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Vale, Slasher. You will be greatly missed. Slasher's games were a guilty pleasure for us on IRC. I remember we were all playing one of his games together one night. I don't know if his games were intended to be funny, but they were just so absurd and full of heart. A great author who didn't mince words and produced so much.

Having had worked closely with him over several games, you can rest assured that the comedy value was 100% intentional. The old fart could never resist a bit of toilet humour, and left much of the jankiness in the games either on purpose or because it was funny, or probably equal portions of both.

A squid?

Some kind of trailer truck?

I doubt it, but, just to get things rolling:

A scorpion?

Sorry for no pretty pictures etc. Just the basic theme rules:

The story must not take place on any kind of solid ground or floor.

On or under the ocean, up in the air, floating around inside a spaceship, or flying through the astral plane are all viable examples.

But not, for example, sailing on a ship or flying in an airplane.

If a character briefly stands or falls onto something solid, like in the case of a circus trapeze act, that would scrape through as acceptable.

Apart from that, anything goes. Happy typing all! (Yes, you are allowed to write it on a solid keyboard)

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VOTING OPEN UNTIL OCT 18TH.

TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE OF THESE STORIES JUST MENTION ITS NAME WHEN YOU POST IN HERE TO VOTE.

ANY OF THESE:

"TWO BIRDS"

"OH, 'CHUTE"

"THE BOOK OF JIM"

AFTER YOU POST YOUR VOTE THERE IS NO FURTHER OBLIGATION TO DO ANYTHING.

THIS CONTEST HAS BEEN AN AGS CLASSIC FOR OVER A DECADE!

HELP US OUT, PLEASE!

I was walking down a very dark and narrow lane one night. A light approached from behind me. I was worried it might be a car. Then I looked back and saw it was just a bicycle. At which point I stopped being merely worried and became scared.

Why?

Spoiler

Because "just a bicycle" must be ridden by an invisible ghost?

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This is indeed the correct answer. About how long did it take you? Or was it immediate?

By the way, I'll answer this one I posted above as it's just a silly thing:

Q: Why was Gandalf good at golf?
A: Because he can always get at least a few eagles.

The new one is a bit more elegant I'd say.

A new one I came up with today that I think is worthy:
(Please answer in spoiler tags if possible. I think it's worth it to let others feel that "click" moment)
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I was walking down a very dark and narrow lane one night. A light approached from behind me. I was worried it might be a car. Then I looked back and saw it was just a bicycle. At which point I stopped being merely worried and became scared.

Why?

This is a reminder that you do not need to have participated in the competition in any way or form in order to be eligible to vote. All that is required is that you read the stories.

Vote, people, vote, it's your democratic right!

When we got that surge of incoming votes a while back it was because I reached out via PMs to those people and told them that the stories weren't all that long and it would really help this contest that has been a backbone of the AGS forums for over a decade. I chose people who have either participated in the contest before or who I knew were loyal AGSers and/or invested in the story aspect of games. The AGS forums format doesn't really draw attention to any small corner of it and so people only look at the bits they usually frequent.

The stories aren't all that long this time either, so maybe try that? I don't really want to again just yet as I might seem like a botherer. Either way, just an idea that worked for me before.

that's probably exactly how a subset of teenage girls behave

Spoiler

Pretty much everything you provided in your feedback was exactly what I wanted to hear. About wanting to find out more about Rob, and why Justine is now suddenly free. Both of these bits were intended as the hooks to draw the reader into the rest of the story past the point it cuts off here. Thanks also for the kudos on the writing.

But thanks especially about that bit I quoted above. Yes, these girls are very much a loner group that were not popular in the school until this event happened. A situation that will later propel then into the limelight of national media attention and change them in many ways. Your positive feedback gives me a further incentive to keep writing what could become an actual serious novel without any of my usual supernatural elements. Thanks so much for reading the initial concept and thanks also to Sini for the theme of weather that made me come up with a serial killer who only feels the urge to go out and kill when it's raining.

This is now my main writing project.

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Hey, I'm just a couple of hours late, no need to rush it!

 

Hidden voting and feedback:

Spoiler

My vote goes to Baron, obviously. But apart from the necessity of my vote, he obviously deserves it. A great story from start to finish. The writing was excellent and carried me along the whole way. I was invested in what was going to happen from start to finish. I could see in my mind the final crash and the banked-up slope of the eventual position of the plane while I read the final paragraphs. The love affair aspect and betrayal leading up to the final punchline completely worked. Well done, mate! Well done!

