I remember years ago I visited a Surrealist forum that did this. Basically someone would start a story, write a short paragraph, and then leave off. Then anyone else could come in and add a part to the story. Sometimes the story got really funny/weird, so I thought it could be entertaining to try this here …
Your addition doesn’t have to follow the previous sequence of events, nor does it have to be logical. Anything goes. So. Let’s start. Hmmm…I think I’ll call it…
Burning with Ecstasy
An Epic Novel
Ira opened the front door that morning to see that his new “Welcome” mat was gone. Again. “Dammit! That’s the sixth one this month!” He growled under his breath. He looked up just in time to see the postman coming down the walk.
“Mail,” the postman uttered as he tripped over one of the many pink flamingoes that littered Ira’s lawn. He was really starting to hate those damn things. A couple weeks ago, he had gotten some pink construction paper and burned a pink flamingo in effigy. As the smoke stung his eyes, he had laughed softly to himself.
The postman handed a soiled letter over to Ira. Ira peered at it, trying to identify the stains. They were still wet, kind of brownish-yellow. Coffee, maybe? Someone dropped it in the toilet? Thankfully, Ira had thought of this last option just before he put his finger to his mouth in thought. The writing on the envelope had been blurred into nothingness. He blithely peele open the damp seal and reached inside.
He turned to go back inside his house when he tripped over his welcome mat. “But…that…was…” Ira muttered as he picked himself up. Seeing how this day had already started, he had to make a choice. Either he was going to go to bed, thinking that this was all a sign, or he was going ride the day out, because it could only get better. He decided to
As the siren grew louder, Ira started to thumb through the money. Six “Loony” coins, plus one bill each from 1937, 1954, and 1961. On the oldest of these was written “applesauce”, but in a different script – the Spencerian style of the Coca-Cola logo – than the word on the card, which appeared to represent the penmanship (pengirlship?) of a 12-year-old cheerleader wannabe. The vehicle to which the siren was attached was now speeding up the street, and the driver looked all too familiar.
Meanwhile, Ira’s wife, Ruby was sitting on the edge of the bathtub trying, for the forth time this morning, to paint the nail on her lrft pinky toe. It was a small toe-nail, and a big mess.
“Ira’ll be mad that I ruined another bathmat.” Ruby thought. She secretly hoped the Welcome Mat Theif had returned in the night. If so, Ira couldn’t be upset about a little nail polish on the bathmat, could he?
Ruby always tried to keep Ira happy. In fact, that’s why she was going to the trouble of attempting to paint her toenails in the first place. Summer was coming, meaning shoes would take a back seat to sandals. Any wife of Ira’s should have nice looking feet, if she was planning on wearing sandals, anyway.
The sound of the rapidly-approaching sirens reached Ruby’s ears in the upstairs bathroom. She strolled to the bedroom and looked out the window (removing the strained placemat used as a temporary blind while Ruby and her husband remodeled the room) to see, not an ambulance or police car as she would have expected, but rather an ice-cream truck. A somewhat disturbing ice-cream truck, shrieking its electronic noise as it careened down Piarskwared Road, on which stood the house of Ira and Ruby -----.
What surprised Ruby even more than the truck, though, was its driver. Behind the wheel, an insane and decidedly un-ice-cream-man-like grin upon his face, was the man Ruby had known in her cheerleading days - the man she had hoped never to see again.
(Yes, despite the failure of my own write-your-own-adventure game, I’ll try to keep this one alive for a little while. ;))
The ice cream truck screeched to a halt in front of the house. Ira stared at the driver, who fortunately had not yet made eye contact with him. He tried not to look obsessive as he tried to remember who the crazed ice cream truck driver was and why he seemed familiar.
The truck driver, with a seemingly permanent twisted grin across his face, slowly opened the door and stepped out of the car, still not making visual contact with Ira. Under the driver’s hand was a blank brown package. The driver, looking much taller than he seemed inside his little truck, slowly walked toward Ira. Though much taller than Ira, he still managed to not glance at him, and seemingly did not notice him at all. But something about the grin on the driver’s face made it clear that he was well aware of Ira’s presence.
The driver stopped a few meters away from Ira, bent over and placed the package on the ground. He slowly panned his face up towards Ira. When they finally made eye contact, Ira instinctively tensed up. The driver’s grin had faded into a frown of solid indifference.
“I believe this is yours.” he said in an as-matter-of-factly voice as possible. He turned and briskly walked back to his truck, and in a matter of seconds he was gone.
Ira, already having received some strange mail today, was reluctant to open the package but morbidly curious as to what it contained, given its deliverer. The package was about the size of a grocery bag, and covered in plain brown postage paper. The only bit of writing on it was a hastily scribbled “ESKIMO” in blue pen in the stamp corner.
Just as Ira’s curiosity got the better of him and he picked up the package, he could hear the screams of his wife from in his house…
…