# Literary Maneuvers May 2022: Candlelight



## Harper J. Cole (May 2, 2022)

*Literary Maneuvers May 2022
Candlelight*​
Introduction
Time for another contest! Now, this was advertised as a picture prompt, but it's been pointed out we shouldn't really be using pictures from outside the public domain without the express permission of the artist. In future, if we have further picture-based challenges, we'll make use of public domain databases for the options. Apologies for this mixup.

As some of you may have had ideas lined up for the winning picture, I've selected a word prompt with a similar theme.






650 words max., deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Sunday, 15 May
If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2023 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.

Judging

Judges this month include *SJ Ward, ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord*, *Megan Pearson* and *Vranger*. If you'd like to volunteer, please let me know via PM or in the Coffee Shop. If you wish to know more about scoring, take a look at the NEW JUDGING GUIDE which also includes a template to use for your scoring. Please use this template for consistency.

Additional

All entries that wish to retain their first rights should post in the LM WORKSHOP THREAD.

*All anonymous entries will be PMed to myself and please note in the PM whether you want your entry posted in the workshop.*

Please check out our Rules and Policies for extra details on the LM contests.

Everyone is welcome to participate, including judges. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score, though some judges are happy to let you know their score for you privately. Please refrain from 'like'-ing or 'lol'-ing an entry until the scores are posted.

Judges: If you could send the scores no later than* May 31st,* it will ensure a timely release of results. Much later than that and I will have to post with what I have. Again, please see the Judging Guidelines if you have questions. Following the suggested formatting will be much appreciated, too.


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## Harper J. Cole (May 6, 2022)

*The Hidden Life*
by Anon


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## Vodyanik (May 8, 2022)

*Dr. Curt Richter's Rats (644 Words; Warnings: Blood)*

The Shadows tear at the edge of the candle’s light. Against the wall, a man hangs, struggling between gravity and the hands chained above his head. His long hair, held back by a piece of thread, was slowly coming undone. His face sat tightened in anger. They had hung him here an hour or so ago, lit the candle, and laughed as he had cursed at them. Supposedly he was getting what he deserved.

He wasn’t sure anyone deserved this.

The jet-black candle held a steady flame for moments at a time, shuddering whenever the Shadows slammed themselves against the light it cast. The man swears and the flame responds, flickering a little stronger, the light reaching a little further. He curses his luck, his fate. Why should he be the one to end up here? It was the fault of the world.

He blamed the rich upper class. The ones who took advantage of him and everyone else in the slums. They would experiment on the poorest people, offering small sums of money in return for being used as a lab rat. Yet, knowing the risk, he and those around him would take the trade because the only other option was starve. Even then, the hunger pangs wouldn’t leave.

Maybe if they’d had an option other than starve, if those stupid pigs hadn’t so gladly gorged on their own wealth, he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t had to have done what he had.

Still, it was him in these chains. It was him who the Shadows were craving.

He yells, his eyes squeezing shut. The flame flares, burning brighter and pushing the shadows back. He continues to scream, yell and curse until his voice is lost, and even then he sits, stewing in resentment, hoarse sounds escaping him; the rattle of chains filling the near silence.

The candle burns greedily, a red wax dripping down it’s body. The man, tired now, slumps forward in his chains. The candle, responding in kind, retracts it’s glow and the Shadows lurch forward, hungry. A hoarse cry escapes the mans throat and the flame answers, pushing the shadows back again. Tears fill his eyes. It wasn’t fair. There was no choice. His fate may as well have been sealed since birth. Of course he wouldn’t choose to starve.

Tears flowing down his cheeks, he begins to nod off, tiredness claiming him. As he slips into sleep, the candle follows. Burning gently, it’s light slowly fading, but maintaining itself enough to keep the man barely lit, letting him have the moment to sleep.

