This was one of my all time favorite games, and it's actually been a couple years since we played.

First player sets a prompt, other players submit an ultra-short story matching the prompt, first player chooses a winner, winner sets new prompt. Pretty straight-forward.

FIRST PROMPT:

Convention-defying fantasy fiction. Must include a spoon.

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS I CAN'T EVEN USE LOWERCASE LETTERS

Feet rooted in the earth, I built the power. Hands raised to the air, I built the flows. “Power is nothing,” I murmured,” It is direction, and control…” I tried to use the minimum, building from horse stance to cat, hands compressing, almost caressing, as the air started to move where guided. The air firming, flowing, circling around the stone plinth, scooping, forming around an orb of liquid, rising above the surface. “Control myself, the elements will co-operate...” My sub vocalized mantra tuning my qui as I brought the orb slowly up. Closer, closer… Splat.
Just after my misguided chicken broth cascaded over my robes, I felt the bamboo stick on my back. “Use a spoon, stupid!” said the master. “They make different tools for different purposes. Learn yours!”

The persecution began almost at once. This is a land of conventional ideas and progress is frowned upon, as in "pitchforks torches, and rioting villagers" frowned upon. While fleeing the masses out for blood and listening to their Holy Mantras "The spoon is sacred. The fork is sacred." one thought keeps running through my mind. The spork was an idea ahead of it's time.

I note that my bookerdash 'bonus round' entry qualifies, so I nominate John Scalzi as an honorary entrant.

~~~

If I could only get back on the table... Or rather, on the table in the first place. Regaining access to the table was the important part: the reversal potion would be simple to create once there. But for now, I was on the floor. My only assets - those I could still move - a spool of thread, a fragment of beef, a large cobweb, a spoon, and a very sticky bit of toffee.

I pondered constructing a catapult with the spoon, but settled on covering my hands and feet with toffee, and bringing spare bits stuck to my belly. Climbing along the bottom edge of the table was a little unnerving at first, but no real trouble. Coming up around the bottom edge was the technically challenging part, but I found a crack and exploited it for good handholds.

The tabletop was mine.

~~~

(The urge to add a twist ending was so strong that I declare the lack of a twist to be the genre defying element)

The prince tightened his grip on the bundle in his hands. The dress they’d made him wear, brocade heavy and stiff as iron, formed a wad like a cannonball. Four sets of footsteps approached the door. He should be just able to handle them. If his nerves did not fail. If—

Sixteen months captive in this bedchamber had stretched his resolve to something thin yet unbreakable. His volley flew true. He leaped over the crumpling body and felled the next two with sharp smacks from a corset-bone truncheon. As the weapon was ripped away, he came up under his last opponent’s chin, holding a sharpened spoon to the hollow of her throat.

"Does my father yet live?" he hissed.

Her eyes burned. "My lady, you are not well."

"The kingdom is worse." He pressed deeper into her flesh. "Take me to the council in the woods."

She led quietly, as he’d known she would, this woman who had betrayed him so easily, who had believed so foolishly—as everyone had—that simply because the gods had mistakenly birthed him into a female body, that he was no true heir, that the prophecy had no true fulfillment.

No.

It was time.

Some very good stuff in this round!

Edguy - nice use of multimedia. If it was an original piece it might have won this round!

Hexnut - loved this one, especially since I practice qigong on occasion. Great sense of humor, nicely handled twist, the narrative works great as a mini-story. The characters really come across even in a few short lines.

Chaosman - really liked the concept, the punchline, and the way it responded to the prompt, but found it a little light on narrative.

Drache - funny that your bookerdash entry was so apt --maybe I was subconsciously influenced in my prompt!

I thought your entry was strong and well written. I also liked your outside-the-box take on the prompt. It's true, however, that the format is so often tied to a surprise ending that not having one felt like a bit of an anticlimax --I kept feeling I must have missed something.

insp - It's no secret I'm a sucker for your writing. In fact, I tried hard not to be impressed by this one, but I failed. Everything was sharply delineated, and I was blind-sided by the twist in a way that made me re-evaluate my own gender assumptions.

OKAY, insp, I really didn't want to declare you the winner, but I have to. You should submit this one somewhere.

Hexnut, you were a very strong contender. In the end, I picked insp over yours mainly because I thought her entry was more convention-defying than yours. But I'd love to read something longer about your characters. They reminded me a bit of the "Myth Adventures" series of books that I loved in my youth.

I thought hexnut had it for sure! The story made me giggle and was fun to read.

I'm also really glad to hear that mine was vivid. I had to wrestle with it quite a bit because it kept getting bogged down with description/exposition and didn't have any actual momentum or arc. It was a great exercise for me to write!

--

Okay, round two! Let the inspiration for your story be heat -- in whatever way that word takes you.

300 word maximum. Go!

