October Writing Contest: First Place

March short story contest-first place

Muffins -by Colby Cox

The thing about being a teenage boy is that you fall in a teenage-boy-version of love approximately every four minutes. Hot girl leaning against the wall of the school smoking, not worried at all about whether or not she would get caught? Love. Girl who sits down beside you to help you with your trig homework? Love. And, yeah, when my parents got me my own pet dragon for my sixteenth birthday, regardless of the fact that it was entirely deranged and would only answer to the name Muffins, that was another version of love.

           Trying to surprise someone with a pet dragon, my parents found out, is next to impossible. First of all, dragons are noisy creatures. They stomp if they walk, and if they fly there’s a WHOOSH sound as they flap their wings up and down. Second, dragons are HUGE. Basically, if I were to look out any window of the back side of my house, I would have seen the beast.

            This led to my walking out the back door of my house that day and saying, “Um, why is there a dragon back here?” and then my parents saying, “Uh, surprise?”

            “What’s this?” I ask, cautiously approaching them and the dragon.

            “This is your own pet dragon,” my father says. “It answers to Muffins.”

            “Muffins?” I say, hiding the fact that this is one of the most exciting things to ever happen to me.

            “Yeah, we didn’t name it,” my mom says. “Happy birthday!”

            “Well, thanks, guys.”

            When my parents go inside, I step closer to the dragon, remembering the advice my dad had given me before going in: introduce yourself to her. Make a good first impression. She needs to know that you won’t hurt her. She looks at me, lowering her head, curious. “Hi there, Muffins,” I say. She lowers her head more, allowing me to reach out and touch her salmon-colored nose. Breathing in quickly, she shies away from my touch before moving closer and lowering her belly to the ground. That’s when I understand what she wants: she wants me to mount her back.

            “Uh, hold on there, Muffins,” I say. The creature nudges me with her nose. “Okay. Okay.” I walk over to the stake and grasp one of the huge chain links that is connected to her metal collar. “Stay still now, girl.” I put my foot in the bottom chain link and begin to climb as if it is a ladder. It takes a moment, and I almost fall as the chain twists to the side once, but I make it to the top and sit on the upper part of her back, just at the bottom of her neck. The flapping of wings is something that it will take time to get used to. There’s a moment where it just feels like everything’s shaking, and then we rise up off the ground and are in the air. But when we get a good twenty feet up, a sudden jolt knocks me back. Even though I was holding on to the metal collar to hold on to Muffins, I hadn’t remembered to unlatch her chain. I catch myself on her tail, narrowly escaping death by falling to the ground, but Muffins just keeps flying in frantic circles, tail whipping back and forth, threatening to throw me off. She must think that something has her caught.

            “Muffins!” I yell. “Calm down!”

            I try frantically to pull myself up as I slide further down her tail. As luck would have it, her tail whips around just the right way, and I take my chance. I jump. Fall in what seems like slow motion. And—

My arms feel as if they are going to be ripped out of their sockets, but I catch onto the collar at just the right time. “Yes!” I yell, but I’m still just hanging over the side of Muffins, trying to hold on. I decide that the best thing to do now is to try and stop my dragon’s panicking, so I hold on for dear life with my right hand while reaching around the side of the collar with my left, grabbing the latch. Suddenly, we’re flying higher than before and the chain is falling to the ground with a thud. I use all of my remaining strength to pull myself up onto her back. Once atop her, I don’t have to do much except hold on as she does a lap around the city.

            Seeing a dragon with a rider atop it is not an uncommon thing since the Return of the Dragons, which happened when I was eight years old and a man who had been breeding dragons in the mountains in Colorado was killed when he was struck by lightning as he opened the gate of the massive cage he had built to feed his dragons and at least two-hundred dragons were set free, but it seems odd to be the one on the dragon. For my first time riding, I feel as if I’m doing a great job. But all of my built up confidence dies whenever I see another rider flying even higher than me. I recognize him instantly. He goes to my school and always ties his dragon in the field that used to be used for some popular sport before the Return, where all the dragons are tied during school hours. His name is Vincent, and he is, for lack of better words, the school’s resident douchebag. Which is why it freaks me out whenever he starts flying over here, his dragon’s nostrils spitting out short streams of fire. “Magnus! Halt!” he commands his dragon, which lands in flies over to a nearby park, startling a few children.

