Writing Challenge ~ August 2014

WRITING CHALLENGE ~ AUGUST 2014​

After another fantastic month for writing, July saw some epic pieces, it’s time for a new challenge! This challenge will also run for the whole month and hopefully we’ll be treated to some more amazing things to read!
And so, here are your August prompts.


You can involve the prompts themselves in your piece and make your link to the prompts as obvious or as subtle as you like or use them simply as inspiration for something else. You can use part of the prompts, just one aspect of the images, or use them in their entirety.

As there are several prompts you can of course chose to use all of them in one piece or write one for each…again, it’s your writing, your challenge. You write whatever you’re inspired to write!

The word limit for this challenge is 1,750 words and your submission can take whatever form you desire – poetry or prose, complete story or a vignette. Erotic or not, serious or light hearted, it’s whatever you want it to be!!

Post only your submissions in this thread, constructive comments and reviews are to be posted in the appropriately named – Comment and Review Thread
And please, if you do take the time to read? Please just take a few more minutes to leave a comment.

The deadline for this month’s challenge is Sunday 31st August 2014, with September’s challenge hopefully going live shortly after!

Previous challenges and reviews can be found here.

Happy writing!

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Every town has its traditions. Some unique, others less so. Rites of passage that have become engrained in the lives of those that live there. Rosebury was no different. Not far from Savannah and named after the family that founded it a little over two centuries before, it was the old Rose family house that at the centre of one of the oldest and most famous urban myths in the town.

The house in its heyday had been something to see. Three stories of colonial style elegance, with six impressive columns running across the front, supporting the covered balcony on its second floor. With extensive gardens and a sweeping driveway it was almost sad to see how the years had treated the Roses’ home. It’s white paintwork faded and green, almost black in places, with mould. The roof was pitted with holes and it would be a difficult task to find an unbroken window in the place. The gardens once manicured were now overgrown with weeds, huge clumps of Spanish moss hanging from the trees lining the driveway were like natural cobwebs. Cloaking the exterior just as smaller silken versions were sure to decorate the inside.

The house, they said, was haunted. The family had been prosperous and generous, a rare combination, and were well loved by the townsfolk. But that love could do nothing to help them when the cholera came. The entire family succumbed to the illness. Parents and children, the disease was indiscriminate. The rest of the town managed to escape relatively unscathed, leading to rumours and legends that perhaps the family was not as upstanding as everyone had thought. Perhaps it was karmic justice of a kind.
Whatever the real reason for the demise of the Roses, the fact remained that at one end of the town was a huge, empty house within which an entire family had met their untimely end. The perfect setting for a rite of passage and that is truly where this tale begins…


“You’re a jerk!” Anabel tugged her hand out of her boyfriend’s with a pout. “And this is the dumbest thing I ever heard!”

“Aww, it’s not that bad,” he charmed, an arm looping with ease around her shoulders and using the position to keep her by his side. “It’ll be twenty minutes, half an hour tops.”

“Yeah, half an hour of my life I’ll never get back!” She glared, trying to shrug off his arm. “You said we were going to the movies.”

“And we will, but I gotta do this first.”

“No. You don’t.” Anabel stopped walking, forcing him to do the same. “This is ridiculous. You do know that, right, Mike?”

“It’s half an hour,” his lips formed the smile she usually found hard to resist and soon enough they were walking again. “Just half an hour and then we’ll head to the movies.”

“We better!” Her dark eyes flashed with barely controlled annoyance as their step slowed and they reached the gate that barred their path. “You got thirty minutes and then, I’m going to go to the movies on my own!”

“Don’t be like that,” his lips were aiming for her mouth but a turn of her head meant they were forced to press her cheek inside.

“Why not? You’re choosing a dumb dare over me.”

“If I don’t do it, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Anabel rolled her eyes.

“Everyone does it,” he continued, a slight whine entering his voice.

“Then everyone is dumb,” arms were folded across her chest, making a natural barrier between them and emphasising the hint of cleavage visible in the ‘v’ made by her jacket at the same time. His eyes flicked down to it and then back up, sheepishly, to her face.

“I’ll be real quick, I swear!” Eyes dropped to her chest again and the ghost of a smile flickered over her lips.

“Go get your stupid proof,” she inclined her head towards the abandoned house behind the wrought iron gates. “But I mean it, if you’re not back, I’m going without you. And this,” her finger waved back and forth between the two of them, “is over.”

Without another word he pushed open the gates, the metal protesting the movement with an almost painful squeak. Flashing her a grin and a wink, he set off down the driveway towards the house at a jog. Sneakered feet crunching on the gravel, growing quieter the closer he got to the house. Soon it went quiet and Anabel leant against the gate post to wait. Drawing her phone from her pocket she tutted to see there was next to no signal where she was.