The man screams, or tries to. The Shadows had dropped low enough to reach the tip of his hand and had begun to tear into it. His blood quickening, adrenaline kicking in, he tries to pull his hand away, but his chains hold him in place. He struggles, the light holding steady, watching. As he begins to give up hope in survival, the flame flares again, making the Shadows retreat. The man cries, a warm liquid dripping onto him, intertwining in the mess of his hair, running over his eye and down his cheek. He could only whimper.

The blood dried, crusting an eye shut and he sat, staring at the candle. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been watching it. He guessed days. He was exhausted, catching brief moments of sleep, only to wake up, panicked. No matter how long he watched, the candle never seemed to grow any shorter, although colored wax veins coated it’s surface. Deep reds, then blues, with the occasional splash of black.

He wasn’t sure what it meant and he knew it didn’t matter. He was stuck here. He knew no one would come save him. And he knew he couldn’t save himself. He was doomed.

His body went limp in it’s chains. And then the flame went out.


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## Quelhallow (May 10, 2022)

*Unfiltered*
(650 words)​
The murals on the walls leading up to the grand entrance of GraceFace morphed every minute, their built-in nanotech bleeding seamlessly from Angel Falls to the Amazon to the Cliffs of Moher. Selfie drones patrolled the streets, armed with the absolute best in resolution, ready to be slaved to your phone. Only fifty cents a picture. 

Painted, hip passersby gave him side eyes and a wide berth. He was dressed simply, in jeans and a white t-shirt. He had even bathed earlier this morning. But he knew the source of their panic. He wasn’t wearing his face today.

Pushing through a pair of double doors, he strode confidently across the lobby. He was here for business, his posture said. He looked adequately bored as he placed his palm down on the security panel. The light flashed green, and he nodded curtly to guards. He had paid good money for the graft.

As he rode an escalator up to the mezzanine, a hologram played an ad overhead, a model face spinning midair. “Catch fire with Candlelight! This new DLC is sure to impress at any time of day as all your sharp angles and blemishes simply melt away. Download it now and get the Nexgen Roses-are-Red contour palette absolutely free!”

He rolled his eyes.

In the elevator, a stunning young woman with dark purple hair and green eyes sized him up.

“So bold,” she murmured in a French accent, “what filter is that?”

“Sorry,” he replied, “I’m having trouble understanding you.”

She pressed the side of her throat. “Is that a new filter?” she asked in a crisper American accent.

“After a fashion,” he replied curtly.

“I was taking this one for a spin,” she said, rubbing behind her ear on an implant. Her face flickered and then she was suddenly Vietnamese. “But something’s wrong with the nose. I don’t like it.”

“We can only but strive for perfection,” he said, quoting the GraceFace motto.

“Do you think it’s pretty?”

He turned to study her, his jaw set, his lips tight. “Do you need to be?”

 Confusion crept along her brow and she remained quiet.

On the fifty-first floor was another security checkpoint, a retinal scan this time. Nothing twenty thousand credits couldn’t buy on the dark web. The white-paneled doors slid open, exhaling a puff of cold air and the hum of server banks.

Green and red lights twinkled as he walked past rows of cool machinery. He pulled out a handwritten note from his back pocket. _A-29 Port C4._ It didn’t take long to find the right server. GraceFace was a well-oiled, organized corporation. Everything was meticulously labeled.

As he was fiddle-fucking with the computer, unscrewing the plating and pulling out its intestinal wires, he heard soft footsteps behind him and then someone cleared their throat. He glanced up, nonplussed.

“Didn’t take you long,” he grunted, twisting his multi-tool to pop off a circuit board.

“Mr. Fernandez, isn’t it?” the well-dressed gentleman said behind him. He held a pistol casually in both hands, one finger tapping the barrel.

 “Yep,” he replied. “What’s up?” He withdrew a portable flash drive and steadily plugged it into the port.

“That won’t work, you know.” The gentleman flipped off the gun's safety. “The server you want is two rows back. I hope you didn’t pay much for the information.”

