DD Writer’s Jam Fest: Round Robin 12_01

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

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Fiction is the truth inside the lie. ~ Stephen King

Okay here we go!

Round Robin… Pretty simple. Spontaneous. We’ll figure it out as we go. I think I’ll go ahead with One A Day, they will be ongoing, open ended. No end time imposed.  But, if you missed it or came in too late, there’s a new one on the way the next day. I’ll give them a theme or kick-off sentence or even a pic maybe of some kind.

PLEASE drop me an email if you have an opening line or kick off to suggest!  ladylibertine22 AT yahoo DOT com

Just pick up where the previous person left off. You can certainly write MORE than one sentence, but don’t get too carried away. It work best if you set the next person up for… something. No pressure. heh.

We’ll just see where it goes.

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First line… with 2PM UPDATE: and we’re off!!:

6:30PM UPDATE: oooh, this is getting exciting!

9PM note: I gotta check out til morning.

MOnring arrives, 630AM Update: LOL. Okay ready for a new one? Shall I impose some Guidelines next Round? This was fun. You can keep it going if you want.

It would be tough going with such little light, but Adam knew, if he was persistent, he would eventually find out who had launched him on this insane quest with no more clue than the damned key he had used to open the gates to this strange place.

Adam didn’t want to walk through those gates, fear held him back.

He glanced back at his friends.  He could see in their eyes that they were thinking what he was thinking. . .

By rights we shouldn’t even be here.  But we are.  It’s like in the great stories.  The ones that really mattered.  Full of darkness and danger, they were.  And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.  Because how could the end be happy?  How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.  Even darkness must pass.  A new day will come.  And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories Adam remembered now.  Because they meant something.  He understood now. People in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, but they didn’t.  They kept going.  Because they were holding on to something.

So Adam kept going, and his friends followed him through those gates.  They kept going because there’s some good in this world.  And it’s worth fighting for.

As they all walked through the gate, suddenly they heard a loud growling sound in the darkness.

Adam found himself half choked by Penelope’s panicked grip around his neck.

“I don’t like this at all!” she whispered furiously in his ear.

But the west coast was what we all missed, longed for and wanted.  Somehow the fun and purity would make our return possible.  It was just so difficult, though, with Penelope glued to my ear from fear.  

Adam took the magic herbs and elixers, knowing success was within reach.

But dawn was still so far away, and Adam thought about his girl, and how far this long, dusty road had brought our two protagonists.  Adam could look back to just a month ago: both of us so young and so unworldly, not knowing what kind of path would await.

“Not a solitary star tonight,” said Adam with a painful grin, familiar words from a popular song on his lips:

No moon to light us

No torch to burn:

But night will part us,

And dawn r…

That last word stuck uncomfortably in his throat: again a loud, ugly growl that Adam couldn’t pinpoint.  Chancing a timid cry -“Who is it?” – Adam caught a distant rustling sound (“Wait… did you catch that?” “No, I didn’t, what was it?” “Shh… I’ll go find out”), but to no avail.  Soon, nothing but a dumb, still night all around.

“I’m afraid, Adam.”

Now Adam was shaking from top to bottom, and uncomfortably (but softly) singing again, No moon to light us…  

And thinking, “Good thing I brought magic.”

Adam was dumbstruck, thinking he had shackled himself with plastic handcuffs, and couldn’t think of a way to get out of them.

“Penelope!” he squeaked out a whisper, “The key! Retrieve the gate key! It’s in my boot. The same key that opened the gate for us will surely unlock these damn plastic handcuffs.”  

Penelope gave him a puzzled look and proceeded to dig under the thick cuff of his leather boot searching for the key. She felt something velvety and pulled it out.  Not a key. A pouch. A deep purple velvet brocade pouch. Fancy. And it was heavy. But no key.

“What plastic handcuffs?” the ones in your drug addled brain she mumbles as she turns away.

digging out her penlight from her pocket she puts it in her mouth & squats opening the aubergine bag. peering in she shines the light around at the vast contents:

asprin, paperclips, pencil, safetypins in three sizes, a small pair of plyers, a ball of twine, a box of matches, a bag of trail mix & a butterfinger, a box cutter, a small red bag, two pieces of wood a black sharpie, a mirror,……

but, so far, no key……

The girl looks over her shoulder, checking on everyones whereabouts. Adam sat on the ground shaking uncontrollably, a vine loosely wrapped around his wrists.

Then it occurs to her… these items are the key!  She’d seen this very thing once on an episode of McGyver.  She popped the butterfinger in her mouth as she worked frantically with the pliers, paperclips and safety pins to form a makeshift framework.  Then, using the box cutter, she carved out the two pieces of wood until she was satisfied with their shapes.  She scraped off the sulphur from all the matchsticks into the small red bag, stripped the wood off of the pencil and collected the graphite.

Adam watched in awe as she took apart the sharpie and combined the graphite with the black ink, making some arcane concoction which, when combined with the plastic from the sharpie was then melted by her lighter into a solid hollow pellet.  She filled the pellet with the sulphur.  Then she used the twine to form the paperclip framework and carved wood into a projectile weapon that sat sturdily upon the ground, aimed at the lock on the door.

“How will you fire it?”  Adam asked.

“Wait for the clouds to break and the sun to come up, then concentrate the suns light using this mirror.”  She replied.

And the aspirin?  Adam wondered.

I don’t think Steven Spielberg is ever going to buy the movie rights to this unless there are some close encounters with aliens pretty soon, followed up by Penelope traveling back in time to land on the beaches of Normandy.

Far more sex than there has been so far wouldn’t hurt either, in my opinion.  

thought Russ, as he watched Penelope’s shirt strain under pressure.

He shifts uncomfortably.

A cat strolls nonchalantly out of the woods…

Penelope gave him a come hither look.  And then they started to (deleted by Soapblox) but there was a problem with (deleted by Soapblox) because Penelope was intent upon (deleted by Soapblox) and that was a form of (deleted by Soapblox) that had never been tried even by professionals with years of experience.

The cat scampered back into the woods, leaving eight of its nine lives behind.

“Back away…”  

“I need only the boy to speak to.”

Penelope looked around for who had said the words, but both their friends and Adam seemed not to hear it.

The cat eyes glowing in the bushes blinked at her. She put a hand on Adam’s shoulder and said, “Wait,” and moved back up the path toward the group.

The leopard strolled toward Adam tangled in his vines, rolled, and then there was a woman.

. . .