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Rob the Weather

  It was a dark and stormy night inside Rob's head. Outside of it however, it was only just beginning to spit down rain. But that was enough to draw the old urge back up to the front of his mind. Three months had gone by since his last kill. Not the longest time for him, but it was an above-average gap. He drew his hands back from the keyboard and tilted his right ear. Still only a pitter-patter on the plastic, corrugated awning over the back deck. But it was rain, and Rob found himself feeling thirsty again.
 
  He stood up from his desk, the cheap metal chair scraping out behind the backs of his knees. He put back his hand and gripped the bowed bar at the top of it, stopping it from tipping over on its teetering balance. Would have been annoying had it fallen in a folding clatter. Rob righted the chair, and then walked down the path that had, over the years, established some kind of mutual peace treaty between his need to be online and the piles of garbage all around it.

  Robert Hill had lived in the home his mother had left to him for a decade. No, it was coming up closer on fifteen years, now that he thought about it. The house was a two-story structure with a basement. It was the basement door he now headed to. Along the way, he kicked aside an unopened pack of potato chips that had tumbled down, many months past its expiry date. One narrow slew of the slope of similar snack bags started to pour down all over itself briefly, but then jammed up just short of a complete avalanche. The path behind Robert through the rubbish tip he lived in remained an open one. He pulled open the door that led down to his lair below.

  Twelve steps down the stairs and his feet were on the basement floor. It felt like a homecoming to Robert, as it always did. He hadn't been down here since the last time he'd put his urges to sleep. He looked around, his narrow nostrils sniffing the air. It smelt, to his nose, of decay and of the beatiful suffering the decayed had gone through. And of bleach and quicklime. He walked his knock-kneed way between stacks of semi-opaque plastic storage boxes, seeing here a flattened face he'd known well, tipping its moldy, smashed wink of eyelashes back, there a pale footprint pressing up against the inner side of one of the fluid-heavy boxes.

  Robert walked on and on, between the long stacks of his encased friends, until he reached the doors of the squat, steel-meshed locker where he kept all his adventure stuff. He yanked forward the ring of keys latched to his belt and unlocked the padlock, pulling it aside from the weapons locker's latch and pocketting it.

  It felt it was time to bring another puppy into the playpen. Robert took his toys from the locker. Then he shut the doors of it and turned and walked away with a grin on his sweaty face.
 
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  Celine slammed the pedal to the metal. Her green bob-cut do bounced up and down as she thrashed her head to the music. She hand-over-handled the steering wheel back to the other side and heard the cheers of her back-seating friends as she skidded around another turn, only just avoiding the rear end of a big trailer truck. "SHIT!" she yelled. Her friends screamed with delight when an oncoming car appeared out from behind the bulk of the truck. Her car slammed into the front of it and the arcade game's screen played out the carnage of the head-on crash.
   
  It had been her best run yet, but Celine was done for the night with arcade games. The warm hands of her best friends, Bobbie and Justine, yanked her hands and armpits up from the machine's seat and bore her out of the video arcade with much back-slapping and some butt-paddling just for fun. The giggling trio staggered across the crowded mall concourse, arms around shoulders, and right into the Baskin Robbins opposite the Orbit game arcade.

  In this year of 1995, in this particular ice cream shop, the month of July's specials were "Summer Scream", "Boston Tea Party Hearty" and "Spoon Under the Moon". The three girls, best friends since grade four of Miss Robert's elementary school class all those hot half-a-dozen summers ago, bought their cups of double scoops and went to a table to eat them at. Bobbie was ribbing Justine about her date with Harry Stiles, the one that had ended in disaster last weekend. Celine was spooning Caramel Ribbon melting into Summer Scream into her mouth, grinning at their antics, as the first fat splatters of rain started to hit the window pane they sat by.

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  If Robert Hill hadn't stepped on the brake pedal of his ratty old Volvo, things might have turned out very differently. It would have been an embarrasing way to be caught, but he'd spotted the radar trap through the swishing wipers just in time and cruised past the patrol car a bare millimeter under the speed limit. According to the backlit speedometer on the dashboard. Still nervous though, he leaned forward and peered intently into the ceiling-mounted rear view mirror. The cop car receeded into the distance behind him without a budge. He chuckled, and it sounded scared. Damn, that would have been a fucked-up way to get caught. They would have found all his toys in the trunk. They would have taken him in. They would have gone into his house.

