“The Future”
Wesley McNair

On the afternoon talk shows of America
the guests have suffered life's sorrows
long enough. All they require now
is the opportunity for closure,
to put the whole thing behind them
and get on with their lives. That their lives,
in fact, are getting on with them even
as they announce their requirement
is written on the faces of the younger ones
wrinkling their brows, and the skin
of their elders collecting just under their
set chins. It's not easy to escape the past,
but who wouldn't want to live in a future
where the worst has already happened
and Americans can finally relax after daring
to demand a different way? For the rest of us,
the future, barring variations, turns out
to be not so different from the present
where we have always lived - the same
struggle of wishes and losses, and hope,
that old lieutenant, picking us up
every so often to dust us off and adjust
our helmets. Adjustment, for that matter,
may be the one lesson hope has to give,
serving us best when we begin to find
what we didn't know we wanted in what
the future brings. Nobody would have asked
for the ice storm that takes down trees
and knocks the power out, leaving nothing
but two buckets of snow melting
on the wood stove and candlelight so weak,
the old man sitting at the kitchen table
can hardly see to play cards. Yet how else
but by the old woman's laughter
when he mistakes a jack for a queen
would he look at her face in the half-light as if
for the first time while the kitchen around them
and the very cards he holds in his hands
disappear? In the deep moment of his looking
and her looking back, there is no future,
only right now, all, anyway, each one of us
has ever had, and all the two of them,
sitting together in the dark among the cracked
notes of the snow thawing beside them
on the stove, right now will ever need.

Challenge Name: Connect the Dots
Rating/Warning: PG; one death
Word Count(Optional): 1,333 words
Author's Notes(Optional): I don't know why this idea stuck with me so hard...I don't really know if I even like it.

Challenge Name: Connect the Dots
Rating/Warning: T
Word Count(Optional):287
Author's Notes(Optional): This is very strange to me, and I'm not sure that I really like it. I thought about not posting it at all, but I thought 'What the heck?'

( Morning Star )

“About Friends”
Brian Jones

The good thing about friends
is not having to finish sentences.

I sat a whole summer afternoon with my friend once
on a river bank, bashing heels on the baked mud
and watching the small chunks slide into the water
and listening to them - plop plop plop.
He said, 'I like the twigs when they...you know...
like that.' I said, 'There's that branch...'
We both said, 'Mmmm'. The river flowed and flowed
and there were lots of butterflies, that afternoon.

I first thought there was a sad thing about friends
when we met twenty years later.
We both talked hundreds of sentences,
taking care to finish all we said,
and explain it all very carefully,
as if we'd been discovered in places
we should not be, and were somehow ashamed.

I understood then what the river meant by flowing.

Challenge Name: Connect the Dots
Rating/Warning: Rated E, for everyone.
Word Count: 802
Author's Notes: I probably should wait until morning to post this, so I have a chance to read over it again with some fresh eyes, but I'll probably scrap the entire thing if I do that. So, I'm posting it now instead. And I suck at coming up with titles, so I apologize for the vague title. I'll try harder next time. While pretty much everything is still out of my comfort zone, since I'm still trying to get used to writing original fiction, I chose to write this with a man as the main character, something I'm pretty sure I've never done before. It turned out better than I had expected. Concrit welcome.

Hello my fellow TDMers!!!

The time has come to unveil the winners for the Fire! challenge!

(the crowd hushes)

How effective are you in details?  In many cases, less is more.  You don't have to describe a person or thing from top to bottom to give your reader an accurate picture.
    First, ask yourself what you want to convey about the thing you are describing.  Let's say it's an ostentatious house inhabited by a family whose youngest son is prone to violence.  Skip the granite walkway, the wraparound porch, the French doors, the landscaped garden.  Rich is rich.  Find the one thing in the house that gives away the house's secret:

       "The staircase rose to the upper floors in a theatrical flourish, a swatch of carpet flattened over each tread and tacked hard into the wood."

    I like this description because it is so suggestive.  The staircase seems to belong to a house big enough and nice enough to have "upper floors," and yet there's a weird sense of menace to those flattened carpet swatches and the way they're attached to the treads.

