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Shall We Play A Game?

Little secret. I love writing.

I’m not talking about the act of writing. That often makes me want to beat my head against the wall.

But I love reading what other people write and I dig spontaneous creativity. I am intrigued by people and the myriad ways in which their minds work.

So, an invitation and a request.

Write for me today? ::grin::

As for what about…let’s play the game I ask people to play with me when I need to write but have no starting point.

Starting point is a word, a phrase or an image.

I’m supplying the 3 below. You can use one or any combination of the three if you like. Whatever works.

Word: Pulse
Phrase: Because I said so?
Image: Dark clouds in a summer night sky.

You write whatever using that starting point and see what comes.

Wanna play?

Few comments: Feel free to post anonymously or under your name and I’m not gonna worry too much about keeping it G-rated. We are, after all adults. Oh and, tell a friend if you like.

14 Comments

  1. dagamant: I’d love to read that! You should post it somewhere like Google Docs or your own blog (Heck I’ll host it for you if you need or my blog or my ladyfreind’s website.

    Hmmm, I’ll have to think up something for this event, most of my writing as of late has been…not fit for public consumption.

  2. well, i accepted your challenge but when I tried to post what i wrote, wordpress sais it can be a maximum of 4096 charicters. i checked my count and it was over 11000 so if you want a 3 page story about survival in a post zombie united states that has very little action but high tension, let me know. its waiting and it may be more then 3 pages by then to.

  3. She stood in the crowd, swaying in time to the rhytm of the drum that was creating a new pulse, a new beat for her blood to surge through her veins.

  4. Iko Iko

    We laid there, on the blanket, as the last rays of the setting sun diminished behind the world. The breeze was soft, cooling winds that were relief from the hot summer day. The stars twinkled in the sky. Some winked out when a passing cloud blocked our view.

    I could hear him breathing next to me. He stirred and I felt his hand touching mine. I felt his pulse, his warmth. It comforted me. That is my last memory of peace.

    The moon was high in the sky. Suddenly, it lit up, impossibly bright. The stars framing it disappeared in its glow.

    “Holy shit!” He exclaimed. We both sat up, staring at the moon, the moon that was no longer a cool night orb. It was white hot, glaring. A terrible eye.

    We looked at each other. “Oh, inconstant moon.” I said.

    “We’d better get ready.”

    I nodded. My hand in his, we got up to face our future.

  5. The pulse rifle jumped in her hands, roaring with thunder like dark clouds in a summer night sky. Her partner’s – make that former partner’s – torso smoldered from the off-center impact. The corners of his eyes glistened as he looked down at the carbonized tunnel through his body. Lifting his hand in an abortive farewell, he crumpled.

    Lowering the weapon, she held her arm across her face to block out the all-wrong odors of ozone and scorched nylon.

  6. Lou Lou

    his work for the Agency was routine. he felt blah, underutilized. so he spent afternoons on Twitter. he had over 1000 followers. one night, he dreamt he had been directed to incite revolution in a Middle Eastern country, using “Web 2.0” (his boss wanted to be trendy, but she had no idea what “Web 2.0” meant). why he asked? “because I said so” she replied (she so reminded him of his mother). so he tweated to his agents. the tweat-up was in the streets. it got ugly: rubber bullets, fire hoses, tear gas. broken bodies lying under a gathering dark clouds of gas set off against the summer night sky, moving the afternoon into twilight. he woke up, his pulse racing and went to work…then he found out it wasn’t a dream

  7. Dark clouds in a summer night sky, she lay back on the dry grass studying them.
    In the silence that came before a storm, she could almost hear her own pulse in her ears.
    With a deep sigh, she slowly stood.
    She glanced back up at the clouds as if in apology.
    “I have to go in now, because I said so.” Her voice broke as a drop caressed her face.
    Was it a tear?
    Or had the rain come at last?

  8. While sitting in the ambulance on a long night shift the radio screamed to life. The harsh tones of the dispatcher called out “car 222 I have a call for you. Head over to 1313 Mockingbird Lane for the unknown”. Well it sure beat sitting around staring at the park statue listening to coast to coast so off we went. When we arrived it seemed a bit too quiet and we proceeded slowly.

    Did someone call an Ambulance? Hello is anyone here? Suddenly it was all too apparent why we were there and the unknown became known. Woah, you have to come see this I shouted to my partner Steven. He came over and immediately blurted out WTF do you think he has a pulse? I said “I doubt it but we should go check”. “Do we have to” he asked quietly. “Yes and before you ask any additional questions it’s because I said so”. Getting into CSI mode I began to walk through the likely sequence of events that brought us to another episode of the Darwin Awards.

