Second Challenge (4th Platform-Building Campaign)

You all know Rach, right? Over at Rach Writes? Well, the girl has gone a little crazy this time. Lots of prompts and added challenges, so you can torture yourself as little or as much as you want.

I went with three of the challenges (three being an added challenge), each written in the dystopian genre (another added challenge as I've never written in the dystopian genre before): the pitch, 200 word story using prompt #1, and the five-line story using each of the five prompts.

My theme is life and survival in a newly dystopian world, and so I have used water as a strong life symbol.

You can go HERE to check out the other entries. I am #25 if you want to "like" mine.

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PITCH:

A blip, no bigger than a tear drop, a tiny hiccup in the earth’s perpetual spin, results in the struggle to survive in a new world and a new society for those lucky enough to find their way to the safety of the bridge.

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Under the Bridge


I shifted my position, wincing at the pain in my leg.


“Try not to move,” said my companion. “That cut on your leg is pretty deep.”


Rain water dripped from points off his drenched hair. He had given me the trash bag, first slitting the side and slipping it over my head like a hood, the odor of rotting garbage hugging my face.


The concrete bridge had collapsed, sending pedestrians cascading like a waterfall to drown in the lake of debris below.


I didn’t remember. I awoke sitting here, partially protected under the remains of the bridge, the rusted support beams etching a painful tattoo into my back.


Time escaped me.


“What’s taking so long?” I croaked. “The rescue people – what’s taking so long?”


No sirens blared. No barking, no chirping, no buzzing, no engines.


It disturbed me.


“Where are the others? The other people from the bridge?”


He didn’t answer, only sat with eyes closed, adam’s apple gliding up and down.


It all felt wrong. Terribly wrong.


I leveraged myself up, hands scraping against the rough surface. Dragging my stiff leg, I shuffled to the opening.

Nothing but barren land, leveled, ravaged.


No one was coming.

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Afterlife


Each bridge, dark, dank, wet, safe.


Each child, a miracle.


Each splash of water, life.


Each search through rubble, a treasure hunt.


Each energy field, a field of hope.

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HERE ARE THE PROMPTS, RULES AND CHALLENGES:
There are five prompts, four of them are photographs:

Prompt #1:

Two people are sitting together under the remains of a concrete bridge. Their backs are against a rusted bridge support. One person’s leg is cut. The other person has wet hair.

Prompt #2:

 

Prompt #3:



Prompt #4:



Prompt #5:




Here are the challenges. Do one or more of the following:

1. Write a pitch/logline for a book based on the prompts (less than 100 words)
2. Write a short story/flash fiction piece of less than 200 words based on the prompts
3. Write a poem with a twist using the prompts as inspiration (in less than 200 words)
4. Write a story/poem in five sentences, each sentence based on one of the prompts
5. Write a poem/flash fiction piece (in less than 200 words) about the water pear *without* using the words “pear”, “spoon”, or “droplet”.

For added difficulty/challenge:

• Complete at least three of the above activities and tie them all together with a common theme (feel free to either state the theme in your post or leave us to guess what it might be)
• Write in a genre that is not your own
• Ask Challenge entrants to critique your writing. After the Challenge closes, you may wish to re-post your revised piece(s), and I’ll include a Linky List at the bottom of this post for those wishing more feedback on their revisions (note: revised entries will not be judged, so please label clearly your original post and your revisions. Please do not offer critique unless someone asks for it, as per the usual blogging conventions. If you do ask for critique, make sure you ask for it clearly so people know you want it, and please be prepared to receive feedback that may not be 100% glowing. If you are a critiquer, please be tactful and courteous, and remember to provide positives as well as negatives.)

Second Campaigner Challenge

It's time for Rachael Harrie's Second Campaigner Challenge! You gotta love her sense of humor - wait until you see the words she gave us that must appear in this post. I looked every one of them up on Wikipedia. This is a clear lesson in vocabulary - or little-used words, I'm not sure. You can read and vote for your favorite entry here. I'm number 34.

The Challenge is:

Write a blog post in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, whether flash fiction, non-fiction, humorous blog musings, poem, etc. The blog post should:

• include the word "imago" in the title

• include the following 4 random words: "miasma," "lacuna," "oscitate," "synchronicity,"

If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional and included in the word count), make reference to a mirror in your post.

For those who want an even greater challenge (optional), make your post 200 words EXACTLY!

I MET THE CHALLENGE AND THE EXTRA OPTIONS!

AND SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEAVE THIS POST IN ORDER TO GO LOOK UP THE WORDS, I POSTED THE MEANINGS BELOW:

Imago: Insect in its sexually mature adult stage after metamorphosis.
Miasma: Noxious atmosphere.
Lacuna: A gap or space.
Oscitate: Gape or Yawn.
Synchronicity: Events that happen together by chance.

AND HERE IS MY POST.

Imago of a Lost World

AirShip America Log, September 22, 2075.
24:00 hours.

Reached Mariposa. Declared international martial law upon discovering mixed human/alien race in apparent distress. Subsisting mostly in an area called Lacuna, below ground, the unsustainable miasma being above ground. They are barely surviving. The race is surely facing extinction. Entire planet is beginning to oscitate in large areas and increasing daily.

I tapped the pen against my lips. I hadn’t quite figured out what to do with an entire race from a defunct planet.

“What are you planning?” asked First Lieutenant Carmenski. Clearly uneasy, she wanted to begin doing something. Anything.

“They must be evacuated, obviously,” I said, annoyed. I don’t like being rushed into any decision, especially one as important as this.

“But how?” she pushed. Our ship will only carry five hundred more.”

She sat next to me, commanding my attention. “Don’t you think it strange the AASA sent us here? I don’t believe in synchronicity. I think it’s all smoke and mirrors. They knew what they were sending us into.”

“Perhaps,” I said. But I secretly agreed. We landed on a dying planet. The American Aeronautical Space Administration surely knew about it. And sent us all to certain death.