STACH Short Story Contest #22: 199 words, 5 winners, 15SBD prize pool!
Hello Everyone, @kingst here with the announcement for the STACH Short Story Contest #22.
What is a Short Story.
A short story is a story with a fully developed theme but significantly shorter and less elaborate than a novel. It makes use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components to a far greater degree than is typical of an anecdote. You can read it in less than 90 seconds.
Contest Rules:
•Write a Short Story based on the topic that will be given every week.
•Write an Original Short Story (Plagiarism will be flagged and reported).
•The Story must contain no more than 199 words.
•One entry per user.
•Story should be pasted in the comment section below, no links.
•Contestants are permitted to post their stories in an article on their blog, so they also get upvotes from the @stach trail.
Winners Selection.
Winners will be selected based on the topic, story plot, number of words and delivery as determined by the selected Judge. One word above 199, disqualifies the entry.
Contest Topic.
Write a 199 words story based on A BOTTLED MESSAGE.
PRIZE.
FIVE winners will be selected for a share of the 15SBD. The story with the most interaction gets a 1SBD prize from @ejemai.
First Prize: ----------------------4SBD
Second Prize: ------------------3.5SBD
Third Prize: ---------------------3SBD
Fourth Prize: -------------------2.5SBD
Fifth Prize: ----------------------2SBD
Good luck guys!
Sharpen your writing skills and throw in some inspiring short stories. XO!
STACH is a physical Accelerator Hub dedicated to decentralizing the offline by breaking the barriers to accessing the internet like light, internet and conducive working space.
STACH is supported by @Sndbox as a Sndcastle project.
The tattooed girl stood atop the last mountain staring at the torn sky. Up. Flip. Down. Hollow slap of the bottle solid against the meat of her palm. Freezing air, thin and sharp -- but it mattered not at the end of the world.
A thousand feet below, ravening darkness ascended, gobbling clouds in its path.
The fissure above widened. She sighed, rocked back on her heels. Held the bottle still, contemplating its contents. Green and blue danced within, swirling as if seen through dark water.
A hundred feet. The darkness boiled upward as if it had her scent.
She looked down. Sighed. Raised her face to the ravaged sky once more. Her right arm caught fire, flames tracing every tattooed line.
Forty feet.
She looked up. One more breath. Plant right foot. Lean back on it, left hand stretched languidly at the sky, as good an aiming point as any. Blazing right arm cocked back, bottle by her ear.
Ten feet.
She threw. Hard. The air split athwart it as the bottle thundered into the slashed maw of the sky. Darkness swallowed the mountaintop below but the world in the bottle escaped the end of the world.
Wow. Na the end of the world be dis na. Everywhere else don go under the shadows, na only this superhero of a girl still dey. I see wetin you put inside her message bottle ooo 😄 "green and blue" indeed hahahahahaha 🌏
The thing strange sha but e take style make sense. Wehdon!
Hehehehheheh, exactly. You don see the trick lol - as above, so below 🍾😁
Even when your story is longer than most it still make sense with a nice plot . make @africaunchained proud man .
This looks like a winner to me.
Very poetic. I loved it!
Much appreciated. So far, you and @madmaxfury are the only ones who figured out what the girl was up to 😄
What a way to go.
A very rainy day, Steban went in search of his mother's medicine, when, in the middle of the road, he was in a storm fountain, the boat was left in nothingness! steban desperate without knowing that if his mother will not have her medicines worsened! Suddenly a fisherman arrived and asked him: Hey steban, what happened to you! He answers my mother is sick and went to the city to look for medicines and the boat became nothing because of the storm. Millet do not lose faith you will see that you will have your mother's medicines. Steban turns the river down and sees a bottle of glass sending a message in the bottle !!! Well, that's how I wrote a sheet and sent the message! The next day I knocked on the door and was a doctor with the medicines Steban was happy and gave his mother's medicines thanks to the doctor!
Wish failed.
I've tried everything to get close to you, I've gone to places you go frequently, I've gone to theaters to watch movies that do not interest me, I tried to make you like the same music that you like, I even wrote a message on I dropped a bottle and threw it into the sea, wishing you were by my side.
Two years have passed since I threw the bottle with a desire that unfortunately was not fulfilled, I do not hold a grudge, I do not hate you; You were the best teaching that life has given me, thanks to your contempt I understood that my lies would never make you fall in love, you did not look for someone who was the same as you, you only looked for a girl who was honest and that girl was not me, because I lied to you Believing that in this way I would get closer to you, and what I did not know is that every time I lied, I moved further away from you.
