Part VIII is open & Part VII posted

Deadline for submissions for Part VIII is: Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 11:59 PM, Eastern Time.  

Visit this post for more information on submitting content. 

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Part VI has been added to the Google Document.  You can click to read the entire story or scroll down to read this week's submission.

There was one submission this week - by Rob Ferguson. 

*~* 

“I give to you the magic.”

“What?”

“Si, it’s magic I give to you. Come, follow me.”

She started walking away but I just stood still, dumbfounded.

“Come, come,” Rita insisted, motioning me forward with her hand. Curious, I followed. She lead me
along more narrow hallways and dusty old passages that smelled of moldy potatoes. After several
twists, turns, and long straight passages, Rita stood infront of an old white door. The white paint of the
door was chipped and pealing in long curling strips that exposed a dark, redish-brown undercoat. Rita
stood in front of the door with her hand on the knob. “This is the room I stay,” she said in her heavy
accent. “Please, you wait me here.” Rita opened the door, darted over the threashold and close the
door with a quick snap. I heard shuffling and the sound of what I assumed to be boxes or crates being
pushed along the floor. I could make out a few words as I heard her mumbling in Spanish: “Mala. Verde.
Aciago.” Eventually she emerged from the room. Even in the dim light of the hallway I could see beads
of sweat on her forehead and upper lip. She was breathing heavily and forced herself to smile. “Aquí,”
she said, extending her hands forward. “For you.” In her hands she held this green bowler (Nomad
tapped the hat he now wore). I just looked at her, and laughed.

“Uh huh,” I said. “I suppose this is a magic hat?”

“Magic! Si, it’s magic. For you, for you. Now you leave and never come back.” Rita literally put her hand
on my back and started pushing me up the passage from which we’d just came.

“Sorry, sister,” I said, resisting her. “I’ve seen plenty of strange things in my day, but I’m not one to
believe in magic.”

“This hat is magic,” Rita insisted. “Here, I show you.”

Part VII is open & Part VI posted

Choose your own adventure at it's best... just write your own version of where the story goes next.



Deadline for submissions for Part VII is: Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 11:59 PM, Eastern Time.  

Visit this post for more information on submitting content. 

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Part VI has been added to the Google Document.  You can click to read the entire story or scroll down to read this week's submission.

There was one submission this week - by Tanya Hofford.

*~* 

Part VI - by Tanya Hofford
The girls had settled in to the comfort of the story, not minding the company of the strange man nearly as much as before, and actually starting to loose track of how long he’d been riding with them.

Nomad continued, “After making sure that Peepsie’s cage was fastened tightly, I turned back to the vacuum to reassemble it back to it’s original state, when I saw several hundred dollar bills crumpled and slightly torn.  

“Now, I don’t often get surprised by things, but it’s not often that you come across someone with so much money they’re willing to throw it away in that quantity.  So, I looked up at Rita and began to ask, ‘Do you realize that there’s money in h-?’ When she cut me off, running over and pushing her way between me and the vacuum. She began to talk quickly in her thick accent again, as she began to try to push me out the door.  Curious why she would be trying to get rid of me so quickly and intrigued by my findings, I planted my feet against the old, slightly worn hardwood floors.  I again asked ‘Do you realize that there’s money in the vacuum?’

“Rita looked up at me with her eyes wide, tears forming in only the corners and began to explain that the people who owned the house had inherited it from their ancestors, and hired her nearly two years ago.  As it turns out, she was vacuuming behind an ancient china cabinet in the main dining room when she found a crack in the wall.  To ensure that the walls were clean behind the cabinet, she ran the vacuum hose over the crack and heard something get slurped into the vacuum.  When she went to empty the bag later, she noticed three one hundred dollar bills.  After surveying everything that had happened that day, she realized that the money came from a hole in the wall.  As it turns out, in place of insulation, this old mansion is insulated with money.   And everyday since she had originally discovered this, she’s been going through the building finding every crack there was, and secretly pocketing her findings.

“Now that I knew her secret, Rita became nervous and began offering me things to ensure that I didn’t tell the owners of her findings.   She offered up everything from the money in the vacuum bag to her first born child.  Just when I didn’t think that the situation could have gotten any stranger, she said the craziest thing...

Part V - Story 1

Part V has been added to the Google Document.  You can click to read the entire story or scroll down to read this week's submission.

There was one submission this week - by Maria Fisher.

~*~

PART V
-by Maria Fisher


...a large house in old Hollywood. Most of those places have been done
and redone, with each new big shot tearing out the old stuff to put in
new old stuff. But this one still had the golden-age feel. It was the
little touches--the windows and electrical outlets. You could tell, if
it ever got cold in SoCal, it would have been a drafty place.

“A little spitfire maid named Rita met me at the servant's entrance.
She had the look and attitude of a terrier, and you could tell that
she ran the rest of the staff by sheer will. But today she was
spooked, showing too much white around her eyes.

"So I introduce myself, say, 'You must be Rita,' and ask what's the
trouble. She says, 'It's Peepsie.'

"Now, she's got a pretty thick Spanish accent, and she's nervous, so
she's talking too fast. I had to have her repeat herself a couple
times. 'It's Peepsie. It's Peepsie.'

