The "Still Among Us?" Challenge Post by kailhofer » April 28, 2016, 10:54:23 AM This challenge was run by Eddie Sullivan. The challenge was to write a story where the protagonist is a cryptid Example story: The Night the Evening Went South in the Cold North By: Eddie Sullivan So I’m driving along after work buzzing down Route 14 listening to my favorite podcast. It hadn’t been a good day but hadn’t been a bad on either. Road is slippery but there isn’t much traffic, I figure I will be home in ten or fifteen. The guy in front of me isn’t tearing along but he is somewhere in the ball park of the speed limit, so I figure I will give him about two car lengths. No sooner had I thought this than he stopped dead in the middle of the road, in winter, in Vermont, doing forty miles an hour. It was hit him or go for the freshly plowed snow bank on the right side. I chose the snow bank. I figured I would pull out so I could tail him and introduce boot to ass, I didn’t catch his plate as he slowly started back up and pulled away. I was stuck and he was gone. My head started pounding. I rallied my composure. I had taken my medication, I had done my meditation earlier. This too shall pass. No houses were right in sight. Very angry. A truck pulls up along side of my dilemma. Nice old couple real country folks, good folks. “You need help son? I don’t think I can get you out even with my chains.” I shake my head a bit, not answering “No”, just shaking it because it seems appropriate. Maybe I am hoping if I keep stirring the rage won’t settle. “I appreciate it if you could give me a ride down the street and I will call the auto club.” Old man nods a good natured Vermont nod and gestures to get in. His wife scoots over. It was like I said good folk. I definitely don’t want any rage to leak out now, not with kind folk doing a good deed. They leave me at the store and I dig out the auto club card and call their number. I tell the girl on the other end I know the local tow vendor they send. “You need to tell him I am half way between the bridge and the high school, not far from the town-line.” She gives a practiced retort like what I said didn’t even matter. God damn minimum wage zombie. She can go off script even in the service of better service. “I have to tell them a cross street sir.” “They will know what I am saying, I need them to find me sooner rather than later.” “Sir I will tell then you are on Route 14 near the Chelsea Street bridge.” I am too pissed to think straight. “Sure whatever I will be at my car.” I head out to walk the miles back to my car to meet the tow truck. Given auto club response times I should just make it back if I hustle. I need not have rushed. Miss “I can’t go off script” has given them directions which send them to the opposite end of town so I get back to the car with well over an hour to spare. I don’t do well with to much time to think when I have been wound up. The tow guy is nice enough. He does his job and gets me out of the snow bank. He earns whatever the auto club pays him and the added bonus of me not decapitating him and feasting on his warm organs right there on the roadside. Whoa I really need to get home and get to my medication. I need to have enough benzodiazepines in me to tranquilize a rhino post haste or something bad is going to go down. I drive up the snowy Vermont hill, well really it is a small mountain I live on. Coincidence continues to flop with me all the way home. I narrowly miss not one, not two, but three separate head on collisions with full grown deer. Three miles and I see a buck and two does almost smash into me in three separate spots. All miss narrowly and bound off into the woods. Not my night, this last bit really gets me worked up. It makes me want to hunt instead of go home. I pull up my driveway and see the back end of a grey Dodge parked in my driveway. I live at the top of the hill. It is two miles of woods to the nearest neighbor. I don’t really do unexpected visitors, especially not tonight. Wait a God Damn minute! That is the car! I park and get out in one motion. A piss-ant college looking turd gets out one side, and a buddy as smarmy looking and spoiled as the first get out the other side. Dink one says, “Oh man were you the local yokel I brake checked back coming into town? Bummer. You should’t follow so close.” His friend was trying to hide a smirk. “I think it best that you let me go inside, I need to take my medication. You should be gone when I look back out.” He put his hand on my arm and his buddy came over on my other side and put his hand on my shoulder. “Wait a minute Bra’, we came all the way from upstate cause we heard you had inside info on a real wild trip. Someone said you knew where to find a Wendigo and you need to show us. We will even pay you enough you can buy moose meat or whatever you woods people eat.” I looked into his eyes. “ Yeah you know what, now that I think about it, I don’t need those tranquilizers at all. You make an interesting offer. I can show you a Wendigo. I can show you possible the most wild, scary ass Wendigo to ever stalk these woods.” The change comes quick when I don’t even other to hold it back. Dinner was served. The End Top User avatar kailhofer Editor Emeritus Posts: 3245 Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM