Warm-up - no wordcount, no title, prompt is: ‘crystal’

These are quartz. They’re good for getting a sense of the time. This is agate. It’ll help you get through things. This one is amber; it’s a warning that change is coming. And this is turquoise -- full of Eastern wisdom. But this last one is yours, I think: Fuchsite. It’ll help a *lot*.

Warm-up - no word count, no title, prompt is: 'crystal'

Write here

Finding crystallized ginger in a biscuit is like finding a crystal in a geode. They both taste like they set your teeth on edge but in a joyful way. One will break your jaw when you eat it and the other will cure your nausea. Finding malachite in a biscuit is like finding a lawsuit. Not all fibrous masses are acceptable for human consumption.

Warm-up - no word count, no title, prompt is: 'crystal'

Crystal was a dead stripper. Most strippers are dead. That’s true of almost all professions. Just going by the law of averages. I wonder how many professions there are where the living outnumber the dead. Not many. Social Media influencers, probably, if you term them ‘professionals’. That’ll change. Come the revolution, they’ll be the first up against the wall. Just to make the averages straight again. That’s probably an interesting marker for times of progress throughout history. What periods is this true for? What percentage of all human labour is actually fresh, and innovative, and new and original, at any given time? And what is merely retreading the grave-dirt of withered ambition and failed aeons gone?

Warm-up - no wordcount, no title, prompt is: 'crystal'

When you look at a salt crystal under a microscope it looks like a Borg ship. Maybe there are tiny nano-Borgs living and dying in uncounted multitudes in each sprinkle of salt over our dinner plates. Hosts of Nano-Borgs flying from the salt cellar home universe, through the endless void between atoms, before entering the galaxies of our bodies and orbiting solar systems in our blood streams. Like in the biology books for kids where the functions of the body are represented by tiny people working the organs like machinery. A medieval idea, that of the tiny human inside the larger, operating the levers. A lobster spirit within a meat shell. Except for the fatal flaw - what is inside the tinier human? It is humans all the way down? And then I suppose that idea is a prototype for discovering atoms. Smaller and smaller until a human the size of a pixel. All the complexity of a human averaged into one atom. Not very functional when it comes to breathing or having a heartbeat. Just a solid block of average human. Gross.

Warm-up - no wordcount, no title, prompt is: 'crystal'

“You have to see”

He took me over to his desk, meticulously studded with the trophies from a thousand parties, trips and phases. Glued, tacked, or weighted down by others.

“Look at them”

A march of ants connecting the floor to the surface of the desk, circling around a nugget of alexandrite. Each one taps the jewel with its antennae as it passes.

“I know exactly what they’re doing” he says.

His fiance appears in the door, son in her arms.

“The moving men are downstairs. They’ve moved everything else but the desk has to come down.”

By response he moves his face closer to the ants at the crystal. His eyes glaze over.

PAUL DAVIES FIRST DRAFT

100 words first draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

BOWSER.

Mmmmmm. Tasty. Tasty morsels. Lovely, lovely chunks.

No more OI BOWSER. No more GERROFFOUTOFIT. I need a dump. Here’ll do.

He’s been lying here long enough. Nuffing else doing. Kibble’s out.

Pissed on the stairs. Lovely scent that, yes. Proud of that. Now. Time for a kip I think. Lovely.

Hmph. Hungry again. Take a snifter. Still there then. Fine. Be like that. Better I reckon. Just a nibble then. Just a chunk. Oh. Oh yeah that’ll do. Lovely that.

Bored now.

How about a walk, you fucker? Oi. Come on. Walkies innit? Walkies.

I wanna go. Oi. OI.

Fucker.

Paul, your editor is: Tom McNally

Suggested edits:

99 words, added one last word

Do you get it?

Is the voice clear enough.

The voice is clear as a gutteral doggy scooby voice, though I think the quoting of the human with “No more OI BOWSER. No more GERROFFOUTOFIT.” works against it.

It took me a while to twig as to what’s going on here - I think the title was distracting me as I was scanning it for Mario stuff.

He’s been lying here long enough. Nuffing else doing. Kibble’s out.

Would be a better opening line. The kibble’s out then he just starts eating face.

PAUL DAVIES SECOND DRAFT

100 words second draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

OI!

He’s been lying here long enough. Nuffing else doing. Kibble’s out.

Mmmmmm. Tasty. Tasty morsels. Lovely, lovely chunks. No more OI BONZER. No more GERROFFOUTOFIT.