Mr. Fernandez got up slowly, dusting off his knees. Shouting could be heard from beyond the doors of the server room. “Oh, I know,” he said, smiling contentedly. “I planted the virus ten minutes ago.”

The gentleman’s face twitched and then flickered as his implant powered down. The face beneath was cragged and crooked in all the right ways. The shouting beyond the room turned to screams as implants shut down nationwide. 

“Any final words?”

“Nope, I guess not,” Mr. Fernandez said, crossing his arms. “Just doing my part to save the world.”


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## Ibb (May 11, 2022)

*Subject Matter (649 Gooey Bits) *


It was over for him. Life could not go on. Being a poet, desiring fame, and receiving but a paucity of paucities of even that, he scribed one last final note to his landlord (‘_Fuck you, you bitch!’_) threw himself out the third-story window, caterwauled, and landed onto the concrete with nary a splat; whereupon, to his great chagrin, he became aware of not yet being dead.  

Perhaps it took a moment. He settled his eyes into a state of blissful nonchalance and awaited the fading of the light as the remainder of his organs and internal functionings slowed to a halt. Failing this, he summoned happy memories, proud in that moment to successfully summon only a very few, proof to him of the validity of the true poet versus the faux bohemian fake.

Alas, organs still alive, internal functions merrily rolling, memories come swiftly then gone, death remained elusive; what the fuck was going on? He opened his eyes, having previously closed them to accommodate the aforementioned memories, and found himself face to face with an inquisitive street bum. 

“Ah! Jesus! Gah—!” He soon settled down, returning one foot to the earth and both hands to his sides. The street bum was not a bum at all but, per his own soliloquizing, a nomadic philosopher, presently out of work and without a morsel to his tummy.

“You see,” he went on, entirely unbothered by the poet’s discombobulation, “I am here not to beg, but to impart the wisdoms I have collected, which, after hearing, you may reward me with whatever method of reimbursement that you wish. I am partial to—”

“Leave me the fuck alone!”  

The poet rubbed his backside and turned away, considering the letter addressed to his landlord and the likelihood of her having read it by now. All things considered, he was now both failed as a poet as well as a suicide. And why wasn’t he dead? What god awful miracle of medical mishap had he unwittingly performed to the apparent spectacle of no one but a goddamned street bum?

“Excuse me…” He turned around to find a gun pointed directly at his head. “I was trying to be nice…”

And in that moment the poet understood that he wasn’t suicidal at all; he was merely narcissistic. Death, presented outside his control, was no longer appealing. 

Then a great caterwauling tore across the sky—plummeting toward them at great speed.    

The poet was splashed suddenly in an excess of blood. The gun, one moment at his head, now lay at his feet. Where once stood a philosopher now lay what looked like red mashed potatoes; but which, on closer inspection, appeared to be two bodies smushed abruptly together. “Aw, jee!” cried a voice; the poet, squinting through globs of red, looked up to see a beautiful woman poking her head outside the window.

Details arrived later in the police report. A prostitute on the third floor had been ordered by her client to perform a series of sexually exotic debaucheries involving wicks and hot candlewax. But the heat off one candlelight had proven too unbearable when shoved up his ass, and the shock had resulted in the untimely death of her client as he ran screaming outside the window. 

“I swear officah, it was like—s_plat!_”

So that was that. The poet was considered evidence and told not to move as parcels of human blubber were plucked from his skin. 

Later that evening, the window to his room left open, he was visited by a magical talking cat, the first of its kind, and inquired to resolve a bit of curiosity. “Meow meow?” it asked him. “Why the long face?”

The cat was still young and not yet used to poetic types. 

“Oh!” the poet moaned. “I’ve been at this desk for hours! I’ve tried everything! But alas—!”

“Meow?”

“I still have nothing to write about!”


