The writing group I belonged to many years ago (the one that got me back into writing after a long hiatus) had the occasional challenge involving creating a story one sentence or paragraph at a time, with everyone allowed to join in and take the story wherever they wanted it to go (almost).
I've saved a few examples of what came out of such challenges; most of them had twists that would leave writers of thrillers suitably gobsmacked...
This one has no title. Any suggestions?
"I don't want to kill you, James, you have been a true friend all my life, but I will not be denied what is rightfully mine."
James bit back the first response that came to mind and replied in what he hoped were suitably urbane tones, "Then perhaps you could explain what you're claiming, Peter, as I'm no mind reader."
"Playing the fool insults us both. Hand it to me before I become truly enraged!" Peter spat in reply as his mood was taking a clear turn for the worse.
At least, that's the way the exchange would have gone, had the participants not both been goats. But I could see it in their eyes after Peter sheepishly looked in his brother's direction standing between the favoured nanny and his now rival.
"You have been the leader for too long and it is time I challenged you for the position," bleated James gruffly.
Emily, who had two legs and not four, sat on the gate watching as this altercation that was taking place in the front paddock, a little sad as she had hand raised these two goats from birth when abandoned by their mother. She pushed forward on her front legs, the awkward trolley that the vet had fashioned to support her withered haunches tinkled as the spokes cycled past the edges of the gate she'd been resting her grey hide against, distracting her two adopted billies from their incipient quarrel.
"Tell you what, Peter," mocked James, "the loser gets to hang out with Mum."
Kirk, the Concierge, shook his head at the display in the lobby of 'his' hotel – it was bad enough that the owner had been so desperate for cash that he'd let these 'people' with their strange costumes hold their convention here, but now these two in the matching costumes were acting out their animal alter-egos in his lobby in front of the other guests.
With a furtive glance around to make sure that he wasn't being observed, he pressed the button under the counter.
Downstairs in the cold depths of the basement, Big Sven was awakened from his slumbers by the annoying little buzzer on the wall, and moved to obey. He pressed the intercom button and said, "There'd better be a good reason for me to open the Gate this time!"
"While at first glance it might appear to be about goat skin used to make bagpipes and the annoying sound of a buzzer resembling a sour note from a bagpipe (although there is a school of thought which claims that ALL bagpipe notes are sour, I don't agree with that), it is actually a translation from the review in the Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið of the very little-known Zen musical collaboration between Captain Beefheart and Philip Glass entitled "The sound of one hand stitching", which, during the course of the first performance in Reykjavik an inferior brand of goat thread was used, resulting in a noticeably sour note being obtained, as the stitches leaking was actually a mistake in translation and should have read ‘the stitches failed’".
Sven glared at the intercom. "If I wanted a lecture in post-modernism I'd go to Madam Mim's!"
Then, realising that the words were inside his skull, Sven shook his shaggy head to stop the stream of bag-pipe trivia that had erupted into his consciousness and started towards the Gate, his vast bulk scraping against the rough hewn stone walls of the tunnel leading down from the basement.
"Sven," the voice called, proving that cold, alcohol, and one sentence stories can make the mind function at levels hitherto unknown to contemporary science, but correctly identified by the medicos on Star Trek, and exemplified by Sgt Detritus of the Ankh-Morpork Guard.
"Oh dear God!" he cried, "the Morporkian Mercenaries are invading my mind again, how can I get rid of them?"
"Sven," the voice called again, and this time he realised it wasn't just inside his cold and hung-over skull, now he could hear the same words echoing out from the far end of the tunnel…
Meanwhile, high on a Himalayan cliff-face, our intrepid hero clung to a tuft of grass and wondered, "How did it ever come to this?"
After a moment's thought, he came to the obvious conclusion that accepting a double-or-quits dare at Mary-Ann Ravenswood-Jones' shebeen was the answer.
He closed his eyes and could almost see the New York office as it was two weeks ago, and his first meeting with those bloody goats…
