2012 New Beginning Award Winners

It was 10:30 and we were halfway through the quarterly meeting when my clothing combusted. Several people gasped, and Celine Carter started giggling. I just stood up, dumped my cup of water down the front of my pantsuit, grabbed my briefcase, and said, “Excuse me.” Jennings pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and waved me out with the other. 

I fumed all the way to the bathroom, clothes sizzling and the whole office gawking. Maddening. Just maddening. I’d always heard menopause was painful for super heroines, but this? This was humiliating! This was my third pantsuit in a week to explode; the second in a month to explode during a meeting.

I shucked off the ashy pantsuit and pulled a skirt and blouse from my briefcase. As I struggled into the new outfit, I called my husband on my cell.

“Jeff? I need an asbestos wardrobe!”

Jeff sighed. “Oh, sweetie. The flame retardant didn’t help?”

“No! I had a hot flash, and my clothes blew up. Again! It’s just…it’s so frustrating.”

“Maybe we could get Edna to make something for you? She dresses all the hip you--hip superheroes, doesn’t she? Or, wait, maybe we can just pull your old suit out of the attic!”

I huffed into the phone. “Even if I could fit into it, which I seriously doubt, I’d like to remind you that when I wore that thing, I only shot fire from my hands. It won’t do anything against a full body hot flash!”

“You could always quit your job and just sit around the house naked.”

* * *

Enough!" Stan hollered. "I Know I said we needed a female superhero in our comics line, and that I wanted it written by a woman, but issue 1 was breast feeding in public, issue 2 was that time of the month, and now menopause?! Firebabe has yet to take on a single villain!"

"But Boss," Chatsworth replied, "it's outselling Spiderman and Superman. It's the hottest title in comics."

"I know, I know. It just feels . . . wrong."

"Not to worry, Boss. Next month Firebabe faces her toughest foe yet. The Misogynist!"

"Who's he?"

"The shoe salesman from hell!"

"Christ."

 Opening: Rachel Roy......Continuation: Evil Editor

Some months after my cousin took a bad fall down the grand staircase of his home, I called on him for an extended stay. I arrived but a short hour before the doctor was to arrive for one last examination, and he, having burned off any inherent bashfulness at boarding school and again in the army, invited me to stay and chat throughout the examination.

The doctor struck a match and passed it before my cousin's eyes to watch his pupils follow it; snapped his fingers at either ear to see if he started. My cousin's joints were flicked and found adequate. The doctor seemed pleased with his recovery."

"Has your appetite been well?" he asked, writing mysterious marks into a notebook.

"Strong as ever," said my cousin. "Stay for tea and I shall prove it."

"And your libido?"

"Positively libid."

"And how have you slept?"

I saw my cousin hesitate for a slip of a moment before saying, "Never deeper. Never deeper."

"Appetite and libido good?" The doctor's face wrinkled his concern. "And yet you're sleeping deep? Hmmm."

The omnipresent author slipped my cousin a note. His face lit up, and he spoke with a renewed vigour.

"Maybe I've discovered some fantasy dream world the rest of this story will be about, in which I'm some testosterone-fueled centaur laird taking a stand against the nouveau teen vampire chic with hooves a-blazing."

"Might work," said the doctor, tossing aside his stethoscope, "but you reckoned without the Snake Lords of the Preposterous!"

As serpents slid from beneath his Red Cross poncho, I sensed it was time to play my own hand. It roared from my wrist, half Addams Family appendage, half Fireball XL5 rocket propulsion blast, and stabbed a series of alien-looking sigils into my cousin's bare chest.

EQUINE RELATIVE!
I SUMMON YOUR ASS
AS AN AMPUTEE WIZARD ENRAGED!
TOGETHER WE WILL BATTLE THESE SERPENT MEDICS!
AND SAVE ALL HUMANITY—

"Ha!" cried the doctor. "Your edict has fallen foul of the terminal navel. If you're gonna inscribe a call to arms on a torso, do it on a giant where there's more room to flow freely."

The omnipresent author slipped my cousin another note.

"Forget the horses and the snakes. Looks like we're going with romance."

No need for further words. The three of us embraced each other on the hospital bed. Then we kissed like harlots, ready to spawn some fantasy love child...


Opening: 150.....Continuation: Whirlochre

When the world came to, it came, not to its senses, but to its madness. Those who were left alive learned what their needs were—these of course, were the same as they ever had been, as the nature of the ones left behind was no different from the nature of the ones who had gone on—and from one’s nature come one’s needs. They learned what their true needs were, which was almost as important as learning how to get them met.