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## CyberWar (May 12, 2022)

*My Forest Dove [650 words]*​
“There,” Leni says as she lights the floating candle and pushes it gently into the pond, “Isn’t it romantic?”

The floating candle is pink and shaped like a water lily, several of which blossom at the far end of the pond.

While she puts away the lighter near her clothes, I waste no time to jump in, careful not to make too big of a splash that would douse Leni’s candle. The water feels like warm milk. There’s a thin layer of fog drifting just over the surface. It reminds me of the fumes coming off of dry ice in a chemistry class experiment we had this spring.

Having put away her lighter, Leni joins me in the water. We have purposely chosen this late hour for a dip, because there’s always some kids and youths at the pond during day hours, and Leni is very shy about showing any skin. What’s there to be shy about, I just don’t get - she is slender as a reed, and if anything, I can think of quite a few girls who would kill for a figure like hers. I guess it must be one of those girl things that guys just don’t get.

“Do you like it?” she asks, nodding towards the candle as she swims towards me. I am roughly in the middle of the small pond, where the water is just over my head.

“As romantic as it ever gets, babe!” I smile and pull her in for a kiss, “Happy birthday!”

My sweetheart turns seventeen today. I was going to suggest we celebrate with our friends, but Leni was quite insistent on celebrating with me alone. This whole midnight dip thing is her idea, and so far I am happy to have it her way.

Leni looks at me, her green eyes appearing very thoughtful. Then suddenly she takes a quick breath and dives, swimming vigorously to the far end of the pond. I take that as a challenge and follow her suit.

The two of us emerge almost simultaneously near the reeds and water lilies, where the candle has come to a stop. Leni is slightly ahead of me.

“I won!” she cheerfully proclaims.

“I didn’t realize this was a race,” I protest with a smile, “You cheated!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

We promptly resolve our dispute with a splashing battle, which I chivalrously allow her to win. Satisfied, Leni swims over to me and pecks a quick kiss of reconciliation.

“Oh no, the candle went out!” she exclaims, noticing the candle that our splashing must have put out.

“Wait, it’s coming back,” I tell her as she sets out to retrieve it. The faintest of flames still licks the wick, sputtering as it touches water drops. Soon the flame grows stronger and prevails, and we are again able to enjoy our late-night swim in candlelight. Leni gently retrieves the candle and pushes it back to the middle of the pond on our way back.

After swimming another small circle around the candle, we stop for some more kissing and making out. The crickets and nightingales in the nearby bushes sing a hymn for our pure, untainted love. The bittersweet smell of the water lilies and the scent of Leni’s hair is driving me mad, and I am glad my parents aren’t home tonight. Probably, so is she.

“I’m getting cold,” Leni says, the goosebumps on her skin affirming her words, “Let’s get out.” 

Although I’m loath to leave, I oblige. 

After changing, we sit down to have a smoke. I share my cigarettes with Leni because she’s forgotten hers back home. She leans on my shoulder, shrouding it in her wet raven-black hair. Her soft voice reminds me of forest doves that nest in the ancient oak next to my home.

“Happy birthday, my forest dove!” I say again, looking at the floating candle in the pond.


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## Elle_Kay83 (May 12, 2022)

*BURNING WINGS
 (573 WORDS)*​
My wings are made of dreams…

My eyes, the facets in them are tempted by the light…

My small fragile body is lost in the warmth of the fire…

I am a butterfly!

I am a glimpse of existence…

***

The candlelight’s flame burned as the tempting force, as the desire that might kill you. So bright most of the time, with small interruptions of the flame with a crackling sound or even a quiet hissing, when it meets the was which it melted.  

Love is like candlelight and we are the butterflies burning to reach it.  

Dreams.

Imagine them so bright and so beautiful, lightning up the dark the moment we see our soulmate. His image is in the flame, surrounded by the dreams we have. Dreams about our home, our family… OUR future!

How could you resist that?