~Monica Woods, "The Pocket Muse"

Title: Into the Woods
Author: Lee Terati
Challenge Name: Connect the Dots
Rating/Warning: Dark and eerie
Word Count(Optional): ~650
Author's Notes(Optional): Well, was this out of my comfort zone? I don't usually write horror or supernatural stories, but this time I rose to the challenge.

The dots are all in bold and duly connected.

( Into the Woods )

Hello, everyone in TDM land!  Now, I know that there's been tons of craziness going on, with four mod challenges in a week.  Lots of reading, lots of voting.  Things'll be slowing down to one (I think) a week, and I hope that helps.  However!  We do need your help!

There are three more challenges to vote on! 

Two challenges to vote on!

Fire!

Mythology

Not As They Seem

Again, thanks to those who have already voted!  Those of you who have read submissions for these challenges and haven't voted... Please vote!  Those of you who submitted entries for these challenges and didn't vote... Please vote!

Also, have a fantastical day!  :D

“First Gestures”
Julia Spicher Kasdorf

Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release.

Challenge Name: Connect the Dots
Rating/Warning: None
Word Count(Optional): Forgot to count
Author's Notes(Optional): Enjoy!

( Willows )

1.  Here are your dots:

An old woman is sleeping under a tree
with a girl with eyes as slender as pearls.

Everything is plush velvety and satin;
out in the forest, hunters are wandering,
while pigeons hunt for food.

Your mission:  Connect these disjointed themes in any order to create your next submission!  But that's not all...

2.  Use a genre or perspective that your aren't comfortable writing in.  Hate first person?  Write it.  Can't make present tense work?  Try anyway.  Never written horror before?  Do it! 

This challenge is to push your comfort zones and to broaden your horizons.  Think it's too hard?  Do it anyway!  One sentence at a time!  Yay!

As always, place your submissions behind an lj cut, and use the following form:

Challenge Name: Connect the Dots
Rating/Warning:
Word Count(Optional):
Author's Notes(Optional):

Ready, set, GO!  This challenge ends August 4, 2008.  Happy writing!  :D

(((EDIT: And I forgot to say: Comment if you plan on participating!)))

Attention, lurkers, writers, readers, voters, kitties, puppies, and everyone else!  It is now time to vote for your Not As They Seem entries!

Once again, we do ask that you vote even if you just lurk about.  You don't have to submit in order to vote, and your votes help us pick winners!

Our contestants are...

lienoym with What Seems Unexpected!

queenkitteh with Not As They Seem!

classicrocker with Galaxy Five!

thefaeway with Judge Not!

lee_terati with (L)if(e)!

and not_quite_queen with The Man and His Trike!

Vote, vote, vote!  As always, comments are screened.  Pick up to three writers, and don't forget to tell us why you liked their stories!  :D

Title: Between Scylla and Charybdis
Author: Lee Terati
Challenge Name: Wizard of Where?
Rating/Warning: PG
Word Count: 731
Author's Notes: My own version of the challenge - it does feature a tornado.

( Between Scylla and Charybdis )

thelifelist
A forum for exchanging lists of things you'd like to have done before you die.

ljsecret
Share a secret through the means of art, under complete anonymity.

mourning_souls
A community for cemetery photographers, dark poets and anyone else who appreciates and admires the beauty of cemeteries.

“And nothing is ever as you want to be”
Brian Patten

You lose your love for her and then
It is her who is lost,
And then it is both who are lost,
And nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.

In a very ordinary world
A most extraordinary pain mingles with the small routines,
The loss seems huge and yet
Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.

You are afraid.
If you found the perfect love
It would scald your hands,
Rip the skin from your nerves,
Cause havoc with a computered heart.

You lose your love for her and then it is her who is lost.
You tried not to hurt and yet
Everything you touched became a wound.
You tried to mend what cannot be mended,
You tried, neither foolish nor clumsy,
To rescue what cannot be rescued.

You failed,
And now she is elsewhere
And her night and your night
Are both utterly drained.

How easy it would be
If love could be brought home like a lost kitten
Or gathered in like strawberries,
How lovely it would be;
But nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.

Hello again!

Voting for Playing in Reverse in now over!

Thank you everyone who voting, you picked them, and here they are!

Challenge Name: Wizard of Where?
Rating/Warning: None
Word Count(Optional): Forgot to Count
Author's Notes(Optional): You better like it!

( The Ent )