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Welcome to a Round Two Battle Thread for the BoG Tournament! Be mindful now, as your votes are the determining factor to who takes the win!

For a few reminders though:



Now without further ado here are the works of our would-be Masters of Genre!

Kamiroo Wolf - Meaning in Nothing
to me and say that you don't, now. I know you do. I can see it in every shift your eyes take, every huddled breath your mouth makes, and even feel it in the clammy blood running through your veins. It's more than that, though. It isn't just your body- it's your soul, isn't it? Doesn't it just feel fantastic?

The way the frozen needles prick with precision into the goosebumps lining your skin? The way they divide and snake throughout your bloodstream; freezing the crimson struggling for warmth within? It feels amazing doesn't it? It's tingly and tempting, is what it is. I can't even begin to imagine the intense pleasure rushing through you as the thin spines prick your bones. Euphoric, is it not? It's creeping, creeping, creeping; assassinating your nerves one by one... oh how I long to feel it once again...

They have just entered the lining of your stomach, haven't they? Oh, I can see it in the widening of your delicious pupils! Yes! Yes! I love this! You love this too! You're on the verge of climax as the acid inside of you is slowly chilled and crumbled to a base?! I think I may love you. I think I may love you, indeed. It's working now towards your liver, and next your pancreas, and on to your spleen, your urinary bladder... all the way up the stalk of your spine until- finally! It pricks your precious little heart. But before that it must make a brand new cage for your lungs, for your old ones will have shattered beneath the frost, would they not?

But not yet! No! It cannot finish you yet! You need to stay as turned on as possible! Allow it to quench your sexual desire! Allow it to sate your self-destructive hunger! This is what I want to see! Your shaking now!

...How delightful...

You can't feel your toes, can you? You can't feel the spines barreling down your urethra? You cannot feel the frozen thorns protrude from your genitalia? Let me assure you that they are, child. And deep deep down you are roaring with satisfaction, moaning and grunting heavily within as the very root of your reproductive organs are taken to a whole new level. I think, I just really think, I may be in love with you.

You'll be able to let it all out soon enough, my dear. The deafening numbness, the gripping cold... it will all be over soon. You're...not...relieved, are you? Not in the slightest? Promise? On your life? No?! Merely excited?! WONDERFUL! I could not be happier! You're body is welling with anticipation as it pokes through the skin lining your neck, the blood trying to flee freezing alongside the subzero spines as more and more holes in your throat allow my stagnant breath to breach your body. You are just about ready aren't you! I love you, indeed I do! I love you, I know it is true! You love me too, right? You want to be one with me!

First, my dear... I want you to have a slight taste of heaven. It will only be... a little bit longer.

It's in your head now isn't it? Rooting along the bones in your cranium, weaving throughout the skull as hair follicles fall stiff to the ground beneath us? You are almost there! I can see it in your dulling eyes... so lustrous I may need to acquire a pair of shades the next time we make love like this! It's in your brain, now. It's enriched the fluid. It's overtaken the hypothalamus. It's in complete and total control. Are you ready, my dear. It is just about time for your to experience the greatest release your body will ever know. You can stop thanking me. You can stop fearing my divine absence. I wish to make love to you like this once more!

“And nobody will stop us. Not Ralic, not Dexter, not Clark, not even Sencarn will be able to intervene."
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Jare's eyes light up and his heart skips it's third beat since he first entered the frozen cellar, and even with the flames at his back the private eye is no match for the gripping frostbite clinging to his under-protected person. He checks the revolver locked in his grip and makes sure to count the remaining 3 bullets several times over as the various meats strung to the ceiling rustle in anticipation of his next move. The door behind him invites even more cold, and the snow cascading through the cracks beckon he return to it's safety, but the blind man can not simply back out of his mission just yet. One of his trademark crimson eyes stretches out across a thin, rotted hunk of lamb, and in that split moment Jare thanks his unknown God as a lifesaving perspective grants him vision of a man wielding some kind of twisted needle. He stands straight and stiff behind a rack of butchered cattle, his massive weight and bulk fitting in perfectly as his naked body blends to the exposed bovine flesh.

