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Post by James on Feb 3, 2011 21:26:51 GMT -5
Agro vs Manny Nhaims
Topic: Carnival
Deadline: 11:59pm - 10/02/2011 [/center] |
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Post by James on Feb 4, 2011 17:00:29 GMT -5
<Temporarily Removed>
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Post by Manny Nhaims on Feb 10, 2011 22:32:07 GMT -5
“Manis, Manis, Manis!”
Oh no. Not here. Why did it have to be here?
The thought ran through the girl’s mind as her feet came to a halt amidst the bustling crowd. At once she felt herself buffeted by hips and hands as people heading in every direction tried to make their way past the sudden obstacle. Despite this though, the adolescence’s feet remained planted, her person transfixed by the chanting from behind.
“Manis, Manis, Manis!”
Janis’s mouth was dry. And not just because of the cotton candy that currently went forgotten in a fist that started tightening. Her breath quickened, her stomach went cold, she found herself wishing she hadn’t ducked away from her foster parents. Slowly she turned to confront the aggressors whose identity she had already guessed.
Timothy. Andrew. Steven. That evil, menacing trio. The terror of sixth grade. Where one went the other two followed. Like some twisted three-headed beast whose sole purpose was to cause pain and anguish to any it disapproved of. And dumb luck had brought them to one of their fellow classmates and favored victims today.
“Hey Manis, what are you doing here?” the center head, Andrew, spat, fiery spiked hair shaking as a sneer chased after the question.
Janis cringed on the inside at the name. Manis. A nickname designed to remind the girl of her tom-boyish appearance, something she blamed equally on her biology and her foster parents. It was a combination of height, wiry figure, clothes –some of which she shared with a foster brother- and the stupid bowl-cut she was forced to have that served as the inspiration to her tormentors. However, she’d be damned to let these boys see how much they got under her skin.
“Spending time with my father,” she snarled back, “something you don’t know anything about!”
The middle face recoiled in pain after being reminded of its misfortune and sought to hide itself among the others. A blond head with metal teeth then shot forward taking its turn to taste blood.
“Your foster dad,” Steven grinned in correction, “and I don’t see him. Is that because he left you like your real parents?”
Without batting an eye the girl stood her ground. “Maybe ‘cause he went for a roll in the hay with your mom like the rest of the town!”
There was an angry, pained hiss as the creature retreated a
second time. But not fully defeated the third and final head shot forward. It didn’t attack though, not right away. It hovered a moment first, studied the girl with merciless brown eyes gazing out between strands of its black mane. The eyes narrowed, that was the signal.
“Or maybe ‘cause he went to work out a deal with the ringleader,” Another pause, letting the statement drip from his mouth like venom. “See if maybe they could use another mutant in the freak show.” The teeth in his words were sharp, jagged, and painful.
Janis’s mind whirled. She stood there for several seconds, mouth flapping like a fish on dry land. She struggled to grasp any insult that could come to mind. Nothing came.
The triple headed monster, realizing its victory, reared back it and roared with laughter.
Its victim, slowly working out of its paralysis, whispered a final cry. “I hate you.”
The beast answered with fiendish smiles another round of heartless chuckles.
Water began to sting the girls eyes as tears threatened to overtake her vision and her lower lip began to quaver. Heart beating furiously she clung to survival. “I hate you.” The words were quieter, weaker.
The “tri-opple-ganger” went in for the kill. “Man-is, Man-is, Man-is, Man-is!” The word getting louder with each repetition.
Desperate to drown out the taunting, Janis found strength for her voice. “I hate you,” she screamed. Pitilessly, the creature pressed forward. With a final flailing act of rage, she hurled her pink, sugary treat at the grotesquerie and ran away. Legs not wishing to give chase, smug voices were finally silenced as gnashing teeth settled for the discarded cotton candy.
Unaware she was not being pursued and teasing had ceased, Janis pressed forward through the crowd, not knowing where she was going but also not caring. As long as it was away from those lousy, rotten jerks.
She dodged crowd members as best she could, but her long limbs had never been the most graceful. She received more than one reprimand that went unheard in her mad scramble to nowhere. Brightly colored tents, vendors, and games of chance were only paid as much attention as need to decide how best to fight through the lines in front of them.
Somewhere that cheesy pipe organ music sprang up into the air. Several cheers were short in coming. In her distress the sound was nothing but mocking, driving here further and faster toward the edge of the festivities.
Eventually she came to the apparent end. A make-shift fence constructed of nothing more than stakes driven into the ground and two ropes tied across the middle and top sections. Beyond this lay a collection of tents and trailers which she could only assume belonged to the people who worked the carnival and by trade were forced to travel with it.
