Round 17 was... a three way tie
So for Round 18 the words were:
(RD)
Executive
Perpetuity
(SG)
migraine (because i have one)
confection (because candy is goooood.)
(TW)
wounded
virus
Here's my submission and the way it went up.
TW1 (my initials and this was my first story for this round. This is also how you vote, if you had voted for this story, your vote would have been for TW1)
Elizabeth awoke in the morning.
The sun had just begun to peek through her bedroom curtains.
The house was still except for the perpetuity of the grandfather clock ticking it's incessant countdown until the moment when she would belong to Captain Drake.
Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced around her quarters. Obviously no expense had been spared in preparing for her arrival from America. The room was ornate, but very executive and it made her homesick for her own warm room back in the colonies.
She couldn't wait to have this whole wedding over with and get back to her home.
Her father had worked the land around their plantation with his own bare hands and had turned it into one of the largest cotton mills in the south. Last winter he had caught a virus and, although her mother had begged him to slow down and give himself time to recuperate, he had continued to work the land until the day before he died. He was a man of conviction and honor. He didn't think it right for a man to lay in bed all day and let others carry his burden.
Her mother had been devastated by the loss of her husband.
Then to add to her misery, her only son, Howard had been wounded in a duel for the affections of one of the Harrison girls. Stupid really... Elizabeth's mother couldn't stand the Harrison's and would never allowed her brother to marry the little trollop anyway.
So that is what had led to the hasty trip across dark waters and her impending marriage to Captain Drake.
Her mother knew it would take a man of financial means to keep the family in the lifestyle her husband had intended... and if it meant that Elizabeth would have to give up her infatuation with Ethan Myers, the handsome but poor son of the local blacksmith, then so be it! It was every girls duty to marry whomever her parents thought was fitting... love wasn't part of the equation.
Elizabeth pushed the heavy damask comforter off of her and walked towards the window. Although the morning sun had not completely risen she heard the hustle and bustle of workers on the front lawn.
She looked down as the cooks brought her wedding cake.
A confection of too-sweet white icing covered with red roses.
It seemed like such a fraud... so beautiful and so inappropriate.
It should have been black and adorned with no roses... only the thorny stems.
That is how she felt in her heart.
She thought of Ethan... of the day she had said goodbye to him on the pier.
He had a forlorn look in his eyes that said more than any words could have conveyed.
She had locked herself in her cabin and cried brokenheartedly for the first three hours they were at sea. It did no good... the dye was cast... her fate was sealed.
Elizabeth walked across the room and pulled on her dressing gown.
She sat at the vanity and began slowly brushing the night's tangles from her long auburn hair.
She could smell the sweet breads and coffee that Clarissa, her personal maid, and Captain Drake's cook were preparing for her, but the thought of food just turned her already queazy stomach.
She closed her eyes and counted out slowly each of the one hundred strokes as she brushed her thick hair.
She could feel a migraine beginnning to throb behind her strained eyes.
Wonderful, she thought... another blessing on her dreaded wedding day...
She turned in her seat as her bedroom door was thrown open and a big cart of breakfast fare was wheeled into her room.
That's about it.
We request that you highlight the assigned words because we don't want to miss them when tallying up the totals. Otherwise you can write to your heart's content.
Stories can be short or long, clean or dirty, and believe me we get some nice dirty stories. hee!
Register on the forum.
We suggest writing your story in word then transferring it so you don't have to worry about have your connection crap out on you as you hit submit.
At the assigned time the forum will close for voting.
Sometimes if enough folks are still writing we'll do an extension. Did I say sometimes? Most of the time, that's what I should have said.
Depending on the number of stories submitted you'll get to vote for your favorites.
Normally we try for three.
So by a certain date, usually a weekend to read the stories, you'll be allowed to vote for your three favorite stories, in no particular order.
At that point the round is closed and the winner is announced, based on total points for the number of words used in the story and number of votes received.
The winner then gets to choose the words for the next round.
And just for fun, and because it was such an excellent story...
Here is the story that won for Round 18:
Posted by her lovely wickedness...
The Wicked Wench!
Wench 1
I awoke from a smoky, charred and tortured nightmare full of chaos and deception. The sounds and smells of sex, lies and roaring flames lingered vaguely in my mind as my eyes adjusted to the early morning darkness in the curtained motel room.
