Redux story contest!

So what is the topic, a story around a campfire, do you go straight in or do you start around the campfire

 

It's just a scary story, like in the books or the games.

 

I absolutely love writing, but I haven't had the time lately to try this (posting a screenshot doesn't take anywhere near as long as putting effort into creating a good story). Mostly because of college. More recently, I was messing about with my PC's entrails ahead of a case and GPU upgrade I've been saving up for, so my rig was off-limits for a short while.

 

I shall when I get round to it then people will like me

 

I was working on my story that was suppose to be submitted my october 8th!!!

 

Well... this sucks. hwell:

 

Keep writing. Post your stories within the 8th, and you'll have a chance to win

 

My friend and I called it the dead zone, the red zone, the uninhabited zone, it had many names. It was also called the world. Outside Moscow is nothing, inside Moscow there’s next to nothing but me and my friend, we decided to explore nothing, how do you even describe something that isn’t there? It all started at Polis, an average stalker day, find loot, loot bodies, loot anything, my friend, god… there is no god, especially after what I’d seen, my friend, Vlad, and I walked into the blinding sun, spring was coming, maybe Moscow would live again but at that time we looked in awe, as we always did, at the dead city. Stocked up on filters, we scavenged and got a considerable amount of objects, guns, ammunition, toys. As we marched a while, we decided to enter the metro at a little station called VDNKh, made good tea, that’s all I knew but I thought we could easily get through Hansa, straight to Polis. But as we started to go down the steps to the metro, Vlad stopped me.
“Why don’t we keep walking?”
“Keep walking?” I had no idea what he was on about.
“Go north, past the botanical gardens, north, out of the city!” He said through his gas mask excitedly.
“We what?” I knew what he said but the stalling might pull him out of the madness.
“Look, we leave our loot up in the building then we go north.”
“But our loot.”
“Who cares if we steal it, we can sell our stories about what’s north of the northern stations.”
“North of the north?” Stall away.
“Stop acting dumb. Don’t you want to be like Columbus, see things no else has seen?”
“You can’t be the only one who’s thought it.”
“No, but I’m the only one to act on it.” What had I got to lose, I had no family, Vlad was the only family I had and vice versa, if he went off alone and never returned; I’d have no one left, if we went off together, we’d both die in company. I agreed and so the hike began. North and north, mutants became sparse, so did the buildings and the filters. We didn’t have enough to make it back now.
A good few hours later, Vlad and I looked out across a nuclear wasteland, the buildings had stopped, we had passed the highway, we were in…. we were in…. we were somewhere. As I looked across the wasteland, I thought to myself a quote I remembered or maybe I made it up, ‘when you walk to the edge of the universe, are you the man who keeps walking or the man who turns back’, I knew which one Vlad was but I wasn’t too sure who I was. And even as I thought this, I saw a nervousness in Vlad’s eyes that I had never seen before. It soon disappeared as he removed his gas mask.
“No more filters and I wanted to breathe in the country air.” He took a deep breath and exhaled before turning to me “Into the breach?” We walked over the edge of the universe.
A good mile later, we came across a tank and a flimsy tent next to it. The sun started to set as we witnessed this life in nothingness. At first we didn’t see the body but as Vlad drew nearer, the visible heap became a lot more visible. And what was Vlad’s first reaction? He was a stalker, what else? Don’t question why there’s a fresh body outside Moscow, you just got to loot it. Vlad grabbed the body to turn it over, the body grabbed back. Vlad nearly died at that moment, so would you if a corpse just grabbed your arm. I brought the rifle to bear, ready to fire as soon as Vlad gave the word. At that moment, I checked my watch, my last filter just ran out. Damn. But more important things were happening.
“You aren’t the reaper?!?! You aren’t him?!!?” The corpse screamed at Vlad.
“No, I’m fucking not!” Vlad shouted, yanking the man up and kicking him in the stomach so as to make him let go. The man pulled into a foetal position as I removed my gas mask “Who’s the fucking reaper?” Vlad asked.
