It's that time again! Today we're going to play a game called "Round Robin." It's more fun than mutineering! (So says the ad campaign, anyway.)
Here's how it goes. It's easy, trust me. I'll start telling a story. Then I'll stop. Then each reader will head to the comments section and add the next piece to the story. When you add to the story, try to stop just before something exciting happens--it will give the next person a bit of a running start.
Since we've never done anything like this before, we'll keep it simple. The only rule is that what you add to the story has to make some kind of sense based on what has come before. Think "teamwork," not "postmodern non-objectivism."
Here goes:
"It was late at night on a Tuesday. Winchell looked at his watch and saw that it was past time for him to head home. As he locked his office, he heard a noise coming from the darkness behind him. He turned around..."
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. . . reaching to his coat pocket to find it empty as it always was - a habit he could never explain. He saw a small. . .
child, sniffling and wiping her runny nose on her coat sleeve. Oh how he was tortured by the sound of sniffling! It had always grated his ears. He was about to ....
head out into the drizzle that defined Chicago in March. "Shit," he thought, annoyed at being delayed,...
...he turned to the little girl and said, rather stiffly, "Why aren't you sleeping? What are you doing out of your box?" She just sniffled again, the sound like that of a boot being pulled from the mud. Winchell pressed his lips tight together with disdain. "Well, get on then! I've no time for this," he said, as he pointed towards the corner from which she had just crawled.
"But I got a splinter," she mewled, proffering him a grubby finger.
He grabbed the girl by the wrist,jerking her off her feet in the process. "Jesus," he thought, pulling her finger up close to his glasses in the dim light for inspection,
"What the hell...
. . .is that?"
He studied the finger in amazement as the little girl resisted. This was no splinter. "Splinters don't glow," he thought.
Suddenly, the girl began to. . .
...hop from one foot to the other, screaming. In a sudden flash, she ignighted! Nary was left but a pile of ash, and of course the glowing oddity. Winchell grabbed a handbroom and dustpan from the closet in the corner and...
. . .watched the glowing object from the corner of his eye. He thought he could see it gain suddenly in size, but he hesitated to turn his head and confirm his fear. As the glow dimmed a rumble took over, and the stench of singed hair left no doubt.
Winchell had spent years going over what he would do if they returned to claim him. Now, his hesitation would cost him those years.
"Were's my goddamn . . .
...and the thought withered from his mind.
They weren't coming for him. No. They had come for her. It was her all along. Why hadn't he seen it. He had been a fool.
Frantic now, he wondered how long he had been standing holding the broom and dustpan, and staring at the wall. Winchell often had these "lapses" in time where he found himself coming out of some sort of trance like stupor not knowing hours had passed.
As he suspected, the tracking rod was gone when he turned to confirm. The ashes remained.
He had lost the key. He had had it all along. She was not the danger, she had been the answer. Now doom was certain. He would have to confess his failing to the council. They would surely discipline him.
He turned to walk down the steps when a stray car horn sounded...
...no, that was no stray. It was the same damn alarm that went off and then on, on, interminably, until the moronic owner of the huge Armada flipped a synapse and turned it off.
That goddamn Armada. Who the hell tried to park an Armada on this street? Winchell had seen her, though. She'd rented one of the new pricey apartments that was part of the downtown "revitalization" that would soon price Winchell out of his humble digs.
And she was the only person he'd ever seen in the eight passenger Armada, which was even now howling in the night like a dying hippopotamus.
Winchell's hand sought the rusted crowbar he kept for...personal safety. What the hell. They were coming for him anyway...
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