Mixed feelings about this prompt. Less gloomy, but also likely to open the floodgates to forced comedy. I felt like the previous one ("Hiding in Plain Sight") was better because it doesn't imply a specific tone in advance.

Loved this story, wish it had been in the top 3, but 4th place is close enough. The ending paragraph is abrupt and rather awkwardly worded compared to the rest of the story, making me feel like you should have just left it out. The story itself kind of reminds me of the style SCPs are written in -- minus the quirky [REDACTED] and other elements that have since been done to death -- which added an eerie, almost creepy atmosphere to the whole thing, especially since the setting is in the middle of the Great War (so perhaps the immense destruction and suffering can create supernatural things?) At the same time, the setting also has very sad undertone, with a clear implication that we are just dealing with a broken spirit rather than a real "fairy", to say nothing of the children.

This story is a shining example of how one can squeeze a ton of detail into just a few words. Could have used a bit more polish, but these are mere surface blemishes, while the foundations are rock solid. Well done!

Wow, never expected you to do this sort of thing. This fic nearly slipped past my radar (even the title felt like I should probably skip it), and the phonetic spelling in the dialogues was a bit awkward for me too, but the overall experience was nice. A little generic, tug-at-the-heartstrings sort of thing, but not bad at all.

For me, what really makes it stand out is the setting, rather than the plot. Most authors make things "comfortable" for the reader with this type of story, choosing nice, clean, well-spoken people who we are expected to instantly feel sorry for when their life goes astray. Meanwhile, the more realistic and less "refined" people of the world are ignored, perhaps even looked down upon, which is why it's nice to see a story try to inspire some much needed sympathy for them. Of course, in this fic, the characters are still rather "tame", so I feel like you could have gone much further to challenge the reader, making the two even harder to like at first before showing their humanity.

I'll be honest: out of all the stories you submitted, this might be my least favorite (and I did really like some of the others). Which is strange, because in terms of flow and attention to detail, it does rate quite high, but the overall experience just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The quirky style and the profanities feel like such a massive "vote-bait", where any lack of substance is covered up by the character doing a stand up comedy routine of complaining about annoying people. It got old very fast, had no real relevance to the story, and it refused to go away.

Sorry for being so blunt, but I would much rather have seen your other submissions take this one's place on the scoreboard. This one just drags them down, acting like further proof that one can either write something that challenges the reader (and be ignored) or just play to the crowd.

I'm quite surprised, in a good way, that someone decided to take on this subject. I always approve of an author not pulling their punches when picking what they will show their readers, especially when they pull it off without cheap forms of "shocking content" (such as profanity or violence). The story itself sets up the tragedy quite well, and shows us the humanity of those involved.

I partially agree with the other commenters, the reader is left wanting more, though I chalk that up to the word limit more than anything else. You can't really squeeze much more in and also keep the flow of the prose.

Well done, sorry you didn't make the cut. Between you and me, I think this was far better than most other entries.

>>Monokeras

No hard feelings. :)

>>Monokeras

Word of advice for the future: unless you're the editor, or if the story is chock full of glaring mistakes, only point out things like this if you can contextualize it in a useful way (e.g "it ruins the flow of the narration and does not help with immersion") Doing it just for a cheap laugh is bad form, to put it mildly. "Hey, I know you wrote a whole story, but GUESS WHAT, I only noticed that (debatable) mistake in the first sentence!"

This one is also a bit difficult to comment on, as there seems to be a lot going on, yet nothing at the same time. In many ways, it feels like the story took the easy way out, so to speak. Mysteries easily catch one's attention, and they avoid the trouble of an ending that can please everyone, but it exchanges that for the problem of leaving the reader wanting more, which is probably the main issue of this entry.

The "small town" setting is always good for such mysteries (especially if they're supernatural), but the setting must also justify its use. We need to know why this particular place was chosen, and how the characters contrast with the events. While we do get some good glimpses here and there, it's not quite enough for the story to have the real punch it's going for. Rather than go deeper into these details, it hides behind more "mysteries".

That aside, it's still a good and rather puzzling (in a good way) read. While I'm harsh on the "mystery" aspect, the details do still give the reader plenty of hints to construct their image of the place and the truth of what happened. My guess is that the doctor thought the whole thing was bogus, but after one late night binge, he went to check the statue for himself and did not see anything out of the ordinary, yet was still wondering what could have possessed the others.

Love this poem. The quality of the rhyme and rhythm goes up and down a lot, at times it feels like it bends the rules just to squeeze a line in, but the overall vibe I get from it is fantastic, outweighing any "structural" issues I see in it (in fact, considering the short deadline, even this is amazing). It's a whole story, it's emotional, no "punchline ending", and it's all told in a format that is much harder to pull off well than in simple prose.

Well done, definitely my favorite so far!

At the risk of sounding redundant, I'll join the others of saying that this indeed reads like the first two-three pages of a fantasy novel. But in my opinion, length was not the issue. There's no reason why one cannot write short one-shots about imaginary worlds, trying to compress as much information into a few words as possible, and then leaving the reader to wonder what else might be going on in that universe.

However, in this particular entry, we barely got a few hints at a plot, as well as its relation to the prompt. To your credit, it was exchanged for proper prose and exposition (there's a few grammar mistakes, but I don't get worked up about those), which is vital to immersing the reader, so it's not a lack of skill we are seeing, merely incorrect focus. The exposition is great, but it pushes the story closer to what the others pointed out above, namely "this is the start of a whole novel".

This is a somewhat hectic entry. There's definitely an interesting story in here, but it juggles too many things at once to really hit home. In and of themselves, the individual components are executed well, but tossed together, it doesn't flow very smoothly.

The narration itself already tries to depict a somewhat zany protagonist, which is fine on its own, works well with the exposition (being a psychic spy, if I read that right, must not be a very comfortable life), but then we get to the quick back-and-forth dialogue which only offers scraps of information and moves at a rather fast pace. To me, it feels like it should have been one or the other, with more time devoted to fleshing out a single component.

Interesting premise, but even in the span of less than 1k words, we dwell on his talent for too long. Since it's revealed more or less at the start, we're not really building up to anything more. I personally would have gone the opposite route: things going wrong, as opposed to him making the same kind of escape as so many times before

Prose is very good though, good pacing, decent humor that doesn't outstay its welcome. Good job!

Has a bit of an "ends on a punchline" issue, which is a recurring thing with most short stories, but I enjoyed the flow of the prose. Well done!

It started off so wonderfully Australian, but then there was a distinct lack of the c-word. I'm disappointed.

Joking aside, decent story, though it wasn't quite as witty as it could have been. And while I adore crass humor, this was on the weaker side.