“He comes every night, to take another life, he comes every night; he brings only strife.” The man started singing.
“Whose life has he taken?” Vlad asked, coming down from his bout of violence.
“Behind the tank.” He whispered. Vlad pointed with his eyes, urging me to go. I took a deep breath of air, country air and moved round the tank, slowly, nervously. What was a pile of skeletons, nothing new except for one thing. From where I stood, I could see a perfect circle in each skull. It was the doing of a tool, ritual not bludgeoning. I walked back around the tank. The man was now sitting up against the tank, Vlad stood over him.
“What’d you find?” Vlad asked.
“Skeletons, with a perfect circle in the head.”
“Brains, he feeds on the brains, he sucks out the brains through the hole.” The man looked ill, radiation sickness, probably what I was getting right now.
“How do you survive?” Vlad knelt down on one knee.
“Act dead, like what I was doing then, he wants brains alive.” Vlad thought for a second, the man’s eyes darted to the gas mask on my hip “You have gas masks, I have filters, I have no gas mask, you can take them.” He suddenly became full of energy and jumped onto the tank, disappearing into the ancient machine before reappearing with six filters.
“Put them in a bag.” Vlad said as he ruffled his hair, looking out at the wasteland.
“Don’t you want them?” I asked.
“No, and neither do you, keep them for the trip back.” I began to argue but decided against it, just agree with Vlad, it was the best thing to do.
“Are you the military rescue?” Both me and Vlad stared at the man.
“What?” We both said
“Me and my crew asked for assistance three months ago.” Vlad and I exchanged looks.
“What year is it?” Vlad asked.
“2013?” The man said questioningly.
“You’re eighteen years out, no rescue team is coming because there’s no military to send it.” Vlad said, sitting next to him. The man stared into the middle distance, how else would you react if eighteen years of your life hadn’t happened? Vlad decided we should sleep for the night next to the tank. Any radiation sickness we had was surely irreversible, he said. He knew how to make everything better. As I lay down, the man lay near me and Vlad stood over us.
“Is this reaper mortal?” He asked the man.
“Yes, it is a horrible creature.”
“Then I’ll kill it.” Vlad turned around, walked a few metres and sat down. I felt safe with him on watch.
Hours passed and I awoke to a noise from the tank. The unnamed man jumped down, didn’t see me awake, I couldn’t really was, he held a knife and what seemed to be a cylinder.
“He comes every night, to take another life, he comes every night; he brings only strife.” I heard him whispering as he advanced towards Vlad who was facing away. Vlad clearly didn’t know he was there. My body computed it after it was too late. The man grabbed Vlad’s head and drew the knife across his throat. I leapt up immediately, looking for my AK, closer to the man than me. The man turned to me, brandishing the knife. He then ran at me and I ran away, kept running until I was under the highway, at the botanical gardens, at VDNKh. I stopped to breath and picked up the loot, wasn’t stolen, but what the fuck happened? I wasn’t exaggerating, I ran all the way, didn’t look back, didn’t want to, back to normality, back to the metro, alone.
You see, Vlad was a great stalker, a true adventurer, one of the men who would carry our race back to the surface but this story wasn’t about Vlad. This was about nothing, what nothing does to. That man, that sick man was so confused, so mentally deranged that he scared himself, he was scared of him or maybe he deserved a place in Hollywood. I don’t know but if you have the balls to leave Moscow, look out for the corpse on the ground....

 

Here's my long boring story. I really like Darkness' story a lot. It's short a simple -not complicated- and written really well. It reminds me of one of those type of Sci-fiction books that just leave you thinking. ahhh, anyway...

you'll see how my story is rushed toward the end and perhaps confusing. Also, mine looks like a block of boring compared to Darkness' neatly organized story. I don't really know what to say about my story. I had a good idea, but then I couldn't think too much of a good reason why the things that happened in the story happened.

