Wordsmoker

Sometimes—and by sometimes I mean always—quality is more important than quantity. While last week’s The World of Parks theme didn’t yield the mass of fruit that I had hoped, the pulp of the few pieces was indeed juicy. Some themes don’t strike that creative G-Spot in as many of our artists as others do. However, we did meet our quorum of one entry. 75% of the entries were excellent. One was a contemptible excuse to use a photo of an Asian general in the reminder post.

Here is the recap of last week’s candidates:

• BobDog – An untitled piece about the hubris of film crews.
• Chillbear Latrigue – “Last Friday Night.”
• Swifter – “The Ceremony”
• Baroness – “Twilight of a Bronx God”

Militant Rubber Ducky was the winner of last week’s contest and is, therefore, this week’s judge. Here is what she wrote:

“I choose Baroness.”

Succinct. Remember, the judge isn’t required to give a lengthy explanation as to why he or she chose a particular submission. It’s also not necessary to rank the runners up. The only thing that the judge is required to do is select. Here is Baroness’s victorious piece.

Twilight of a Bronx God, August 1977

“Scorching park day, a hunnert they say. Skinned knees, sprinklers, icy cherry Canada Dry. Running swinging shoving playing, happytired, happy boy. All day, all day, today is forever.

Ancient concrete GrecoRoman stadium to conquer. Gigantic, a pyramid to climb. Giant Apollo statue at top, like Superman. Explorer-boys, fearless. Exhaustion, doubt halfway. Soldier on!

Victory! Mile in the sky. In Apollo’s presence. Alabaster skin lashed with graffiti, lewd X across his crotch, dirty words scrawled everywhere, broken bottles at his feet. Sky is purple now, late, the kid shivers. The 44. caliber killer is out there. He wants to go home.”

Congratulations to the enigmatic and brilliant Baroness. There are so many different directions that one could go with this, but we have been on somewhat of a dark bent as of late. The Baroness’s “Twilight,” is about The Son of Sam serial killer, who terrified the city of New York in the 70′s. Therefore, this week’s theme is going to be Serial Killers. I know that we’ve done a few about mental disorders and dementia, but this type of theme really does seem to bring out your best. You can go with a famous killer, like BTK, Gacy or the Zodiac Killer, et cetera, or you can create your own. You car write about the victims, the killers, the fear, the politicians; it’s really up to you.

Here is a little theme music and a movie scene to set the mood:

The Rules:

Please not the change in the below rules for the Fourth of July week only.

• Your entry must be 101 words or less; if you choose to title your piece, the title will not count against your 101; there is no limit on the amount of entries you can submit.
• Because of the holiday the deadline will be Monday night at midnight. This will give the judge 24 hours to submit his or her selection to me by Tuesday night at midnight. Sorry about the shorter turnaround, Baroness.
• If I don’t receive the judge’s selection by one of the established methods (e-mail, Wordsmoker messaging or Facebook private messaging) I will be forced to make the selection so as not to delay the next week’s competition.
• The winner of Micro-Fiction Roundup automatically assumes the responsibility of judging the next week’s competition. Obviously that person can still submit writing, but can’t pick himself or herself as the winner. Otherwise we could end up with some sort of ridiculous perpetual judge situation.
• In the interest of keeping tradition, I will try to select themes based upon the previous week’s submissions when possible.

Sharpen your axes and knives, micro-fictioneers. We have work to do.

Image via Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern