Writing Challenge ~ November 2014

WRITING CHALLENGE ~ NOVEMBER 2014​

After the awesome stories we got to read for the October challenge, here are your prompts for November. These are all black and white, something I thought fitting before all the colour that December brings.
Remember you can still leave reviews for last month's pieces if you haven't already!


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 2,000 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 30th November 2014, with December’s challenge hopefully going live shortly after.

Previous challenges and reviews can be found here.

Happy writing!

It's like you're screaming and no one can hear...

Except the fog that rolls across the fields before being immolated by the sun. The misty tendrils trailing 'round the echoes of your cries.

It's like you're screaming and no one can hear...

Except the trees that stand as sentinels before the encroachment of so-called civilization. The fir and birch and oaken guardians watch silently as your voice rattles through their leaves and needles.

It's like you're screaming and no one can hear...

Except the stars that shoot and blaze across the night sky, before the moon distracts those gazing upward. The sparkling specks dispersing even as your words dissipate amidst the heavens.

It's like you're screaming and no one can hear...

Perhaps it's best that way; Certainly things could be worse.

Perhaps you're simply meant to vent that energy, release your stress...back into the universe.

Content warning - There are some non-consensual elements to this story, so those that don't enjoy reading such things...this probably isn't for you.


As children they'd run through the woods.

Laughs and shouts lost among the leaves that surrounded them. Skipping and jumping over roots, fingers outstretched to brush the bark of trunks as they rushed by. The game had never been laid out, no rules as such, but still it was by far their favourite game to play. Running for no other reason than to feel the wind whipping through their hair, to run until they felt sick and their heartbeat thrummed through their entire body. To be the first to the stream or the first to reach their tree, whatever goal they had yelled at the start of their sprint. Everything done in a rush. Such is youth.

Then the game changed. As they had grown older so too had the purpose for their running. He was taller and his legs longer, he could easily outrun her and reach any given finishing point long before she could. But that was no longer the game.

She was the game.

They were.

A chase now, not a sprint. She would run, giggling for the most part, darting between trees, trying to hide. But never trying too hard. Teeth fastened on her lip while she waited. Hearing him get closer and waiting until the last possible moment to make a break for it. Rushing out into the open and running only until she felt the weight of his body tackle hers and down onto the moss and grass they would tumble. Rolling one over the other until they stopped, one over the other. Breathless with eyes shining, smiling until their lips met and then the prize would be shared between them both.

So many times they had run through the trees, then came the day he caught her but instead of pinning her against the ground and claiming his victory as he always did, he tugged on her hand and knelt at her feet. She cried, they both did, and then the running stopped. For a long time.

Now she was running again. But this was no longer a game.

The fallen leaves, dead and dying on the ground, helped muffle her footfalls but they still seemed far too loud in the otherwise still forest. So did her breathing. Heavy and quick and yet never quite enough to soothe her aching lungs.

It was too quiet. That eerie kind. No birdsong. No...nothing.
The mist having crept among the trees made everything seem that much creepier and unearthly. At first she had hoped it would help her, help hide her, but she hadn't realised it would also be hiding him.

A sudden snap somewhere behind her made her stop running. A glance back over her shoulder combining with her momentum meant she didn't see the root sticking up out of the ground. She felt it though, as it smacked solidly into her ankle and sent her face down into the dirt.

She bit back the cry that rose up in her throat when her knee collided with something hard beneath the decaying carpet on the ground and scrambling to the nearest tree she crouched behind it.

Silence.

Just silence. And the terrified rhythm of her heart, the same pulse radiating in her knee. Wincing she touched the joint and hissed between tightly clenched teeth. Whatever rock she had landed on had obviously broken the skin. Her jeans were warm and slightly sticky where her index and middle fingers pressed. Rubbing her thumb over their tips as she lifted the hand back up the dark red stain on her skin was clear even in the gloomy light where she hid.

Holding her breath she rose, keeping her body tight to the trunk she had hidden behind. Once upright she gingerly tested her injured leg, hissing once more as her knee protested and all but refused to support her weight. She sagged back against the tree, raising suddenly shaking hands to her face to push back her hair. A smudge of blood inadvertently left upon her cheek in the process.

Just as the game had changed, so too had he. They might not run anymore, but still he always won. Even when she didn’t want to play. That fact didn’t seem to matter anymore. Then the victories he claimed started to turn into something even uglier. He didn’t like that she didn’t want to play his games, their new roles as victor and victim grew more and more pronounced and she knew she couldn’t stay. That one day soon they might play for the last time.

And so she had run. She had deliberately let the wood run out, hiding sticks and logs beneath their couch. The little house in the wilderness that had seemed so magical was now a prison, trapped by the sheer distance between them and the nearest other people. When he went to refill the basket with logs from the shed in the yard, she’d bolted. Snatching her jacket and jamming her feet into her boots. She knew she’d have a fair chance of hitting the treeline before he realised what was happening but then the time would begin to count down.

