It's Friday afternoon for me and I don't feel the least like posting anything serious, so let's play a game and write ourselves a story at the same time. I'm going to start off with the first line and I want y'all to add a new line or two each time you comment, leaving an unfinished line for the next person to pick up.
Repeat comments welcome but to make it more unpredictable, there has to be at least one comment after each one of yours before you can comment again. Make sense?
I'm going to leave this up all weekend and see what we come up with. If it works, we could start our own ongoing serial!
And the tale begins: Magnolia Peach Blossom was astonished by the sight of a circus clown gagged and hogtied in her bed. Her first thought was...[to be continued!]
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to search for the hidden camera and perhaps try to catch a glimpse of the Punk'd film crew. After all, since Magnoia had rocketed to fame with her subtle but stirring turn as deaf prostitute in this summer's blockbuster, TEARS OF A CLOWN, it figured Ashton Kutchner woudl try something like this...
to take her down a notch. Finding no cameras or crew, Magnolia cautiously approached the clown to find a note pinned to his rapidly heaving chest. It read: "...
"You can have him. Sincerely, Demi." Magnolia did another cursory sweep for cameras, before she ripped the duct tape from the clown's mouth. "Ashton? Is that you?"
One look at the blue lips of the clown and Magnolia knew it wasn't Ashton.
"Help. Me." The clown sputtered and coughed. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
She backed off, shaking. This was no prank. Was it?
Then she saw
slash marks on his neck and wrists. If they had gone any deeper, the clown would have been just a hunk of meat on her bed.
"Who are you?" she asked, reaching for...
her cell phone. She had to call 911 and get help for the clown, but she feared he'd be dead before help arrived.
"Who's Demi?" she asked as she opened the phone.
"Demi is . . . " he began, then
began to cough. "short for Demetrius. My bookie. Do you have any vodka?"
Magnolia paused, her manicured nail poised over the 1 key. She oculd see it now. Well, officer, after I discovered the bloody clown tied to my bed, I thought I'm mix him up a nice gimlet. You know, to dull the pain.
She eyed the man and finished dialing. "How about some water?"
Her cell phone rang before she could call 911.
"Hello?"
"Did you get my present?" asked a muffled voice. "I know how you've always loved clowns.
A shudder iced its way up her spine.
"Who is this?" she demanded.
"It's doesn't matter," replied the muffled voice. "I wanted you to see the scene before you became a part of it."
Magnolia rushed to the window and whisked open the curtains. Under the light stood a figure in a coat right out of a Chandler novel.
A cell phone was in the stranger's hand. Click.
The clown gasped behind Magnolia, making her jump. She glanced at him; his chest wasn't moving anymore.
Heart pounding, she looked back out the window and
saw that the first man had been joined by a smaller man. A much smaller man. She gasped. Was that...
the guy from Fantasy Island who was always saying "da plane, da plane"?
No, that guy was dead. At least, Magnolia thought she'd read that in one of the tabloids last year. Not that she read tabloids all the time, only when she was waiting in line at the grocery . . . she shook her head. She must be losing her mind.
But the guy was a midget, a fat midget in a three-piece suit, and if she didn't
do something, surely someone else was going to the Big Top in the sky.
Wait. The bloodied clown... the dwarf ouside the window... Magnolia couldn't place them as extras in TEARS OF A CLOWN. They had to be the real deal.
She steadied herself against the window pane, the painful memories of her humble beginnings...
as the only daughter of the Bearded Lady and the Lion Tamer suddenly blindingly fresh in her mind. She'd spent years burying her past, becoming Magnolia Peach Blossom, an orphan who'd lost her memory in a train accident. But now someone was telling her...
that those carefully concealed roots could no longer be denied. Trying to collect herself, Magnolia glanced out the window to an empty sidewalk. She gasped and reeled to find herself staring face to face with the little man and an assortment of other strangers, each fingering a long, sparkly baton under shiny brass knuckles.
As their stares burned holes through her soul, the group parted for a disturbingly familiar figure that emerged from the shadows like a shark from the shallows. It was the bearded lady...
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