Since Father's Day is coming up, I thought I would run an options contest on Josef Fritzl, the Austrian Dungeon Dad.
Here are your options:
1. His teenage daughter, whom he had imprisoned for all of her 19 years on earth, was brought to hospital with multiple organ failure due to long term oxygen deprivation. When the doctor became suspicious because of things like the fact that she hardly had a tooth in her head, Fritzl ordered him NOT to call the police.
2. His two sons, aged 18 and 5, who had also been incarcerated in his basement every single day of their lives, howled at the moon and giggled uncontrollably while being driven in a car for the first time, thinking that the oncoming traffic would crash into them.
3. The bound corpse of a girl which seemed to have been raped washed up on the shore of a small lake where Fritzl ran a resort hotel in the 70s and 80s at about the same time Fritzl took his daughter by force into the dungeon, where she would remain for the next 24 years. The corpse is now being linked to Fritzl.
4. Fritzl had a previous rape conviction and spent over a year and a half incarcerated before being allowed to return to his wife and family. That record was expunged thanks to Austrian law.
5. He had crept into the window of a nurse's apartment and raped her at about the time the daughter he would go on to incarcerate was born. (This goes with option 4)
6. He insists that he enjoyed his second family living in the cellar behind the one ton door that he told them was wired to explode if they went near it. He visited approximately every third night and brought cuddly toys and books for the anemic, sun deprived children, who were too listless to do more than sit or lay on the beds for most of the time, due to oxygen deprivation.
7. He cared for his daughter who was pregnant with his children due to repeated rapes by bringing her books on pre-natal care and delivery, which she would have to endure on her own seven times in the dungeon.
He also brought flowers.
8. His wife living upstairs continued to take in his children by their daughter over the years so that some of them came to be known as "upstairs" children and attended school and band practice regularly, conducting a seemingly normal life without knowledge of their mother and siblings imprisoned in their own home downstairs.
9. A tenant who lived directly over the dungeon apartment for twelve years reports now that he heard repeated banging, scratching and droppings of things during that time which Fritzl passed off as sounds of the furnace. He incinerated one of the bodies of one of his infant sons in said furnace.
10. While vacationing with friends in Thailand, he was seen buying expensive lingerie. When questioned, he said it was for his mistress. The friends are now horrified to find out it was his own daughter.
11. Fritzl made up a story that his daughter had run off to a sect and couldn't keep her children. He would force his daughter to write letters home, which he postmarked from various places, in order to throw off the mother, who even went to the police after receiving a call from the daughter, asking her not to search for her. The mother couldn't understand how the girl had gotten their newly unlisted number. It is now theorized that since the daughter has aged so much and looks more like her mother, Fritzl had grown tired of her and was about to release them from the dungeon, making it look like they had returned home from the evil sect at long last. His final act of mercy - taking his ailing daughter to the hospital - accelerated the plans and if all goes well, his families will never have to spend father's day with him again.
12. The prostitutes in the Viennese brothel he patronized were afraid of him and didn't want to grant his requests to do things like "play dead."
13. "They're just lucky to be alive," he has stated. "I could have killed them all."
multiple entries allowed.
Here are your options:
1. His teenage daughter, whom he had imprisoned for all of her 19 years on earth, was brought to hospital with multiple organ failure due to long term oxygen deprivation. When the doctor became suspicious because of things like the fact that she hardly had a tooth in her head, Fritzl ordered him NOT to call the police.
2. His two sons, aged 18 and 5, who had also been incarcerated in his basement every single day of their lives, howled at the moon and giggled uncontrollably while being driven in a car for the first time, thinking that the oncoming traffic would crash into them.
3. The bound corpse of a girl which seemed to have been raped washed up on the shore of a small lake where Fritzl ran a resort hotel in the 70s and 80s at about the same time Fritzl took his daughter by force into the dungeon, where she would remain for the next 24 years. The corpse is now being linked to Fritzl.
4. Fritzl had a previous rape conviction and spent over a year and a half incarcerated before being allowed to return to his wife and family. That record was expunged thanks to Austrian law.
5. He had crept into the window of a nurse's apartment and raped her at about the time the daughter he would go on to incarcerate was born. (This goes with option 4)
6. He insists that he enjoyed his second family living in the cellar behind the one ton door that he told them was wired to explode if they went near it. He visited approximately every third night and brought cuddly toys and books for the anemic, sun deprived children, who were too listless to do more than sit or lay on the beds for most of the time, due to oxygen deprivation.
7. He cared for his daughter who was pregnant with his children due to repeated rapes by bringing her books on pre-natal care and delivery, which she would have to endure on her own seven times in the dungeon.
He also brought flowers.
8. His wife living upstairs continued to take in his children by their daughter over the years so that some of them came to be known as "upstairs" children and attended school and band practice regularly, conducting a seemingly normal life without knowledge of their mother and siblings imprisoned in their own home downstairs.
