I want to try a social experiment... Will you help me?
Let's write a story together. I will start and then, each person can please add on another few lines in the comments. This will be fun!
Okay, so here goes:
When I awoke, the sky was clear and it was eerily quiet. It was the kind of quiet that made the hair on my arms stand on end. There should be some sort of noise, but there wasn't. There was only quiet. I was afraid to look out the window...
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I couldn't find my cats anywhere. They are usually easy to find being indoor cats. I searched and searched, until I came to the claw marks on the window.
I didn't recognize the marks immediately, as the early morning's residue still glistened on panes, cascading it's calleidiscopic view across the room. It had been that light, or colours of light that attracted me to the window to begin with. I was confused by both the brilliance of the morning and the Claw marks. Why would they be on the outside of the glass?
(I put this on my MySpace page and a few friends participated. I will add their additions below this disclaimer.) :)
From Mark Lee...
I started when the phone rang. Quieting my racing heart, I padded over to the antique style phone on the small table near the entryway to the kitchen. I picked up the receiver.
From Tsappora...
There was no one there... Wait, this thing hasn't worked for years! Where's my cell phone? I grabbed my duffle bag off the floor, still packed with clothes and personal items from the night before. The phone with its "old-fashioned" rotary ring tone was still ringing. I furiously ransacked the contents of my bag, finally catching the gleaming glow of my pink razor, and snapped it open clumsily, "Hello?? Hello??"
I missed the call.
And at the same moment as Tsappora, Empress posted...
All I heard was the crackling sounds of a bad connection, reminiscent of the old landline sounds when there was a storm brewing. It was unsettling, but I continued to listen, waiting for something. What I wasn't prepared for was the sound of one of my kitties meowing through the crackling!
Then the brilliant Jim Williams chimed in...
At that moment a tough guy burst through the door, pointing a gun.
I screamed: "Why are you doing that?"
"Listen, sister," he sneered. "A guy named Raymond Chandler told me that, whenever he gets stuck with the plot, he has a guy with a gun come through the door. So that's what I'm doing"
"You mean I'm being held up by a mere literary device?"
"You better believe it. And this one is loaded with metaphors, similes and oxymorons. One wrong move and it could get messy."
The cat came in. The man looked at it.
"Take a powder," he said, "or the broad gets it."
"I'm a cat," said the cat nonchalantly. "Do what you like with the frail. See if I care."
The man loaded an apothegm into the chamber of the revolver.
I wasn't sure what would happen next.
And I just had to respond...
I ran for the dictionary.
An apothegm? What is an apothegm? I have to know what it is to combat it and save the cat.
Frantically I thumbed through the pages which were as thin as the layer of onion skin I had once looked at through a microscope in science class to understand the make up of a cell.
Apothegm –noun- a short, pithy, instructive saying; a terse remark or aphorism.
Ah-ha! I got it!
Instructing the cat to step behind me, I stealthily slid my gun from my waistband and slid in some moral precepts, adages and truisms which would knock the intruder on his rear and disarm him, as well.
And Mr. Williams came back with...
I let him have it. Six literary tropes, right in the kisser. He should have been history.
"I'm sorry, Velda," he sneered, "But you're firing blanks. The hard-boiled roman noir format had you fooled, but this novel is in fact a piece of magical realism."
"He was right. The cat was a giveaway. Whoever heard of a talking cat? A singing one, just maybe."
I fixed my lips while playing for time.
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