  Everything was cool now, though. He reached over and twisted the volume down on the radio. It was time to concentrate a lot better on the task at hand. Annie Lennox sung a bit lower about some angel in her heart or whatever as he swung the wheel to the left and bumped the undercarriage of the car up and over the lip of the entrance to the Barneyville Mall's expansive carpark.

  The raindrops splattering on the windscreen doubled and then, just as suddenly, quadrupled. The wipers could barely keep up by the time Robert pulled into just the kind of nondescript parking spot he liked for his missions: About a third of the way down the lot from the mall's brightly-lit entrance and over a bit to the side, out from under most of the swan-necked arc lights dotted here and there.

  He turned off the headlights and engine, only keeping the wipers and radio going. Manic Monday came on. He liked the coincidence of the day, taking it as an omen. He turned the volume back up. He watched the rain impact across the tarmac, bobbing his head to the bouncy beat. It was lovely how his friend of rain hammered down, spreading out its fan of spattered reflections of the mall's neon across the black ground. Robert felt good again for the first time in ages. His instincts told him it was time to sit and wait.

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  Ice cream and gossip were almost done. Justine had been a good sport at first under the teasing about Harry, but had told them to shut up about it. And they did, eventually. Talk had moved on to Ross and Rachel's breakup, and speculations over if they were going to get back together or if this meant the show was wrapping up on a downer. The three girls continued to speculate about the fate of the TV couple all the way to the mall's entrance, where they were pulled out of fantasy and had to face down the reality of how the hell they were going to get through the hammering rain. It would be a long, drenching run to where Bobbie had parked at the far end of the lot. Back when it had been packed at noon.

  Now, as the mall approached its 9pm closing time, the lot was almost empty. Behind them, lights started to go off in the depths of the shopping center, the clothes stores and hardware outlets the first to fall dark. Glances passed between them and, as was most often the case, one of Celine's eyebrows arched up. She dashed off into the downpour screaming, arms thrust out behind her. Justine and Bobbie locked eyes. Bobbie grinned first and dashed off after Celine. Justine rolled her eyes and ran, instanty soaked in third place. 

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  Days passed. Frantic phone calls were made. Panicked visits to the police staion happened. By Thursday morning, a few regional radio stations were briefly mentioning the vanishing of Justine Faire. By Friday night, her face was on the local news. Those wide, blonde bangs of hers hanging split above her large, startlingly blue eyes in the blurry photo of her in the broadcast's upper-right corner. In the upper-right corners of the TV screens Celine's and Bobbie's eyes were glued to. Center-front, the ever-serious face of anchorman Bob Leene was saying, "Local authorities have said that they still have no leads on the sudden disappearance of Barneyville high-school student, Justine Faire. And now on to the weather report with Lancey Brown."

  Bobbie rolled over onto her back, the long spiralling cord of her bedside phone tangling around her shin. "Oh, hell, Cellie. We are TOAST at school by Monday. This is..."

  Celine's tearful voice came back, "SHUT UP, you dumb bitch. Who gives a fuck what those retards say? FUCK! Think back!"

  "Okay. OKAY!" Bobbie said into the mouthpiece. "Okay... That car, yeah. I saw its headlights."

  "Where did it... FUCK! We've been over this! Just fucking remember! Did you see it go near where Justine would have been?" spat back Celine from her own end of the call.

  "WHY IS THIS ALL ON ME?! I don't know! There were headlights. Jesus!" Bobbie said.

  "Okay... sorry. Listen. I didn't mean any of this is your fault." Celine responded, her mouth clenched tight up by the blocky end of the dial phone handset her drunk, useless parents had never swapped out for a push-button one. "Sorry, Bobkins."

  Now Bobbie's voice had hitching tears in it as well, "S'alright. I-I just dunno is all. You were u-unlocking the car and I only l-looked up f-f-for a b-bit."

  "What did you see? Sorry for yelling at you, Bobbie." Celine's half-asian eyes squinched shut, the tears that had built up in their corners spilling down the sides of her nose. She paused. On the flickering TV set across the ratty living room, Lancey Brown was pointing at shark-tooth curves, predicting no more rain for the next few days. "What did you see, Bobkins?"

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  And there they were. Just for Rob. The rain had never lied to him. Three delicate angels dashing off into the downpour. One. Two. And then the third one hesitated just long enough for him to judge the timing of the snatch. Yes, it could work. And, if it didn't, he could just drive off and nothing would ever land back on him. Robert Hill was always careful. He prided himself on it. That's how he had made it this far. He eased down on the accelerator, keeping the headlights off for now, and pulled out from between the white lines of his parking space, no car blocking the one in front. Almost none anywhere across the lot.

