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Weird But True |
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The saying "the boogeyman will get you" was coined in regards to the actions of the Boogey people of Indonesia, who to this day, attack passing ships as pirates. |
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Did You Know ~ |
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To keep from separating while sleeping, sea otters tie themselves together with kelp. During the night, they often drift miles out to sea. |
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Terrifying Toys:
Horror Writing Contest
FINAL
NOTE: To Those
Who
Didn't Win
Who would be an editor?
One hundred and forty entries, or thereabouts. From
those, I had to select only one. It wasn’t easy, especially
since more than half of them arrived in the last couple of weeks.
There was only one way to do it. I had to try to think
like an editor in order to thin the field.
First of all, the easy stuff. Bad formatting, too many
spelling or grammatical errors, too much overt sex, swearing or
child abuse —those
went out. It’s not that we’re prudes here at
AlienSkin
Magazine®,
it’s just that the magazine doesn’t publish those stories.
Others do, and most of those I turned away with my first filter
would have been accepted by those mags. Just not by
AlienSkin.
This left me with a lot of stories still. I took out a
few with a second filter. The toy. Was the toy central to
the story? Could it work without the toy? Was the toy a prop
for another story, or was it The Story? Again, I put aside
some excellent tales with this filter but remember I had to cut
140 to just one. Ruthlessness was the only option.
Still too many.
A couple had the first-person-who-dies-in-the-end mistake.
A classic error. If your narrator died, who’s telling the
story? A few had that bane of short stories, the rushed
ending. Good writing throughout but the end looks as if the
author reached 800 words and did a quick tie-up. Some
entirely predictable endings. Ruthlessness prevailed.
Eventually, I was down to six and couldn’t choose between them.
So I read them all through and went to bed. My only option
now was a subjective assessment: which of those stories stuck in
my mind, which kept coming back to haunt my thoughts? It
wasn’t the last of the six that I read, as you might expect.
It was one with no blood, no gore, no actual death. One
which left only a chilling inevitability as to the narrator’s
fate. A cold despair, a feeling that one day, that toy might
resurface.
You might not agree, you might have different tastes, but well,
too bad. As for the 139 who didn’t win, well don’t consider
that you lost. I’ve read some amazing imaginations from some
devilishly twisted minds these past few months and I say to each
and every one of you —keep
writing. This time there could be only one, but there’ll be
a next time for all of you.
Although I won’t run another competition until my eyes grow
back.
Dr. Dume.
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