I want to thank everyone who participated in this contest. The Submissions were:

@cyemela with "Untitled"
(I think I might refer to it as Bruno's Night Out)

@sarez with "Unspeakable Horror

@marcoriccardi with "The Error"

@theironfelix with "Incident-111a"

@gaby-crb with A Woman's Job

@calluna with The Harbringers

The Mighty @f3nix with "l-wave"

And last, but not least, we've got @tristancarax with "Not Before You're Married"

I'll be rewarding a total of 10 SBI shares.

The Winners

5 SBI 1st place: @f3nix - the final scene was VISCERAL
3 SBI 2nd place: Second Place: @gaby-crb.
2 SBI 3rd place: @cyemela.

Thanks to everyone for submitting stories. Happy Halloween!

There's also the following Halloween Contests available

@calluna's contest
TWB
@stevescoins

My response to your stories

@cymela's "Bruno's Night Out"

This is a classic tale, terms of the protagonist (or truthfully, antagonist) meeting their end in ironic fashion. In this case, Bruno, a swindler of hearts, is kidnapped. His captors? Women.

The playboy experiences the objectification that he himself forced on women. The reader finds him desperate for help on a Halloween decorated street. The woman who answers the door calmly offers him entry. And from there, the fun begins again.

The sparagmos here fits perfectly with the Greek trope. The women, druidic and evil in their witchcraft, force Bruno to rip himself to pieces. I think we could have used a bit more backstory for Bruno, just to allow the reader to feel more comfortable at his demise. Yeah, understood. He was a jerk.

Either way, quite a night for him, tearing himself apart and all. Who doesn't hate themselves, eh? Am I right? lol

Thanks for your entry @cymela!

@sarez with "Unspeakable Horror- A Short Story"

We have our main character, Mauny. And Mauny is out on an eventful day. A day where he can finally perform a ritual that allows him to enter the realm of manhood. Thus the story begins with those familiar and sucessful tropes of becomming, of ritual, of exiting one world and entering another.

Oh. I forgot to mention. The ritual is that of quartering. Literally ripping the arms and legs off a boy. And ho-ly-shit is that a graphic scene. My mouth dropped at the bloody tears line. And after the dismemberment and mutilation, they handed out the body parts! Now that's community!

"Swallow up lad."

Of course, his entry to manhood comes at a cost. And he himself is put in the role when he's captured by some Southys.

As far as critique goes, the story's pacing was fine. You had a beginning. You had a protagonist with some emotions. The quartering put them through some shit, but the it didn't connect with the second half.

If the quartering was the first half, the capture was the second. The consequences of the first weren't felt in the second. (How did the quartering influence his decision to go hunting. That could have been a connection). You've got lots of details, like the tobacco spit and the Southy's preference for cleanliness. These embellishments are nice. I thought the first half was visceral. It set up the story and pulled me in. But the ending felt meek.

Ok, I get the joke: the horror is a ban on tobacco. And that's completely incommensurable with quartering. But so what?

So I'd say, your details and images are strong points. But the weakness here was plot: the story seemed 3/4 of the way done. I felt like there wasn't a proper ending. Still, I enjoyed what was there. Thanks for the submission!

"The Error" by @marcoriccardi

There is a good first line, here. Good opening to a character.

One weakness here is grammatical: prepositions/pronouns are missing in the first part of the story.

"If it had not been for his extreme caution in every little thing, for his paranoia, for his strong instinct to hold on to that unfortunate life that had fallen to him, he would have died dozens of times."

I would have liked to have SEEN this instead of you telling me that. I really like this idea. I really like so much of this story. But most of it is description and TELLING and not showing.

Example:

"Never more than a step away from the end, he had nourished himself with scraps, repellent and useless to support for any other living being. For him, however, whose existence was so close to nothing, even these infinitesimal crumbs were enough. Thus, he continued to hold a weak grip on life."

By the fourth or fifth paragraph there still isn't much going on beyond describing the same thing in different ways: that this life is wretched.

"because his obstinate tendency to remain alive was an insult to the natural course of events, and all living beings of this earth were perhaps trying, instinctively, to restore cosmic justice."

This is a wonderful line and image. I want you to show this to me by a character and plot,and less with description. I should be able to understand this line, word for word, by reading the story (SHOW), instead of you TELLing it to me.

By the time we get to the alchemist, I'm still confused as to who the creature/entity is. Why?

