(Dedicated to the fictitious Katherine O’Day)
In the spirit of the season, I decided to write a Halloween story. Unfortunately, I have reached a writer’s block, so I invite the SDMB to continue the tale. I’m usually partial to happy endings, but because it is October 31st, feel free to scribble as you will.
The story revolves around Kate and her 3 brothers (Bartholomew, George, and Homer). They face off against a mad scientist and his evil friends who threaten England, and ultimately, the entire world. Spooky, eh?
One requirement however. Each sentence of the story has something in common. The common factor has nothing to do with the silly tale being told, but it is nonetheless appropriate for a certain reason. Please make sure your new sentences adhere to the common factor rule.
According to some ladies (who often prattle on about such things) Dr. Haydon Chatterton was the handsomest man in all of England. However, most of these same women ceased to fancy young Haydon after he and his friends turned into giant venomous insecta.
I had just come from the theatre, where Godzilla vs Robin Hood had been playing, when I heard that Chatterton had become an enormous mutant cricket and was destroying Canterbury. Was it too much to hope that I could spend just one Halloween in peace???
I thought vaguely back to a night in August when I, Katrina, had last made a visit to Haydon G. Chatterton’s laboratory. He had then told me that he was about to perfect a formula that would put a man to sleep and have him awaken as a gruesome leaping six-legged monster. I assumed him mad then, and that Chatterton’s subversive comments were merely meant to psyche me out and send me skittering homeward. So I left the fiendish Haydon to work on the grasshopper and cricket transformation experiments, and raced away in deepest horror.
I went to my brothers for help, as they were all brave and true men. We hurried to our favorite (and somewhat shameful) hideaway on the sea coast near Dover. I first stared stonily left at George, and then peered over to Homer and Bartholomew on my right. We had come to Mrs. Reynold’s Cat House, aka “the Mermaid Bar”, for a last round of drinks and fun before we battled what was now an army of menacing insecta. We each toasted life, love, drink, song, and vowed defeat to Chatterton and his crew.
George turned to Fanny FInklesmith, his favorite girl, and told her that the giant insects were outside now preparing to destroy the brothel. “I say (hic): give me women…wine…and snuff out the mutant giant bug wherever it may crawl…verily wherever it may drool,” he slurred. I told Miss Finklesmith not to listen to my brother George because he was drunk as an otter.
Next the building shook and the pot of basil and parsley soup overturned sending scalding broth everywhere. Ah, but then, as the first katydid claw punched through the walls and scratched deep bloody lines on the Mermaid Tavern flooring, I sensed the germ of an idea. I turned to Beth Reynolds and cried, “Bring me a small snail shell and fill for me a brimming bowl of that extra-hot basil/parsley soup!”
I whirled to face the monsters head on, receiving a curious shell and an improbable urn of steaming seasoned bisque from the voluptuous Beth…