  He pulled slowly to the right in a sweeping arc. The straggler had fallen behind to wipe her soaked hair back and stop and shout something at the two other waifs far ahead. Yes! This could work! He wished the radio was playing something more appropriate, something like "Who'll Stop the Rain". But it was just some pop song from the '80s he'd never heard before. It was jangly enough, though. It had him surfing the mood for a snatch. He could still abort.

  The lights across the parking lot started to go dark on their poles a row at a time. Rob pictured in his head some pimply loser in some backroom of the mall raking the backs of their hands up across a bank of bulky switches. It was only seconds until the whole lot was in darkness. He turned on his headlights and cut in closer between the stray and the two others of her pack. He braked his car, cutting the girl off. Without a single thought for the handbrake, he ripped open his door. He jumped out saying, "Excuse me miss, but there's something on your..." grabbing her attention, and then gut-punched her before she could say a single word back. She crumpled forward, winded. Unable to cry out. He caught her elbow and wrapped an arm behind her. One quick, practiced, shuffle later he had the back hatch of the car open. He shoved her in and slammed it shut.

  Robert ran and caught up with the open driver's side door, slipped in, slammed it shut, and then was gone. Textbook.

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  The Barneyville Public Highschool stayed open over the next three weeks. Justine Faire did not come back to attend classes. All the other students who had not vanished got used to the media circus that thronged outside the gates. Some took advantage of a microphone thrust in their face to say horrible or tender things about Justine. Most just walked by with their heads down as their parents had told them to.

  Classes took on a muted tone. A vigil was held, barely televised by the time most of the TV crews had left, bee-lining off in their vans to the next big story. Celine and her mom attended, candles in hand. Her dad had been too drunk to leave the sofa since noon. The bandage on her swollen forehead went unremarked on, but observed by all. Daddy issues were assumed by most.

  Bobbie was there as well. The two girls eye-nodded to each other in passing, a gesture unnoticed by Bobbie's parents. They had banned any social contact between the two friends outside of school. They were responsible, upstanding members of the community after all. And, of course, the two girls had taken every possible opportunity they could to slip out under the radar and get together.

  Like on the night Celine had just got done streaking the blonde roots of her hair bright red in the shitty bathroom of her home. It was really just an excuse to stay up late on a school night. She knew her mom and dad would be down and out by the time she had the red stripe down the middle of her green bob decently done. She'd been right. They were. She slipped out the back door, snicking it shut behind the snores of her dad and the unfortunate visual of her mom's sleeping face tipped against his shoulder on the sofa. Scrunched together as always after the afternoon drink-a-thon.

  It was five days until the vigil at the school. Bobbie and her sat next to each other on the same side of the bench of the Wonder Park's wooden picnic table. The moon was a brilliant quarter-cresent above.

  "Cellie, no! Let's just chill. I don't wanna talk about it any more." Bobbie said.

  Celine insisted though, "Come on. Give up the goods!"

  "Okay. Shut up about it already. FINE! Butthead, then!" Bobbie finally admitted, a blush tinting her wide, plump cheeks.

  Celine tried to contain her laughter but failed, "PPPPFFssshhhTTTttt. Wait. HAHAHA! You'd fuck Butthead?!"

  "SHUT UP! YOU made me choose! So then, what? You'd fuck Beavis?!" Bobbie burst back.

  Celine put her serious face back on and said, "The question, my dear, was if you would fuck Beavis or Butthead. You chose Butthead."

  "Yeah, so? You'd go with the Beave?" replied Bobbie, her annoyed lips starting to twitch up into a grin at one corner.

  Celine's own shuddering expression shattered completely into rubber as she yelled, "NO! You'd never fuck either of them. OBVIOUS ANSWER MUCH?!"

  The two friends fell into each other's arms, wailing laughter. After a bit of that, they got up and walked home. Celine dropped Bobbie off first, with a hug, and then walked the extra half-mile and threw herself onto her own bed. She fell asleep, a smile coming and going on her face.   

  The next time they both managed to sneak out and meet up at the park was two nights before the school vigil for Justine. This time they sat on opposite sides of the picnic table, across from each other. Celine stared over at her friend, waiting for her to talk again.