Because you've yet to place the character into any kind of being or location.

We have some descriptions of food/waste/sticks/etc but I didn't feel like there was, yet, a world that I could stand on in this story.

I think this is because it was mostly telling and not showing. So when it came time for the alchemist, as a reader I was indifferent. It could have been a clown or a Martian. It would have made no difference because I wasn't in a world, yet, because I hadn't been shown one (or a plot).

The alchemist shop is when the story stops being too nebulous.

After I was able to put my mind into the story. It has a Frankenstein feel to it. Almost like it should have been written in first person.

I loved the allegorical feel of the tale. The emergence of consciousness, from wretchedness to a being capable of thought and existence. But the method, the narrative, didn't do it justice. This felt like a summarized version of what it could be.

Really, every paragraph or so could be a few pages worth of scenes with plot and activity. It could easily be expanded to something far longer, should you move to SHOWing and not TELLing.

Descriptions are your strength. Rephrase it, possibly from different perspectives, with more plot and showing. Eitherway I enjoyed it. Thanks for the submission!

"Incident 111a" by @theironfelix

LOL. Madness?!?! What a throwback to the days of flash and newgrounds. And a fitting comparison to the insanity that ensues in this story.

If I understand it right, this is a Lacanian-influenced take on the emergence of consciousness from the point of view of a resurrected, gaseous being awakening on a starship on the way to Heaven (or Hell).

Compared to other stories I've read of yours, this one had a lot more descriptions to give the reader a "space" in the head. You're including a lot more sentences that show place/space/color/etc. I was able to picture the story in my head.

I like the evil military SCIFI feel of this. It's also obviously video-game insanity. The killing is all pretty wild throughout!

I mean, at one point, you're clogging vents with angel bodies whose blood reeks of incense. Next you're snapping necks.

Basically, Madness. I enjoyed it!

A Woman's Job by @gaby-crb

A young girl is intiated into a coven through the ritual of Sparagmos.

The narration weaves between Aurora, and Charlie, a juror sitting in on a case. Charlie has to listen to a case of gruesome murder, and we soon find out it's regarding mutilation, and obviously, Aurora.

As the narrative continues, weaving from Aurora's perspective as a member of the murderous cult, growing bored with the monotony of the cult, we come full circle and learn more of the details of the court case.

And of the mistake.

"The Order was supposed to be about taking out men that had robbed someone of their life through transgressions.
Aurora hadn’t been following that mandate for some time now"

"With significant force the arm finally tore away; Aurora held it up for her audience. Her feeling of pride soon vanished as the faces revealed nothing. A renewed sense of determination set in."

This line stuck out to me. They're like, "nope. not enough. we don't want an arm. We want a whole puzzle set!"

The weaving between narratives creates a nice pace for the narrative.

It kept me wanting to learn more, in terms of both stories. Aurora's vignettes also give us more characterization.

We get more of her than just a killer, she has desires. That makes the character seem more real. She wanted a witness. And the ending is perfectly fine. The two narratives are bound together. We learn that the person on trial isn't even Aurora, but another member of the coven.

Then Aurora shows off her immunity to the survivor. And finally, eyes Charlie as a possible recruit.

Really, classic structure in many ways. You have a proper beginning/middle/end. Well done. This felt like a full story to me.

"The Harbringers" by @calluna

This story reminded me so much of the film MFA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.F.A._(film))

Sense of believable realism throughout. The 'roofie proofie' cups. the placards.

You sucessfully encapsulate the traditional (and sociopathic) "if you didn't want to be _____, then why were you wearing a skirt?" questions and ideology in the characters.

Unironically, I fully support the Harbringers.

The narrative structure is standard, and not in a bad way.

A: announcement of something going to happen

B: flashback giving characterization and foundation of meaning to [A]

C: return to [A] to show the "BIG THING"

"Until the phrase “village bike” had been spray painted on one of their garage doors. It only got worse from there."

details. wow.

"Grace had hung back, loading a small coil-spring jaw trap."

oh fuck.

Critique:

It's always difficult to include speeches in a narrative. I've done it and tried and failed. You want the fiction to be read as fiction, and not a political treatise (the two operate with different functions and rules).

I enjoyed the speeches. I just wonder how they could be in the story while accomplishing more characterization.

As it stands, the first part has the foreboding sense of doom. The second act demonstrates the meeting. The third act is sparagmos.