Location: Kaukauna, Wisconsin (USA) Contact: Contact kailhofer The "Still Among Us?" Challenge Post by kailhofer » April 28, 2016, 10:55:19 AM A Novel Experience By: Spacer I could feel the noisy buzzing in my head again. It seemed that they always turned the thing up higher than it needed to be. One wondered why they allowed the tourists to set the interface knobs themselves but of course tourists always like to play with knobs and dials. It wasn't like it would give them a headach, oh no, their end was carefully set and controlled lest a lawsuit rear its head. It was occasionally amusing to watch their reactions of course. Their faces would twitch slightly as the foreign sensations intruded on their normal thought processes. Sometimes their head would cock to the side as their neck went limp under the interface headset. It was at times like these that one could really make merry at their expense for they had lost all sense of themselves for a moment. It was just such a situation now as I crept a bit closer trying to ignore the static that leapt across my head and caused my leaves to rustle involuntarily. The bears never seemed to get used to it. A few were up and sniffing around looking very concerned. At least none had given up and lay down in defeat this time. That was the hardest thing to watch. The wolves had a better time of it. Perhaps because they were used to being a more social and sharing themselves with others. As I got closer the vibrations began to ebb a bit. Whatever the tourists were aiming at today in the park it was clearly behind me now. It seemed they had brought with them some of their own offspring to see the new births of spring. They had much the same dumb and oddly cute look on their faces as the bear cubs. They were munching on something as the adults pointed at the various creatures and connected with them. They were always doing this and I was determined to get more information. Just because I live in the woods and look like mother nature herself doesn't mean I don't appreciate the intricacies of new technology. Such things continue to visit my woods frequently and they have an ever growing impact. I went unnoticed as always moving close among the pines. I had reached a perch a few branch-lengths when one of the young humans, unseen by its elders, began pushing buttons. The polished surface became unlocked from its bear target and a loud and audible gasp was elicited from some of the others who had the curious masks on their faces. This was proving to be a more enlightening outing than usual. The shiny thing they always had themselves attached to began to make a high pitched whirring noise and rotated around this way and that for a moment before settling down. It was then that my mind was engulfed in a mad, twisted blur. I suppose I must have looked like nothing so much as a branch as I fell out of the tree concealed as I was. Strange for a live and healthy branch to fall thus but maybe no one noticed as stranger things were occurring. I wouldn't be surprised if I had had on my face as stupid a look on my face as I saw in theirs. Few saw the incident and none have reported back to me about it. Most there were locked into a wholly different world in any case. When people came to this wood I was annoyed. When they built roads I was frustrated. When they began building tourist centers I was worried. None of these invasions however, could come near to matching this breach of my very mind and soul. But I learned even as they did. As the pain become emotion I found myself almost in awe both of the powers which these people had and what they also missed. It was a world I had barely seen the fringes of. But then they had known nothing of mine. Though I could understand more than I ever though possible of them I knew they could percieve me more deeply. This was menat to be a one way event after all. Living the sensations of a bear, or a wolf or an elk. A more primal and visceral sensation than these people would otherwise know. I was a novelty no one had counted on and now I was laid bare my true self exposed in my own mind and thus made manifest on the ground where I lay. One of the offspring pointed at me and said with its mouth not its mind, a language I could interpret now, “Look at the green lady” and the world changed... The End Top User avatar kailhofer Editor Emeritus Posts: 3245 Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM Location: Kaukauna, Wisconsin (USA) Contact: Contact kailhofer The "Still Among Us?" Challenge Post by kailhofer » April 28, 2016, 10:56:04 AM Electrosmooth By: JP Garner “Yeti! Yeti! Yeti!” the children all chanted in unison. “He’s so hairy I’ll bet he has to comb his whole body.” “My dad says he belongs in a zoo.” “What a freak.” The children of the playground danced around Ralph, dropping insults and teasing in the sing-song manner of their age. From out of nowhere a stone struck Ralph on the head, sending him to the asphalt. The chanting stopped and the children stood in a circle, no one daring to say who had thrown the rock. When the bell rang they all ran off to class, leaving Ralph where he had fallen. It was the last day that he ever attended school. ### “Do you suffer from unwanted hair? Are you tired of razors, powders, and creams that