17 May 2006

One Sentence at a Time -- the Game

Help Word Nerd write a story.
In a comment to this post, write the next sentence. Write only one sentence at a time. From time to time, Word Nerd will collect the comments into a running narrative and repost the game so the whole story is visible. Look for a link on the right to keep adding to this post in the future.
To keep this narrative going, you can add one sentence a day. Everyday, if you want to.
Word Nerd will delete the old comments that she has added into the main story, just to make it less confusing.

Ready?
Here goes:


“She’s trying to poison me. I know it.”

“You can’t overdose on Tylenol.”

“You’re imagining things. Your face always looked like that.”

“Yeah, and there’s no sugar in pixy sticks.”

“That’s just it – it doesn’t taste like Tylenol.”

I looked around the round table in the corner of Perkins – bubble-gum happy Ashley, black-helicopter Martin, love-struck Beckett and Cecily, Nick and me – this night was headed toward being just the same as all the others.

I was so tired of the same thing always happening in this speck of a small town; someone needed to shake things up.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of Nick's backpack, I knew he not only had pixy sticks, but also a decent stash of emergency cherry bombs.

Snorting pixy sticks or otherwise getting overloaded on sugar wasn't enough to break the doldrums I felt.

The last time we used the cherry bombs, it was to blow-up fish at the lake. The last time we went overboard on pixy sticks, it landed Ashley in the hospital for a freak reaction; exciting, yes, but not the kind of excitement I was hepped up to repeat.

"Let's go to our campsite by the river," I said.

"Too muddy," said Ashley, cheerfully dumping another Half-n-Half into her coffee, "and anyway we have to convince Martin that Konnie isn't secretly plotting his death."

Konnie, with a K, I thought scratching the side of my neck was the reason we were all at Perkins tonight in the first place, and more likely was going to be the death of us more of us that just Martin.

"There ya go," offered Nick with a silly grin, "Martin and Konnie should mud-wrestle. Great way to settle scores, plus perfect YouTube material."

"I am not going if Konnie's going to be there," Cecily said.

"When was the last time any of us checked the campsite? Is it still up?" mumbled Beckett, eyes still closed, before returning his head to Cecily's shoulder.

"It's still up," I said confidently, "I was out there already."

"Martin honey? Do you wanna go to the campsite?" Ashley asked, sounding much like she was asking a five year-old with a tummyache if he wanted to go lie down with his blankie.

Martin seemed to be intently watching Nick, who was trying to balance two forks on a toothpick he’d stuck into the salt shaker.

I stood up, put my palms on the table and looked them at them square; enough dinking around, I was deciding the plan.

11 comments:

Bethany K. Warner said...

"We're going," I said.

Bethany K. Warner said...

"To the campsite."

Anonymous said...

"Yes, of course!" said Cecily, glaring at me. "Instead of wasting our lives talking in a restaurant, we can waste our lives talking outside being attacked by flies from the garbage that nobody ever cleans up. Brilliant! Sit down."

Anonymous said...

I stayed standing. "Look, we're turning this booth into an old-folks home. If we don't do something to shake this town up, someone's gonna break out a checkerboard and a pitcher of lemonade."

Anonymous said...

"OK, so say we go to the campsite. What do you wanna do there?"

Bethany K. Warner said...

I glared at Ashley for asking such an asinine question, then turned on my heel and walked away from the table -- let them follow if they dared.

Bethany K. Warner said...

I beeped open the locks on my SUV before I heard them behind me, trailing out of Perkins.

Anonymous said...

"Dude," I heard Nick shout, "Have fun at the campsite. We're taking Martin home."

Bethany K. Warner said...

"Get in," I said, waving a hand at the SUV; taking Martin home was not the plan.

Jude said...

My mind was so fuzzy I could barely remember the plan, but one thing I sure as hell remembered was that Martin wasn't in it- that was for sure.

Steve Kabelowsky said...

One tire on the SUV wasn't as well inflated as the others, making this strange "thump" sound as we rode down the pavement.