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Character Story Final Poll


Character Story Final Poll  

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Character Story Final Poll

 

Vote here for your favorite Character Story story. Please MAKE SURE YOU READ ALL ENTRIES BEFORE VOTING.Voting begins now and will end on July 17th at 11:59 PM PST. The entry with the most votes will be the winner of Character Story theme and will then be either judged or polled against the winners of the other themes.

 

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Choice #1:

 

"The Wishing Rock"

When I saw the girl sitting at Wishing Point, gazing out over the valley, I didn't think much of it right away.

Then the girl made a jerking movement, flinging something from the outcropping. I paused to watch, curious. She picked up another stone and threw it. Soon she was tearing up piles of pebbles and dirt and hurling them over the precipice. Finally she gave up, fell to her knees, and began crying.

I stepped off the path, blending into the dense branches of a pinewood. Half of me wanted to let her be; the other half couldn’t turn away and leave her like that.

I watched, and she did nothing. It was one of the pebbles that did it. It flew suddenly back up over the precipice and landed beside the girl, glowing red.

It glowed brighter, then stopped. A pool of dark, reddish-orange liquid bled from the rock, pooling on the ground beside the girl. She jumped up, backed away, staring in disbelief as a human woman began to rise from the pool. She was clad in coppery robes that cascaded from her shoulders like a waterfall of fabric. A jeweled turban concealed her hair.

"Yes, mistress?" she droned.

The girl's mouth hung open, but no sound escaped it.

"You have wishes, mistress?"

The girl gasped, "You're--a--a genie?"

"A genius," the woman corrected. "There is a difference."

"And you'll give me three wishes?"

"Correct."

"Well--I--"

"Come, you were wishing yourself silly moments ago. I have not all day."

"I wish for--a dog?"

Her hearts' greatest desires at her fingertips--and she wishes for a dog! By her tone, however, I guessed she was only testing the water.

The genius nodded. "Granted."

The girl looked around. "… Where?"

"Patience! It will come. Your next wish?"

The girl squeaked, "I--I wish my mother were alive."

Now we were getting to it.

"I cannot bring the dead back, my child," said the genius irritably.

"Oh--I--I'm sorry …"

"Your next wish?"

"There are so many things … A friend?"

The simple, childish desperation of this request twisted my heart.

"I cannot grant what you have already."

"But--but I--"

"Broaden your mind and you will see what you do not realize you have. Your next wish?"

"I wish for a boyfriend!"

"I cannot alter such things as are destined to be."

The girl hesitated. "You--you really grant wishes?"

"I do."

The girl shuffled her feet. "I wish my big sister didn't have cancer."

The genius eyed the girl. "Are you certain?"

"Of course!"

"I am sorry. I cannot grant a wish that is destined to be."

The girl looked up. "You mean--she'll be all right?"

"Your sister's cancer will not last much longer, my child. I--" The genius hesitated, as if her next words were foreign to her. "I am truly sorry."

The girl hugged her shoulders. Voice shaking, she said, "I wish someone would help me!"

"I cannot grant what you have already." The genius put a hand on the girl's shoulder. There was a new compassion in her flat tone. "You want help, my child. Let me give you this: You have all the help you need if you look for it." She straightened and went on monotonically, "Your next wish, mistress."

The girl looked out over the valley. What she was thinking, I couldn't imagine. Probably the same as me, wondering what the genius meant by what she said. It was a long time before the girl spoke again.

"I only have one more."

The genius said indifferently, "If that is your wish."

"Yes it is."

"Will you watch the sunset with me?"

There was a pause. The girl, her face unreadable, gazed up into the eyes of the expressionless genius. Finally, the woman spoke.

"If it is as you wish."

They sat together and watched until the final rays of the sun had faded into the starlit night sky. With the sun's last ray, the genius disappeared. Silently the girl picked up the colorless pebble, put it in her pocket, rose, and left.

I followed at an inconspicuous distance until I had seen her safely home. I lingered on the sidewalk across the street, watching her front door, until a tired-looking, poorly-fed puppy padded up to the door and pawed at it, whimpering. I turned and walked away.

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Choice #2:

"Oranges in a Thunderstorm"

I was… oh, I don’t know, eight years old, maybe, kind of a weird kid, didn’t have many friends. It was midway through summer; the few kids my age I got along with were out of town. I was bored, really bored – couldn’t think of anything worth doing inside, and it was way too hot to do anything out in the sun. I figured I might as well head into the woods behind my house, see if I could find anything interesting, a deer, maybe, or a creek or a pond I didn’t know about. The woods went back quite a ways, see; you could spend every afternoon out there for a decade and still find new stuff each day.

I grabbed a couple granola bars and a bottle of water and walked off, wandering aimlessly until I found a neat little waterfall sort of thing. I sat there for a while, watching it, and eventually decided to follow it upstream for a while. Somehow, I made it to a road cutting through the trees.

The road was narrow, but it was paved, paved with cobblestones, anyway. I started down the it, curious to see where it would lead, and I glanced up at the sky as I did so. It was darkening; storm clouds were gathering above. It would be raining before too long.