“Of course there isn’t,” she groaned, pushing the slim device back into her jeans.

She waited a while, not half an hour, but long enough to be bored. The sun was already close to the horizon and it was definitely cooler than it had been when they’d arrived. Squeezing through the gap between the gates, she began to walk the way Mike had gone. Arms around her torso again, this time for warmth. And self-assurance. It was just an empty house. Nothing to be afraid of, right?

The dare was simple, sneak into the Rose house and take something. A photo, a cup. Anything that would be obviously from there. It was about being brave enough to do it in the first place and sneaky enough to do it without being caught. The local police knew all about the tradition upheld by the teenagers in town and, apart from the dangers an old house presented with rotten floors likely to give way without notice and so on, they let it continue largely without interference. The kids would do it anyway. They’d watch, from a distance. The stories of lights at strange times and sightings of figures at the windows, they were sure, coincided with the latest attempts to complete the challenge set by their friends and rivals.

Picking her way through the weeds that poked out of the gravel in patches here and there, Anabel walked up to the house. It looked like something out of a movie, a movie where most of the leads ended the film covered in blood and with several of their friends laying murdered in various rooms around the building.

“Just a house,” She muttered to herself as she forced her legs into motion and walked up the steps to the front door. “An empty…” The door creaked horribly when she pushed it open. “…empty house.”

If she thought the door made a spine tingling sound, it was only until the first of the floorboards squeaked under her shoes. It sounded like the whole floor was a moment away from collapsing beneath her.

“Mike!” She hissed, her voice somewhere between a whispered shout and a grumble. “Mike? Where the hell are you?!”

Chewing her lip she looked around. Everything in the house was covered in a thick layer of dust, surely his feet would have left prints. Her eyes scanned the floor in every direction but she couldn’t see any sign of where he had gone.

Then she heard it. A floorboard creaking.

“Mike!” She waited for him to answer. He didn’t. “Mike, you bastard, come out here now!”

The sound of her foot stomping the floor in irritation echoed slightly in the old house.

The floor creaked again.

“I’ll go.” She shouted, her tone unimpressed. Fear quickly being overtaken by annoyance. “I’ll leave. Right now!”

Then again. With a huff she started off towards the sound. Opening a door off the hallway that apparently led to a corridor. As she stuck her head through, the door at the opposite end of the hallway clicked shut.

“Mike, this isn’t funny!” She stomped along the corridor. “This whole thing is ridiculous,” her fingers closed around the door handle, “and you know it!”

Flinging open the door she stalked into the small room on the other side.

It was empty. What might once have been a study or library, with a large desk and shelves crammed with books, was untouched. And she was the only one there.

“Mike…?”

Behind her, the door clicked shut and the beginnings of a smile crept onto her face.

“Very funny, Mike,” with a brow quirked she turned around but in a second the colour drained from her face. The door was closed but it seemed she was still alone in the room.

But things aren’t always what they seem.

Like the fact that Mike had been upstairs the whole time and never once heard her voice. And that with no one there that she could see, somehow the key was turning in the lock. Someone…something…was in there with her. And whatever they were, whoever, they didn’t want her to leave.

‘Roses are red…’

She backed away from the door, feeling the air in the room suddenly growing colder.

’Violets are blue…’

And colder.

Dashing to the window, its panes unbroken, she tried to open it but the frame had swollen and seized over the years and would not be moved. It was then she saw a shape out in the driveway. A person, moving away from the house.

It was Mike.

‘We’ve been waiting so long…’

Her hands rose to bang on the glass, break it if she had to. Screaming out his name. Only growing silent when she saw something moving beside her own reflection in the window. When what felt like an icy finger brushed her face. Suddenly she knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

’For a friend like you…

Outside, Mike jogged easily to the gate with his prize in his hand. The monogramed handkerchief he’d found in a drawer would be proof enough of his success. When he got there though…Anabel was nowhere to be seen. Frowning he slipped through the gate and looked down the road to town. No sign of her.

“Girls.” He rolled his eyes, stuffing the handkerchief into the pocket of his jeans, and then jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he headed down the road, calling after the way he figured she’d gone. “Hey! Anabel! Wait up! I’m sorry, don’t be like that…!”

And so, another girlfriend had gone, leaving their prize seeking boyfriend behind. A lesson in priorities for those hormonal young men.

But what no one ever knew…was where they all went.

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Nicely written !!

I don't read a lot, so I am just getting around to this. You are very talented!