            “Muffins, halt!” I command mine, a bit quieter so as not to be heard by Vincent calling my dragon Muffins, and we land near Vincent and Magnus in the park.

            “Fagboy got a dragon?” he asks me, snorting. I want to ask him if his vocabulary is simply limited to insults such as fagboy, or if he really just thinks that being gay would be such a huge insult, but I hold my tongue because I remember how stupid my dragon is and how his is still spewing flames out of its nose.

            “No, Connor got a dragon,” I correct him.

            “What’s its name, fagboy?” he asks me, ignoring my previous statement.

            “Um,” I say, trying to think of a name I could give it that might sound at least a little intimidating. “Viper? Right, Viper?” Muffins sits on its back legs, swiping at a bird she found flying around with her front legs.

            “That’s not really its name, is it?” Vincent says, smiling. I feel so small, like I’ve been caught in a lie. “C’mon, fagboy. What’s your dragon’s real name?” 

            “Muffins,” I say under my breath.

            “What’s that?”

            “Muffins,” I say a little louder, still ashamed.

            “I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Muffins sounds like a gay name, which is really fitting for you.”

            “God, do you seriously have no other insults than to call me gay? You know that being gay isn’t a bad thing, right?”

            “That sounds like exactly the response a gay guy would give.”

            “I’m just going to ignore that, because I know that I am straight, and also that your lonesome brain cell is simply lashing out at me out of jealousy for my many brain cells.”

            “You know what, fagboy? I’ve listened to about enough of this.”

            “What do you mean?” I ask.

            “You. Me. On our dragons. Now. May the best man win.”

            Within moments our dragons are flapping their wings and rushing into the sky, preparing to face off against each other. Muffins takes an oval-shaped curve around the park as Magnus holds his place in the air by flapping its wings up and down. Muffins flies a little bit too near Magnus, who sends a stream of fire out of his nose. My dragon squeals and flies down a nearby street. Magnus follows, Vincent now standing on his dragon’s back. Magnus surprises both me and a family in a minivan by picking up the van with his back legs. The dark blue dragon twirls in the air to throw the vehicle at us, but Muffins heroically catches the van right in her mouth. She sets it down, having taken the entire roof off, and chews the bit of metal before gulping it down. As Magnus flies in front of us, the roof of the minivan hits Muffin’s stomach and she belches. A stream of fire flies from her nostrils, surprising her a bit. The family in the minivan gasps as the fire hits Magnus and Vincent. As the smoke clears, I see that Vincent is nothing but ash, while Magnus is burnt, but not badly. Magnus takes off flying again, forgetting about her rider just like that.

            Thus, my teenage-boy-sort-of-love for my stupid dragon was affirmed.

Colby writes an awesome  BLOG -check it out!


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Find information about my next writing contest, interviews, book news and more on my website.