don’t work? If so, then the new Electrosmooth from Bionetics International is the solution for you. The Electrosmooth zaps unwanted hair out of existence with its new pain-free, patented Quantalaz technology…” Annoyed, Ralph switched off the television. Did even it need to remind him? He walked to the bathroom to look in the mirror and see if he really looked so strange. It was not until he opened the door that he remembered that his mother had removed the mirror. Moping back to the living-room, he switched on the T.V. , his only window to the world of people. Maybe he should buy something like the Electrosmooth. ### Ducking on his way out the front door, Ralph left his mother’s house for the first time in nearly fifteen years. He shielded his eyes to block the harsh light, a light strikingly different from that of the television. In his pocket burned unspent birthday money from years of letters sent by an unmet grandmother. He jogged towards the taxi door while scanning the street, relieved that it was an off hour. The cabby’s eyes widened as he asked “where to” through the rearview mirror. All through the drive Ralph caught the stares of more people than he had ever met in person. ### “You’re not going to believe our good luck Eddie. A gold mine just walked into the shop. He looks like some kind of yeti or something, and you guessed it, he’s here for an Electrosmooth. Think of the ad campaign it could make. Seems like he doesn’t have much dough to me, I’ll bet we could even work out a trade offer.” Carson hung up the phone with a feeling of satisfaction. If the boss was pleased then he knew he was onto something. “Ralph, with your unique gift, and our unique product, we could make quite a team. Why not sign up with us, we’ll throw in a free Electrosmooth, and even get you some medical help if it’s needed. We think that you’d make a perfect example of how our product can help people, people like yourself.” Carson bit his lip in anticipation, knowing that he had Ralph hooked, and that his ad campaign would be a smash success. ### The lights of the studio dazzled him. Never in his life had he met so many people, and never in his life had he felt so accepted and liked. The people were wonderful, but the best thing of all was that he was going to be on television. Just a commercial, but to Ralph is was the real world, one in which he could finally participate. Behind the scenes was a shock that he was not prepared for, but he resigned to not let it show. He enjoyed the limelight. ### On his way home he stopped at the store and bought a mirror for the bathroom. For the first time in his life he felt unafraid of the outside world, the one which his mother had demonized since almost before he could remember. Hanging the mirror with pride, he took the first good look at his now hairless face and body. It was foreign and would take getting used to, but he was unashamed. The telephone interrupted his first prideful moment, but he answered with enthusiasm, wanting to talk to someone. The voice on the other end sounded nervous and excited. “Ralph, I’m glad you answered. This is Dr. Charleston. It’s a miracle that we’ve found you. You know that we’ve been trying to track you down ever since you were taken out of school. You’re quite a hard man to get a find. Forgive me for being blunt, but your condition, I mean we’ve been needing someone with your condition, you see we’ve discovered that your abnormal hair growth holds the cure for cancer. With one of your hairs we can cross reference genes and destabilize the rapid growth process. It’s just that your condition is exceedingly rare, and you are believed to be the last hypertrichiac alive. With your help we could save thousands of lives.” In the mirror Ralph watched as his smile sagged. The phone sank back into the cradle. In front of him sat the box that housed the Electrosmooth. Bold letters on the side of the box read, results permanent. The End Top User avatar kailhofer Editor Emeritus Posts: 3245 Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM Location: Kaukauna, Wisconsin (USA) Contact: Contact kailhofer The "Still Among Us?" Challenge Post by kailhofer » April 28, 2016, 10:57:02 AM Hunger Shames By: Sergio Palumbo Whirinaki Forest Park, in New Zealand, was a publicly accessible forested area in the North Island of the country, and was part of the eastern boundary flanking the Urewera National Park. Due to its geographic isolation, it was one of the last regions to be claimed by the British during colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries, and some M_ori leaders had found refuge there from their pursuers. It was a wild place where many tall trees stretched up to the sky, giving shelter to strange birds called saddlebacks that hid in the leafy branches of the undergrowth. There were many legends about this place - as is common when people think of very secluded sites - and some of them involved the presence of a few wild, violent men called the Maero. According to the oldest M_ori tradition, these men had bony fingers and long, dirty hair all over their bodies. They supposedly killed their prey, from time to time, with long pointed fingers and then ate them. Certainly, there had always been tales about them, but nobody was sure they really existed