Air, of course, then water, then food. Those who were left alive were at the mercy of place, and some lingered long enough to learn how to get their needs met in the place where they were; others did not, and died. Still others began to travel the broken roads, to band together, to beat back or be beaten back, to become victims or victors. Eventually, life resumed its potent, inviolable rhythm. And eventually, the things that had been left behind began to become normal.

The crone’s name was Senga. That’s what everyone called her, anyway. She was not quite the eldest of their group, but if she wasn’t, no one knew anyone older.
 
Senga knew what life had been like in the old days, the days before the days of now and the days before the days of before the days of now and even the days before the days of before the days of before the days of now. She could teach us how to function again. We could emerge, blinking, into the light. Society could regain its structure.

Our future depended on Senga's memories, and on only one other thing: that she could finish imparting these memories to us before we could no longer resist eating her.

Opening: Helen O'Reilly.....Continuation: Anon.

2011 New Beginning Awards

Once upon a time bodies lay thick on the ground. Most were dead but there were a few who were soon to be made so. Postules filled with blood and pus, then burst. The mixture burned the skin of the living and dead alike.

I am Death. I have sinned. This is my confession.

"Death, you say?" I tugged on my collar and swallowed. "Well, let's see . . . This is most unusual, and I'm a bit new at this, but . . . you're going to need to say twelve million Hail Marys and thirty-five thousand Our Fathers. Yes, I think that should be about right."


Opening: D Jason Cooper.....Continuation: Eric




Journal, if I am going to keep you we need to get one thing straight. I am keeping you because I want to, because I choose to and because I wish to share my experience and pessimism with any travellers fortunate enough to find you (if there are any nuggets of wisdom in my words, I apologise for that now). Most importantly, journal, this means I am not keeping you because Miss Perfect Susanne asked me to. I like to think that more than a flimsy shopper’s notepad and bank pen lies between me and insanity, thank you very much.

I would also like to point out that I’m aware you are an inanimate object, even if I refer to you as ‘you’ – it’s just easier that way. Given that I’m one of probably only a handful of sane people left on this planet, I thought you’d understand.

Not that most people nowadays are insane; they’re just dead.

Dresser, don't think I can't hear you sneaking up behind me as I write this. That's an expensive hardwood floor you're tearing up. Just keep your distance, and if I need a pair of clean underpants, I know where to find you.

Television, you turned yourself on and now you can turn yourself right back off. Or at the very least, switch away from Jersey Shore re-runs. If there's any silver lining to the bizarre force that has breathed hellish life into Earth's inanimate objects, it's that reality TV "stars" were among the first casualties.

Toilet ... we need to talk.


Opening: Naomi Reynolds.....Continuation: jrmosher




The girl screamed in delirium as she lay on the white bed twisting the stiff, starched sheets under her. A stain of sweat and blood spread below her raised and shaking legs. A musky smell hung in the air as the girl struggled. Outside the rain streamed down in a torrential rush beating in a tinny, rhythm on the windows of the back room of the one-floor medical office.

Doctor Britton’s right hand slid inside the girl up to his wrist as he pushed down on her bloated stomach. She screamed again as he touched her monstrous belly. Then her lungs and strength gave up and she trailed off into ragged whimpers.

“The head is turned. Get me the forceps!” He yelled to the nurse with cropped, gray hair. She swiftly identified the instrument from the table near her and placed it in Doctor Britton’s outstretched left hand. She trembled next to him. In her 40 years as a nurse she had never seen a pregnant woman scream so hideously through the birth process. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

She wished there were other attendants here for this birth besides herself and the doctor – and the unseen man outside who waited to finish this night for them and take this baby. She glanced at the back door where he waited. She wondered what kind of man would wait in the rain for such a job.

[Slow dissolve. Fade in on man in brown uniform waiting patiently.]

Voice-over: UPS: For your most difficult deliveries. Ask about our guaranteed pick-up service.

[Fade to black.]


Opening: Donna Galanti.....Continuation: Anon (Probably ril)

2010 New Beginning Awards

The bank robber was wearing a heavy-duty bulletproof vest,but that didn't do him any good against the lightning bolts.

When the thief came running out of the bank's front doors, Cobalt hit him with electrical blasts from both hands, sending him reeling to the ground. The man was wearing his body armor over black coveralls, with a full-face motorcycle helmet on his head and a submachine gun slung across his chest. He'd been intent on the four racing motorcycles lined up at the curb and hadn't seen Cobalt hovering twenty feet in the air, concealed from view by the building's overhanging facade.

If you wanted to be a successful crook in a place with as many hyper-heroes as Biggs City, you had to look up once in a while.