However, spurred onward by the sounds of enjoyment, she paid little heed to the meager impediment. Stooping down and parting the ropes, she slid past the barrier with ease.
“Stop! You can’t go back there,” she heard someone shout, but ran onward. The voice continued though, getting louder as the speaker gave chase and seemed to close the distance.
She ducked down and crawled underneath one trailer and then another, wound her way around several tents and even a small shanty made out of plywood.
But her new pursuer was getting closer regardless of her darting and dodging as evinced by the nearness of his voice. “Hey! Get back here!”
Wanting more to be left alone and worried less about getting in trouble, Janis dove for the side of the closest tent, slipped her hands underneath the edge and wiggled her way inside. Once there, she crawled toward the nearest corner and sat down, legs pulled up to her chest and ear next to the fabric of the “wall”. Steadily the stranger’s calling grew fainter and further away until it stopped altogether.
Thankful she had evaded capture - and an awkward explanation she would have had to make- she allowed herself to relax, dropping her head down to rest on her knees and began collecting her thoughts.
She was glad to be so out of breath, it seemed to keep the tears from falling. Likewise with the strain she put on her muscles. She could focus on the physical aches instead the emotional ones.
Why did she always let those stupid boys get to her? She knew what they were about but could never manage not to fall for the bait. Oh well, at least she didn’t cry in front of them. She would never let them get that satisfaction from her.
“Is something the matter?” a voice abruptly croaked.
More angry than startled, Janis stumbled to her feet and came face to face with an old woman. “What do you want?” she snapped.
“I believe that question is reserved for me,” the stranger said, “seeing as this is my home.”
“I was just leaving,” was Janis’s curt response before she put a foot forward to round the elderly person.
But the old lady stepped to the side, effectively cutting off the girl’s escape route. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“What?”
“Is something the matter?” she repeated.
Janis paused in confusion, the old woman continuing to block her path. Was this woman for real? The girl looked over her face for some type of hint. But the wide, thin lips, sharply hooked nose and large beady eyes all wrapped beneath a massive grey kerchief revealed no secrets as to her sincerity.
“What do you care,” Janis began, narrowing her eyes, “you don’t even know me.”
The lips parted, revealing yellowing teeth, while a loud, wet chuckle bubbled up from deep in her throat. “I know everyone who enters my tent,” she chortled, “sometimes better than they know themselves.”
“Huh?” was Janis’s only response.
“Would you like to see?” the woman asked simply, turning slowly and hobbling over to the center of the room where a table and two chairs sat waiting.
Janis moved forward, wrinkling her nose at the strong perfume the woman left in her wake. She stopped beside the table, finally getting a good look at her surroundings. Aside from the table and chairs, the only other furnishings the room had were a small cot and several ancient leather trunks. There was no floor to speak of, just the grass. And the only light to be found came from the tent’s door which had been left open and that Janis now edged toward.
“I should really be going,” she started.
“Sit,” the old woman barked, a knobby knuckled hand gestured sharply at the chair opposite her.
Deciding it best to humor the old crow to prevent any further ruckus, she pulled out the seat and plopped down in it, the legs sinking into to the ground a bit.
From nowhere it seemed, woman had produced a deck of cards bigger than standard playing cards, and began shuffling them. Every so often she would cut the two halves and twist them round before resuming the regular motion.
Then, presumably finished, she held out her left arm and gave it a trembling shake. A card fell from the sleeve, landing face down in the center of the table. The old lady flipped the card over and placed it inches in front of Janis. The picture revealed was a woman in robes, wearing a crown and wielding a scepter; at the base was a banner that read “The Empress.”
“That is you,” the woman said, removing her fingertips from the corner of the card.
Janis glanced down at the picture, then back to the old woman with a quirked eyebrow. She never thought of herself as something of an empress, or princess, or any sort of royalty.
“The card is meaningless, only a placeholder,” the woman across the table said, as if reading the girl’s mind. “It’s the next four that tell me who you are,” she added, placing the deck down on the table.
Meeting the old woman’s gaze, Janis watched as she plucked one card after another, for each side of The Empress, placing them face up for the girl to examine.
The woman reached forward and dropped a gnarled finger on the uppermost card, in fine garb dispensing coins to a pair of beggars while six stars floated above his head. But it was upside-down.
“The Six of Pentacles, reversed,” the woman whispered, “you are a poor child, you have little to call your own but cherish it.”
No surprise there, Janis thought. Anyone with a pair of working eyes could tell that. With shoes falling apart and wearing faded overalls over a shirt that was more patches than original fabric. The only way it could be more obvious is if she wore a sign around her neck.
Still, the woman moved on, directing the girl’s attention to the card on the left. Painted here was a solitary hand emerging from a cloud in the sky and holding what looked to be a stick. Again, it was upside-down.
