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#54909 02/02/02 07:16 PM
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A little over a year ago we attempted to write a story to which everyone contributes, post by post, but eventually the characters were talking in iambic pentameter and it got confusing. Shall we try again?

The rules, from the previous thread, are:

1. Story segments should be no more than 200 words in order to allow others to develop it. (and no double posting.)
2. No real-life comments, only Story related posts.
3. Each segment must end with a statement that will lead into the next. (ie. "and then he . . .")
4. Try to keep the thread in a straight line so we don't have parallel universes of the Story.

And now 5. Prose only.

Let's begin:

It was the nadir of winter and the world was covered in a warm blanket of pure, icy white. In a misty dell far from any civilization, past miles of dusty roads twisting endlessly over rolling hills of lustrous white, there lived, in a small, ramshackle cabin, an old, miserly Gypsy woman.

One evening, while reading her favorite book by the light of small, flickering fire, she heard the faintest of rappings on the door. Glancing around she placed the book on a side table, lowered her spectacles and rose slowly. Hobbling to the door she . . .


#54910 02/02/02 10:30 PM
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Hobbling to the door she was about to open it, when she thought "Hang on, hang on! That narrator's got it all wrong. Winter can't have a nadir, can't it? Bollocks to that!"

She turned away from the door in search of tsuwm's online copy of the OED to prove her point to the young whippersnapper who'd had the temerity to (a) begin a story which made her get out of her chair by the fire on a cold night, and (b) abused the language to the point where she couldn't even bring herself to follow the plot, slim though it was.

She failed to notice that the faint rapping she'd heard at the door was only faint because she'd turned Dr Bill's stolen hearing aid off. (Gyppos are notorious for stealing hearing aids in California.) In fact, the door was being splintered by repeated heavy blows of a half-axe (or ax, if you're American, of course, but then, of course, if you're a gypsy you ain't in the US, are you?).

Engrossed in booting up her late-model ENIAC word-processor, bought second-hand from a carboot salesman who'd just happened to have 35 large lorries with him that day, she also failed to notice the door finally give way, fall in pieces on the floor and generally give up the ghost.

She did, however, notice a faint draught. She didn't really feel all that cold, because being a smart old gypsy woman, she'd reinforced the warmth provided by the fireplace by dropping a tab of the finest Ecstasy that Transylvanian Draco Blood and Supermarket food coupons can buy. But the unexpected draught was enough to make her turn around in time to see ...



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#54911 02/03/02 08:55 PM
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But the unexpected draught was enough to make her turn around in time to see ...a barrel of cider with a axe floating towards the old model T Ford she was fixing. "NOOOOOOO!", she yelled, leaping at the barrel of cider. She knocked the barrel to the ground. She looked at it, and thought "oh, what else will I do with it." The Gypsy woman took a long drink of water from the barrel of cider. Then she said "Wait. this is supposed to be cider." This occupied her mind long enough so that she wouldn't notice...




#54912 02/03/02 10:25 PM
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This occupied her mind long enough so that she wouldn't notice...

that the Eniac had finished booting and [due to a bizarre and statistically unlikely conjunction of coincidences, including among other things a sunspot, a chemical explosion at a nearby nuclear plant, a moth fluttering in Brazil, and the missing hundredth monkey deciding he would rather pleasure himself yet again than wash vegetables with the others] had transcended bewildered indifference into Supreme Enlightenment. A fraction of a second earlier, 200 miles away, a hungover lineman came to the belated realization that he should have called in sick, as he stumbled into a charged line and caused what later became known as "the brown-out of aught six." The transcendant Word Processor was about to type a letter to Ann Landers when the power grid surged and failed, turning its brain into melted plastic, and its memories into scattered electrons. The old Gypsy wiped her hand to her shirt, while looking over her shoulder back at the once flickering and now dead light in house, when in the distance she spied ...




#54913 02/04/02 02:16 AM
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when in the distance she spied ...the same carboot salesman who had sold her the Maniac. Maniacally she ran down the road to meet him, and implored...








#54914 02/05/02 04:28 AM
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she ran down the road to meet him, and implored, "Pierre! Pierre! Wait!" The saleman, whose name was, in fact, Gringoire, turned, an expression of amazement mixed with dismay on his face. "Esmeralda!" They fell into each other's arms, sobbing and laughing at once.

Later that night, in each other's arms, they heard the bells of the nearby abbey church ringing for Lauds. Over the sound of the bells they heard faintly a voice calling,


#54915 02/05/02 09:50 AM
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they heard faintly a voice calling, "What a load of old rubbish! You can't have a bunch of geriatrics having it away on prime time telly! No, I don't care if it is your idea of a kind of retro "Big Brother", wrinklies should keep their clothes on on telly. At all times. At all costs." Pause, then "And that goes double for him! No, the pretzel doesn't constitute a suitable fig-leaf substitute."

Esmeralda, her foot still in pain from her little interlude with torturers in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", staggered to her foot, and shouted,



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#54916 02/05/02 11:09 AM
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Esmeralda, her foot still in pain from her little interlude with torturers in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", staggered to her foot, and shouted a round of drinks for everybody at the bar.

Only then did she wonder how come she'd being making a bit of the passionate and frantic in front of a whole pub full of full people. Putting it down as one of those little experiences you have when you are least expecting it (after all she was well into her eighties and she'd only just met the guy), she tightened her crocheted stole around her and headed into the night.

Esmeralda had only hopped the length of the street when she was astounded to see that...



#54917 02/05/02 11:12 AM
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Esmeralda, her foot still in pain from her little interlude with torturers in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", staggered to her foot, and shouted, 'Oi! CapK! No double-posting!!!!'

After counting to ten the pain in Esmeralda's foot ebbed and the swelling subsided. This time was long enough for the glint to return to her paramour's eyes and, on seeing this, she smiled askew, and hopped on her single leg towards the bed. Oblivious to all but her lover's glance she failed to notice the axel grease smudge on the bedroom floor left by her mechanical exploits from the previous night. It was too late! She skidded and pirouetted about the room like a ballerina on rollerskates, jetering neatly across footstools, cushions, boudoirs and hampers. One would award her marks for technical excellence if it were not for the tragic circumstances about to unfold. Looming fast before her was the open door and the cavernous stairwell drop to the cellar floor.

'Esmeralda!!', her lover cried as she lunged into the void and the darkness swallowed her up. He darted out of bed and over to the door just as a crashing sound came up from the unseen below. 'What is to become of me??' he began melodramatically. Rushing to his clothes he pulled a dagger by the hilt from out of its scabbard. With all the pomp of a Shakespearean actor he raised the blade to the light and mumbled a soliloquy and then with closed eyes he thrust the dagger towards his body....


#54918 02/05/02 09:47 PM
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he thrust the dagger towards his body, but since his eyes were closed he did not see Esmeralda's ghost rising up the stairs. But he did hear her say, "Is that a dagger I see before me, or art thou just glad to see me?" Since he wasn't glad to see her, he used the dagger to punctuate his sentence, laughing in a jugular vein.

Esmeralda's ghost watched her former lover...



TEd
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