I need a dump. Here’ll do.

Pissed on the stairs. Lovely scent that, yes. Proud of that. Now. Time for a kip I think. Lovely.

Hmph. Hungry again. Take a snifter. Still there then. Fine. Be like that. Better I reckon. Just a nibble then. Just a chunk. Oh. Oh yeah that’ll do. Lovely that.

Bored now.

How about a walk, you fucker? Oi. Come on. Walkies innit? Walkies.

I wanna go. Oi. OI.

Fucker.

CLAUDIA TREACHER FIRST DRAFT

100 words first draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

Saplings’ Vengeance

I was a leaf at the time and an accessory to the event. A bipedal flesh being was being hounded by freshly hewn saplings down the hill into our forest. We could all feel its tiny feet pounding the earth and sending panicked vibrations into the network. One of its fleshy limbs got caught in my mother’s exposed roots and she fixed it in space. The body kept moving and then an almighty vibration, a core-rending snap like a tree-branch breaking, echoed through all the bark in the dell. The flesh-being curled up and braced itself for the saplings’ vengeance.

Claudia, your editor is: Amy Sutton

Suggested edits: Not a huge fan of sapling’s vengeance, either as title or final line. I quite like the ‘accessory’ idea, like it’s a witness statement or a testimony on trial. I think I’d go for ‘I could feel’’ rather than ‘we could feel’. You can cut ‘an almighty vibration’. Love ‘all the bark in the dell’. Make flesh-being hyphenated for both (saves on word count). I’d cut that whole last line and use those extra words to either push the trial/witness narrative, or describe the death by saplings (justice served). How does the leaf feel about being on trial? Is it covering its back? How does it feel about selling out its mum? Might not be able to cover these with word limit, but might give some ideas for direction.

CLAUDIA TREACHER SECOND DRAFT

100 words second draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

The Snap

I was a leaf at the time and an accessory to the event. A bipedal flesh-being was being hounded by freshly hewn saplings down the hill into our forest. We could all feel its tiny feet pounding the earth and sending panicked vibrations into the network. One of its fleshy limbs got caught in my mother’s exposed roots and she fixed it in space. The body kept moving and then a core-rending snap, like a tree-branch breaking, echoed through all of the bark in the dell. I could feel our brethren on the edge quivering in the oncoming bulldozer roar.

JOSHUA CRISP FIRST DRAFT

100 words first draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

Shitting and Pissing and Drinking (I hate this)

She slurped up the filthy piss water and wallowed in her filth. She was shitting openly into the pond as she gulped down more and more. The liquid brown and fetid - things growing on the surface. Things growing on her. Children’s fingers condemned her with excitement and scandal through mesh fencing. She didn’t care. By day there were always children watching her. They only left at nights, when she would rut with her mate in the turgid grunting gloaming, glistening golden and guiding him inside her. But now there was only the triple ecstasy of defecating, drinking and pissing.

Joshua, your editor is:  Claudia Treacher

From the placeholder title I though it was going to be a Bukowski-esque story. I see now that you have surpassed him and possibly also the work of Marquis de Sade also. What an opening line. It is perfect. You really don’t need it to be any cruder than that.
The third line about things growing doesn’t make grammatical sense in my head--I think it needs to be tweaked? The rutting line also possibly needs tightening. Could be a strong ending if you switch around the order of the last line, so that it ends with “: triple ecstasy.”? The title could be something exposed, or raw, or nude? A portrait? Fantastically horrible story. Well done.

JOSHUA CRISP SECOND DRAFT

100 words second draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

Meat Slave

She slurped up the filthy piss water and wallowed in her filth. She was shitting openly into the pond as she gulped down more and more. The liquid brown and fetid. Soiled. Children’s fingers condemned her with excitement and scandal through mesh fencing. By day there were often children watching her. They only left at nights, when she would rut with her mate in the turgid grunting gloaming, half-hour orgasm after half-hour orgasm until she was spent, and he was dribbling cum into the muck. That base pleasure seemed tawdry compared to the triple ecstasy of defecating, drinking and pissing.