Ahoy whoever finds this message
I 'ave been shipwrecked!!! I be th' first mate o' th' "Black Pearl" I bet ye 'ave heard a bit o' th' amazin' adventures we 'ave had. Now, it ain't jus' a plain ole ship since most o' th' crew 'ave a bit o' monster personality in them. Fer me, I 'ave always been th' family disgrace, eyes that go in th' opposite direction, long, dirty black nails, crooked teeth, these qualities made me generally unwanted fer a job. So when I was called aboard th' Black Peark, I was o'erjoyed. But now we be wrecked.
We were sailin' t' th' Island o' Ammedin, t' get some arabian hidden loot. Thar was a storm that left us shipwrecked on a large Island, good thin' be thar's a lot o' grub 'n friendly natives, bad news be no one knows how t' build a ship. Th' Island has forests 'n lots o' beautifully carved natural caves 'n thar's a rich tradition o' mummies (nah th' kind ye came from her belly). So if ye find this, try t' look fer us.
Now I shall cast this message in a bottle.
Yers in trouble
Jack Sparrow
Lol!!!! Amazing. You deserve to win!!!!
Thank you
"Hohoho, we comin' t' getcha capn." Lolest! I like it.
Thank you
Emptying bottles was to Dad what swimming is to fish. He could not function properly with a clean system but he was a damn genius when he got it in the right amount of it.
It was not a surprise to anyone even himself when he died of cirrhosis. Like he used to say "something will kill a man".
"He is dead", Ruth my sister said with best clarity she could managed. Hearing that he is gone gave me a mixed feelings. His treatment was consuming every income everyone was able to come up with...that brought relief. Loosing a father and me becoming the 'head of the house' brought a feeling of great loss and sudden heavy burden.
Getting home, i rushed to mum's room console her and my sister. After most of the sympathisers have dispersed the second day. I went to his room to see if there is no anything there is anything of note.
Expectedly there are many bottles to clear, but an empty but sealed bottle with a small paper in it stood out. I took out the paper and it reads "I AM PROUD OF YOU, SON. YOU ARE ALL I WANTED TO BE".
A BOTTLED MESSAGE
Miss Joy, unlike other times stood fearlessly before Dr James her project supervisor who had been a thorn in her flesh.
Image source
Dr James: Young lady, you have to come back next year for your project since you have refused to dance to my tune of one hour pleasure with you.
Joy laughed out so loud that even the dead could hear her laughter.
Miss Joy: And how can that be possible by a toothless lion like you?, she roared at him.
Dr James lifted his hands to slap her; she held his hands in the air and said to him
image source
I have a sex video tape of you and my friend mercy, and your secrets will be out soon if any further misbehavior from you. Dr James shivered as hot sweat immediately formed on his face and the lion in him became a gentle lamb.
This is the deal you must follow if you don’t want to lose your home and your work.
You will have to finish the project I started and grade me “A” in it, She said and walk out of his office with the smile of a victor
Uww...wow...interesting.. But how did she managed tp get the video clip . did she used her friend to set up the supervisor?
@michaeljerry There might be many sides to the story. She might have had an agreement with her friend or the hotel they went to and a camera was set or she must have known that Mercy was tired of the lecturer headache and she gave him. So Joy now trying to use boldness to get at the lecturer even if there was no video evidence.
Wow wow wow this story made me shout go girl you have got so much confidence. Wow nice story it is concise and tells a lot. This always happen to female students even my relation was a victim but all thanks to God the man died a shameful and smelling death had severe underlying infections.
I just love the boldness in Joy.
Nice one my dear.
@eunireal1 should i say thank God the man died or what ? A sad incident but it in a way serves him right. If evil people continue to live then wickedness will continue in the land.
The case of Joy are similar incidences that happen on our campuses often times. I have heard of wicked lecturers been inflicted with terrible disease until their death. Any way God will help us.
Thanks for reading and contibuting
Very interesting piece.
So sad and annoying seeing ugly incidences like this happening in our higher institutions
So sad that such sad occurrence still goes on in our campuses but God will surely aide us Amen.
This is what i so despise in men, time will come when i would fight it with all i have.
My sister sounding so annoyed but fear not. All men are not the same. There are still men who marry as virgins today and don't flirt.
My dear. Just pray to marry a good one.
Nice piece of work.
Good job.