"So I say, 'Your name's Peepsie?' She loses patience and starts
jabbering in Spanish, but the she stops and talks to me really slowly.

"'No, I'm Rita. You come this way.'

"She pulls me into the house through the kitchen and a bunch of these
really narrow halls, these servant halls that are really dark and the
wood floor creeks. When she stops me at the end of the hall, it's in
front of this tiny old door.

"You could tell the door had been there forever because the doorknob
had all these ridges on it, so you could see all the colors it had
been painted over the years. So I grab the handle, but before I open
it, I turn to Rita.

"’Peepsie is in there,’ she tells me. I say to her. ‘Look, Rita, what
exactly is Peepsie?’

“She struggles for a minute, then says, ‘He's a little...uh... little bird.’

“I look at the door again and say, ‘A little bird. And it's trapped in here?’

"’Yes,’ she says, ‘Peepsie. He needs to go back to his cage.’

“So I said, ‘You need me to catch your canary?’

"’Oh, no,’ she says.

"So now I don't know what to think. I open the door, and it's a small
library with a large window seat and a bird cage. You can see Rita's
been cleaning the cage, because it's open and there's a couple
newspapers and a vacuum right there.

"So I slip into the room, careful not to open the door too wide in
case the bird flies past me, but I don't see him. I look at all the
shelves and think, ‘This bird could be anywhere.’ I'm sort of creeping
into the room, trying to find the bird, when Rita opens the door wide
behind me and stares.

"’Careful woman,’ I say, then look around for the bird, but I don't
see it. Now Rita's just standing in the door, and I see where she's
looking. I think she's looking at the cage."

"Then I hear the vacuum chirp."

The women all start laughing. "Oh no!" Shannon said.

Nomad, also laughing, confirmed. "Yep, that poor woman was using the
hose attachment to vacuum up the bottom of the cage, then she must
have gotten distracted, waved the hose around, and sucked up poor
Peepsie."

"So I got the vacuum all broken down and open the bag, and there's
this dusty little canary hopping around. The poor thing didn't even
try to fly away. I just scooped him up and put him on his perch."

"Was he ok?" Pamela asked, once they stopped laughing.

"Seemed to be," Nomad said. "But you better believe that bird got the
ride of his life."

They all laughed again.

"But the really odd thing about that, was what else I found in the vacuum."

Part IV has been posted...

There wasn't any submissions during the last opening, so I took in the spirit of continuing the story, I have added my own version of a continuation.  Click here to read the story thus far.

Anyone can make a submission to Part V of our story, including previous contributors.  Remember: if there are multiple submissions, I will post 3 to the site and allow the readers to comment to pick their favorite.

Deadline for submissions for Part V is: Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 11:59 PM, EST.  
Visit this post for more information on submitting content.

The Ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure...

Years ago, back in high school, three of four of my friends and I decided to write a story. We took turns starting the story out, individually filling a notebook page or two with content and would pass the notebook on to the next person. I have long forgotten the full stories that were created, but remember the fun we had doing so, and seeing how the story would evolve from one person to the next. Much like the “telephone” game that we all played as children, the original author's story was completely changed from their original idea.

Today, I have spent many hours enjoying the works of Wil Wheaton and Neil Gaiman, and feel the desire to explore the creative workings in my mind. So, I've decided to start this blog, following the same concept that my friends and I followed back in high school, with a bit of a twist.

I will begin a story, leaving the plot completely open to you, the reader. You then can submit your version of the next phase of the story by clicking here. Your entry can be any length, up to 1000 words, and must include the name you want to have posted as your pen name. Once we reach the submission deadline, I will then read through the entries, choosing the one that I like the best and post it to the blog, noting the author, for all to read. Once this step has occurred, I will then reopen the submission process and we'll proceed until the story is complete.

All entries and submissions are subject to the Creative Commons license.

This will be a work in progress and together we may find ways of improving this process as we go along, and I'm always open to your suggestions and constructive criticism. Just know that I was not an English major and may misuse grammar and punctuation from time to time. Please forgive me for this in advance....

Here we go....


TITLE: To Be Determined...
Contributors: @Sunnytana, others to be determined.

Graduation is over. College is officially complete, and before accepting their fates of becoming responsible adults, Shannon McAndrews, Pamela Jones, and Felicia Timon decided to spend one last month touring the United States. Being that all three women were from different areas across the country, this was a plan they had had since they met during freshman year. The time is here and the girls can hardly contain their excitement.

The apartment they'd shared for the last 3 years was now completely empty, and Felicia had taken the last load of boxes to the post office earlier today. The girls walked into their once crowded living room and laughed as they remembered the countless parties they'd had and the movie nights that turned into gossip sessions. Though they should be sad that they were leaving, they were each anticipating the journey ahead and squealed with excitement. Pamela pulled her long, wavy chestnut brown hair into a ponytail and said “Ok girls.... let's go!”

The three women piled into Shannon's dark green 1978 Mustang Convertible and started on their voyage... A voyage they had only dreamed about until now... A voyage they never could have imagined would end the way that it did.