Spoiler

“Have you ever wondered what happened to all the mirror that were once hung up on the walls of stations –stations like ours- here in the metro? Or how mirrors in places that only you might have know existed, such as a bathroom in far, abandoned, station, became broken all of a sudden?” Viko asked his fellow guards who were huddled around a fire at the 30-meter mark guard platform.
“No, not really.” Replied a listener with weary eyes and a horse voice. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never really thought about until now.”
“Well, it turns out,” Viko continued, “a couple of decades ago…” midway through his sentence, Viko was interrupted by a young man who sat one person to his right.
“Hey, that’s not exactly true.’ Explained the young man, who had been reflecting on what the former question was. “I’ve seen they’ve got them mirrors up at Theatre Station, in the back of the dressing room where all of them fine dames put on makeup and fix their hair. Man, those girls are something. Hey, that’s another thing: where in the hell do you suppose those girls get their makeup from anyway?” Said the young man, energetically and continued, “The only thing left here on this earth anywhere near to being makeup are the ashes; and there’s an entire city above our heads covered in them! I’m I right, eh?” The young man said, lightly backhanding the arm of the guy next to him to get some acknowledgement. The young man looked around with a ridiculous smile on his face. A few men gave him a light grin and nodded their heads while the others remained in their own minds, staring deeply at the vibrant flames dancing at the center of the platform.
“Well, yes, that is true.” Replied Viko, gathering himself and going back to the original topic, “but the mirrors over at Theatre are special. They come from a church.”
“A church mirror? What’s so damn special about a mirror from a church?” Asked the young man, strangely eager for a response.
“Well, they’re holy and have been b…”
“Holey with bullet holes maybe.” Exclaimed the young man. This time, he got a few laughs from the other guards. The ones who had been staring at the flames broke from their hypnotic sense of mind and were now paying attention to the conversation. Knowing he had been set up for the pun, Viko grinned and chuckled at the young man, who was now staring at him with the same dumb smile he had plastered on his face earlier.
“So why haven’t those mirrors been smashed yet?” Asked the guard with the weary eyes.
“Ah, yes. As I was saying.” Continued Viko. “The mirrors are hol…The mirrors have been blessed, yes, blessed and can ward of the Babushka.”
“The Babushka?” One of the guards asked, puzzled. “What does my granny have to do with mirrors?”
“No, not your granny.” Viko answered, annoyed. “The Babushka! You know, the Babushka from the abandoned bunker station. The one near that track line with all of those sixes.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Oh-well then. Anyway,” Viko continued, “The Babushka is a force that’s not to be reckoned with.” Viko paused for a moment and added, “unless, of course, you’re looking for trouble.” Everyone was quiet. The only thing that could be heard was the steady sound of the crackling fire. “Take a glace at your watches, please.” Said Viko. “Just not for too long.”
“It’s going to 1:00 am in twenty minutes.” Said one of the guys, who was still staring at his watch, confused, trying to find something weird about it.
“Do you notice how the light from the fire reflects off of your watch’s face?” Asked Viko.
“Uhm, yeah I do.” Replied the man who reported the time. Everyone was now staring at him like an exhibit inside of a museum. The man continued staring at his watch, now watching the flames dace around on the dial, and occasionally looked up at Viko with confusion.
“Okay, just stay like that.” Commanded Viko. Viko stood up and slowly made his way to man. “You see, the faces of our watches reflect the world around us like a mirror. It’s not powerful enough to produce a perfectly clear image, but it reflects enough that we could make out objects off in the distance. ” Viko now stood tall behind the man who had his watch out in front of his face. Behind Viko, the tunnel crawled on into darkness.

“Now you see, Babushka was once a dweller like us. She ate, slept, pooped, worked, and continued the process every day until the day she was found out. ” Viko commanded the man to lower his watch. “Babushka lived in one of the four corners of the central housing community of her station. She wasn’t much of a social speaker and kept mostly to herself. She was also of old age and didn’t appear quite well to the eye –even to those who had seen the most hideous creature of the metro. Her teeth rotted away and her hair thinned, exposing her blemished scalp. She reeked of death and could be smelled from meters away. The pupils of here eyes were foggy and the nails on her hands were cracked and yellow. The small critters of the station could often be found lurking around her quarters.

