Thank you to all who participated in the third challenge of Project REUTSway 2013!
With your help, we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even want to TELL people what our collective word count is, because we’re making the other NaNoWrimo groups look bad. (Psst, it’s well over 700,000 by now.)
Courtesy of KnowYourMemes.com. All rights reserved.
BUT WAIT. We’re not going to stop there, oh no. We’re going to keep RIGHT ON running with all of this fabulous creativity, until we’ve got ALL the twisted fairy tales we can handle…and more! (Not to mention lifetime rights to brag about how we slayed NaNoWriMo, like the bosses we are.)
Please stay tuned for the FINAL Project REUTSway challenge, which will be so CRAZY and TRANSFORMATIVE that it will make all the previous challenges look like child’s play! Project REUTSway Challenge #4 will be announced Sunday 11/24 at 9:00am EST.
In the meantime, we’ll be damned if you don’t seriously love this week’s TOP LOOKS:
Project REUTSway Challenge #3: Fairy Tales From Hell – TOP LOOKS
(In no particular order, posted in their raw & unedited form)
***
Her face was radiant and shone brightly, but that wasn’t the only change. As she set back on her feet I realized that I was slumped to the floor and she was kneeling before me, covered in the black ichor that was demon blood. Her short dark hair now tumbled to her waist in golden waves, and her big brown eyes, shown brighter than the clearest topaz in our treasury. Her face and everything else was the same, or at least I thought so. Rubbing my gritty eyes, I looked again for the trace outline of wings undulating and shimmering behind her back. Blinking my eyes again, they were gone and her street rat glamour was restored.
“Oh good!” she threw her arms around my neck, peppering my cheek with kisses, “I thought for certain she had eaten you!”
Rubbing my aching temples, I looked at her through squinted up eyes, “What? Why would she eat me? My badassed-ness is too bitter for her!”
Project REUTSway “Fairy Tales From Hell” Top Looks – Excerpt from “Agrabah” by Carly Drake
***
On the day after Corbin’s sixteenth birthday, Father gave him a new apple and a crust of hard bread, handed him his dead mother’s sword, and sent him north to Beastly Manor.
“You knew this day would come,” Father said, kissing Corbin on one cheek, and then the other, while Corbin’s golden-haired sisters hung in the doorway and cried. “It’s a pact I cannot break. For the sake of your sister, you must go.”
Corbin nodded. He was too old to cry, and the sword had been his best companion for the last decade.
“I’m ready, Father,” he said. He hesitated, then gave his father one last, hard hug. “I’m more than ready. I’ll bring you his head, and free Belle from your bargain.”
Father was too old to cry, also. But he wiped tears from his face as he nodded.
“Good lad,” he sad, turning and ushering Corbin’s sisters back into the family cottage. “God go with you.”
Project REUTSway “Fairy Tales From Hell” Top Looks – Excerpt from “Corbin and the Beast” by Sarah Remy
***
He holds me tight, his breath tickling my skin and his teeth on my neck. I’m trapped beneath him, one hand in his hair and the other grasping at his shirt because there is nowhere else I can put them, and there is no place I would rather be. His body is hard and warm against mine, his lips rough; he moves up my neck, to my mouth, and bites, sucking on my bottom lip before kissing me properly. Finally.
I pin him closer, wanting all of this, and I feel him smile against my mouth. It only spurs me on; our actions become heated, our wants driving us over the edge and bringing us so close… so close…
Then he moves, and leans back to hover over me. He keeps his face just a couple of inches above me, teasing me. “What?” I murmur.
“Wake up, Snow,” he whispers, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. It scares me. “And run.”
Project REUTSway “Fairy Tales From Hell” Top Looks – Excerpt from “Unnatural” by Sam Hardy
***
Her soul nearly stripped of brilliance, she sinks to the ground. I hover over her, life-giving energy coursing through my body. I can live forever. The fear of fading away, of being lost to the universe is wiped away. Despair of reaching the end vanishes. The drunks, the blackened spirits, can sustain me, but pure souls can make me immortal. The woman’s eyes fill with life. Her soul flickers, regaining a bit of its light. My eyes lock on her as I step away. Her soul can regain what I’ve taken. Good deeds will add to its brightness — I’ve seen our kind save people from darkness. She may replace enough light to save herself from the burning, it’s possible. But now her soul is tainted.
My gaze sweeps the landscape. Small shops. Restaurants. A bicyclist whizzes along the sidewalk. Waving new leaves, trees line a street that minute by minute holds more cars.
My hunger growls. My body trembles with newfound excitement.
The hunt beckons.
I can survive. The easy targets will always be there, always giving up whatever light they have left. After tasting the pure light, I want more. I turn my back on the streets of addiction, of darkness and face the light. A challenge. Someone to feed me, to keep me whole for a long time, allowing the hunt to continue. That individual will be hard to push into the dark, for the truly good, the ones with power enough to help me along the path to eternal life will have no blackness.
From the shadows, I stalk the humans, gazing into their souls. The sun takes its final leap up into the sky. A group of trees throw long shadows across the grass. Moving silently through the trunks, I creep through the beams of light. My face remains in shadow. My tattered clothes hang loosely from my weak, pathetic frame, but I am strong. I was banished, left here to turn to dust and have found a way to survive.
How many others discovered the secret? How many others roam the world searching, hunting for the light? Those among the stars sing and give praise, never knowing what evil they have set loose on the world.
The Wolf.
Project REUTSway “Fairy Tales From Hell” Top Looks – Excerpt from “Dark Wolf” by Kathleen Palm
***
Project REUTSway PSA: If you weren’t chosen for this week’s Top Looks, don’t worry! You’re still in the running for the final anthology, provided your story met all of the posted submission guidelines. Likewise, if you were chosen for the TL this week, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a finalist overall.
Keep creating! Keep writing! As they say, it’s still anyone’s game!