We don't necessarily get insights into the protagonist at any of the three parts. Just description about why they think their cause is just. We already have a kind of justification for their group in part B. Part C is some details of the organization plus arriving at the house.

What I'm saying is, I wanted more insight into the protagonist's mind (or any other character).

I don't need anymore justification for her actions (although the stuff about the corrupt cop and the town bike were totally great). I wanted her participation in the murder to reflect something about HER.

And also, some kind of conflict. There's not much conflict here. Only the movement from A to B to male genital mutilation and some fantastically gory sparagmos.

Loved it. Keep working on it!

"L-Wave" by @f3nix

I had trouble keeping track of what's going on in the first part.

Puddle at her feet? Did she piss herself, lost in the alternate reality of the LamdaX machine?

Then she is wet from rain...in the house? Then rain falls on him. Are they outside or in the house? I'm enjoying the scene, the distance between husband and wife, just having trouble following the rain.

The interactions at the birthday party were really good. I liked the subtle rise in tension as both husband and wife attempted to be normal.

The final scene really caught me off guard. He's...he's fucking doing WHAT?!?

And my god. She's got it too! No!

There's so much to love (and be disgusted at) in this story. The trials of a couple, the struggle to survive and 'be normal' in bourgeois society, and finally the danger of pulling each other down into that abyss. I felt this, viscerally, from reading (and fuck if I can't relate!)

The strength here is the story itself, which I really enjoyed, as well as that final, fatal punch.

The weakness here is: the writing wasn't as clear as it could be (particularly with the rain). Also, draw it all out a bit more.

So the L waves are causing horrific dystopia. Give me MORE hints, play with the possibility of the reveal before revealing it all.

Give me more DISTANCE and VOID between Grace and Damien. In fact, give me more of EVERYTHING.

The weird 1984 L waves, the meaninglessness of bourgeois life, the struggle to continue loving each other. The dystopic society they live in. There's so much here!

Loved it. Sparagmos? Absolutely, just in a techno-dystopic fashion! (frenzy induced mutilation/consumption of flesh)

"Not Before You're Married" by @tristancarax

(nice photo btw)

Kids off to enjoy themselves. I'm sure this will end well for them!

Lol so Darren has "nice-guy syndrome". Ok.

(later)

Ok. I hate these people. Please kill them off.

I appreciated the Hollywood feel to this story. But at the same time, it was campy. I don't like reading screenplay formats and present tense. My issue with the story were some nonsensical aspects. The campiness of it all made me not believe it as a reader.

1. So they get to the house and its a haunted house. She didn't know that? I was confused here.

The two friends then proceed to encounter evil after evil. This is all typical hollywood fashion.

He gets killed by a masked serial killer type.

1. Regarding the acute phase of Chagas disease, I'm not sure that it would have come about as quick as it did in the story. Typically I think that requires a few hours at least.

"Without thought of what might be below, he drives out the window. Turning in mid-air, he fires shots back at the window when he sees the masked man. Fortunately for Harold, he lands in the back seat of the convertible. He empties the rest of his clip, swearing to himself he hit his target multiple times."

1. Despite a concussion and an infectious disease causing his eyes to swell, he can barrel roll out a window and fire from a .45 then land, like a professional acrobat, square into the back seat of the convertible?

A gun fight ensues! He gets shot in the legs (direct hits) and blacks out (again). Well, that was quick.

Let's think. How can a person fire directly from a window down at a convertible and manage to get direct hits in the legs to immobilize a target, instead of just shooting? Not only is Harold a master acrobat and sharpshooter, but so is this masked killer. But apparently Harold's technique with the gun were lost immediately upon landing magically in the convertible.

.45 rounds are fat and heavy and are good for close combat, not sharp shooting. The fat bullets tend to fall to the ground due to gravity.

Then Harold wakes up (again!) and tries to start the car. How long has he been out?

Why hasn't he bled to death from gun shot wounds in both legs (apparently missing both femoral and popliteal arteries)?

Bullets dont just sit when they enter flesh: they fly around inside. They break apart (.45 rounds are fat and heavy). These things would potentially have shattered any bones they came in contact with (depending on how far away the shooter was). Again, assuming that masked killer was a sharpshooter. so the idea that harold would wake up is just...hollywood. Dude would likely bleed to death in minutes.

Thanks for your submission!