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"Writing Challenge 9/19: Cats & Dogs"



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Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:01 am
Griffinkeeper says...



"Wake up star shine, it is going to be rainy day today, so get out and beat the cats and dogs!" The DJ yelled obnoxiously as I pounded the snooze. What time was it anyway? 7:30!

I jumped out of bed and started a frantic, if not familiar, routine. In ten minutes I was dressed and eating breakfast.

Then I heard a small thump. I looked up at the roof briefly, but what was one thump to me? I was late.

Then I heard two thumps, then four, the thumping was growing exponentially more over a smaller period of time. I looked outside and gasped.

There were literally hundreds, no thousands of dogs and cats falling from the sky. Lightening, from all the static electricity, flashed as animals (it was mostly kittens and puppies) fell onto our neighborhood. The roads filled with blood as the animals impacted against the sidewalk. My block had turned into hell in less than two minutes. Children were crying along with their parents, while car alarms were going off as animals smashed into the car, broke windshields. The dogs were all spread out, some had cracked their skulls, while others had disintegrated upon impact. Cats were often spread out in all directions, like a horrible pancake gone wrong. I suppose it was true what they said about cats always landing on their feet.

Even then were still coming down. People began grabbing sheets and making trampolines it worked for a little while, until the rain got heavier.

Fat cats and one hundred pound dogs started falling and people began feeling the weight. One of the little children was killed when a Great Dane collided with her head at terminal velocity. That is when the stampede began. The few animals that had survived the falls ran after the humans for the houses, which were the only protection to speak of. I made it into mine, when the first hole was punched into it. A Labrador Retriever had gone through the roof, and it wasn't the only one. The constant impact of animals over one hundred pounds made my house a literal death trap.

Blood made the floor and carpet slippery, not to mention the animals themselves. I went for the one safe place: the door frame. This seemed to work, but how many would survive?

After 30 minutes of impacts, the rain stopped. I got out of the house to survey the neighborhood. There was no surface that didn't have a dead animal in some terrible position. Some of the dogs that had survived began feasting off the dead, while the cats had ran away a long time ago. With some other neighbors, we began searching houses for survivors. There were many casualties. The Cellphones, TVs, and Cars had either been destroyed or rendered useless. The power was out.

Then the flies came. Millions of them crawling over every surface of the block. We started burning bodies. We kept a funeral pyre going for over 3 days continuously. We were still in shock when some relief arrived.

A few months later I packed up my things and left for Nevada, to get away from the rain. I always hid from the rain. The lightning would send me cowering and the mere sight of storm clouds would make me nervous, even paralyzed. Finally, I had had enough. The rain came to me. I stood out and welcomed the cats and dogs. Fall down on me.
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Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:11 am
Snoink says...



First of all, this isn't really a story, which I suppose is the main disappointment in this whole thing. Sometimes I love weird, scary stories, but only if the story is a story. What happened? A bunch of people got killed by dogs. Nice. Why should I care? There are no characters to associate with, the main character is only mentioned slightly, and there is no connection whatsoever. Believe me; when the author of FREAK complains about the lack of character, something is wrong.

You could insert character in it. The narrator of the story might be so tramatized about the entire experience that he may not want to relate to it. But you have to tell the reader this somehow. Because of the detachment, when the main character's thoughts are finally revealed, they fall flat and do not affect the reader at all.

I suppose, if you want to look at it critically, you can say that it shows a realistic, horrifying reality of raining cats and dogs, but this just is a description of something that fictionally happened.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach

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Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:56 pm
Bobo says...



Horrific and pointless. Great description, however. I think that part of the problem is that we're all expecting a humorous story instead of a violent, bloody one.
  





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Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:28 am
concertchick16 says...



:arrow: i like the violent bloody stories...or this one anyhow, maybe make it more descriptive,
for example you said there were dogs in his house where were they? were they splatered up against the walls?
or where they just crumpled on the floor, what? and yes add more feeling to the main character..
i really like the part about the neighbors using sheets as trampolines, and how cats land on thier feet.
very good visual picture.lol
  








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