Even after midnight the heat was still stifling. The rain hadn't helped either. It had been warm, like being in a shower, and while it had washed the filth and stink from the streets, the humidity it had brought with it made the heat even worse. But now the rain was gone, leaving only puddles on the ground to reflect the neon glow of the street, and the lightning that still flickered in the clouds above. It was Friday night, and the the disparate music from the dozens of clubs and bars that crowded the road blended together with the normal sounds of the city at night into something more then the sum of it's parts, something desperate and vibrant, wounded yet brilliantly alive. The heartbeat of the city, the soul of the streets. And he was part of it, part of that jungle of concrete and glass and steel. He was it's apex predator, on the prowl for fun and profit. Wily and clever and skilled, he had enough chrome grafted onto and into his body to place him at the far end of the augmentation bell curve, the domain of corporate hit-goons and cyberpsychos, but he wasn't either. He'd kept clear of the corps and by some miracle had managed to avoid cyber psychosis. Maybe it was because he was already crazy, or maybe he was just lucky, it didn't matter. He'd managed to keep his soul and the edge he needed to stay alive and prosper on the streets.

The muffled scream of a woman drifts out of a darkened ally, and he smiles. Just the excuse he was looking for to go shred some scum.

Hmm....

Maybe he didn't completely escape cyberpsychosis after all.

Then again, maybe it's just the heat.

"Heat" they called it. It wasn't illegal. It was cheap, non-addictive, and had no known lasting physical effects. It didn't even make you high. In smaller doses, it gave you a pleasant, wholly illusionary feeling of warmth. At higher doses it became painful.

Who was the first person to take a mega dose? A kid accepting a dare on the playground? A frat boy trying to impress girls at a party? No one knew, but it spread across the country like --pardon the expression --wildfire. Those who had been through it described it as the most horrifying experience of their lives, the unmistakable sensation of being burned to death. And then, a minute, an eternity later, the blessed, miraculous return to normalcy. No one ever wanted to try it twice, but it did no permanent damage. The authorities continued to ignore the fad.

But then --people who had been through it began making changes in their lives. They quit watching television. They quit buying knick-knacks. They quit dead-end jobs. They stopped drinking. They quit putting off their goals. In short, they made all the changes you might expect from anyone who had survived a near death experience.

Days after this phenomena was noted, "Heat" was banned in forty-eight states.

It was just about the perfect crime. A small, sleepy town which practically shut down on Sundays. A significant number of wealthy residents who moved here to escape the big city. A time and place nobody would think to pull a robbery. Meek and compliant victims. Lots of women wearing jewelry. It couldn't be better.

He quietly slipped into a pew in the back, the musty smell of dust and prayer books swirling around his nostrils. Yup, lots of well-dressed men, accompanied by women in furs and diamonds. They didn't notice him enter, instead paying rapt attention to the preacher--an aged but strident pulpit-thumper--delivering a fire-and-brimstone-laden sermon. Too easy.

Sauntering to the front, he emptied a cardboard box of hymnals on the ground and tossed it towards the congregation, then raised his semi-automatic. "I want all your wallets and jewelry in this box now!" The people froze, their eyes wide with surprise. It was as if their brains had shorted out.

From behind him came the voice of the evangelist, his voice full of gravel and warning. "Son, you better leave now, or prepare to feel the heat of God's Wrath."

"Sure, Father," he sneered, not even sparing him a glance. "Come on! Wallets and jewels! And bring that collection plate over here!"

"You don't seem to understand," said the pastor coolly, as an ominous ka-click sounded in his ear. The robber turned to stare cross-eyed straight down the barrel of a Colt 45, a mere inch away from the bridge of his nose. Hastily dropping his pistol, he backed away and raised his hands. As members of the congregation restrained the criminal, the preacher chuckled, then displayed the handle of his gun. Two ornately carved words gleamed in gold leaf on the silver and ivory handle.

God's Wrath

"I saw you at the airport in 2009, on the other side of the security line. You didn't see me waving. I read your letter to the newspaper about flag-burning. It was right below mine, responding to an article on police brutality. And now, the one day I go to the auto parts store - to get a tire patch for my bicycle - here you are. I see thousands of people a day, read dozens of names. In a city this size, we shouldn't be meeting this often, randomly. Should we?"

"Not us specifically, no. But many of us will meet someone, randomly, this often. What'd be unusual is if we had deep personal significance to each other, right?"

"... right. Right. See you." I looked down. He couldn't know, not after saying that.

I continue my trend of being too lazy to actually write something myself, so here's a little.. poem.

The sky is red, I don't understand..
Past midnight, I still see the land..
People are sayin' the woman is damned;
She makes you burn with a wave of her hand!
The city's a-blaze, the town's on fire;
The woman's flames are reaching higher!
We were fools, we called her liar..
All I hear--is Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn!

I think it's time for some judging, yes?