“WHERE IS SHE!" Jare calls to the man's location, and before Jare knows it his crimson eye has been shut down. Several more white ones spawn in compensation as the procedure follows, only to have their vision painfully obscured by the quickly clambering frostbite. A headache creeps along the back of Jare's cranium and his P.I. trench coat vigorously shakes off gathering ice as he shifts 85 degrees to release a deafening shot into the cold darkness.

2 bullets left, he reminds himself repeatedly, mustering a shaken breath from his throat as another crimson eye spawns, this time spread across the burning wings attached to Jare's back. Behind him stands the same man, nude and stiff as before, gazing down on Jare's relatively tiny size as his large needle is brought down on the detective as a guillotine on a prisoner. He isn't fast enough, Jare, and before he can dive forward to fully escape the oversized medical syringe he can feel it's pointed tip pierce the flesh of his right calf. Pinned and low on ammunition, Jare's eyes have a brief flash regarding his life as his crimson eye picks up on the door being shut quietly by the gargantuan serial killer.

“Before I die...tell me just what it is you did with the girl." Jare's heart grows sullen and his body accepts the numbing cold as his blazing wings flicker to nothing. Each and every one of his thousand white eyes peppering the cellar going black one by one as the massive hulk stands before him, a new, microscopic syringe delicately encased in his death-like grip.

“Girl? Ain't no girl here, mistuh, just me. Just me. Me. Me and mama-uh, boss! Boss. Yeah. Boss, mistuh. Sorry, mistuh."
[/Spoiler]

roBEAT - The Scraping Mass
t's a thought.)

The Scraping Mass

The hot cup of coffee warms my hands as I sit down at my desk and carefully place the cup next to my keyboard. I try to take a sip while I’m waiting for my PC to run up but the black elixir of every journalist like myself is still too hot and leaves my lips burning. My body however tells me he just needs the coffee so badly since I stayed up all night. I just had 2 hours of sleep in the morning and as much as I tried it, I can’t really sleep in the daytime. On the other hand staying up was necessary for my current case as an investigative journalist. A long yawn leaves my mouth and I take another sip of coffee. “Almost drinkable”

I open up the video footage of last night and see almost only black as the video starts. There has actually been a cold shimmer of moonlight sneaking through the curtains but everything was darker through the lens of my camera. Although it was dark, I know where I was. I sat in the corner of the room hidden in a pile of baskets next to an old bookshelf. “Alright this should the moment when…”

It was the moment. The speakers of the PC dispense the voices of two women in the corridor. They speak Spanish. One of them seems to be angry about something and talks really fast while the other one responds calmly and slowly, probably disagreeing. Unfortunately I don’t understand a thing. I never learned any Spanish. “Luckily Maggie will translate it tomorrow.”

The screen lightens up as one of the women presses the light switch. I remember holing up behind my wall of baskets while filming through a gap between them. My Camera focussed the women. The calm old lady is small, about 70 years old and with her wrinkles and her hair more grey than brown she looks like a typical Hispanic grandma. Although she is walking slowly she enters the room first while the other woman continues her tirade behind her. She is taller and her age must be somewhere around 60.

The women continue talking and start taking things out of drawers while the screen shows my attempts to capture the room as much as possible. The room is a normal living room with a TV, a couch, an armchair, some closets and a shelf with photos of the small old lady and her family. As the camera turns back on the old women, they are coiling the huge heavy carpet. The floor underneath it was covered with symbols drawn with chalk. Runes, stars, circles, well whatever you’d expect from witches. However no pentagrams, although some signs looked similar. Last night this was the moment I was sure, I was in the right house. They were from the group of women I was looking for, a circle of witches practising Brujeria, which is basically Spanish witchcraft.