9. A tenant who lived directly over the dungeon apartment for twelve years reports now that he heard repeated banging, scratching and droppings of things during that time which Fritzl passed off as sounds of the furnace. He incinerated one of the bodies of one of his infant sons in said furnace.
10. While vacationing with friends in Thailand, he was seen buying expensive lingerie. When questioned, he said it was for his mistress. The friends are now horrified to find out it was his own daughter.
11. Fritzl made up a story that his daughter had run off to a sect and couldn't keep her children. He would force his daughter to write letters home, which he postmarked from various places, in order to throw off the mother, who even went to the police after receiving a call from the daughter, asking her not to search for her. The mother couldn't understand how the girl had gotten their newly unlisted number. It is now theorized that since the daughter has aged so much and looks more like her mother, Fritzl had grown tired of her and was about to release them from the dungeon, making it look like they had returned home from the evil sect at long last. His final act of mercy - taking his ailing daughter to the hospital - accelerated the plans and if all goes well, his families will never have to spend father's day with him again.
12. The prostitutes in the Viennese brothel he patronized were afraid of him and didn't want to grant his requests to do things like "play dead."
13. "They're just lucky to be alive," he has stated. "I could have killed them all."
multiple entries allowed.
Contest is Over
- Contest was judged on May 20
- Rewards: Gold: 300, Silver: 200, Bronze: 100
- Final notes: This was just excruciating to judge. I seldom have a contest where I truly feel that several are gold worthy. That is the case today. I don't like to let contests run over their original set date because I feel it is somehow unfair to the early entrants, but I was really tempted to here today simply because this contest generated such stunning work. Thank you.
Contest Winners
Gold trophy winner
Silver trophy winner
Bronze trophy winner
Entries [6]
1 - 6 of 6
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• Viewed by judge.
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Comments
1 - 21 of 21
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Good grief, Marcy - this is a challenge and a half!
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had enough of the petty bourgeoisie yet?
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I'm a paid-up member.
(currently working on a poem for this contest)
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Don't really think this is appropriate topic for poetry....think it shuold be laid to rest to let those poor poor people get on with their lives.
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Perhaps when you grow up, you can come back to me with something like this sonnet by Weldon Kees:
For My Daughter
Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read
Beneath the innocence of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed.
Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh
Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands;
The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland,
Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen
That may be hers appear: foul, lingering
Death in certain war, the slim legs green.
Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.
These speculations sour in the sun.
I have no daughter. I desire none.
by Weldon Kees
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(Not that it isnt incredibly creative..but dont you find it disturbing and horrifying?)
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yes, I do find it disturbing and horrifying; that's why I have it under the categories of "dark" and "horror."
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I wasn't trying to have a go at you about it..Although if it provokes some action against the current sex laws in Austria, then that would be good.
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here's to widening your vision when it comes to "appropriate" topics for poetry, then.
As for me, I'm just a lowly writer isolated in the Black Forest, seeing how my prose skills are after years of living outside my language. I wrote this news report myself, from my foreign bureau. See how different things are over here? The Austrians actually have an ethic of forgiveness in their lawmaking, after what they went through under the Nazi regime. -
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Bravo! dear lady, here is to educating those who so easily forget how rules and power and un-forgiveness combine; how society can strangle itself with its own laws: "first they came for the Jews; but I'm not a Jew"
The wisdom of this quote can be laid across so many American laws that have come to pass in the name of freedom.
I will write to this creative and provocative topic and see where my muse takes me
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I await your entry.
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Ken
The problem with democracies is that they are corrupt, outmoded, hidebound by stupid laws, captive of powerful media enterprises.
Yet, there are no better models on the face of the earth!
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It never ceases to amaze me the depth of cruelty that exists in mankind, the levels of depravity that it seems some can so easily slide into. I heard this on the news when the story broke and for the life of me I could not comprehend it, I really thought it was a nightmare of some kind, I was right a nightmare for those poor children.
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I look forward to your response to this, Bunny. Germany and Austria work tirelessly educating their children about the horrors of the past century. I just saw a comment on the poem by Maya Angelou called "I know why the caged bird sings" - it said "the free bird takes his freedom for granted, but if it was caged, it would aprreciate being free a lot more."
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Is this terrible story for real?
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Yes, it's current events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Fritzl
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Congratulations to all.
The standard was high, I thought. The subject difficult. Ea, a triumph for poetry here. Ron.
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Thank you very much, Ron.
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And I agree ...
not a triumph for the system. There is absolute dribble collecting Gold out there among some kids and poetry rivalling that of laureates missing out in contests like yours, Marcy.
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Thank you so much for finalist status in your contest. It was truly a captivating subject. Thank you again and congratulations to all! ~Pamela
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Thank you, Pamela - I was really astounded by this contest.
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