Here are the finalists of this month’s writing contest. The entry that garners the most votes wins. Yes, it’s a democracy. Good times. Winner announced on October 27th. Thanks again to BFF Ann for helping me pick them. Check ‘em out.

Rainbow Tea

“You can’t take that.” Honey stated in a flat voice that was past patience. Raphael had long ago sprinted across that line.
Correction; Raphael did not sprint. He wandered. Aimlessly.

He looked at the painting. Then at her. Finally something inside his head clicked.

“You mean I can’t take it?”

“No.” She sucked in air between her teeth. The bandaged wound at her side throbbed mockingly, a constant burn. The man looked so damn disappointed, like a puppy that had gotten tossed out on its ass into the raining streets.

“But it’s my masterpiece-“

“They are not going to destroy it. It’ll be here. Later. When you come back.” If the men they were running from didn’t catch them first. The thought made her ill. She genuinely liked Raphael, felt flattered when he’d start studying her and declare with confidence that she was beautiful. What woman didn’t appreciate a heartfelt compliment?

She snapped out of her thoughts and straightened up. Carefully she parted the curtains to have a look at the parking lot below the studio. It was still empty save for their pulverized Hybrid. It’d taken a thorough beating. The trunk was completely crushed, the victim of repeated ramming.

“These people are serious, we need to-“ Honey stopped, the curtain falling from her fingers. Raphael’s vaguely too-handsome blue eyes and messy brown hair were reflecting on the glass. Irritation flared up and threatened to melt her cool. “Why are you still standing there? You can’t take the damn painting. Go and get the document from the safe.”

The artist hesitated. Long enough that Honey pivoted to face him with all intentions of forcing him physically to open up the safe box. Time was an expensive commodity and-

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thanks, now move.” She urged, glancing towards the door. Locked. Bolted shut. He left the room and something made her look down at her hands. They were tinted with dried blood. Not her own. Chunks of skin remained under her fingernails from when she’d had to literally scratch her way out of a scuffle. Honey fisted them, knowing Raphael had never guessed that she was capable of such violence.

And yet he still thinks I’m beautiful. Crazy idiot. Honey almost smiled, mouth softening. Frankly it was a stupid idea to care about flaky Raphael – but it was too late. Now she had to keep him safe.

Rae

Word Count: 399

Okay, so she wasn’t the Bionic Woman. Or Buffy.

But damnit, she had a gun and she knew how to use it.

Sort of.

Go, go, Speedracer, Mare thought. She had adrenaline and brains—she hoped that was a lethal combination. She wasn’t the Lara-Croft-guns-blazing type, but she could outsmart a pair of goons, right? Sure.

She peeked into the glass-fronted lab and winced at the blood dripping from her boss’s nose and the welts that would soon be bruises.

She knew the bad guys. The Auditors. Playing games with her head all week, asking if she was sure she’d recorded every calculation correctly for the nanotechnology that she was heading the development of—nanotechnology that, it looked like, the two goons would be jacking from her now that it was complete.

“Auditors my ass,” Mare mumbled, re-checking the semi-automatic.

She could take the fake third degree she’d received, and deal with them jacking five years of work, but if anyone had dibs on kicking Jake Montgomery’s ass, it was her. The man was a dense, albeit gorgeous, pain-in-the-ass. Gorgeous enough she wouldn’t hit him in the face. Damn unrequited lov—lust, she meant lust.

The goons exited the room and she ducked into a doorway until their footsteps had retreated to silence. She slipped into the room where Jake Montgomery was unsuccessfully pulling himself off the floor.

“What the hell are you doing, Mare?” Jake hissed.

“Saving your ass.” She regarded him silently once he was upright. “You swear you aren’t in on this? Because I know how to use this.” She waved the gun and almost believed herself.

He held her face and looked her in the eye, “I’m not in on this.” Luckily for him, she knew he was telling the truth.

She half dragged him down the hallway, nearly clearing the emergency exit before a warning shot hit the ceiling. Mare turned, and with one lucky shot sent Tweedle-Dee stumbling into Tweedle-Dum—buying her and Jake enough time to stagger downstairs and out to her waiting car.

Minutes ticked by as they drove in silence, “You owe me big.”

“Anything.” Jake turned her face to his, pressing his lips hard against hers. “Anything, Mare.”

Mare felt one corner of her mouth curl at his attempt to regain a bit of ego at being saved by a girl. Maybe Jake Montgomery wasn’t so dense after all.

Kerry Allen

“Hey, Einstein. The barbarians breached the gate. Some security system.”

“That’s a privacy fence,” he said of the twenty-foot stone wall topped with bales of electrified razor wire, “not security.”

She pointed the muzzle of her Sig Sauer out a gap in the window and squeezed off a shot. A shadow on one of the monitors in front of him fell flat.

He scanned the remaining screens fed by cameras mounted throughout the grounds. “I have visual on five more.”

“I see eight. How cute. They found matching ninja costumes.”

Three more shots. The three shadows he wasn’t spotting, apparently. A third of the cameras were offline, along with crucial portions of the electronic security system.