    “It appears that we have another victim of dark clouds in a summer night sky”. “You see when playing a rousing game of catch the lawn dart you are highly dependent on the moonlight outlining the shape jart as it flys through the air. Unfortunately when dark clouds roll in unexpectedly they can block out the moonlight and that brings us to the end of a series of rather unfortunate events”. “Ugg so the lawn dart hit him in the head” asked Steven. “What? No that would be disgusting and who would want to see that? What happened was he turned his head to avoid being struck by the flying jart obscured by the dark clouds in a summer sky causing him to fall. Is his haste to get up he grabbed the hose nozzle shooting it straight towards the house next door. It appears the window was open, thus the stream went inside soaking Mr. Snuggles the cat. His scream of displeasure was so loud it startled the porcupine sleeping in the tree who fell out onto the pile of balloons left over from the earlier party. The ensuing racket caused 2 witnesses to wet their pants thus invoking an intractable case of hysterical laughing which killed our poor victim”. Steven looked very skeptical and said “you got all that from a guy laying on his lawn”? I said “no they posted it to youtube and then twittered it so I was able to watch it from my iPhone 3GS”.

    Alas nothing is safe from the Twitteratti.

  9. I held the bat firmly in my palms, my veins pulsing through to the tips of my fingers and white-knuckled grip.

    Frank appeared ready to pitch, but stood on the mound like a samurai, poised and ready to strike. We’d met a few days earlier, Frank’s metallic body had obviously caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist the wanton desire to investigate his circuitry. Call me sick, but I enjoy wondering how I can make him do my bidding.

    Like any other suggestion, all I had to do was program him to respond affirmatively to, “because I said so,” and I could have the world in my palm.

    Today, however, was only the test.

    He clutched the Knudson chocolate milk carton in hunk o’ lead hands, and when he finally flung the pint at me, my cork bat swung and smashed it open. Chocolate milk droplets flew through the air like rain from so many dark clouds in summer.

    “Would you kindly get a towel?”

    Frank’s indignant motionless antagonized me…

    “Because I said so?” and he promptly snapped into action. Today milk chocolate baseball, tomorrow, peeing on a restrained John Turturro. Yes, my evil plan is approaching it’s inevitable finality.

  10. It had been a long and exhausting day for Harold Buechweimer. Every day was exhausting.

    Waking up before the sun rises to pull his 5’7″ 350 pound body out of bed and then to dress it. Sometimes, he would just sleep in the next days office attire.

    Sitting at his desk all day is exhausting. It must be. Harold spends two thirds of his work day sleeping while YouTube videos of stock-car drag races play over and over again on his computer screen.

    It’s exhausting for him to get up, and for him to walk the hall to get lunch is nearly unbearable. His heart rate drops so low when he stands that his next trip away from the desk could be fatal.

    Often, he is assigned menial tasks by his boss that require him to actually move around the office, usually a short walking trip. Whenever Harold asks why a secretary couldn’t do it, and why Harold has to, the boss always responds, “Because I said so.”

    But when he gets into his ginormously large truck of ultimate giganticness, he is calmed by his little piece of absolute fuel inneptitude. With his hula girl on the dashboard, he can belt vibrant, black clouds into the summer sky, and get his heart’s pulse up enough to get his only bit of excersise for the day.

    The best part of his drive is always immediately after he cranks up the 50,000 decibel engine and rolls the driver-side window down because that’s when his boss, the owner of the ’98 Jetta parked next to him, looks up at him, ears covered, mouthing in a sort of hellishly painful scream “WHY?!!!”

    “Because I said so.”

    And for a mere $5.99, you too can share in Harold’s small victory over the man by purchasing your very own customizable hula dash-board ornament creation. Order it direct from [insert co. here]… because I said so.

  11. Pulse, an odd word, pulse. One of those words pulde that sounds like what it is, pulse. Remember back to middle school, pulse, who was the teacher, pulse, Ontomontapea..pulse yeah that was the word pulse funny what you think of when you die

  12. “Because I said so”?

    That was her answer? Really?

    An image of Bruce Banner changing into the Hulk popped into my head as I felt my pulse in my temples.

    I paused, took a breath, and tried to remain calm.

    “Ma’am,” I said, “I really can’t do anything to make the movie magically appear on DVD.”

    “But I saw the preview!” she said for the fourth time.

    “Right,” I said. “At the theater. The phrase ‘coming soon’ came up at some point.”

    She flung her massive purse over her shoulder, nearly taking out the candy display behind her, and pointed a tobacco-stained finger in my face.

    “You,” she said as if disciplining a puppy, “need to work on your customer service.”

    And with that, she stormed out.

    I swear to God; if one more white trash fuckwit asks to rent a movie that hasn’t even come out in theaters yet, I’m going to slash my wrists with a broken DVD.

  13. Since you asked so nicely, here’s something short.

    He could feel her pulse quicken as he nuzzled her neck. His lips brushed her skin as he whispered, “Because I said so, that’s why.” She grabbed his head and pulled him away, her eyes boring into his.
    “No way. ‘Becaause I said so’ does not make Picard a better captain than Kirk.” The look he gave her was like melting ice and withering crops.
    He rebuttoned his shirt and grabbed his shoes from the carpet. “Call me when you’re ready to grow up,” he shot back, the door slamming behind him.
    She sighed. Patrick Stewart would not be checked off her list today, it seemed.

  14. Hmm, wow, had to do this on another day I’m trying to figure out where to start myself :P.

    Good starting points though, vewy intewesting…

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