Week 5 Winners!

I asked last week's winner, @hummingbirdFF, a few of my silly questions ...

1. What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given? 
I honestly don’t think anyone has given me any specific advice when it comes to creative writing. However, I think some advice that I’ve gotten in terms of professional writing that has been very useful in my creative writing is this:

If it’s not necessary, don’t include it. Don’t write for the sake of filling up empty space. Sometimes you can say something much better in 200 words than you can in 2000 ;)

2. The first and last books you fell in love with? 
First book… probably a book of Afrikaans fables that my dad read to me at bed time when I was younger, until I was old enough to start reading it to him :D

The last, I think, was The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers. It’s an incredibly emotional and thought-provoking book. It deals with the aftermath of a rape resulting in a pregnancy.

3. What are you listening to right now?
My Yiruma playlist (he is a pianist/composer)

I actually found him thanks to Twilight! I was looking for Bella’s Lullaby on YouTube and found many references to his piece called “River Flows In You”. Many people believe this piece inspired Bella’s Lullaby!

4. If you could delete one word from the English language, which one would it be? 
Oh wow… this is not something I’ve ever even considered! Off the top of my head though, it would probably be one of the most derogatory words used in reference to a woman (HINT: It starts with a ‘c’).

5. Suppose you could travel to any place in time and history. When and where are you going?

I feel like this is where I should pick some significant moment in history. But the truth is… I have never had the opportunity to travel. And there are so many people I love in THIS time, that I’d use this wish for right now. I’d want to take a world-trip in 2013. I’d go to Disneyland with Kate and to the opera in Vienna with Kris. I’d go to a carnival in Germany with Sue, and I’d go shopping in Delhi with Sri. I’d go lounge on an Australian beach with Mabso and I’d go buy chocolate with Sharon in SC. These people and so many others… they’re the people I want to travel to.

And now ...

Here's what @HummingbirdFF had to say about the entries ...

This was so tough for me… I found something to love in every single entry! Each entry was so very different in its own way, that I had no idea how to compare them. It took me forever, but I finally came to a decision. I still wish I could give everyone a prize!

*drumroll*

FIRST PLACE – @spanglemaker9

I absolutely adored this. I could feel his pain—the indescribable feeling of losing your other half. Wanting to forget the happiness instead of living with the loss… it made my heart ache in the best and the worst kind of way.

~~~

Days and days and days. How many still to go? Too many. A life takes too many days to live. I can’t face them all.

“It will get easier.”

“Just deal with one day at a time.”

“Be grateful for the time you had with her.”

“Better to have loved and lost…”

People say a lot of things when someone dies. I’ve decided most of them are lies.

Every day without her is harder than the one before. The memories of her –of us –don’t soften and glow, they burn and hurt. They don’t make me stronger. They’re crippling me. I can’t move forward, and I can’t escape.

I dream of erasing her. I dream of that first day, when she ran into me on her way to class. Our shoulders slammed together, her folder emptied on the ground, my notes exploded, mingling with hers until it took us half an hour to sort it out, full of nervous laughter and fingers brushing and names, numbers awkwardly exchanged…. Instead, her shoulder missed mine. Our lives never collided. She passed by and one day died and I never knew it.

Then I wake up, still in love with a ghost.

SECOND PLACE – @TiramiSue84

This story resonated with me on a very personal level. I just loved how you described the moment of realisation. It makes my heart hurt all over again!

~~~

It was a long time coming and yet, it hit me out of nowhere. It crept and crawled within me undetected, through the pores of my skin and into my veins. Up, up right into my heart. A stab. Further even – into my mind. Was it a punch or a bullet?

This realization.

It's taken me years to see, feel and grasp what's been hinted to me by others right from the start.

You are not good for me.

It wasn't pink-tinted glasses I'd been wearing where you were concerned, but rather blinders and earplugs.

I was blind and deaf to your fake and phony, your resentment and hypocrisy thinly veiled by the cover of your pretend caring.

You felt no love for me.

You kept me around so that my misery could make you feel better about yourself. For you to soar, you needed to see me fall.

And this realization hurts. So much so that I'm breaking a bit as I walk out on you now, but I have to. If I don't, you'll further use me up until there's nothing left.

It's too much to ask, too much to take.

I have to let you go.

HONORABLE MENTION – @BedeliaJane

This interpretation of the imprinting bond was just beautiful and heart-breaking all at once. But the feeling of unrequited love stood out to me—sometimes we can’t help who we fall in love with.

~~~

We cut our teeth on their hearts. Hiding in blanket forts and tree houses, we giggled and schemed. Our wolves would be anything we wanted—our very own pair of grownup puppets, dancing to our whims.

Now they stand before us, their faces unchanged by time. Jacob stares at the place where my fingers link together with Claire’s. My voice freezes with my breath, hands itching to let my power do the talking for me.

“We’re in love,” Claire says, meeting Quil’s gaze with her shoulders straight. “Have been for a long time.”

“Ness?” the ghost of my Jacob says.

I nod. “The imprint makes you be whatever we need, right? Well, we need you to be our friends. Just that, nothing more. No one asked us if we wanted…”

Trailing off, I swallow the unfair words. No one asked them, either.

Claire gives my fingers a squeeze. Time to cut the strings. Time to let go.

We don’t say we’re sorry. Hand-in-hand, we run away from the devotion everyone claimed we’d never be able to refuse.

Neither of us look back.

HONORABLE MENTION – @Aleeab4u

I simply loved the descriptions in this story—so vivid!

~~~

Another dingy bar. Company found in minds as lost and lamenting as his own. Despair bled into the walls, and floors, and the whisky in the dingy shot glass before him.

He swallows down liquid self flagellation, wincing, though it's regret that burns not fermented grains aged in charred oak casks. The hint of smoke in his throat is the essence of irony, the palest illusion of her. His gut reminds him it wants red, not amber.

Memories are his only sustenance now.

Smiles, shy laughter, and sweet-pain kisses. Breathless sighs carrying the promise of passion barely breeched, and, oh, how he longed to breech. Claim sweet innocence, bring it life, spark it with fuel and let it burn him alive.

She would have ignited for him so sweetly if he'd only known to trust the tenderness within to love her that way. Instead, he sits here, a million miles away from his one true weakness, leaving her fire to fickle human fates.

But time waits for no one, least of all him. He stares at the clock, knowing he's losing the will to stay gone.

Until then, he raises his empty glass, one more for the empty road.

CONGRATULATIONS @spanglemaker9!

I look forward to seeing the prompt you choose for next week's #fanficflashfic.

Thank you to Ari for judging, and to everyone who participated!

See you next week.