www.TheNeverChronicles.com

In bookstores 6-5-2012

The winning short story contest entry

Flying High

By Sarah Monroe

The cool night air bit into my flesh painfully, but I ignored it. That’s what I got for
wearing just a tank top with my jeans and Vans. From the roof I was perched on, I
could see into the rooms of every house in the town. I could see parents tucking
their young children into bed, a mother nursing her baby, and a family watching TV
together.
I hadn’t had a family like that since I was five.
Unfurling my large golden wings, I ran and jumped off the edge of the roof,
and flew high and fast. The cold breeze slid along my feathers, and I felt the relief
that only came with flying. I turned east, back to the beach where I was supposed to
be. Once landed, I kicked off my shoes and let the still-warm sand run between my
toes. A tall, silvery figure approached me.
“Skye, where the hell have you been?” Wrath asked me testily. The angry scar
that ran from his cheek to shoulder was the same silver as his hair and eyes in the
moonlight. His wings matched.
“I want a family.” I told him, ignoring his question. “I want parents that love
and take care of me. I want to live a normal life.”
Wrath sighed, impatiently pushing the long hair out of his face. “You know
why you don’t have a family – they died in that fire when you were five… just like
mine, and just like Luke’s. And say that we did get adopted before we escaped from
that damned orphanage, what would your new parents do when they saw your wings?
Would they freak out? Would they sell you for money? Yes, because you’re a freak
of nature! No matter what you do you’ll always be the outsider!”
I’d been holding back tears during his speech, but now they flowed in hot
streams down my cheeks. Wrath was right, which made it worse. I hated it when he
was right… which was often. Anyone who saw our wings would sell us to the
media, or worse, to some science laboratory. We’d either be stared at or dissected.
And my family… Oh how I missed them. The mother and father that I had
faint memories but no photos of, and the unborn brother I never had a chance to
meet. Fire was my worst enemy for taking away my 5 year old world. But then
again, I would never have met Luke and Wrath without it. The latter I could deal
with not knowing, but the former… well, that was something I didn’t even want to
think about.
As if knowing I was thinking about him, Luke came into view from some trees,
and I noticed for the first time how long his beautiful golden hair had grown. I
looked down at my own chocolate-brown hair and saw that it had grown longer too,
almost to the small of my back. At that moment, I didn’t care. Luke must’ve seen
the melancholy expression on my face, because he came over and wrapped me in his
arms.
“We should leave…” Was all he said before letting me go, unfurling his wings
and leaping into the clear night air.
I followed, and Wrath too. We didn’t fly in any sort of organised formation;
we just went wherever. Wrath, being twenty and the oldest, was of course the fastest.
But then again, we were all pretty fast, so it only took around fifteen minutes to get
from the Gold Coast to Brisbane. Yes, we were on the east coast of Australia.


Night in the city street was absolute bliss. People were everywhere, and all the
lights were like brilliant stars close to Earth. There was so many noises and activity,
I didn’t know where to look. It was exciting… no, exhilarating. My senses were in
overload. The scent of curried chicken from a nearby restaurant, flashing lights on a
hotel sign, car horns beeping away, the feel of the humidity that curled my hair…
We reluctantly found our way to the museum at South Bank, where we were to
meet someone under the life-size whale models that hung from the ceiling. A strange
note we found in China Town, Melbourne, had told us to.
We waited, and waited, and waited, until I felt like I was going to fall asleep
on my feet. But then a small girl of about eleven came up to us, which was quite
unexpected. Someone so young shouldn’t have been out alone, and at night especially.
“Hello, my name’s Emily.” The young girl told us in a high, sweet voice. Her
hair was golden brown, and her eyes a bright blue. I thought I saw a flash of white
wings on her back, but couldn’t be sure. That is, until she said: “What you just saw
is real. I’m just like you – nephilim – the offspring of humans and angels.” Emily
flicked back her golden hair and smiled wide. She was adorable. “I’m also Luke’s
younger sister… Or I should really say half-sister, because we have different human
mothers. But now, Luke, our daddy’s been waiting a long time to find you. You’re
all welcome to come back to my house, because really, he wants to meet all of you.
It’s rare for there to be so many nephilim in the same area, and around the same
age…”
The three of us stood staring at this young girl, who though talkative,
unknowingly answered the question we’d been brooding over the last few weeks –
What are we? But now that there was an answer, what was there to do? Was there
some sort of purpose in our lives… Like a reason half-breeds like us even existed?
But really, we had nothing to do but follow Emily back to where Luke’s angel
parent was waiting.
I wanted to look for my real dad next. Whoever he was, and wherever he was,
I would find him.

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Sarah is from the Gold Coast, Australia. She writes under the pseudonym Vanessa Belle


check out her facebook page HERE


Keep up the writing, Sarah!  We look forward to seeing more of your work! (*cough* guest post)

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www.TheNeverChronicles.com