Sta.sh
$25 USD of credits at stockproject.fotolia.com
He who birthed the strange tale into our world with a spurt of kaleidoscopic intergalactic vomit has now decided its end. *CliveBarker has chosen his favorite Chapter Eight to bring the multi-imagined Hydra-headed beast of a story to the end. All that remains is Chapter Eight illustration submissions remaining open for the next two weeks. And with the perfect visual, Odyssey II: Propulsion will become another hallmark in deviantART history.
So many writers and artists from around the world contributed amazing gifts of their wildest imaginations, collaborating with each other and offering suggestions and encouragement to each other in the friendly Odyssey environment.
The true spirit of the deviantART community was on full display, with moments of elevation provided by helpful angels’ wings far outnumbering the moments of snark and cynicism. There are still glitches technical and human in the Odyssey Project, but this is a dA “show” that will definitely go on – so long as talented arts “deviants” with spiritual leaders like *CliveBarker are willing to use their time and effort to pioneer new roads into creativity in the emerging Internet powered narrative.
In the end it was *BillBlogins, a regular contributor to both Odyssey competitions, who was able to somehow, employing an economy of words that nonetheless achieved a fine dreamlike flow, pull together all the dangling threads of the intergalactic takeover tale concocted by our chain of writers and then let Paul convincingly save humanity on Earth – only to then debark into the cosmos to save other worlds. Wonderful for what had to be done in so few paragraphs.
And Paul, after having been a tortured victim throughout so much of the story, was finally able to redeem his protagonist’s role and go out a real hero. The use of sound vibration warfare was just what was needed to elevate this horror-science fiction thriller into the incredibly memorable.
Visit the Odyssey Project Page
CH 8 Lit Runners-Up
London CallingPaul's Journal (February 28)
Six months.
One-hundred and eighty three days from vomit on my pants to the fall of civilization. John Dryden once said, "...mighty things from small beginnings grow." Yeah, no shit.
There were more entities than we thought, hidden in other cities on other continents, and they all rose together in that terrible final struggle to fight us for control. I was wrong to think I was strong enough to stop them. I was so wrong.
At dawn, on the one-hundred eighty-fourth day of the war, all I can see from the roof of the House of Commons is the apocalypse. Across the Thames, the London Eye looms over the riverbank l
Odyssey II - Chapter 8: The Oroboros Wassail
Have you ever seen sound?
There's a condition named for it: Synesthesia. The ability to hear and at the same time SEE what is, or might, be there.
Paul was experiencing something similar to that right now. Each word that had poured our of Maya's mouth had rung a bell in his mind. One that pulsed with all the colours of the void, similar to a violently organic oilslick that danced and twitched and wrapped around the edges of his consciousness.
It was how he'd been woven back together, the very sinew of those kaleidoscopic utterances stitched into his body now.
The word was being strangled by those tendrils. Tal'Shen was the final spin
Nightmare Virus"I trust you." Maya said inching closer to Paul.
Paul lowered to the ground and hugged Maya tightly in a loving embrace.
"Everything is going to be ok now."
Maya then collapsed on to the floor and her body shook in violent spasms.
"Maya!"
Maya's mouth peeled open like a sack of dead flesh. She exhaled a dying moan as her body melted like candle wax boiling into a red stump of slimey flesh that seared through the floorboards like sulphuric acid.
The windows began to fog and the room walls blackened like hot cigarrette butts as the sound of demonic bull-like grunts warped any dillusions of victory Paul had into unholy nightmarish madness
The Mandala Turns"Are you sure about this?", Maya muttered as they made their way over rooftops on a helicopter Maya was "borrowing."
"Yes. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I have to get closer to her." His voice seemed... deeper, and it carried a strange resonance to it that distracted her. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and pointed. "Thar she blows, as the saying goes." Up ahead, illuminated by the city lights, was Tal'shen. Her form was huge and amorphous, a gelatinous mesh of pieces of that seemed to belong to the menagerie of the deep sea. The skin was a murky grey that crackled with bolts of rainbow colored lightning and gigantic tentacles l
End Times Paul lay in bed listening to the radio, still shivering from the battle weeks before.
He remembered his pursuit of Tal'shen, but on reflection it had been less of a chase and more of an allowance to follow her, perhaps she had known that Paul had the seed to defeat her.
Despite his brave words to Maya, he was not truly purged of the beast. A small sliver of unnatural life lay trapped around his spine. Paul kept it for a reason, knowing the link, no matter how tenuous, would be the key to sooth the abomination.
Tal'shen had waited for him in a side street, one of London's many capillaries that litter her maps.
She could not speak
Art submission for Chapter 8 will close on Thursday February 14th, which will also mark final submissions for poetry.
Read Chapter 8 Literature Winner for Artwork Inspiration
My god, this is amazing.
Wow, just....
Look, I know the English language is a bit of a bitch. I know she assaults other languages in dark alleyways for spare words and loose grammar.
But did she really deserve the fractured and incoherent sentences in this article?