I think we need to get a good fun thread going, so how about a Choose Your Own Adventure story?
This is similar in concept to the Neverending Story thread from a while back, but slightly more structured. I’ll start a story, and give two choices for how to continue. The next person will take one of the choices, add a paragraph or two, and give a couple more choices for continuing. The next person will take one of those choices, and so on for as long as we can keep it going.
The setting of the story is an old estate called Smuggler’s Island, on the shore of Lake Huron in Michigan’s lower peninsula. It takes place in modern times (ie, 2002 AD).
The rules:
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Quote the choice you take, to help maintain continuity.
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If two or more people simulpost, the next person can choose whichever post he/she likes best to respond to.
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Try to stay on the island. Smuggler’s Island (described below) has several interesting features, which will hopefully give us plenty of room for adventures.
(Note: my intoduction is pretty long because I want to give things a good setup. For additions, a paragarph is fine.)
It was a beautiful late summer morning in Lakeside Township (forget that “dark and stormy night” crap). Mark and his girlfriend Becky stood on the small bridge, looking over at Smuggler’s Island. “Come on, Becky, let’s go look around,” Mark prodded. “I don’t know, Mark. They say that Mr. Burkman was into all kinds of wierd cults and stuff.” “Yeah, but he’s dead now, so what’s the harm? I mean everybody wants to go look around Smuggler’s Island, and now we have the chance.” Everyone in the area did want to look around that estate. Smuggler’s Island was a very picturesque place. It sits between the north and south branches of the Jackpine River, which splits about a mile before it empties into Lake Huron. The Burkman’s mansion was on the east side of the island, near the lakefront. It was a large three-story building, in no particular style. Several additions over the years gave the mansion a sprawling effect. Vast gardens surrounded the mansion. They were beautiful and always immaculately maintained. The western end, where the river divided, was heavily wooded. Supposedly, there was an old cemetery in the woods, but neither Mark nor Becky had ever seen it.
“Come on, Becky, maybe we’ll find some old arrowheads or something.” Smuggler’s Island had a long and colorful history. In ancient times, local Native American tribes used this island as an exile colony, where certain intolerable members of their society were banished. The island’s original name was Wanehimaweenakonga, which means “Place where we send guys with really bad B.O.” White settlers knew the place as Stench Island. The island served in this capacity until the end of the 19th century. By that time, advances in deodorant technology had rendered the colony unnecessary, and in 1893 it was abandoned. People downwind rejoiced.
Wanehimaweenakonga/Stench Island sat unoccupied until the 1920’s when Prohibition-era bootleggers used it as a base for smuggling illegal liquor into the US from Canada. This is when the island got its current name. Local cops would frenquently go out to “raid” the bootlegger’s operation, but in reality they were just picking up a few cases of Labatts for the weekend’s football games. After Prohibition ended, Smuggler’s Island changed hands a few times, and in the 1970’s it was purchased by John Burkman.
John Burkman was a strange character. For one thing, noone knew where his money came from. When asked how he came by his fortune, he would only speak vaugely of “investments” he had. Most people decided that Smuggler’s Island was probably being used for smuggling again. He was something of an amateur scientist, and you could frequently see odd lights and hear odd noises from one of John’s experiments. He sometimes set up booby traps to ward off trespassers, and several times the police had made him remove traps that might have hurt people.
Then there was John’s wife, Delta. Small and shy, she hardly ever ventured off the island, and had no friends that anyone knew of. It was widely rumored that the Burkmans practiced some odd fringe religion, and that they had set up an altar in the cemetery. There were three children: John Jr, Jeremy, and Jennifer. Mark and Becky had both gone to school with Jeremy. He was snobby and annoying.
The Burkmans lived a quite life until about ten years ago. John and Delta’s marriage was falling apart, and Delta had hired a lawyer to begin divorce proceedings. They were never completed; Delta disappeared. The day she vanished, John took his boat, the Mad Scientist out onto Lake Huron, and spent most of the day out of sight of land. When he returned, he called the police and said that Delta had “simply vanished.” It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had probably happened, but the police never found enough evidence to file charges.
In the ten years since then, the children had all grown up and moved away. Now John himself was dead; his BMW had gone off the highway at over 90mph and crashed into a tree. The children came back just long enough to bury him, and then took off again. None of them wanted the mansion, or the island. The estate was currently in probate.
“Well, OK Mark, a quick look won’t hurt,” Becky finally conceeded. The pair walked over the bridge and onto the island.
**Do they:
A) Go up to the house, or
B) Go into the woods?**
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