  The black, motionless silohette of Wonder Park's ferris wheel interrupted the arc of the Milky Way across the sky behind Bobbie. The silence had gone on long enough. She said, "Do you think.. I mean maybe if we'd..."

  Celine's eyes were already welling up as she said, "Yeah. Fuck. I've thought about it a million times too, Bobkins. I mean, what the fuck?! How can we even deal with this for the rest of our fucking li-liv- FUCKING LIVES?!" And then she just started straight-out bawling.

  "OH, NO! I didn't mean it was your... oh, no-no-no, Cellie! NO! Don't do that, sweetie!" Bobbie stood and rushed around the rough wooden table to where Celine was bashing her forehead against it. Bobbie, outweighing Celine by over one-and-a-half friends'-worths, was easily able to yank her back from further self harm. Damage had been done, though. Bobbie lifted up the hem of her shirt and blotted Celine's bleeding forehead with it. They both laughed over how shockingly bloody it got, and fell into each others arms crying. The salty drip of their tears down the backs of their throats felt both good and bad as the one dropped the other off at home, and walked home herself, her forehead swelling up, still bleeding trickles into her eyes now and then. She bandaged it herself, tears mixing with blood and running down the shitty drain of the shitty sink in her shitty home of her shitty life. Then she went to bed.

  The two friends didn't have any contact again until they passed by each other on the night on the candlelit vigil outside the school. Speeches were made by several teachers and the principal, Mr. Cordon. During his, Celine heard him say "She was a wonderful person.". He seemed to not even notice his unintended slip into past tense, but Celine noticed, and it jarred her badly. Not because of the slip-up, that was just a mistake, but becuase it made her realize that she herself, without fully noticing it happening, had already started thinking of Justine as now belonging only to the past.

  A few more days of zombie-like school passed by, and then the weekend arrived. On the Saturday of which, mid-morning, Justine came back.

  She staggered her weaving way down the forested road. Mostly along the gravel shoulder but sometimes side-stepping out into the windy backwash and blaring horns of swerving cars and trucks. Nobody stopped for her until finally a local delivery van driver slammed on his brakes.

  He leaned across the passenger seat, opened the window and said, "Oh, shit! Miss Faire?! That you?!"

  She replied, "H-hi, mister. C-could you give m-me a lift i-into t-t-town?". She burst into tears when he threw the door open for her.

Spoiler

(My story is obviously nowhere near finished. In, fact, I didn't even try to rush some kind of actual ending on it, as the premise grew in my head into something at least novella length, maybe even a full book. I'm aware by the way that some of the timing of events might not be completely solid but will worry about that on a second draft.)

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Oh, awesome!

Working on mine bit by bit. Should be done in time hopefully.

What grinds my gears is this endless summer heat and humidity here in Japan. What makes me able to be happy and ignore that today is that I just booked tickets for myself, Stupot, and two other mates to go see Jimmy Carr in Tokyo on January 29th of next year.

PS - And I was cutting the grass and think I aspired inhaled a tiny bit of grass when I empty the machine... Now it's stuck in my esophagus...

Not the best kind of grass to inhale.

I'm so conflicted between Sini's and Baron's stories... Both took me to places inside my head where I forgot I was reading words on a screen and could see instead what was happening. And that is the best thermometer I know of for reading the temperature of moonlight...

ARGH! I have to vote slightly in favor of:

Spoiler

Sinitrena

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Just read through Sini's story, still not voting, but here's my feedback on it:

Spoiler

I LOVED the beautiful story of the man and the flower. I felt there were lessons applying to our human condition threading through a lot of the tale. I felt most interested in what would happen to the two of them when they got back to the city. The royal court scene had me enthralled. And it was good! But the princess seemed slightly a bit too much one-dimensional with her spoilt over-the-top response. This is just a fleshing out of stories here in our little "contest" of course. If the final "villain" were given a bit more depth and layers as a character then this story could be a great candidate for a complete novel, I felt. Basically, I wanted more, and that is always a good thing!

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Still not voting, but just read Baron's story and here's my feedback on it:

Spoiler

Weoooowwwll, it was amazing. But I think you cheated a bit by using your superpower to actually go into the mind of some nearby cat while you were writing it. There were so many turns of phrase that puuurrrfec... nope, not going there again...

That "perfectly" fit the mindset of a cat while also being beautiful in and of their own structure.

I thought this story was among the best balances between your obvious wit, writing ability, and power to put the reader instantly into the head of the main character, that I have read of your stories to date.

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