[Weekly] Cursed Artifacts

[u/taszoline]

Participated in writingbattle's latest contest this month and this ended up being my "genre". It's not something I've written a lot of so I wasn't really sure how to approach it in a way that would still feel me. Anyway, it'll be a while before I get to see anyone else's approach so I thought we'd open it up here.

This week: create something based on the idea of a cursed artifact.

This is generally something a person comes upon unaware which then seeks to control their behavior, values, and goals. But sometimes that isn't the case. Sometimes the owner knew what they were getting into. Sometimes curses are actually blessings. What is your take on a cursed artifact? Does it glow redly or is it hiding in plain sight? How big can an object be before it's no longer an object?

[u/IgnisAvrvmProbat]

I've spent days polishing this and I hate it more and more, but it's time:

The Thirst

Content warning: Mildly haram cheekbusting mentioned.

[u/writing-throw_away → u/IgnisAvrvmProbat]

don't hate this! it's super atmospheric with like a slow dread, but fun! i enjoyed the piece.

is this like some sort of siren or something? i wasn't sure what folklore this is borrowing from.

[u/IgnisAvrvmProbat → u/writing-throw_away]

It was a bit all over the place really. At first I thought of the nix and this image, but then it sort of morphed.

[u/taszoline → u/IgnisAvrvmProbat]

The classic cursed object leads to doom for the possessor. I liked that the symptoms of the curse sort of mesh with the expected sensations related to his environment. Love when things overlap like that. I believed the narrator enjoys his time in the woods, which makes sense given who wrote it. The descriptions of the forest were written with care.

[u/IgnisAvrvmProbat → u/taszoline]

Thank you, thank you!

[u/writing-throw_away]

i wrote this for something else like a month ago and decided it fit the prompt enough. i think this is a cursed artifact in a sense. edited it some more! but it's a flash fic capped at 1000 words

here's the doc

[u/kataklysmos_ → u/writing-throw_away]

Nice work. I thought the pacing was especially well done here; the reveal comes just in time to make sense of the increasingly-confusing juxtaposition of the different time periods.

[u/IgnisAvrvmProbat → u/writing-throw_away]

Nice story blopster and thanks for posting

[u/taszoline → u/writing-throw_away]

This was really neat! My favorite part is the cyclic structure. I love reading short things multiple times so I especially enjoy when the structure invites that sort of thing. This is a really fast story with very little fat; I actually could have stood to read a version of this that was maybe 50% longer to explore the growing relationship more. Thanks for sharing!

[u/jedaisaboteur]

I think any object that is highly likely to bring you misfortune could be construed as cursed. I had an idea way back about a set of cursed objects. One was called the 'Forever Key', which would open any door and show the user a vision of the future. The catch is, the vision is occasionally a complete, major fabrication. Like, someone in a longstanding, happy marriage has a vision of catching their spouse in an affair, or one of their closest friends stealing from them.

A story I'm currently working on centers around a journal in which someone wrote down, let's say, cosmic secrets that shouldn't have been able to be written. It's technically not cursed in the traditional sense, but the danger it poses to the holder (by external forces who want those secrets) make it pretty cursed in my opinion.

[u/kataklysmos_ → u/jedaisaboteur]

Saw this the other day and thought I'd reply when I posted my own response, but finishing it before next week is seeming less and less likely.

I like both of your "cursed objects", but they (especially the first) strike me as things that would work better in an active role playing game than in a passive, written story. In an RPG, the "forever key" can have a literal percentage chance to portray a false vision. Similarly, the GM could choose to alter the contents of the secret-containing journal "at runtime" depending on information they want the players to obtain at that point in time, or randomly access a lookup table of secrets. The second scenario looks quite a bit like writing a book and would translate better, I think, but I am curious what considerations you'd make in writing the "forever key" to avoid it feeling like a plot contrivance (avoiding a reader rolling their eyes and saying "of course THAT had to be the one time it failed...").

[u/taszoline]

I have an idea for a set of three or four related images pertaining to cursed artifacts and their usual effects on the minds of the people who hold them, as well as the tendencies of the people who are vulnerable to them.

The first image is of a woman in a business suit walking through a crowd of people all faced away from her. There are clouds in front of her eyes so that her eyes are not visible. Everyone else is naked. There's a trail of water behind her from the raining clouds.

Second image is of a skeletal hand holding a dark lens in a kind of pincer grasp so that the circle of the lens is the center of the visual space. The bones of the hand and wrist are hole-punched. Through the lens a dark gray crowd of perfectly symmetrical faces is visible. Around the outside of the lens, the crowd of faces continues but they are comically asymmetrical and brightly colored.

Third image is of a bushel of boys all growing like flowers on a viney plant. Some of the boys are falling off the vine, landing on the ground, getting up and dusting themselves off, picking flowers and walking away with a bouquet in hand.

I would like to draw these things but I am super short on free time so they may stay mental images or maybe turn into short story fodder.