So we fly closer. Hypnotized. Unrealized what might happen. Because we are butterflies and we love the light. We are made to chase it despite the consequences.

Hopes.

All our hopes are to reach the flame and enter into the magical stream of yellowish or reddish, white or blue…so many colors changing and tempting. This couldn’t be anything else but real. And we hope. And our hope bedazzles us and dim our mind. 

Hopes and dreams can do that! They can be the medicine, the elixir, the cure… and they can turn to poison.

But yet we fly towards them. Because this is how we are built. This is how the butterfly's short and free live ends sometimes - burned to ashes. 

Can you resist that?

So we fly even closer…

Faith. 

Our wings are made of dreams, hopes, and desires, covered in a fine dust of faith. Faith leads us and we fly forgetting about the world. Forgetting about ourselves. Running away from the dark, where the facets in our eyes can’t see anything but the shadows of fears and loneliness! The faith in the light in front of us - that tempting us with love and life, hopes and dreams, and his image surrounded by them…

Why should I resist all of that?

So, now we are as close as we can be. 

***
The candlelight doesn’t love the butterfly. It’s a mindless embodiment of fire and warmth!

But this candlelight is more. It’s an embodiment of love and desire, and even worse - pure lust! He wants to lure the butterfly and consume her, to satisfy his never-ending hunger to turn everything to ashes. To burn her beautiful wings! Just because he can. Just because he is a mindless embodiment of love, desire, lust, and all the destructive instincts in a man.

And the butterfly! She’s doomed.

***

My wings are burning! I can feel them.

My dreams and hope, my faith in him - the image of light, in the candlelight are turning slowly into ashes and might never be born again. 

Burning wings is what we have at the end when we can see the fire of the candlelight as what it is when it comes to love and life altogether. His merciful flames are consuming my fragile body. But I still love him and want to be one with the light and the warmth. 

Fool! Burning with the dreams and hopes, the faith and life into ashes…

And the candlelight is waiting for its next victim, still tempting, still luring her in the dark to burn her wing made of dreams, hopes, and faith.


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## Matchu (May 12, 2022)

it had to go, Im sorry it was making me feel poorly )


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## RosesPoetryOfficial (May 13, 2022)

My Angel Evelyn


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## twinmommy1113 (May 15, 2022)

*When all the Lights Went Out

(650 words) *​
The storm raged around her as she headed out into the dimly lit streets. She knew she should have brought a raincoat today, but the weather had been so unpredictable lately. Even in this horrible storm, the streets of New York City were still crowded.

Madison headed down into the parking garage in pursuit of her undercover police cruiser. It was her vehicle but was fitted with all the proper law enforcement equipment including a caged-in back seat. She found her car and headed out on the busy streets in hopes of no delays. She was exhausted from a day of investigating a dead-end murder case.

Luckily, there were very minimum delays on the way to her condo. The most major one was of a tourist ignoring a crosswalk and barely being missed by the car in front of her. Madison parked her car in the alley next to her condo and proceeded to the entrance of the building.

Once she entered, Madison stopped to check her mail and then continued to the elevator. On any other given day, she would have taken the stairs, but between being slightly waterlogged and tired from an “on foot pursuit” today, she didn’t have the want nor need to exercise anymore. She closed the metal gate and pressed the 4th-floor button. It sprung to life abruptly and headed up to her desired floor.

It stopped once on the 2nd floor to let a little girl and her mother on. They conversed with Madison about how they were just checking on the little old lady on two that broke her hip last week. The elevator jolted to a stop when it stopped on their floor, and they all parted ways. Madison smiled as the little girl waved and ran to catch up with her mother.

She made it to her condo which took up half the floor. This meant that there were no neighbors on that side of the building near her. She fumbled with her keys til’ she found the right one and entered her home. She sighed in relief as she closed the door and continued to her bedroom. As she entered, she threw all of her belongings onto the bed and sat down on the edge. She started to take off her work boots when suddenly the lightning struck, and she heard a crash followed by the power cutting off.