“The Ace of Wands, reversed,” this time the old woman paused, her brow furrowed before directing a pitying smile at Janis, “you are alone in this world. Even among the people you know, you still feel it.”
The girl’s features hardened, eyes went blank. So what, it was a lucky guess.
The wizened finger traveled to the bottom card containing a hideous winged creature with a pair of demons chained below his talon shaped feet. There was another banner on this too, it read, “The Devil.”
“You find yourself, hunted, hounded, tormented by monsters. Ones that bother you even when they’re not around.”
Impossible, how could she…
Finishing the circle, the woman moved on to the remaining card. Janis released a startled gasp staring at this one. It was a figure, face down in the sand near a body of water, blood covered the body and numerous swords were planted in its back.
“The Ten of Swords,” the woman said, “often times, you engage your tormentors in combat, displaying your courage and steadfastness. You don’t win as often as you like, but more than you think,” she finished, a proud yellow toothed grin directed at the girl.
Janis was stunned. “But what about-“
The old woman snapped her hand up from the cards and held it before the girl to forestall any questions. “We’re not done yet. We have yet to see what your future has in store for you.”
Beside the grouping of five cards – to Janis’s right – the fortune teller laid out a four card column, these ones face down.
“We start at the bottom,” she began, reaching to the announced place, “the furthest point into your destiny.”
Quickly, the wrinkled hand flipped the card over to show a rampart in flames, stuck by lightning and two people leaping out of windows in opposite directions. Another banner read, “The Tower.”
“The Tower,” the woman began, a frown creasing her mouth, “your future is…uncertain. Your choices can lead you to great triumph, or certain failure.”
The next card was turned. A man in farm clothes and holding a hoe stood with a smile, gazing down upon a bush sprouting stars.
“Ah,” the woman started with a nod of sudden understanding, “the Seven of Pentacles. Provided you follow you conscience and work hard, the fruits of your labors will indeed bring you to greatness.”
“And to help you get started down your path,” the woman continued, moving her hand to the next card. The card was turned revealing a man and a woman, faces sour and contemptuous but raising up their cups in salute to one another.
“Hmm, the Two of Cups. Help from an unlikely friend it would seem,” she finished, giving the girl a quaint smile that went unseen, as Janis was busy staring at the last unveiled card.
Torturously slow, the old woman flipped the final card. It showed an old man, walking with the aid of a staff and holding out a lantern to light the way.
“A friend who happens to be a teacher. Someone whose wisdom will help reveal things that have been hidden to your own eyes.”
Janis let out the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding and looked up from the table to watch the woman slump back in her chair.
“I don’t…how did you… how did you do that?” Janis asked, somewhat mystified and forgetting about her most recent troubles altogether.
“I did not do a thing, I simply read aloud what the cards told me.”
“But how could you…” Janis trailed off.
The old woman leaned forward, another throaty chuckle falling out of her mouth. She turned her head and raised an eyebrow. “Would you like me to show you?”
Janis nodded eagerly. The old woman responded with a lazy smile and slight nod of her own. “Madam Curie,” the woman said with a dip of her chin.
“Janis,” the girl said, “I’m Janis Weisaur.”
“Let us begin then…”
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Post by Meleta/Isoldaa on Feb 12, 2011 1:12:48 GMT -5
Agro
3/5 Spelling & Grammar
4/5 Ease of Read
10/10 Use of Topic
11/15 Entertainment
11/15 Quality
TOTAL: 39/50
This was an all right story, but I think your 'less than enthusiastic' response to the topic came through on this one. There were some awkward portions here and there in the writing itself, that made me stop and go back and re-read that section again. Sentence structure (fragments included) was a bit of a problem, as well as some of your word choices (not vivid enough in some spots, or just a bit off).
I did enjoy the casual tone of the piece though, and all the wise cracks that ran through the narrator's head made me grinning. Surprisingly enough, the ending actually turned into a rather sweet "awwwwwww... " moment, especially considering the awkward mess James found himself in originally. Overall, a solid piece that could've used a little more polishing, and a bit more time with an eye to edits.
Manny
3/5 Spelling & Grammar
4/5 Ease of Read
10/10 Use of Topic
12/15 Entertainment
11/15 Quality
Total: 40/50
I'm going to have to agree with you here on this one, Manny - not your best piece of the competition. There were a surprising number of technical mistakes, including missing words, and/or mistyped words and phrases. Further, when you began to describe the three boys teasing Janis, your use of some of the pronouns there got to be problematic ("he" to "it," or "she" to "it"), it became difficult at points to follow who was doing what to whom - you lost the flow.