Not being the social kind, Babushka found other ways to accommodate for entertainment. Aside of scaring little children by putting a cockroach on their head, she found connections with the art of eavesdropping. To further her foundation of joy, she placed pocket-sized mirrors around the housing community to reflect off of one another so that she could be standing in one area of the district and be able to see and here conversations, at a respective distance, from neighboring homes and shops. Some of the conversations that took place were only to be heard by elite personal and some of the things she would see were to be only viewed by congress or members of a strict gang. Either way, they were things that should not have been release publicly.

One late evening, when the majority of the station was fast asleep, the parliament was up conversing among a couple of Reich personal interested in capturing Polis. Babushka was near by and had been listening to the conversation and was able to see the people who were involved. Because of her diabolical sent, Babushka fumed out one of the Reich men out into the passage in front of where the meeting was being held for some fresh air. The soldier saw her tucked away in a corner listening in on the secret conversation. The solider approached her and grasped her by the arm, taking here in as a prisoner. She was presented in front of the parliament and was convicted as a spy. The following day, she was executed publicly; but before she was terminated, she cursed the people and swore to punish them, their children, friends and relatives for watching her get killed and not help. It sound crazy, I know, but the old lady was crazy herself.

Nobody took her seriously at first. The mirrors she had placed around the station were found and taken down. Some of the mirrors ended up in homes of the residence of station. For a few days, nothing happened. One day, though, something did. A report of an uncanny death spread around the station. It was of a little girl who had been playing on the tracks with a mirror of the Babushka. Her mother was near by keeping an eye on her as she washed her husband's boots. All of a sudden, the mother heard a sudden thump against the metal railing. She looked up from her labor and saw that her daughter had fallen. She ran to her fallen daughter -or at least what she assumed was her daughter- and gave out a cry of terror at the sight of the body. What had been her daughter was now a parched, glassy-eyed, body of an old woman. It was a terrifying sight. Soon after, the same thing -what many people believed to be a sort of disease- spread through the station. Many fell to the 'illness.' It wasn't until a child witnessed the cause.

The child was in his home playing with the dirt that collected up in the corners of the house with his finger. His mom was near by sitting down at the table with her back facing him. She pulled out a pocket mirror -the Babushka kind- and moved it around in her hands until it reflected to where she could see her son. The son watched and giggled at her mom's reflection. She smiled back. The son continued to stare at his mother. She looked away and starred deeply at her own reflection. She fixed her hair and pouted her lips. The boy continued to giggle. In an instant, though, her expression changed. Her eyes widened and the pupils dilated. The boy grew scared. The mother continued holding the mirror in front of her, watching as she transformed. Here hair turned gray and began to fall off in clumps. Her eyes receded into her sockets. Her hands became bony and the nails turned yellow. The thing that was once the boys mother looked at him straight in the eye through the mirror. The boy sat still, wetting his pants at the sight. A metallic taste developed in his mouth and his palms began to sweat. The physical being turned its head toward him while it's reflective state stayed fixed on the mirror. The boy began to scream. He stared at the reflection that stayed burned into the mirror. It was Babushka. A man from the outside burst in through the door door and witnessed the same thing the boy was seeing. Thinking quickly, the man pushed the mirror out of the mother's hand, shattering it on the floor and went to the boy. The child's eyes had become foggy.

After that, it was obvious what was happening. The mirrors from the Babushka were destroyed. That didn't help though. All the mirrors had the same curse, and it wasn't only in that station. Reports of the same cause of death was being heard from other stations. The public wasn't made aware of it though so there wouldn't be any chaos over the subject. Though, A handful stalkers were told about the problem and were ordered to destroy any mirror they found up in the surface. In the stations, mirrors were taken from peoples homes under the order that it was for military purposes.