It was a lesson Cobalt himself obviously hadn't learned, for moments later he lay gasping on the sidewalk, struggling to free himself from the immense fetid mound smothering him. Far above, the sound of enormous flapping wings and baleful cooing died away as the genetically enhanced arch-villain HindenPigeon flew off to begin his conquest of Biggs City by means of a shock-and-awe bombardment of nano-guano.

Opening: Sean McCluskey.....Continuation: Paul Penna



As the woman tumbled from the heavens a riot of colours and questions chased her. Was that the rainbow spectrum of the balloon? Where was the parachute rip cord? Would life flash before her eyes?

Around 700 feet, she resigned herself to the terror of a recurring drowning nightmare she’d had as a child. Her chest tightened and the panic rose like vomit in her throat. Wake up! Wake up! Her brain screamed, but no sound came out.

600 feet…

Seconds from impact a feeling of calm spread through her. Aware of a benevolent presence, she relaxed into familiar arms, arms that lifted her. And, instead of plummeting, her body now felt as though it were gliding, or maybe she was flying.

500 feet, 400 feet, 200 feet…

The woman who faced imminent death took one last look around.

To the right, the sky was the same blue as her mother’s eyes. In the foreground, gold trimmed puffs of cloud lingered next to the most luminous reds and oranges, as if birds were shedding their colourful feathers.

To the left, the trees were dancing slowly, half lit in red organza dresses.

The woman lurched to the right, missing the trees, and plunged into the frigid water. As her entire world turned to darkness, a final thought flashed through her mind: Freedom.

* * *

After twenty minutes, 24D hadn't returned from the restroom, so Chuck turned to 24F. "Howdy. My name's Charles, but most folks call me Chuck. What's your name? I'm going to merry old England to visit my grandchildren. Have you been to England? The motherland? I went once before on a training course. I'm in sales. Insurance, mostly. You got insurance? You should. Hm? Sure, go ahead. Might be a queue..."


Opening: Dina Desveaux.....Continuation: Anon.



I could hear the fear in my breathing - jagged and sporadic. My lungs screamed for oxygen, and my muscles fought back as I encountered cramps in succession throughout my legs. My brain was wailing in pain, trying to plea bargain with my heart; begging for my legs to stop running, if only for a moment. However, my heart refused this task because I was searching - in the barren darkness of the underground tunnels - for him.

Confused and disoriented, I frantically turned without thinking down another hallway almost entirely devoured by the darkness. The acrid odors previously stinging my nose began to subside as the stale, thick air began to thin, making breathing easier. I continued to run faster than my body wanted; because I knew, I was going to lose the love of my life. Run Carrie, I could hear him say in my head, his voice as smooth as silk was quietly tickling my thoughts. I'm coming, I said without words, and continued pushing myself to run harder as my vision became blurry from tears. Tears of fear, anguish, and love.

The ache was jagged and sporadic, like a pounding in my brain. My eyes were tearing from the fearing, water swirling down a drain. The starkness of the darkness, blackness bringing on the slackness-- courage failing, and my wailing, to my love (whom I was hailing), was the foment of my to'ment, like a beating from a cane.

As I scrambled through the cavern-- dank and smoky, like a tavern-- I espied a glowing fire, at my level, only higher. Up a staircase; through a doorway, like a Dane escaping Norway, ducking ceiling; leaping chasm, 'till one final frightful spasm, sent me sprawling and a-bawling, to the cold unyielding floor.

And then, finally, did I see, like a ship far out at sea, a lone candle in the dim, held up by a hand quite slim: pale whiteness like fine marble, hair of gold, and eyes a-sparkle. T'was my love, my one-and-only! There he stood, alone and lonely. By my side, he bent a knee, and these words he spake to me:

“Where the hell's the circuit breaker?”


Opening: Natbagel.....Continuation: Sean

2009 New Beginning Awards

Each year we honor the best work of our continuation writers. The minions voted, and here are the results:

5th Place
Lord Verenth

4th Place
Slubka

3rd Place
Train Wreck

2nd Place
As You Know, Bob

1st Place
Job Chart


Click the label at the bottom of the post to see the results from previous years.

2008 New Beginning Awards

The votes are in. Turns out the top two vote-getters have been made into Evil Editor Films. Coincidence?


5th Place
564

4th Place
587

3rd Place
518

2nd Place
510

1st Place
465

2007 New Beginning Awards

Voting was light, and close. All five received votes. The nominees were all deserving, so rather than extend the deadline, here's the order of finish:


5th Place. New Beginning 210

4th Place. New Beginning 215

3rd Place. New Beginning 205

2nd Place. New Beginning 221

1st Place . New Beginning 207

2006 New Beginning Awards

5th Place. New Beginning 98

4th Place. New Beginning 151

3rd Place. New Beginning 9

2nd Place. New Beginning 64

1st Place. New Beginning 147