Exquisite Corpse

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Fancy a game of Exquisite Corpse? said Tom, and I wondered how it would be done online, with the impossibility of concealing what had been written before. But then, no one really pays attention to what has been written before, do they? they're all waiting for their turn, or waiting for a better conversation, like that guy I met the other night, who kept scanning the crowd over my shoulder as we were speaking. And then he saw her. She came through the door with an entourage of three...

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 02:44 (twenty years ago)

She came through the door with an entourage of three. Every head turned, the crowd got quiet, etc. What the holy hell was she doing here, when she knew what might happen at any moment. Suddenly, the flash of a gat and a short sharp sound like a seal barking. One of the goons, the tallest and toughest looking, fell like a bowling pin. Then someone turned off the lights...

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 02:51 (twenty years ago)

The next thing I knew was exactly how chloroform smells. I woke up with a pain in my abdomen. One of the goons was taking a snooze with his feet on my chest. She was watching me sleep. Or watching me unconscious.

"You must have drunk alot last night?" she said.

― Joe Dunthorne (JoseMaria), Thursday, 9 March 2006 15:24 (twenty years ago)

"Fneh?" I said, grappling for some kind of sense as I reeled through the events of the previous... I wanted to say week? "Hurf," I tried again. I think I was asking for water. I'm sure she was ignoring me.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:24 (twenty years ago)

But then I wasn't so sure. Or so ignored. I plunged ahead blindly, trying to strike up a conversation. "Would you like to model for me?" I asked.

It wasn't creepy or anything.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 9 March 2006 17:34 (twenty years ago)

Amazingly, she answered.
"What took you so long to ask?"

I spat out a bloodied bicuspid. "That dress you're wearing is all wrong. Too ham-handed in its dangerousness. Do you still have that old unitard from the Junior Olympics?"

She winced as if she had a bad cramp. "I haven't worn that thing since...

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 9 March 2006 23:58 (twenty years ago)

"I haven't worn that thing since I went to The Future, last week. That's how everyone dresses, in The Future."

"Oh yes," I said, "I'd forgotten."

"Maybe I will model for you, sometime." she said, taking the crumpled fedora off my head, and placing it on hers, where it sat, dangerously, and, dangerously, she sat down. "But first things first. The boss wants to see you."

I asked the obvious question.

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 10 March 2006 02:17 (twenty years ago)

i asked the obvious question, "are you a woman"
"no" she replied
you must be kidding.
no that's my brother, I'm joking.

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 10 March 2006 03:09 (twenty years ago)

"Your brother is the boss?" I sputtered. "Give me back my fedora!" She handed it to me with what can only be described as insouciance. I was lying on the floor, looking up at her,and I noticed something that really blew my mind. Underneath that dress, she was wearing the unitard. And there was a bulge in the unitard that looked like a...

― aimurchie (aimurchie), Wednesday, 15 March 2006 16:34 (twenty years ago)

"See something you like?" she asked, with a smile like a truncheon.
"Um," I said, getting up, restoring the fedora to its rightful place and giving myself a second to regain composure. "Your brother. You were talking about your brother."
"Oh, my brother," she sighed, turning away. "My brother bores me." She turned back, halfway, regarding me like a grocery delivery left on the stoop too long. "And I think you do too."

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 15 March 2006 22:54 (twenty years ago)

A grocery delivery left on the stoop too long. "And I think you do too." I recalled the milk and cheese I had left on the porch, and the phone call I hadn't returned. Fedora askew, I tried to get up again. Did my brother call me? I listed cheeses in my head - Edam was all I could remember. Edam and nothing else.

― aimurchie (aimurchie), Thursday, 16 March 2006 00:42 (twenty years ago)

Edam and nothing else...but...what about the bleu? I mean the blue, dress she was wearing? I watched it swishing around her thighs as she walked out the door without looking back. Where had I seen it before? I knew she hadn't bought it. She never paid for anything. Then it came to me. That day last spring when I was serving papers on the French girl who was doing both the mayor and Jimmy the Grocer. I caught up to her in some art scene happening—all the phonies circling round some big blocks of ice dressed up in prom gowns. The French girl was in a corner with Jimmy the Grocer's lawyer, and I remember thinking, all this ice in here, she must be cold in that little blue dress...

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 16 March 2006 02:25 (twenty years ago)

... reading Ulysses. I would recommend a Dante translation in its stead,
but does anyone have anything to say about RPG textbooks?

There were 17 new answers.

― Earnest Ham-on-Whey, Saturday, 18 March 2006 00:00 (twenty years ago)

...but none of them were from the woman with the scar on her left cheek. Tired of waiting for word, he shut down the computer. The cat lolled on the loveseat, making small satisfied noises.

"The hell with it," he said to the darkening room. He got up from his chair, put on his brown leather jacket, grabbed his keys and wallet and headed out into the evening.

At least I can get a drink, he thought. Maybe then...

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 18 March 2006 04:18 (twenty years ago)

... the knot of anxiety that had been tightening in his chest like the jaws of a pit bull around a toddler's leg would finally let go. Maybe the waitress with the lazy eye would be working. Maybe the guy who always played Christopher Cross songs on the jukebox would have gone home to his balding wife. But when he rounded the corner he could see that something was wrong. Standing in a huddle outside the bar were the girl in the blue dress, the waitress and Buddy Holly, back from the dead, with not even a scratch on his glasses. Buddy Holly and the waitress were holding up a fourth person, who seemed to be unconscious. Unconscious or dead.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, 19 March 2006 19:11 (twenty years ago)

"What?" Buddy murmured, his glasses slightly askew, which gave his head an oddly tilted, flickery demeanor. "Asleep, my love? Not dead, my love!" The person, who wore a "Lost" bandana tied about her head was, if standing erect, probably six feet tall. Her hands, dangling to her knees, were huge. She wore a leather tool belt in which a hammer, screwdrivers of various sizes and, something else ... what was it? ... hung.

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Tuesday, 21 March 2006 05:51 (twenty years ago)

(say, howsabout a game o' nomic?)

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 26 March 2006 20:41 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

Buddy removed the woman's toolbelt. "Better safe than sorry. What's this?" He pulled out the mysterious object. "A slide rule! Crazy, man! Nobody uses these things anymore, right? I take it technology has advanced that much since I've been...gone."
We mulled it over. Buddy was right. There was only one explanation. Somehow, a member of the Lost Tribe of Calculus Sasquatch has blundered through a portal.
"I'm out of here," said the waitress. "Nobody told me there was gonna be math. Come on Louise." The two of them went back into the bar, leaving Buddy and me standing on the sidewalk with the giant furry time-traveler, who seemed to be waking up.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, 16 April 2006 13:33 (twenty years ago)

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