While the women continue preparing for their nightly occult event by renewing the chalk symbols, placing candles and taking artefacts like bones, wooden figures, roses, feathers, salt and different powders out of the closets, I start losing my attention for the video and catch myself staring out of the window. It is dark already and my town almost disappears in the darkness of the young night. Only the occasional streetlamps and a few lighted windows allow for the view of some houses gardens and streets. The summer was gone for almost a month now. I try getting myself to look on my screen again, but I’m so tired and I have one of this moments again. “Who am I doing this for?”

It is more than just one question. I hate that my reports about Satanists, witches and weird sects are mainly consumed by religious people who think that they are any better than them, although they also believe in their invented supernatural being they call god. Some fear those witches, some laugh about them and some try to keep their kids away from sects by using my work but I laugh about all of them just like they laugh about the freaks I present them in my reports. “They deny their own rule about themselves and admit inferiority to something that is not proven to exist, while I’m my own lord.”

“Who am I doing this for?”

The other part of the question is the purpose behind all of it. My job is kind of fun and I get into thrilling situations that others just dream of, but I’m alone. My small apartment is only populated by me, but no wife, no girlfriend and while I do have a couple of friends none of them are that close to me, none of them feel special. My mom died years ago and my dad has always been an asshole.

“Who do I live for?”

Myself. I live for myself and I got to continue examining this damn video. My cup still has some coffee in it but it has to be cold now. I try forcing my eyes back to my screen but there is something next to my cup. It looks like some kind of disgusting white worm, wait no, a maggot, fat, ugly with a glimmering surface and a small black face-like front with two surprisingly big teeth. Or are those pincers? Any way they look really damn nasty, possibly able to rip through my skin if I’m not careful. The maggot creeps towards my fingers, leaving behind a slim trail of red blood, drying on my desk. “Maggots turn into flies and flies are insects. They shouldn’t have red blood right?”

“Well maybe it ate from something dead or even had a living host. I heard some maggots do that.”

I quickly pull my fingers away from the sharp pincers and sent my eyes searching for some weapon against the insect. The old dictionary I don’t even use anymore is just perfect. With it I push the maggot of my desk. Then I drop it straight on the disgusting thing. The heavy book falls, hits the ground with a loud pop and buries the maggot under it. I decide to clean it up tomorrow and get back to the video.

Since I am tired I skip to the most interesting part. It is at some point in the middle of their rituals that the younger of the two witches from the previous scenes either recognized me or she has too much fantasy even for a witch. Luckily she says it in English, because some of the younger women seem to not speak Spanish. They were only able to recite some of the phrases the circle of want–to–be-witches chanted or mumbled depending on their rituals. The screen shows the two old and five other women in the dark room, only lit by candles, sitting on the ground around their chalk symbols, except for the oldest woman who sits on a regular chair.

"I can feel someone is nearby and that person is watching us," says the younger of the two boss-witches.

Of course all of the younger ones look around in panic immediately. Some are baling their fists ready to go searching. I remember getting ready to fight my way through them and run away if they find me. My hands gripped tight around the camera.

But the host of this meeting has another Idea. She says "No," stands up from her chair and shuffles towards one of her closets. "We will deal with this our way."

She comes back with a little box and pours the substance from inside it into a chalk circle on the ground. Turns out it’s some kind of black powder. The old woman looks around into the faces of the others "I’m thinking about a curse."

So the women try to curse me. All of them begin to close the circle by holding hands as the two old witches begin chanting in Spanish. As they proceed the black powder begins to shimmer a little because of the flickering light of the candles. While chanting the oldest woman draws a little knife, cuts her forearm and lets a few drops of blood fall onto the black powder. Then she passes the knife and the others do the same. After everyone was done the chanting dies and I pause the video. “A curse, ridiculous. They probably just shared HIV with their knife.”

I close the video and turn off my PC knowing that this is going to be a good report, but I am surely not going to continue today. My eyelids feel heavy and looking outside my window I don’t see any other lighted windows anymore. “Time to go to bed.”

I turn around to my bed which is in the same room as my working desk, the room I’m already in and let out a yawn.

But the shock makes the yawn stick in my throat.