because no one had ever spotted one of them. Occasionally a tourist disappeared while visiting this zone, never to be seen again, and some of those events were reputed to be connected to such creatures, but there was no real evidence pointing to them. As the sun was going down among the tall undergrowth, one of those legendary beings was moving through the vegetation, searching for something to eat. It had been a few days since he had tasted a very skinny tourist that he had assaulted suddenly before dragging his corpse to the most inaccessible area of that forest. Then, he had made all the remains of the dead man disappear completely, as he didn’t want to leave any traces behind: that was how he had kept his existence well concealed and why he was able to keep killing at will, even though with self-restraint, of course. And this was exactly what he was trying to do that evening, when he sensed someone walking around and began to follow the stranger so he could attack using his deadly bony fingers, which was his modus operandi. However, things seemed to be a little different this time, as the odor in the air wasn’t something he had smelled before. There were other details about his prey that looked very unusual, as well… Anyway, the Maero was hungry and he started following the prey’s steps, ready to assault him as soon as the opportunity arose. After some time, his target stopped next to a huge rock, and so the wild creature knew that was the right moment to seize his food for the day. As the massive Maero got out of the undergrowth, his arms hit the target and his powerful fingers fiercely pierced his victim’s skin. Then, before even looking upon the face of his prey, he grabbed the corpse and dragged it back into the thick woods. It was only when he stopped running and examined the remains that lay at his feet that he noticed something incredible: the features of the short corpse were really very peculiar, as there were two extremely wide black eyes, an almost non-existent nose on a swollen, hairless enlarged cranium, a dark gray skin - or maybe it was just a never-seen-before outfit, at least so it seemed to the wild being. However unusual the prey looked to him, the Maero was still hungry, and so he began eating his food. Maybe the meat was a little tough and dry, but he finished his meal in the end. It was only later that same day, when he was thinking of resting in the forest and completely getting rid of any traces of the corpse, that he started feeling a pain in his stomach. Actually, he remembered having stomach-aches at times, but this was much worse than ever before. The pain was incredibly hard to bear, and it grew worse and worse, as a matter of fact, so he decided not to eat the rest of the corpse and just stayed under a tree, hoping that the sufferings were finally going to be over, sooner or later. During the night that followed, he heard a strange noise, and then saw a vivid light in the sky, towering above the vegetation, followed by footsteps. He would have tried to escape, to protect himself, but he was too weak to move. So, there he remained, helpless and scared until a group of short individuals, very similar in appearance to the prey he had taken before, came forwards and looked at him. Soon afterwards, an energy burst hit him, leaving his body unconscious. ------------- Actually, things were worse than the wild Maero, in his little and limited mind might ever imagine. Those gray-skinned strangers had come to this place in search of their missing colleague. And these aliens weren’t visiting Earth just to do research, as they truly happened to be serial killers from outer space! They had found the planet of humans not long ago, and had started mutilating cattle and other beasts at night, as a fun activity to behold with their bug-eyes, while their unruly kids were busy drawing crop circles here and there. They couldn’t believe their good luck since they had now found an interesting fierce cryptid in New Zealand. Now they were ready to start a delightful new sort of safari, certain that they would love kidnapping those previously unknown creatures, making them suffer for as long as the aliens wanted to. Nobody would even discover they had disappeared, ever. Thinking of that newly discovered cryptid, the short leader of that alien team of serial killers reminded himself of that old saying of those humans, the Maori, that went: ‘E kore e ea i te kupu taku aroha m_u…’, that was, more or less, ‘Words can't express how much I love you…’, undoubtedly. The End Top User avatar kailhofer Editor Emeritus Posts: 3245 Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM Location: Kaukauna, Wisconsin (USA) Contact: Contact kailhofer The "Still Among Us?" Challenge Post by kailhofer » April 28, 2016, 10:57:57 AM - Winner - The Poppe Creek Monster By: Michele Dutcher Jonathan and Theresa had never had much luck in love, as both were in their mid-30s when they met, and both had been recently left behind by their respective mates. Trying out an online dating site, they had been surprised to find they had a 93% serendipity rating. ‘Kirk or Picard and why’, Jon had texted after introducing himself via his phone. ‘Classic over Next Generation and Picard over Kirk in a civilized universe,’ was Theresa’s