I’d been on the road a while, never seeing anything but trees and the same cobblestone path, when I realized how hungry I was. I’d finished off my last granola bar a good hour ago already, and trekking through the woods was taking up a lot of energy. What with the rain and the hunger, I was just thinking it would be a good idea to turn around and head back when a dark building loomed into view, a house that was really more a mansion than a simple house. It was on a cliff, and behind it, I could see the ocean churning in the building storm.

I walked forward, a bit apprehensively, I guess, but my eight-year-old mind was more concerned with getting indoors before the rain began in earnest (and maybe getting some food in the process) than the potential danger.

It wasn’t until I’d banged the wolf-head-shaped knocker against the door a couple times that I remembered the stories the other kids told about the house at the edge of the sea, the house where the witch lived. The witch who cast magic with some weird rock and—

The door creaked open, and, well, not that I knew much about witches, but the woman who stood there didn’t seem much like one. I don’t really remember much of what she looked like – she was young, I guess, and pretty. She did have a rock in her hand, I noticed, but it didn’t look very magic to me – just an ordinary chunk of granite.

She smiled down at me, somewhat amused. “How’d you get all the way out here, huh?”

“I, uh— I walked,” I stammered, more confused than anything. She wanted to know how I’d gotten here, but not my name?

“Walked, huh.” She laughed softly, though I wasn’t sure what was so funny. She shook her head. “Never mind. You probably want to get out of the rain, yeah? It’s not looking pretty out there.” As if on cue, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, chased a half-second later by an angry roar of thunder. I didn’t need much more invitation than that. “Hungry, too, I bet? Uh, here. Have one of these.” She grabbed an orange out of a bowl resting on a shelf just inside the house and tossed it to me.

She turned and walked off, a bit of a weird thing to do when you’ve got a guest, but I didn’t think much of it. I followed, peeling the orange as I did so. Suddenly I stopped – the fruit’s flesh was a deep, dark red. She turned, seeing my surprise, and laughed again. “What are they saying about me these days – the oranges are red from the blood of my victims or something?” I blinked. Actually, I had heard that. “It’s their natural color,” she continued, “and a rather nice color, at that. A genetic mutation.”

I cautiously popped a wedge of the orange in my mouth. Tasted fine. The rest of the fruit was gone in seconds. She smiled, pointing a thumb at another bowl of the oranges. “Help yourself.”

I did so.

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Choice #3:

"My Little Angel"

It was days like these I always missed him the most. My father had always been by my side, always calling me his little Angel and while I couldn’t quite rationalize why someone would believe in something like Angels, I must admit it felt good.

We’d come down to our spot on the beach, skipping pebbles along the water, it had always been our little thing, and he’d always beaten me at it. I’d always try and calculate the best angle to throw with, and he’d always beat me, just by throwing it without a care in the world. Whenever I got frustrated, he’d always laugh and say.

“My little Angel, brains are good and all, but sometimes you just need a little fate and a little gut.”

This of course would only serve to make me angrier and I’d call him a fool, but even still we both cherished our time together. Even as the sun began to set, we’d only sit there marveling as the sky and sea turned a shade of blood orange. Under the beautiful, fading rays of sunlight, we’d slowly begin our walk back home, along the way my father would brag to anyone he knew about how his little girl was the most precious thing in the world.

Back then I’d feel mortified, what kind nincompoop has to brag about someone else so much, however now all I could do was tightly clutch a pebble, much like the ones we used to throw, and cry at the memory. Why’d you have to leave me dad.

The night it happened a storm was supposed to be coming our way; I had gotten fed up with the constant bullying at school, the kids always calling me out for being smarter than them. So I ran, I ran to our special spot and cried my heart out, I never wanted to go back, what was the point of me being smarter than everyone else if it only brought me so much pain.

Then I had felt a hand at my shoulder, my dad’s grinning face was looking down at me. His smile was so warm that night, yet his eyes were filled with a deep sadness at seeing his little Angel crying like this. “Your mother’s been crying her heart out dear. Won’t you come home already?”

I only shook my head, muttering about not ever wanting to go back anywhere, that everywhere was terrible. Still my dad only laughed and asked if that included our special spot. The words hit me, deeper than I could have imagined, and I replied that in that case I’d stay here.

Once again he laughed and said, “Angel, you’re a smart girl, smarter than your old man. Do the math; if the world is so big, what are the odds that the only good place in this whole big world exists only here? Pretty darn lousy I’d say, of course I’m no genius, but I’d think you’d agree.”

He then lifted my sobbing face out of my arms and knelt down in front of me so our eyes met. “Now look, the world can be scary place at times and yes there are some bad people out there, but for every bad person there’s a hundred good people out there waiting to be met, so do your old man a favor and keep your head up high to find them. After all Angels like you came from above, not below.”

Sure I found his words irrational at the time, but they managed to cheer me up a bit. So when he asked if I was ready to go home I just nodded my head, unfortunately that was when the storm decided to rear its ugly head. My dad picked me into his two arms and ran as fast as he could towards a nearby shelter, throwing me in and then, my tears began to flow freely down my face as the memories came back, he knew there wasn’t enough time to get in, so he, well, he... shut the door.

That was the last time I saw him, and even then he’d been grinning like a maniac. That next morning I awoke to find the storm had died down. The moment my mind started working I rushed out the door, but all I found were some pebbles my dad used to carry when we came to the beach. I’m sorry dad, I’ll hold my head up high from now on.

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"As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake." ~ Aimee Bender

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