She withdrew from the window and quietly crossed the office in sneaker-clad feet. Thigh-high leather boots would better suit her personality, but he supposed those were impractical for ass kicking outside the pages of a comic book, as were breasts the size of watermelons. She wouldn’t be distracting the bad guys with her nonexistent cleavage, but the arsenal strapped to her compact body should get their attention just as well.

His chivalry was pricked that she was going to face them alone, but he knew firing a gun in real life wasn’t as easy as it was in video games. Killing was a job better left to the professionals, like her.

“Should I kiss my ass goodbye?”

“Do your geek thing and let me worry about your ass.”

She left to do her job, and he bent over the keyboard to do his, wresting control of the system away from the geek the intruders had working for them, stopping once to wipe his sweaty palms. They wouldn’t be shooting if she’d fallen. If it was quiet, he’d have cause to worry.

Silence fell.

She strode through the door, ramming a fresh clip into her gun. “Progress?”

He found his breath, and the right string of code. Titanium shields slid across the door and windows, clunking into place with a hiss of gas. “We are locked down.”

Then she was in his arms, mouth soft and surprised under his. He took his time exploring her lips, figuring she’d gut him where he stood when her shock wore off.

When he raised his head and she merely arched a brow at him, he took it as a good sign. “Now, about your interest in my ass…”

Kelly McCrady

“Cover me.” Gretel rose from her crouch.

“I’m out.” John grabbed her hip and showed her the open .45.

“Don’t you carry extra?”

“One in each pocket. Where am I supposed to carry more, in my ass?”

“You might like it.” She recalculated the distance to the next crate. “Stay down.”

One diving roll spun her across the empty aisle. Red bolts of energy followed. A blast of fetid breath wafted past. Scuffling and a shout from behind dropped her heart into her stomach.

“Gretel!”

How did it get behind them? She whirled. John dangled from grotesque, two-fingered fists. Feet peddling the air, trying to pry blood-purple claws away from his ribs, he failed to notice he could kick the beast in two vital areas.

Swearing, she charged. With its hands busy, the thing only drooled in her direction, unprepared for the swing of her staff. “Duck, babe!” The first hit thudded upside its thick skull. Spinning the staff over their heads, she brought the opposite end down on the monster’s arm. Crack!

The demon howled—and so did John as it squeezed him harder. She brought the first end up into its ribs. She didn’t dare look at John. As long as he kept kicking and yelling, she knew he was alive.

The beast took a step toward her, letting go of the FBI man with one hammy fist. Gretel aimed the end of her staff like a pool cue and pounded it into the blackened flesh of the demon’s face. A blinding flash split the warehouse darkness as the magnesium endcap broke in the creature’s mouth.

John dropped to the cement, rolling away from the dissolving, burning creature, leaving bloody tracks. She stepped in front of him, blinking from the bright flash, but no further threat manifested.

From the floor, John’s voice shook. “You forgot to mention I wasn’t shooting at a human-sized assailant. I think it broke my ribs.” He winced, eyes dilated, face pale and hands shaking. She lifted his bloody shirt. Superficial cuts bled, and bruising purpled his ribs. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. Light stubble scraped her lips. When his hand found her breast, she knew he would be okay.

“Pussy,” she said. “Let’s scram before any of its friends show up.”

“There are more?” John rolled to his feet and jogged after her. “And I’m not a pussy!”

David Jebb

Just my luck, thought Zhen as the guard’s brains splattered all over her sythe-leath body-coating. I keep myself aloof, never get too close. And then what happened?

I go and fall in love with Professor Anton Ranjad, the brightest star in the Coalition Army’s scientific development division, that’s what happened!

Who then got kidnapped by the Imperium for what was in his brain. His design for the Exact Probability Definition Engine, or EPDE, which predicted, with the slimmest error margin, the immediate future. Such an invention would make war obsolete and give immense power to whoever held it in their grasp.

Zhen didn’t really give a damn for the EPDE. She just wanted the Professor.

She plucked the guard’s eye from what her blaster had left of his head and passed it over the retina-scan.
The doors slid open and Zhen leapt to the ceiling, where she clung upside down thanks to microscopic filaments all over her body-coating. A fine layer of anti-light fibres also hid her from cameras.

A pity, then, that the gorilla-sized guard on the ground had a movement sensor-net attached to his goggles.
“What have we here? A little spider?” he laughed.

He fired once against the ceiling, catching Zhen on her side. She fell to the ground, but jumped to her feet a nanosecond later, ready to attack.

She dodged another laser blast, but was grabbed by a meaty hand and pulled into the air by her throat.

“I’m gonna pull your legs off, little spider,” he said, his rancid breath wafting in her face.

Zhen wasted no time. She flexed her left middle toe and a curved blade flicked out from her boot. With one slash, the gorilla guard lay on the floor, blood oozing from his neck.

She produced a long device with a needle on one end and a voice-box on the other. A mind-speaker. She thrust the needle into his forehead and said:

“What the code to Ranjad’s cell?”

“Zero Alpha Nine Four Seven Zeta.”

A few seconds later, Ranjad’s battered but still handsome face looked up and smiled as his cell doors slid open and Zhen walked in holding a blaster with a red-hot glowing barrel.

She smiled back. “On your feet, prof. Let me get you back in one piece, so you can peel this damn body-covering off. I haven’t been out of it for days!”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Contests and Free Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.