Results

I think this contest went very well.  Since we only had two Dreamers write and submit their story, we are going to post both for Dreamers to review.  *the stories will be at the end of this post*

But first, which story Charlie and Hanna chose and why.

Hanna: I chose J Perez's story because to me it gave me more of a sense of suspense and I kept trying to figure out what was going to happen.  Although, I will say that I found both stories a bit confusing.  Of course, it's very hard to clearify in 500-1000 words.

Charlie: I chose Jessica's story, because its something I would want to read. It is also similar to my own writing style, plus it kept me wanting more. Though, to me, it was not much suspense, I still liked it VERY much. Next time, I would tone it down just a little, and put more into the story.
For J Perez, I thought he had too much going on at the same time. For Jessica, I thought she needed a little bit more. That is just my thoughts, though.

So Jessica And J Perez have drawn.

Now, which story out of mine and Charlie's won. The decision was obvious:
Story #2 won by a landslide.

Story #1 - belonged to Hanna.
Story #2 - belonged to Charlie.

So, congratulations Charlie!!!! :) You did good!

Thanks to everyone for participating... Here are the two stories we recieved.

Story 1: by J Perez


Nadia Grimes was hell on heels. The Devil’s babysitter. Evil wrapped in a yellow cardigan. She was also senior vice president—senior vice-president— of Jefferson High School. So when she found out that class president Richard Andrews had stolen money from the class budget, she was delighted.
“Should I tell the principal?” Erin asked. Erin Summers was class treasurer and the one who informed Nadia of the missing money. A soft spoken, hardworking girl, Erin was eclipsed by Nadia in height, personality and social class.
Nadia leaned back in her seat unpeeling an orange. She looked down and smiled. “No,” she said. She then shifted her eyes beck to Erin. “And you won’t either.”
“What are you going to do?”
Nadia stared at the gray, worn t-shirt that Erin wore. Erin looked away.
“Honey, here’s some advice: everyone women has the choice to be stupid or bad. The stupid ones flirt and tease all their lives. They bat their eyes and flip their hair, but when the opportunity arises, they’re too scared to do anything but flirt. The bad ones, they’re the ones with the reputations; they’re the girls who take life by the balls.”
Nadia hated Richard. He was a basket of kittens. He was dimples and apples pies. He killed with kindness. He reigned with love. If Nadia was the devil then he was mother fucken’ Jesus.
Nadia squeezed the orange she was holding, the pulp gushing between her fingers.
“Erin, let’s just say I have a very bad reputation.”

“You look beautiful,” her prom date said to her. She ignored him.
Principal Pattinson cleared his voice into the microphone. It was time to announce the Prom Queen and King and only Erin noticed Nadia leave the table.
Nadia knew if she went to the principal when Erin told her about the missing money, Richard would deny it. She needed proof, but she had none. And if he wasn’t going to leave her any evidence, then she would just invent some.
Nadia also wondered why Richard needed the money.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said.
Nadia knew that the school would ask that same question. She needed an answer.
Students booed and hissed the principal.
And then Nadia found one.
“Tonight, I have the distinct pleasure to announce your new prom king and his beautiful queen.”
It may have cost Nadia a pretty penny, but she bought a diamond ring worth the amount Richard stole. A ring that everyone will think is for his longtime girlfriend Diana.
The audience clapped and cheered.
Nadia just needed to get into the inside of his locker.
“Ms. Darcy, the envelope?”
Holding a class office has many advantages…including keys to the school.
He pulled opened the sealed letter.
It may have been an abused of elected power, but Nadia snuck into the security guards office where they kept a list of student locker combinations.
Principal Pattinson paused.
She just needed to open his locker one more time…
He looked up at the audience.
So when Nadia pulls the fire alarm everyone will see…
“Jefferson High School’s new prom queen is…”
…Richard stole the money.
“Nadia Grimes!”
Nadia had her hand on the doorknob when she heard her name.
The audience cheered. The spotlight searched the crowd. When she turned around the light landed. She tried to cover her eyes in time, but it was too late. Nadia couldn’t see them as they hugged her, kissed her and lifted her to the center of the room. They stuffed roses in her hand. She coughed up confetti. She felt a ring being shoved on her finger, a tiara around her head, a thick robe on her back. When she regained her vision she saw that she was standing in front of a microphone; the crowd was chanting “speech, speech, speech.”
“No, please don’t—“
Ringggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.
Mr. Pattinson grabbed the microphone away from Nadia.
“Fire alarm, people! Follow your nearest teacher or chaperone!”
Students flooded the hallway when the alarm stopped. The crowd looked at each other. Some students began pushing their way back into the gym, others asking their nearest neighbor what to do. Teachers were screaming, trying to keep order. Nadia walked out of the gym, still adorned with her prom queen costume, confused and frightened.
“Hey, look at this!” someone yelled. “Over here!”
Richard tried to move to the front of the crowd to get a closer look.
“What is everyone looking at?” he asked.
Nadia followed Richard through the crowd.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Everyone was crowded around an open locker.
It was Richard’s locker.
Inside the locker sat a black, satin jewelry box on a stack of white index cards. The same ones used to vote for prom queen. Richard bent down and read the card.
“They are uncounted votes that Richard stole,” Erin said as she stepped out of the crowd.
“What are you talking about?”
Erin faced the crowd.
“You rigged the prom,” Erin said. “That was your last mistake.”
Principal Pattinson pushed his way through the crowd.
“Your first mistake was stealing money from the senior class budget.” Erin picked up the jewelry box and lifted it over her head.
“But how else could you buy Nadia this diamond ring.”
The crowd around Nadia stepped away. Everyone turned in her direction. She looked at her hand and saw the diamond ring.
Nadia’s evidence.
“I haven’t stolen a dime!” screamed Richard. The principal was making his way through the crowd.
People started to whisper.
It was the longest anyone had ever looked at Erin.
“Richard wasn’t alone.”
It was the first time that any person, let alone a group, had hung to every word Erin said.
“What!” Nadia screamed. The crowd went wild.
The crowd went wind for Erin.
“Nadia demanded that he prove his love. She told him to steal the money.”
“But that wasn’t enough, was it? You also wanted the prom,” Erin said. “You and Richard had the keys to the school, so you saw your opportunity and stole those votes.”
“You are filthy liar! You framed me!” Nadia was grabbed by nearby students. She struggle against them. Her tiara fell to the ground, shattering.
“Who do you think you are, you bitch?”
Erin walked up to her and leaned in so only Nadia could hear.
“I’m just a girl who saw her opportunity.”
Nadia’s eyes widened and she began to thrash against her captors as they dragged her away.
There are two types of girls. There are the smart ones and the ones that get caught.
Erin Summers was a smart girl.