Thank you so much friend for reading.
Blackmailing,
That's really a painful sting.
Yea but not as painful as a lecturer requesting sex from an innocent girl who might have been trying to keep herself till marriage
What??? Wisdom or smartness.
Nice script.
I think it's wisdom and smartness since the lecturer was trying to play around her future.
Smart moves i think
source
14-year-old boy sam lives with his poor sick dad, he lost his mother a year ago, sam knew he was losing his father too and he needed help.
He thought again about the project for his 3rd grade art class,Message in a bottle and was determined to send the his in the sea. He wrote a note on a simple piece of sheet and placed it in an empty bottle,begging for help and narrating his story with contacts and date, he threw it into the sea.
After two months, lora a rich business woman went for a walk on her beach when she saw something green that shone on the high tide line.
She always dreamed of discovering a message in a bottle on the beach, but she never thought she would find one. she opened it and happiness filled her heart.
few days later, lora sent an email to sam, she funded his family and Sam's dad was well again they began to live a comfortable life.
Although the bottle traveled less than a kilometer from the place where he threw it but no distance could diminish the great help he brought to his father.
The newlyweds Ana and Rafael were happy to have bought their first house on a beautiful hill surrounded by large fruit trees, however they had to do some house remodeling before they could move in, since it was an older building.
The work began and everything went according to plan, but over time the fights started to appear because the couple didn’t agree on the changes they wanted to make to the house and they were running out of money because Ana would only choose the most expensive things for her house.
One day they had a strong argument and Rafael angrily left the house, Ana was crying and to calm down she went down to the basement to fix some things, when she suddenly noticed in an old closet a bottle that seemed to contain a note, she took it out and read it: "In this home I found true happiness. I did not have many material things to offer my family, but they were not important, since we had to love and support of each other" . When reading the note Ana understood what it meant to have a home and ran to look for Rafael.
Link of my post: https://steemit.com/stach/@maeugenia/stach-short-story-contest-22-a-new-start
Charles was walking along the beach. He was going through the worst crisis of his life. His wife left him, taking away his children. His addiction to gambling and alcohol, cost him his job, and his gambling debts, led him to bankruptcy.
Charles had lost everything. Now alone, on that beach he wondered, if it was worth it to continue living ...
Charles was thinking, how to end his life, when the waves brought a bottle to his feet. He thought about kicking the bottle away, but he realized there was a note inside the bottle.
Charles picked up the bottle. He read that note. It was written by a girl named Aurora. She wrote to her father, who had died. The note said: "Dear father, I miss you, your departure has left a great void in the family. You will no longer accompany us in special moments such as: my graduation from school, you will not give me at my wedding. I would give everything because you were alive ... I love you Aurora. "
When he finished reading the message, Charles cried and changed his mind. He would fight to recover his family and his life.
A Bottle from the Interstellar Sea
In the very distant future two children play on the shore of a beach, they observe something luminous fall from the sky to the sea; they continue playing and after a while they see how the waves bring an object.
The children go in its search and when they take it they realize that it’s a golden disk, they notice that it has some printed grooves, they find it interesting and take it with them. When they got home they showed it to their mother and she took it to a university where they managed to decipher the content of the album. It became known that it was from a civilization of another world, they were not alone in the universe.
The planet where the disc came from was located, and a mission was planned in order to reach it. When the men arrived to said planet, they were completely devastated because it had been destroyed in a large-scale war.
What these children had found was a disk that carried the voyager spacecraft. The ship was like a bottle thrown into the infinite sea of space and the disc was a message inside the bottle, a message of peace.
What a bitch! Tolu almost said it loud. He must avoid this one like a snake, looking at the way she was carrying herself and finding it difficult to open her mouth to respond to peoples' greetings.
"A penny for your thought" he jerked out of his reminiscing by the sweet voice and smiling face of Sandra. But her phone ranged again before he had time to answer her. Funny how appearance and sometimes first impression can be deceptive, they are both in this case.
Their first real encounter was few days after he was employed, when she had a problem with her Laptop computer. She was so disturbed. Tolu spending 4 years as an apprentice learning computer engineering is not in vain after all.
"If I paid you a penny for your thought, I think you will be a millionaire". She said while sitting herself gracefully. Tolu could not really figure what she want from, she has a finance in America who will likely come and take her anytime according to office gossips. He wanted to express himself but would rather bottled up the message and enjoy the moment while it lasts..."You can't afford it", he replied smiling.