week #2 winners!

Let's get to know this week's judge, @DarlingVeruca before she announces her winner.

1. Best piece of writing advice you’ve been given? It came recently, actually, and by a completely unexpected source. He told me to write what I want. Very basic and certainly stated before, but when it's said directly to you it sort of means a little more.

2. The first and last books you fell in love with? I hated reading as a kid, so I'll give you the title of the book read over and over with my daughter: The Lorax. The most recent book I fell in love with would have to be The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I've read several since discovering it, but this is the one that's stuck with me the most.

3. You can teleport. Where's the first place you'd go? New York City, 1920's.

4. What are you listening to right now? Literally? Pencils scratching who knows what across paper.  But the song in my head is Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.

5. It's midnight, and you're hungry. What are you going to snack on? A Reese's Peanut Butter Cup two-pack.

Here's what Veruca had to say about the entries. Like last week, I pasted them all into a google doc without names and twitter handles attached.

I didn’t know what to expect when I emailed Shell this pic prompt, but wow, the words were brought. It was honestly a very, very tough decision, because you all are so talented.

And the winners are ...

1st Place: @quietdrabble

I kept going back to this one, and each time it read more powerfully. It drew me in from the beginning, but the blatant ending just hit it home. I would love to read more about him.

She cut.

I saw below her flesh, I saw beneath the self inflicted wounds of loathing she couldn't seem to control. I saw the colors she could not see, the chartreuse and tangerine she emitted. I saw her beauty in a way she showed no one else, the beauty she eagerly wanted to rid herself of. The beauty she desperately hated, the beauty she cut deeply into.

And I mainlined.

We both had our pains, our pasts filled with anguish and abuse. She was strong, but I was weak. She wanted to feel the steady control and I wanted to hide. I didn't want the pain and she craved it.

"The assignment today, class. Look at the picture. Write what you feel. Two hundred words or less."

The memory of her flowing, raw beauty is all I have left. She cut too deep, and I was high.

She felt the pain, and I was wasted.

I stared at the picture, my hand quivering with trepidation over the words I wanted to write. I grasped the pen until my hand shook, willing the nerve. I took a deep, steadying breath and wrote a single word on the crisp white page:

Nothing.

2nd Place: @katiewinkles

This one was really beautifully written. I loved how the prompt was used, how color and music were intertwined. Every part of this was so vivid.

To her, music has always been colour.

Sometimes it’s pretty pale pinks and sunshine yellows to match the soft, lilting, whimsical notes.

Sometimes it’s dark and deep; crimson and inky blues weaving into her subconscious like a honey-laden voice, or the pulse of a kick drum.

Sometimes it’s dark purple like a healing bruise; colours that sink deep beneath her ribs, cutting, burning, aching with each longing word or heartbroken syllable.

Sometimes it’s flashes of bright purple and red; glitchy, twitchy, pitch-shifty stuff that makes the colour pop and fizz like bubbles through her vision.

Today it floats through her subconscious like wave after wave of vivid colour, splashing across the back of her eyelids in swirls of bright green and orange; a cacophony, a riot, an explosion of colour to match the snap and bang of the snare, and the heart racing, feet moving, body twirling noise inside her ears.

She likes to imagine it seeping into her cheeks, staining them pink, or into the green of her eyes and red of her lips.

A constant friend, the music is what keeps her heart beating and feeds her soul. For her, there is no colour in life without music. 

Honourable Mentions

@LadyGwynedd

What I liked about this one was the sweet nostalgia, but in the end, how the narrator chose to live in the present. The nod to Joni Mitchell, though, nicely done.

I hadn’t listened to my old LPs in years. I’d found a dusty box full as I was clearing out dad’s old house. I gazed on the worn album covers each a musical memory. Lastly, came the one with a stylized drawing of a musing girl with flowers for eyes, vines for hair and too many pink-nailed fingers. The record had been a gift from a young man who had been my world for a time.

Fortunately, the old stereo hadn’t yet been sold or given away and soon Joni’s bell-like voice filled the emptied house. Her music transported me to a honeyed time as I remembered the slam of lockers, the giggles of friends, and the thrill of a secretly passed note. Then, there were the shy glances of a bashful boy, his nervous, stuttered invitation, a knot of carnations on my wrist, his warm fingers entangled with mine, and a soft, trembling kiss upon my lips.

“I really don’t know love at all,” she sang.

Enough. I packed the album away with the others, taped the box shut and wrote across the top: Give Away.

The past was much better left undisturbed. 

@AnnaLund2011

Such pretty, poetic words even though it was a painful piece. I want to know how she got to where she is. Love that this one made references to classic music as well.

And she dreams. And dreams. She has lost herself to the images of psychedelic love and peace and understanding and… and… she doesn’t know where she is anymore. The voice that usually anchors her is gone. 

Moments ago, a harsh voice joined her anchor’s voice, and it was spitting out hateful words, hissing and cussing, and then, a cracking sound, like the Earth being ripped apart.

A whiff of terrible, heavy smoke, something that turns the colors in her dream into black ashes. 

The friendly voice is gone, and now she is alone. Not even the angry voice is there anymore.

Her mind keeps trying to come back into the now, back into the room in which she knows she must be sitting, the one where she exists also for other people. Where the ink on her skin matches the lines in her mind.

And in her dream there is a tune playing in the background, an old Rolling Stones song. The music is soft and it culls her, takes care of her. She doesn’t need to do anything at all, today. Nor ever again. She is safe inside her head.


She comes in colors everywhere. She combs her hair.

@ajapersuasia

This one was stunning. This line: Scorched by the chant trapped there. Gorgeous.

I used to hear feet stomping over my head. Now I only hear thunder. I used to smell the grass underneath me. Now I feel the pitch and roll, like an earthquake. Like an ocean.

She used to have hair, long and dark. It used to be still.

I would reach out, touch her. If I could. If I wasn’t immobilized by the weight of all this sound. Oppressed. I can move my eyes. The blood in my veins. My heart wringing itself dry.

And I think I’m smiling.

“You are smiling.”

She can read my mind. Maybe I’m speaking out loud.

My mouth used to taste like LSD. Now it tastes like lightning. Scorched by the chant trapped there.

Cougars! Fight! Cougars! Win!

I used to play.

She nods. Feathers and flowers. Birdsong. Her skin is my fortune teller. My future is made of rainbows. Her voice is a formerly undiscovered country.

She used to wear a mask. Color in bloom is her true face.

There used to be something real beyond the bleachers above me. Now there is only sky.

I used to have hands. Now I have wings.

I used to be me. Now I can fly.

Congratulations @quietdrabble!

I can't wait to see what you pick for our prompt next week.

Thank you to @DarlingVeruca for judging, and to everyone who participated!

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!