site remembers your IP address.

So please do support the writers and the sites that have hosted the stories by voting now! Thank you.

Excerpt from Carpaccio by Lily Childs
Published on Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers March 2010

I prepared a new entry for tonight. A eulogy.

I didn’t usually record the times and dates of their deaths because that made it kind of final. I liked the idea that the agony would go on forever.

Some of them I held onto for weeks, a couple of months even. Kevin and Peter only lasted half a day each. That was my fault, I couldn’t leave them alone.

***

I liked to hang around the fairground. It visited our seaside town two, three times a year; just about the only thrill we had in our genteel haven of beaches and blue rinse.

I imagined how it would be to work there. The rides, the slot machines. I’d be one of the cocky boys on Waltzers who’d steal your money as soon as screw you in the bushes.

***

My first was Jean-Paul. I was only thirteen, a late starter. Jean-Paul captured my attention and I felt this need, this desire to possess him, care for him. For him to love me back. I relished his sinewy moves, the lazy slant of his lingering eye as he moved past me – one time, two times, three times, more.

"Jean-Paul" I whispered.

Read more... | Vote...

Lily's Friday Prediction

What a strange and complicated month April promises to be already. Busy, busy, busy followed by a whole 11 days off. I'm not going anywhere so will get on with the new novel as the research is mostly complete now. (Frissons in my fingertips - itching to type).

Congratulations to Jenny Dreadful for winning last week's Friday Prediction with Slim(e) wa(i)ste. And to runners-up Aidan Fritz and Pixie J. King with The Time Traveler's Hawker and Glass Slipper - well done.

This week's words are:

• Revolution
• Stitch
• Mistake

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 Thursday 7th April to enter.

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

I look forward to the beauty (or not) of your words...

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Prediction Winner

A short and sweet announcement this week, which is hardly fitting for the stunning entries - and for that I apologise. But I've already explained myself so won't blather on about life's inconveniences; I'll just get on with it.

Honestly, what a shower of fairy-tale delight - ripped apart and studded with sharp and sparkling pins. Poor Cinders didn't stand a chance. I'm so glad.

My winner from last week's Prediction is Jenny Dreadful with Slim(e) wa(i)ste. This got right under my skin with its flashlight descriptions and deviant poses. Congratulations Jenny.

Runners-up are Aidan Fritz with The Time Traveler's Hawker - because I just love this whole bizarre (bazaar) concept of the mother equally spoiling and neglecting her child, and also because I want to see the movie. Also Pixie J. King with Glass Slipper because I had wondered what had happened to her dark world of fairy and here it is - slap, bang in front of us, damned well-written - and Theo is taking prisoners. Well done Aidan, well done Pixie.

Sleep or wake well everyone. A new Prediction challenge tomorrow.

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