ATT Round 1: Writer 10 vs. Writer 23 (Writer 10 wins by N/S)
 

Writer 10

1. 13th November 1940, Trondheim, Norway

We are frost-stricken, stranded betwixt the beams cold & godless and scavenging for scraps is our only option,
While we silently shiver in the bitter blackness, this dusky, hollow cellar our only solace
From the impending doom that roams our province in toneless columns, the German troops that search for loot
And lives to rend for life itself wisps like smoke in the hardened hands of these fervid brutes.
I am a poor farmer who had once made a pittance from the earthly fruits,
Now a family whose dismal fates once laid on the brittle state of turnip shoots
2. Face this bleak demise with leaky eyes in the broken rays of a perfect moon.
On a floor ridden with unswept soot, my cherished love gruesomely joined with torment bears the fruit of my loins,
Muffling her cries is my son, weak-limbed, crucially poised with a cloth-in-hand for muting the noise,
But on hard ground we wait, shaken by war and ebbed by hunger in the luminous void.

My dear son Eirik is worn, a lethargic nimbus encases a set of bones that quiver in the tenebrous dust,
There’s a yellowish crust set on the swollen mounds of each and every pestilent cut,
I pray for him, indeed I pray for us, with one hand upon my wife’s hand,
And the other with a passionate grip keeps the Book of Genesis clutched.
With the same grip, she pulls tight as her genitals gush, the resonance of her screams make the cellar erupt
As she braves a perilous plunge, pushing life into a sparsely moonlit world, shadowbound and grim,
She screams, howls until the loudness brims filling the gloom with exerted motions as it stirs commotion,
But I am stunned, as I pull from her some creature and then I am shocked by absurd emotions.
For a moment frozen in time, there is no fear, no alarm or distress and no words are spoken,
As I feel the wet skin against my arms and the eyes of this wondrous girl I’m holding.

Deep blue of azure skylines, lighting up the saddened night-time,
In the face of beauty I weep, how she has been born alongside such tragic lifetimes.
“Cecilie, my darling,” I sob aloud, as I get on my knees and kneel to hush,
But time is lost, from the ordeal she trumped, my cherished love falls ill and slumps.
My spine then aches with fear as I hear a storm of soldiers from above,
No time to cry, to fall, but I can barely breathe with these soulless lungs,
I grip her tight to my chest, thoughts plague me as cold terror overcomes
What would they do to us? To now my only love? The boots overhead, they slowly thump
I place my hands to her throat, what life could she have? With all the warmth and the all the laughter,
But either way, I know: Unwittingly, she awaits the arms of Death and the jaws of darkness…



Writer 10 = ViTRiOL
Writer 23 = Rican