I turned on my side and squinted at the clock, causing my migraine to pulse more loudly. Under the thick bandages, the searing pains in my chest screamed like a scalded bitch. According to the x-rays, the bowie knife that my husband had attempted to murder me with had missed my heart narrowly, but had maliciously mauled my breasts.
The emergency room at Mountain Memorial had been very understanding of my reasons for not involving the police. Apparently that area was popularly known to have a safe house for battered women and the locals were accustomed to ‘no questions asked’ situations. Also, I had miraculously managed to salvage my purse, a sweatshirt and some jeans before the cabin roof caved in- so at least I had some clean clothes and access to cash and my ID which I needed when I rented the cheap piece of shit parked outside my room. (I cursed Randy venomously for causing my BMW to blow up at the cabin).
I had lost a lot of blood from the knife wound, but the sorry sack of shit had failed to cause any major internal damage. Funny how my husband was a failure at just about everything -relationships, honesty, satisfying me in bed… but he was amazing with money. Investments were his forte. I knew this well seeing as I was an executive over his estate. Big mistake on his part.. But I’m sure he’s kicking himself for it now.
That son-of-a-bitch was going to fucking pay for a hell of a lot more than just my new set of tits, I’d make sure of that. It truly would have been in his best interest to check my fucking pulse before he torched the Goddamn place. As I lay there, wounded and bleeding in seeming perpetuity, I was watching him the entire time through glazed over eyes. He was doctoring the scene of the murder to make it tell a different story indeed.
Randy bagged up the decapitated head of my former lover, Graylon. He scattered (what I discovered later to be his own teeth) around the lifeless body. He then hurriedly disappeared into the cabin to retrieve Graylon’s wallet and swap it with his own. My seemingly clever husband finally exited in a blaze of fucked up glory, presuming me dead. Silly bastard.
According to the Mountain View Chronicle that I now held in my hands, Randall Ian Pruitt, 39, had been pronounced dead in the fire, identified by unmistakable dental work. The local police stated in the blurb in the paper that ‘Mr. Pruitt was survived by a wife who was known to be on vacation out of town at the time of the incident and had yet to be notified of the situation.’ A silly thought ran through my head upon reading this- it was the first time I'd noticed my husband's initials were 'RIP'.
So, my husband of fifteen loveless years was so desperate to prevent me from obtaining anything if and when I filed for divorce, that the bastard decided to kill ‘both’ of us. It wouldn’t cost him anything at all to buy a new identity and hit the border when the smoke cleared.. With me out of the way, his precious investments would remain safe.
However, he had NOT counted on me surviving the fire once his ‘death’ had been announced.. we were BOTH supposed to be proclaimed dead and I had defied his evil little ploy. Now I was in the position to get everything that Randy had worked his miserable life for. Did he really and truly believe that he was going to live fucking happily ever after under some new identity? Did he think a plastic surgeon and some dentures could save him now?
I should have seen what the asshole was planning from the beginning. His affair with my best friend, Tanya had not been the first. In fact, several of my former friends had been unwittingly sucked into my husband’s manipulative web of deceit and I was determined to change my fate. I had nothing to lose at all.. Any love that Randy and I had shared had died the moment we signed our insurance policies.
Currently, my husband was nothing more to me than a nasty virus gnawing away at my chance for happiness. I needed this reprieve in the lumpy motel bed to concentrate on how I was going to vaccinate myself against him.
I dropped the newspaper next to the bed and attempted to stretch out my sore limbs the best I could. Wherever Randy was, he had surely had a chance to see the paper by now. He would be a sweaty and paranoid mess until he was able to locate me. It would not be long before he had some greasy henchman scouting me out to finish the job he couldn’t. I needed my plan straight, and soon.
A faint odor of smoke was present as I ran my fingers through my normally lustrous hair. Gingerly, I made my way to the tiny bathroom where I proceeded to draw a steamy hot bath in hopes I would be able to clear my head to devise my next move. As I sank my aching body into the water, I could not help but smile devilishly. I really did have the upper hand now.. I certainly had my stupid husband by his useless balls this time.
My revenge was going to taste sweeter than the most enticing confection.
So you see, it's just a chance to take some given words and weave them into a story. A chance to stretch your creative wings and, hopefully, a lot of folks to make jokes with and hang out with when you get bored. That's the real fun of the forum. Just hanging out with friends.
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Fizzle and Pop
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