Completely annoyed she abandoned the action of taking her boots off and went looking for candles. Arranging them around the house to better light her path, she knew she would be working by candlelight the rest of the night. It sounded as if the lightning struck a transformer and that would take at least twelve to twenty-four hours to fix.

Madison grabbed a slice of cold leftover pizza from her frig and settled down on the floor in front of her coffee table where she had a bunch of files laid out. Using the dim candlelight, she sifts through each file when she realized she had left one extremely important file out in her car.



Frustrated beyond all belief, Madison stood up, grabbed her keys and a candle, and headed out of her condo. Due to the outage, she had to take the stairs, so she carefully trudged down toward the entrance. Once she got to the first floor, she decided that she was to take the back entrance since it was closer to her car.

Carefully making her way outside she immediately felt the sense she wasn’t alone in the alley. She started to speed up to get to her car the flame from her candle started to waver. As she approached her car, she fumbled with her keys but without any warning, she was pressed against the car by an unknown force. The force spoke and whispered, “Miss me, Maddy? I missed you.”


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## Sinister (May 15, 2022)

*In a Dark Place, You Need a Candle*
By Sinister(571 words)​Candlelight is only resplendent in darkness, nowhere else is it noticed or loved.  It has no value in sunshine or moonshine.  It would drown like the musings of a piano in cluttering noise.

The house on the outside of Gunther township stood alone on its hill.  If eyes are the windows to the soul and windows were the eyes of a house, then a person could proclaim the house soulless and blind.  And despite humanity's hatred of dwellings without dwellers and nature's loathing of vacuums, the house was empty of life.  But at night there was a lone blade of flame, the flower of a single candle jumping and dancing in a second story window.

A pale boy in his gray suit sat by the table that held this candle.  On his head was an old pirate hat that he had found in a dresser trunk in the attic.  His arms were waving like an enchanter as his black eyes watched the shadows captured on the peeling wallpaper.  He was humming idly as his fingers cast his memory's version of a butterfly upon the wall.  An unnoticed smile fanned onto his features as his mind reflected how much better butterflies were than moths.  A quick contortion and there was a horrible shark-toothed creature.  It immediately began chewing on an old painting of his father, stopping only to quickly sniff a vase of stolen roses, long-since dried to mummies.

The boy stopped humming and shoved off of his chair.  His light steps, thin legs with hard-soled shoes rattled across the old floors to the great brass mirror by his father's portrait.  It was more of a window to him than a mirror.  The only major change he could make to it would be to carve pictures into the dust.  He was tracing out his butterfly when he heard the door, one floor below, creak open.  He froze completely; the mirror not reflecting his smile as he listened.

Little Nichole had her own guttered candle stuck in a chamberstick to light her way.  After seeing the "Welcome" mat, she had wandered into the open house, barefoot in her white gown.  Passing a great baby-grand Steinway, she let her fingers trail down the black and white ivories.  She could feel a presence drawing nearer.  She smiled to herself as she saw a tiny bobbing light coming from one of the many cavernous hallways.  The two lights drifted closer like fireflies until both children were standing opposite each other.

"You're fancy."  She said, looking at his suit and at his pirate's hat.

"You're in a night gown."  The boy countered, rather lamely.

The both of them erupted into giggles as they and their candles continued back to the second story of the house.  They stopped to admire the floating Candlesticks in the mirror before sitting their lights down, each on a table by a window.  While the eyes of the old house's skull glowed orange, the boy and girl poured stories back and forth and trading jokes.  Sometimes running about the house, playing tag.

As the night wore on, smiles faded and games became less fun.  Each stood by their candle, looking east out of their window at the soon-to-be rising sun.  Sharing a last grinning look, they placed their hands along the broken glass and watched as white light burst toward the house.  The candlelight was drowned in the cold light of morning.


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