I read an entertaining post on a blog I visit Ben's Coffee House Nov. 18th post .

This prompted me to propose a little Christmas Competition. Now, I don’t have a huge readership, so I hope you’ll all enter (both of you, hehe).

I promise a present from England for the winner (if you trust me with your address) and intend to also have a reader’s vote in case the consensus differs from my own. The competition is as follows:

Here’s the start:

It was the quietest night Hank could remember. Even the two strange things in the cellar were silent. Snow was falling again and the only way to get out of the house was through the ice tunnel he’d dug the week before. He hoped that Mimi had made it through the trees and reached the village to bring help, but surely it had been too long. Opening the fridge he surveyed the remains of his food – one chicken leg, half a tuna sandwich and a tub of something green that Elspeth had brought back from the forest. Action was needed…

And here's my entry to Normal's contest.

It was the quietest night Hank could remember. Even the two strange things in the cellar were silent. Snow was falling again and the only way to get out of the house was through the ice tunnel he’d dug the week before. He hoped that Mimi had made it through the trees and reached the village to bring help, but surely it had been too long. Opening the fridge he surveyed the remains of his food – one chicken leg, half a tuna sandwich and a tub of something green that Elspeth had brought back from the forest. Action was needed…but the pain of his broken leg dulled his thinking.

Then the fact that one of the two things in the cellar USED to be Elspeth crossed his pain-filled mind. Now she and the other one looked like moss-covered trees that occasionally moaned and swayed as if touched by an evil breeze. Was Elspeth even still in there anywhere? If Mimi made it back, would they be able to help her?

Even as he dejectedly pondered this, he reached down to the splint on his right leg and scratched at the green spot that was obviously festering on his ankle.

(as an alternate Christmas theme ending ... replace the italicized paragraph above with the following, I have to admit that I like the one above better though:

He hobbled over to the cellar door and opened it. The Christmas lights they had bound Elsbeth and the other with to keep them still twinkled in the dark.)

Well .. not much you can do with just a hundred words ... but what do you think? Join in the fun and enter the contest by clicking on Normality's link.