A road ran through the woods, the one danger that they’d had to watch out for when they’d played, she had to hope someone would be coming along. Someone she could flag down and beg to take her…anywhere.

She hadn’t gone further than a few feet into the woods when she heard the angry shout cut through the air. She felt sick and almost turned back. Maybe it wasn’t too late to take it back, to make amends. He was always more patient when she was penitent. On her knees, she could, if it would ease his temper and lessen the force within his hands…

Snap

Her heart stopped its frantic beating. Stopped dead as the sound of a twig breaking came from nearby. Her fingernails dug into the bark at her back, every muscle tense. Eyes wide as she waited, trying to work out which way the sound had come from. It didn’t come again.

Silence

Maybe a hare…or a deer…
Wetting her lips and gripping the tree for support, she started to lean around the side of the tree.
When she feel the heat of two hands suddenly take hold of her waist and turning her before the weight of a body was quickly pushing her hard against the tree.

“Gotcha!”

She struggled and fought but he held her with little effort against the tree, one hand rising to wrap around her throat, squeezing with steady pressure until her squirming stopped. She hated that her body responded to that, that the years of that action had conditioned her to a point. Or maybe it was something else, the kind of cruel thing he levelled at her when she was beneath him, the sound of her body defending itself in the only way it could. That she enjoyed it really, that he was just giving her what she needed.

“Oh, we haven’t played this for so long,” she could hear the glee in his voice and feel the excitement growing lower down his body, “I’d forgotten how much fun it is. Of course,” the hand from her throat shot up into her hair and pulled, hard, until she whined, “you started without me. Which we both know is cheating.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I-!“

Another tug, close to her scalp, to stop her desperate words.

“I know you are. I can see why you would want to surprise me, get yourself a head start.” The hand on her hip dove down her front between her and the tree to grab roughly between her legs, using the hold to pull her more snugly back against him. “I get the feeling the game you wanted to play isn’t one I would like.”

Her lip trembled but she fought against it. She wasn’t going to cry. Not yet.

“So, as you so wanted to play a game, here’s what we’re going to play.” His lips were against her ear, his breath hot in the cool air. “Hide and seek. You hide and I come find you. If you make it to the road before I catch you, I promise, we won’t play these games anymore.” His tone was almost gentle. Somehow that was scarier than when he raised his voice. “If you don’t,” he drew in a long breath like someone deciding between purchases at the store, “well, let’s not think about that right now, huh? You hide and I try to find you. If I don’t find you, you win. If I do…” his voice dropped lower. “…I win. Got it?”

She nodded twice, a wave of nausea sweeping cruelly through her body.
In the next breath he pulled her away from the tree and let her go and she stumbled wildly forwards, yelping as her knee exploded with pain. She forced herself to continue, not bothering to see if he had shielded his eyes or was just watching her limp away with amusement on his face. That handsome face that once filled her dreams and now was the stuff of nightmares.

Almost skipping to try and minimise the pressure on her leg she charged forwards, banking sharply to the left when she found the stream. She had an idea, an old hiding place that had once kept her hidden for hours. A small hollow in the sandbank above the water. Viewed from above it was all but invisible, that had been one of the rare times she’d won. Perhaps today history would manage to repeat itself again…

If it didn’t, she could guess at what would follow. He probably wouldn’t even take her back home. Against a tree or down in the dirt, he would claim his prize and she knew he would leave little behind when he did.

“Ready or not…!” he taunted from behind her somewhere, his voice loud in the quiet. She noticed that the mist was thicker now. It seemed appropriate in a way. Whatever happened in the woods that day, no one would ever know. The mist would hide their game from the world, as it had always been. They both knew this was a game she couldn’t and wouldn’t win.

Spotting the hollow she threw herself down as she reached it. Rolling slightly on the sandy bank until she hit the back wall. Roots ticking the back of her neck but she didn’t try to flick them away.

“…here I come…!” he called again, louder now. Closer.

She was sure he’d hear her. Hear her breathing, or her heart, or the terror that was radiating out from every pore. But she heard him first. The swish of his feet moving through the undergrowth and the thud of each footstep as he drew nearer. He couldn’t have figured out her plan so easily, could he?

“Come out, come out,” the sing song tone continued before stopping.

Silence.

“…wherever you are.” His face was suddenly before her, peering into the hollow with a victorious expression.

She screamed then, kicking wildly as his hands tried to drag her from her hiding place.

His feet skidded on the sand once. Then again. And then with one well timed kick as his boots struggled to find purchase on the slippery ground and he pulled hard on her other leg, he lost his balance.

He fell backwards. Arms wheeling and mouth open wide. There was an instant where she almost reached for him but gravity and common sense combined to defeat that urge and so he fell back into the stream. The splash shallow and not quite loud enough to cover the dull crack as his head hit a rock. Laying, unmoving, with glassy eyes fixed on something she couldn’t see, his expression was almost one of confusion. This wasn’t how the game was supposed to go.

“…I win…” she muttered softly, her voice trembling as realisation suddenly filled her, watching as the water beneath his head blossomed with colour.

“Game over.”