AMY SUTTON FIRST DRAFT

100 words first draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

Coco

Coco the Capybara was a prize pumpkin carver. Every October she would be locked into a room full of pumpkins with twenty cameras streaming to channels all across the world, and she would not be released until she had a carved a unique seasonal design into each pumpkin, from the largest Musque de Provence to the smallest Italian Stripe, each design ranked by public vote. Coco was a consummate professional in front of the cameras, but fame was taking its toll. Capybara are by nature social creatures, and the weeks of constant isolation along with the excessive pumpkin consumption were wearing on her soul.

Amy, your editor is: Paul Davies

Suggested edits: I love the conceit; you’re right, it’s a great idea. It needs paragraphing, as always, to give it sections.

It needs to steer somewhere toward the end, and that’s why you feel it’s ‘boring’; you’re 4 words over so it can’t be more, just different. From about ‘fame was taking its toll’. Was this a wrong turn?

Reading back, I think it was a turn that could go somewhere, but would need another hundred more words to do so.

So go for internal rather than external focalisation: go into her head, to replace the last sentence? Use the research for content to give her thoughts specificity? What does she miss? What's the most annoyingly un-capybara-like about the situation she finds herself in?

You’ve got 23 words in that last sentence so only 19 to play with. You could trim the early sentences to make room for a few more: eg, maybe ‘was’ instead of ‘would be’, make ‘room full’ into ‘roomful’ at a pinch, and there’s plenty of slack in ‘twenty cameras streaming to channels all across the world’.

Good luck!

AMY SUTTON SECOND DRAFT

100 words second draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

Pumpkin Eater

Capybara are by nature social creatures, but Coco is a celebrity capybara. The whole year she trains rigorously - early starts, late nights, no company but her trainer - and every October she is locked into a room with a thousand pumpkins, fifty cameras trained on her. She can't leave until she's carved each one into a seasonal design with her teeth. And every year she breaks the goddamn record. They say it’s unnatural. Newspapers constantly speculate about performance enhancers, but Coco has no time for haters. She's in it to break records, eat pumpkin, and for the love of the game.

TOM MCNALLY FIRST DRAFT

100 words first draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

A short lecture on consciousness

First we slice off your hand here at the wrist.
Don’t worry, it’s still alive by any measure,
The cells are reacting, replicating, their mitochondria still fizzing,

Even as I bring it up to my mouth and take a bite of the palm between your index finger and thumb.

If I’m quick enough the receptors in the skin will squirt sodium through axons, leaking ions out the severed end.

Your hand is detecting the input of me biting through the little phalanges and peeling off the nails. It knows it is happening.

But it’s only your brain, in what is left of you, that feels the pain.

Just to bring the lesson to a point watch what happens when I eat the hand still connected to your brain.

(128 words)

Tom your editor is:  Joshua Crisp

I really like this. You start using the royal ‘we’ or an even creepier inclusive ‘we’ which in that one word gives us the sense of captivity. It’s gold, let’s use it throughout. I don’t want any ‘I’s in there - let’s draw the listener into our madness.

First we slice off your hand here at the wrist. It’s great, keep it.
Don’t worry, it’s still alive by any measure, we can lose ‘by any measure’
The cells are reacting, replicating, their mitochondria still fizzing, I want to repeat ‘still’ because it prolongs the horror. The cells are still alive, still replicating, still fizzing. Lose mitochondria.

I’d replace the first bit with Now we take a bite from the palm between your index finger and thumb.

If I’m quick enough the receptors in the skin will squirt sodium through axons, leaking ions out the severed end. Again, I’m should be “we’re’” Maybe find room for “Isn’t it exciting?!”

Your hand is detecting the input of me biting through the little phalanges and peeling off the nails. It knows it is happening. Decide whether or not you want this line or the one before it.

But it’s only your brain, in what is left of you, that feels the pain.

Just to bring the lesson to a point watch what happens when I eat the hand still connected to your brain. I love this, don’t lose it. You can remove the ‘now to bring the lesson to a point’  and make it WE eat the hand.

TOM MCNALLY SECOND DRAFT

100 words second draft (press ctrl/cmd + shift + c for wordcount)

Today’s lesson is consciousness

First we slice off your hand here at the wrist.
Don’t worry, it’s still alive,
The cells are still reacting, still replicating

Now we take a bite from the palm between your index finger and thumb.

The receptors in the skin will squirt sodium through axons, leaking ions out the severed end.

Isn’t it exciting?

Your hand is detecting the input of our biting through the little phalanges. It knows it is happening.

But it’s only your brain, over there with you, that feels the pain.

Now watch what happens when we eat the hand still connected to your self.