The wall behind my bed is sprinkled with about a hundred fat white maggots. Their soft pale bodies leave thin lines of dark red blood wherever they creep. The only thing I can do is stare as the maggots crawl on the ceiling, the floor and my bed. Whenever a maggot touches another it made a hushed scraping noise.

Is this the curse? No, curses don’t exist, just like god. There has to be a natural explanation. A fly pr

My vote goes to roBEAT.

Kamiroo: One thing I enjoyed was that this story was a pleasure to read--it was easy to follow and easy to get sucked in and keep on reading more. Although I kind of feel like you didn't put yourself in the reader's shoes while writing this? I had no idea what was going on, and I never did because the story and the names of Ralic, Dexter, Clark, Sencarn etc. were never explained.
I did like the first half's narration, but what did it have to do with the story? Who was being frozen and who was doing the freezing?
In final: The way the story was written was excellent and enjoyable. The story itself was kinda confusing, and I felt like instead of reading a story, I opened up to the middle of a book and followed the page 'til the end of the scene.

RoBeat: Some general advice...
-The characters in the story didn't quite behave like real people. They felt a bit like robots, fulfilling their plot purposes without thinking or being "real." The witches in particular were like that. Wouldn't they be worried about the reporter physically stopping their curse? Wouldn't the reporter be a bit more worried about them knowing exactly where he was?
-The buildup of the story was kind of uninteresting. I almost stopped reading because nothing was happening, and the narrator was kind of boring in these moments. Buildup does not have to be uninteresting--none of any story has to be. It's better, and more fun to write, if you try to make the whole story have something interesting going on.
-The second half of the story once the curse started was fantastic, and I'm glad I stuck around to reach that part. My only critique here is that I thought it was odd that the curse would affect other people so terribly as well when it's only directed at the reporter fellow.

I almost voted for Kamiroo, but once Robeat's story actually got interesting it was marvellous. So my vote went to him.

With horror I feel detail is important which you both exceled in. In fact roBeat's was the more detail oriented. However with regard to Horror the point of detail is to entirely control the reader's mind and give them expectations and subvert them. The goal of horror isn't to tell a scary story, its to inflict fear upon the reader. It can be done in 3rd person but 2nd person is wholly superior in this regard. This is why I vote for Kamiroo Wolf. The intro of "Meaning in Nothing" completely overshadows the second half and "The scraping Mass". I'm reading this on my phone yeah. So when I disengage or get bogged down by plot I simply scroll. Instead of scrolling in Wolf's intro I actually Cringed a few times. Not out of bad writing but because it was making me feel uncomfortable. That's what fear is and that's why he gets my vote.

However, regarding detail in Horror I reiterate my view once more.World building is not as important as emotional evokation and control. Look at Lovecraft, his detail is extensive, but everyword is meant to evoke disgust and fear.

Kamiroo's story has a strong start, but mediocre ending. A creepy sadist is always great for horror, and it was truly scary. Fucked up even. Second half however, is a bit underwhelming. I can connect the dots; I can guess who's who that you mentioned but as Devour said, it's like opening a book at the middle and following through it. Given though, these kind of plotholes doesn't really matter when it comes to horror.

It's slow to pick up pace. I almost kinda forced myself to read through the earlier parts. But shit went down when the curse started. I especially liked how the guy got paranoid enough to think of the lighter's clicking as pincers. Even better was drinking the maggots. Godddd that sent shivers down my spine real good. A great horror story.

Thanks for the critique and the kind words. I really appreciate it.^^

My story probably had such a weak slow start because I was pretty rusty as I started writing.


Anyway, @ Kamiroo:

You had a really creative and extraordinairy way to attempt horror and I love the creepy guy's speech.

However, I had to read it twice to feel the scaryness, because on the first read all I did was wondering what is going on. If you had some info at the start at your story like describing the girl getting captured or waiting for her torturer, the reader wouldn't need to figure out what's going on, while he misses the shock when the speech starts.

But still: Keep doing stuff like this.^^