Now, it brings us here" Finished Viko, squatting down behind the man. "Put your watch up again." Viko said. "Now hold it at face level until you can see me behind you." The Man did as Viko said. He looked at Viko through the reflection of his watch. He noticed that his eyes were foggy. "Now Babushka can't get you if something organic and living, like me, is standing behind you. But if you happen to be with your back facing a wall in the distance or something such as complete darkness like the tunnel behind me..." At that moment, Viko moved aside and made it possible for the only thing to be seen in the reflection of the man's watch was the dark cold tunnel "The Babushka can get you. Remember, the closer a fixed object is, the quicker she can get you" The man with the watch stared at it, focusing his attention on the tunnel's reflection. He noticed a faint gray matter on the face of his watch that wasn't there a moment before. The gray spot grew larger and became clearer. He was now able to make out a silhouette of a small person. "Now let this be a warning to you all. If you find a mirror -besides one from one from a church- be a gentleman and do your fellow comrades a favor. Break it! Oh and another thing, be weary of when you check the time on your watch in the tunnels. You never know when the Babushka will be at your back." The man staring at his watch was now shaking nervously. Viko when back to standing behind him to block the reflection of the tunnel from the watch. The man looked up. His left eye was glazed and he let out a shrill scream of terror. Everyone stared at him in fright.

 

Great stories, absolutely!
I loved Darkness' story for the interesting and exciting idea of leaving Moscow, and all the action. But perhaps it lacked a bit of structure in the story; it seemed a little bit random despite how awesome it was.

Nuclear's story had much more structure and meaning, which I also loved, but in turn it maybe lacked a bit of action. Action is of course not necessary, but in most cases it to help to keep the reader's excitement up.

It'll be a tough choice, as I haven't made up my mind, so I'll have to discuss this with Aaron and Komodo. One of you will soon gain your reward

 

Yesss, definitely a lack of some good ol' action in mine.

Anywayz, I was going to elaborate a little more on why I liked Darkness' story -I would have done it last night, but I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Like Skaara, I enjoyed the idea of venturing out past the Moscow metro and heading out into the unknown. As any survivor of the nuclear holocaust, I imagine the question "is their anyone or anything left, other than our community, beyond these walls " would ponder the minds of those who survived. Then there would be those who were born in the metro and be too young to know about what had existed on the surface. The whole thing is very Christopher-Columbus-like (or if you prefer, very Marco-Polo-like). Then if you have the guts to go up on the surface and continue on past the last station, you still gotta deal with a ghost/corpse thing. I thought that was pretty cool. The military corpse guy had been there for eighteen years waiting to suck the brains out of people who ventured off too far. It's like they'll never be able to leave Moscow...Ever!! Very uncanny.

I reminded me of the kind of short stories I would have to read in gothic ligature class back in high school.

 

Didn't need to sleep tonight anyway.

Also Babushka is actually not a russian invention. A lot of people from Americas and Europe have heard about it while an overwhelming amount of russians have not.

 

Babushka-Babushka-Babushka!!! 0_O
That's interesting, because I always thought it was a word of Russian origin. I remember I first learned about the word when I read it in the book "War of the Rats" -just think of the movie Enemy at the Gates but in book form (also, for your information, there is also a book called "Enemy at the Gates;" though, it's nothing like the movie and you'll probably be disapointed because it reads more like a history textbook and hardly deals with the sniper duel between Zaitsev and that german guy). So anyway, I looked up the word in a dictionary and next to the definition was a picture of the wooden toy dolls -also known as Russian Nesting Dolls in English- that fit inside one another. Because of that, I concluded that the name 'Russian nesting dolls' was the English way and Babushka was the proper way to call them in Russian....and also the way you address or refer to an old lady.

 

^Hahaha! What? That is so random! ound:

 

@OtherAaron Git gud at sleep #SKRUB

Both of your storys are great!

 

Both are really good short stories in their own right. It's a shame the Universe of Metro 2033 series of books aren't being translated into English - you guys would love them. They take the Metro universe into many other interesting scenarios, in various parts of Russia and even elsewhere (Britain, Ukraine, Italy, there's even one set in Poland now). Hopefully they'll get round to translating at least some of the more popular novels from the series into English at some point.