The saving grace for this piece came by way of your very well-done character development, for Janis and for her tormentors. Your descriptions were also incredibly good, as always, and the metaphor you created for the boys tormenting Janis (the three-headed monster) was quite apt.
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Post by Dylaria on Feb 16, 2011 13:23:14 GMT -5
Agro:
Spelling & Grammar - 3/5
Ease of Read - 4/5
Use of Topic - 10/10
Entertainment - 12/15
Quality - 13/15
Total - 42/50
Notes:
I'm never going to a British carnival. Actually, never been to one at all so I guess it is moot.
It was nice to see a less historical twist on this, though it didn't quite drag me in as much as some of your other pieces in the competition. There were some grammar things that made it me pause once or twice but no single thing too major. The main hit to your score was that I just wasn't that drawn in to the story. The whole early bit about people nearly having an orgy in the streets just turned me off a lot. The awkwardness worked but at the same time I was thinking "really? I doubt that would ever happen" then again, never been to one so I might just be stupid here.
I did like the ending bit though, it was a nice moment compared to the kinda creepy rest of the story. Overall, not my favorite piece but still pretty decent.
Manny:
Spelling & Grammar - 3/5
Ease of Read - 4/5
Use of Topic - 10/10
Entertainment - 13/15
Quality - 13/15
Total - 43/50
Notes:
Well, this was probably my least favorite bit from you so far. On the technical end it seems the bar fell a bit on this one. There were enough errors for me to make me mark it down. It still worked in the description and character aspects though and I can see that standards stayed high there. Oddly my favorite part besides when Janis is picked on by the three boys was the tarot reading. I thought the suspense was well done there and I was honestly curious to see what was in store for this girl.
On that note though I felt the name drop at the end was thrown in there to be tossed in. It killed the ending flow a bit for me. Beyond that this was weakest in the technical end for me. I'm good with pronoun mazes but a couple of times I could see how some people might get lost in the shuffle there.
This was okay but not up there with your usual standard. You seem aware of that though so I won't drill on it.
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Mena
Scribe
Posts: 667
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Post by Mena on Feb 16, 2011 22:54:11 GMT -5
Agro
3/5 Spelling & Grammar
5/5 Ease of Read
10/10 Use of Topic
13/15 Entertainment
12/15 Quality
TOTAL: 43/50
I liked your story, although you had a few errors. I agree with Mel that with a bit more time spent "polishing" it up, would have made for a fantastic story. I'm glad you didn't write a story about how wonderful carnivals are, after all, not everyone cares for them.
Manny
3/5 Spelling & Grammar
4/5 Ease of Read
9/10 Use of Topic
12/15 Entertainment
12/15 Quality
Total: 40/50
My least favorite piece throughout the entire competition (from you). I don't feel you captured the spirit of a carnival at all to be honest. I would have loved for you to have described her surroundings a bit more.
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Post by James on Feb 16, 2011 23:02:38 GMT -5
Agro (124) beats Manny (123) The Champion of the AWR Cup is: Agro[/center][/size] Hats off to Manny, that was one close final! And well done to everyone who competed, wrote and worked out their creative muscles. We had a few more drop-outs than I imagined, but it was still another successful tournament, which makes it two in a row. AWR, give yourself a pat on the back. |
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Post by Kaez on Feb 16, 2011 23:04:47 GMT -5
Agro (124) beats Manny (123)
The Grand Champion of the AWR Cup is Agro! [/center] Gratz to the both of you, really. Two years in a row, the Grand Final was won by -one point-. That's all kinds of awesome. |
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Post by James on Feb 16, 2011 23:06:30 GMT -5
You should have said you were going to do it! |
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Post by Kaez on Feb 16, 2011 23:11:02 GMT -5
You should have said you were going to do it! I DID IT LAST YEAR. YOU WERE OFFLINE. PLUS YOU ACTUALLY WON. Bgawk. |
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Post by James on Feb 16, 2011 23:13:16 GMT -5
BUT I'VE BEEN DOING IT THE ENTIRE COMPETITION. ... BUT I WAS ONLINE!? THAT'S WHY I HAD NO EXCLAMATION POINTS IN MINE! Quite. |
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Sensar
Author
Homonecropedopheliac and Legal Property of AWR
Posts: 6,898
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Post by Sensar on Feb 16, 2011 23:13:51 GMT -5
Congratulations, awesome people! And Agro, too!
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Feb 16, 2011 23:57:25 GMT -5
Grats to Agro on the comeback! And well done Manny for putting up such a stiff competition.
So does this mean Agro will be our first King of the Hill?
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Post by Kaez on Feb 17, 2011 0:01:49 GMT -5
Grats to Agro on the comeback! And well done Manny for putting up such a stiff competition. So does this mean Agro will be our first King of the Hill? OH MAN. YES IT DOES. |
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