Our December 2023 Flash Contest was based on Prompt #278 (provided by Stone Soup intern Sage Millen), which asked that participants craft a story around a family heirloom. Our submitters wrote about a variety of items passed down between generations including rings, a bracelet, a deer figurine, necklaces, a wooden fox, and a piano that unleashed a demon. Some of these heirlooms were desirable–giving their original owners’ descendants special powers–while others were cursed. As always, thank you to all who participated, and please keep submitting next month! In particular, we congratulate our Honorable Mentions, listed below, and our Winners, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “The Box” by Nandan Chazhiyat, 12 “A Music Memory” by Chrysanthi Constantinou, 13 “The Holgate Gauntlet” by Yuna Jung, 10 “The Path to Atlantis” by Ethan Lee, 9 “Twain’s Pencil” by Gargi Mondal, 11 Honorable Mentions “The Chandler’s Revenge” by Matilda Carliner, 10 “The Locket” by Angelina Chen, 13 “The Wooden Fox” by Wilson Chen, 11 “Santanic Symphonies” by Andrew Khawam, 13 “Cursed Earrings” by Taeeon Alya Kim, 12 The Box NANDAN CHAZHIYAT, 12 Fear was clouding my mind. My parents had just told me that they wanted to talk to me, and every bad thing I had ever done was in the forefront of my mind. As I walked into the office room, an unusually weighty silence filled the room. I looked inside and…I was in the wrong room. I slowly walked over and opened the door. “Hey, we have something for you.” I was confused. I thought they were punishing me, but they are giving me something? “What is it?” I spluttered. “As you know, we have a…rather large family.” my mother begins. “And we have many things passed down, but this one is rather special,” she finished. My father takes out a small black box, curved and twisted with engravings and chips in the material. As I reach out my hand to take it, I feel a coldness surrounding it. I grab it in my hand and instantly, a dark energy seeps around my hand and through my arm there’s a sinking feeling. I shiver. I feel…different. “Normally it isn’t that violent!” my mom says. I shriek in surprise as I feel a coldness curving through my body. “GOODNESS GRACIOUS GOLLY GEE WILLIKERS!” my mom screams. “What just happened?” I quiver. “That was a spirit, not evil. It helps you. It’s lucky in a way.” “HOW IS THAT THING LUCKY?!?!?!?!?” I scream. “IT ALMOST KILLED ME!” “It will teach you, just listen to it.” And so I listened. And I learned. And I got better. What did it teach me, you ask? It taught me to fight. “Good job!” my mother exclaimed when she saw my practice. “You are getting better! You are finally ready to start the REAL training.” “Real training?” I asked in a meek voice. Suddenly, I am pulled into a swirling tunnel of lights. I am thrown roughly onto the ground. A feeling of bile creeps into me and I throw up. Black surrounds everything except a small island I am on. I look up and a pair of white eyes stare back. “AHHH!” I shriek, crawling back on the hard stone surface. “Do not be afraid,” it says. “IT’S A LITTLE HARD TO NOT BE AFRAID WHEN YOU GET VIOLENTLY YANKED INTO THE VOID ALRIGHT?!?!?!” I scream. “You need to test your skill,” I hear. The voice seems to come from everywhere at once, and every voice is a symphony in this one. And so I am not afraid. And I train. And train. And train harder. I have been hunting someone. He steals from the poor and gives to himself. He kills ruthlessly, and leaves no potential money-grabbing opportunity alone. And I know where he is. As I walk into the small, broken door of the museum, night encroaches on me. He seems to have disabled the lights and security. Clever. I hear the shuffle of feet. Shh shh shh shh. I walk toward the jewel room. And I burst into it. There he is. The man I have been trailing for so, so long. You see, after my training, I fought people who did evil. And this person is one of my greatest adversaries. “You can’t escape now,” I crow. “OOOOOOH yes I can!” He crows back. And he runs. The power of my box-spirit pulls me forward, grabbing the back of his shirt. He turns and punches me in the gut. I block his fist and ram his elbow into his face, hurting his arm and face. He tries to go for a left hook, but I grab him and flip him over; however, he manages to kick me in the face. I step back, reeling from the blow and send a flurry of punches his way. I hit a few, but he dodges the rest. I kick his leg and pull it out from under him, forcing him to the ground. I kneel on him, ending the fight. Or so I thought. He rips reality, and suddenly, I am falling. The air whips past me, striking my cheeks and pulling at my skin. He grabs me and punches me so hard I seem to fly. The concrete street is still hundreds of feet below me, but I know in my mind it won’t be far away for long. I feel a cold shiver in my arm, and I turn just as he knees me in the face, causing a burning, stinging pain in my nose. I try to punch back, but I’m too slow. In what seems like an hour but is only a few seconds, I fall. And fall. And fall. I try to turn, to flail, to do something, but I cannot. My shirt tears from another brutal punch, and a flash of light as he teleports away. The punch shoves me back, so I have a few more seconds. In that second, I know I will die. SPLAT
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Weekly Creativity Post #283: Design a Menu for an Imaginary Restaurant
Design a menu for an imaginary restaurant. Get creative–the restaurant doesn’t even have to be for people!
Level Up Your Gaming Experience, Lexing Liu, 11
From Metroid, the pixelated action-adventure game, to Minecraft, the freedom-filled sandbox game, there is no limitation to what games you can access. However, there is only limited time and resources to expend, so you must be careful about what games you decide to play. Mario Kart, Pokémon, and Ringfit are all games you can access on the Nintendo Switch, the current most popular console, so we will center around these games. Mario Kart is a deceivingly complex game. I mean, what difficulty can you have driving around a racetrack? If you find yourself in the path of a red shell, what can you do? How can you turn efficiently? There are many tips and tricks to see. To start things off, one thing you may not have noticed while playing in-game is using an item to block another. Sure enough, if you hold down the item button, you can keep the item safely behind your back to defend yourself from a potential attack which would slow you down a lot, especially if your vehicle has slow acceleration. Even the blue shell, which specifically targets the player in first place, can be deflected using a boombox item, although these are hard to come by from the random item generator. There are further reasons this game is more complex than it looks. For one, you can drift. Holding the drift button while turning lets you drift, and you get a temporary speed boost when you release it. The longer you hold the button, the stronger the charge gets, and you just might be able to get the fabled PURPLE DRIFT. These are the two most well-known tips in Mario Kart, but there is a deeper purpose in this game and more tricks lie ahead. Not only can you play this locally with your friends on one console, you can connect across town to play online races (despite slight lag). Alright, if you prefer quest games, Pokémon might be the game for you. Now, this is no Pokémon card game. The characters are the same, but there is PLOT! There are also various battle gyms where you challenge the gym leader and raids where you fight 4v1 against a powerful wild Pokémon. If you play the newly released version, there are power ups, which give your ride Pokémon special powers and there is more challenge with a new villain team out there. There is a Terestal phenomenon where you can change the type of your Pokémon entirely, which gives each battle a twist. The humor and the challenge keeps you with the game, and gives you an entirely new perspective from which you can see the unfolding action. As great as these games are, both have a hefty price tag of sixty dollars. This is often an unfriendly punch towards your wallet, and you may want to hover around the free games, but the free games have more in-game purchases that harm your wallet further than these one-time purchases. Although these games cost a lot, they are easily worth saving up for because of the enjoyment you get from playing them. There are many games to choose from, but there is only enough time and resources for a few of the best games, and these are two of my favorites.