reply. ‘Obviously,’ Jon had texted back, as overjoyed as a nerd could possibly be. From that point on the two were inseparable. When they weren’t together they were calling each other, when they couldn’t call - they texted, when they weren’t texting they were in the same room. So it was not a surprise when they found out they had a similar interest in a local Kentucky myth not far from where they lived: The Poppe Creek Monster. The tale went that a creature existed just outside their city limits that haunted a trestle of the Norfolk Southern Railroad. When they discovered how much they each loved the urban legend, they knew they had to go see the goat-man for themselves. Turning onto the Taylorsville Road exit from the Gene Snyder freeway, they switched off the air conditioning to get a feel for the weather outside. It was a clear, hot July night and the lovers were hoping the coolness of Poppe Creek’s water would make the heat bearable. However, when they pulled up by the train trestle in the moonlight, parking beside the creek, the fog that had formed over the cool water only made the moisture cling to their skin and clothes. There was another car parked in the field by the train tracks and Jonathan could see a man in the distance headed up a dirt path towards the trestle, but he quickly disappeared into the dense fog that hung over the creek. “I guess we should follow him,” said Jon as more of a question more than a suggestion. “Well, we’ve come this far – we might as well see the trestle from the top,” answered Theresa taking the lead. And so they began to climb. By the time they were halfway up the hill, the pair had lost sight of each other in the dense fog although Jon knew his girlfriend couldn’t be more than six feet ahead of him. The moisture on the path made the dirt and grass slick and Jon slipped once, suddenly taking notice of how high up they actually were. He could see the top of the hill where the tracks met the trestle, but Theresa must have already made it to the top because he didn’t see her anywhere. “Theresa?” he shouted out, looking at the ‘No Trespassing’ sign. “Are you on the tracks?” “Yeah, come on up,” her sweet voice floated down out of the fog. “I’m standing on the Trestle right now. You have got to see this view!” Jonathan climbed a little higher until he was standing on the gravel beside the tracks. He thought it was odd that his girlfriend had chosen to go onto the trestle without him. He remembered that the monster was supposed to have the ability to mimic people’s voices, to make it seem normal to step into harm’s way. He tried to see her better by turning his flashlight’s beam into the wall of fog over the creek, but the light just bounced back off the mist that drifted between the 8-foot-high fences enclosing the trestle. “Come back off the tracks, honey,” he called into the opaque vapor. “There might be a train coming.” He heard a mocking chuckle before Theresa’s sweet voice echoed out of the mist. “We checked the train schedule before we came. Don’t you remember?” Jon did not remember doing any such thing. He hadn’t anticipated becoming separated or the fog being so thick, but he knew they had never checked the computer about it. “Kirk or Picard?” he shouted into the mist. “Picard,” came back the answer in Theresa’s voice, as if it were an echo. “Tennet or Smith?” he shouted. The voice hesitated for a moment, before finally saying sweetly, “Smith.” Jonathan was certain now that he was talking to a devil not his lover. Just then he heard the tracks begin to whine quietly. It was as if all of creation had stopped making noise, there was no sound except the humming of the rails. “Jonathan! Help me! Where are you?” he heard Theresa shout out, but it seemed to be coming from a different direction than before. Another voice answered before Jon could speak, a voice that sounded like his. “I’m over here, love...on the trestle, come a little closer!” The man was so desperate now that he turned his flashlight again into the fog but this time a breeze whipped up and Jon could see his girlfriend not more than four feet in front of him. Standing before them both was a towering gnarled creature with the head and shoulders of a goat and the body of a man twisted with age, a smirking grimace on his fury lips. The woman shrieked with horror and stepped off the trestle, onto the gravel. The train was rounding the curve and its headlight illuminated the creature as it threw its head back and howled. Jon grabbed his love, pulling her onto the grassy hillside beside the tracks, where they held each other, shivering, praying that the force of the wheels wouldn’t suck them under the train. It took five long minutes for their nightmare to end. Or had it? As the couple ran down the dirt path away from the monster a voice shouted out sweetly from the trestle, Theresa’s voice in fact: “Come back soon and we’ll play some more!” Than a hideous, evil laugh echoed after them as they jumped into their car and sped off, vowing never to return. The End Top 266 posts 4 … Return to “Fun and Games” Board indexAll times are UTC-04:00Delete cookiesContact us Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Limited *Original Author: NOTHAL *Updated to 3.3.x by MannixMD *Style version: 1.1.2 Privacy | Terms Style by NOTHAL