___________________________________________________________

Story 2: By Jessica

A girl named Anna was alone. But not in the usual sense of the word. She was alone rather with the ideas that plagued her with visions and dreams that could only come about if Espials was watching over you. She saw and thought things differently than those around her, because where they saw light, she saw darkness. This is the kind of darkness that brings about the end of the world, the kind that remains hidden from most. This darkness contains a secret, a secret that crawls all over your decaying flesh, or rather, beneath it. It is a poison that infects every living thing, and Anna can see it, she can see you.

She laid on her back, eyes closed, hands open as if to catch her disappearing world, her feet dancing along with a nursery rhyme from long ago. She felt at ease as her tone deaf ears allowed her to mimic the words that gave her a few more precious moments before slipping. As long as she could hear her voice and her uneven breathing she could hold onto the world around her for just a little bit longer. But she kept growing weaker with the ticking of the clock in a distant place she didn’t know about, it was what was dragging her down. The tick, tick, tick, echoing in her ears, making her voice disappear and her breathing to join the rhythm of that god forsaken clock. Her body began to convulse as the rhyme she so loved became only a distant whisper. She couldn’t hold on any more, all she could do was beg for release with a voice weighed down by steal.
Just a little bit longer, please.
Her feet collapsed as if they were cramped and her hands became fists holding onto nothing but the darkness around her. Her body began to feel light and uneasy as if she was falling. No longer could she say a word for all of the air that once lived in the hollow of her lungs left, but that didn’t matter to her, for never had words before helped. The ticking got louder and louder until it was the only thing that she could concentrate on, thinking about anything else took too much strength for her to burn so soon.
But then, it all stopped.
Once again her lungs carved out for air were filled, her feet no longer had the sensation of disappearing, and her hands didn’t dig into her palms anymore, trying to hold onto a reality that never really belonged to her. But the only thing that she felt the most was the lack of the tick, tick, from the clock. It had stopped and now she could finally think again. She felt free of her nightmare. However it wasn’t until she finally heard that dark, growl of a voice, that she realized it wasn’t just a nightmare…it was still real.
“Hello Anna, we’ve been waiting for you now for quite some time.”
She imagined a smile filled with holes and dead things to belong to the voice that whispered patiently to her. She would have liked to look into its eyes and see if she would finally be able to make sense of this place that ripped her from her world to one filled with nothing but debauchery. But she was still too much of a coward and she also knew that was exactly what it wanted, for her to open her eyes.
“Love, you’ve been getting stronger, trying to fight will never do any good. We will always win.”
She tried to think of her nursery rhyme. She knew that if she could hold onto something even so small as a melody from a song she might be able to leave this place and this thing she dared not look at.
“I need you to open your eyes now, we have to go, everyone is waiting for you.”
Over and over again, “Ladybug ladybug fly away home…” But she couldn’t focus on the words, they didn’t mean anything to her because no longer could she understand what they meant or the importance of them, and a terrible smell lingered in the pit of her nose. It played with her emotions as it went up farther, into her skull where her brain lied in wait, frightened. Soon she once again became a puppet who felt and did nothing without a master hiding in the dark.
“Now open your eyes Anna.”
Her eyes jerked open with a command that she didn‘t give. The smell left her then and she was finally no longer just a bystander watching herself fall to pieces. There was no hope of seeing home soon now, because everything had became all the more real since she could see it, the only way back was to be sent. She saw the face of the voice that came for her every night and nothing else. She was too terrified to let this creature go unobserved, too scared of what he might do if she took her eyes off of him even for an instant. This place was one she was not familiar with, and not knowing what was possible here scared her more than all of the terrible things she knew could happen. But also she was afraid to look at the things around her. She knew everything would be covered in a dark glow that made the things it touched seem all the more frightening and dangerous.
“Now then, are you ready Anna?”
His question was more like a joke, because he knew she wouldn’t be able to speak. With his disfigured face like a goblins and a snake, eyes so strange and dark that they might be their own black hole, waiting for the thing that fuels its existence. Anna.
She knew this creature, who was known as Atticus, would take her to a chamber where you could see the whole of this strange world that was home to the nightmares of children and the tragedies of the world. Where everything that infested this dark place would come and see her. There Anna would scream and beg with words formed out of something else besides sounds. She would do anything she could think of to try and run from what was chasing her. But slowly, everything would stop, and all she would see was what everyone who watched her were waiting for. She would see and become who they worshipped.
The Darkness.