I’m old. That’s what happens when you get old. You poke around in the past, seeing what’s in the crannies. Like a smoker digging in a couch, looking for a buck to buy a pack of smokes. Smokes are still a buck, aren’t they? Well they were in my day, by gum! Kids today, with their new fangled $12 packs of smokes, and their whoozeewhatsit ‘peapods’… Get off my lawn!
The latest poking about took me to my old forum. I had big plans for the forum way back in 2004. My site had some regular followers who were also bloggers and creative types, so I started the forum so we could play a game together. A storytelling game called… wait for it… “The Storytelling Game!”
That’s me being creative.
The point of the game is that someone would post a list of words, as many as they wanted, but usually 8-10, and then everyone who wanted to play would have three days or so to write a story that incorporated all of the words on the list. Then after the time elapsed, everyone could vote on their two favorites whether they wrote a story or not. Points would be totaled and the winner of that round would pick the words for the next round.
It was a lot of fun. It lasted through 22 rounds, but toward the end participation was sparse. Near the beginning I became sidetracked by my new romance, in addition to the other daily things that ate my time like a cannibal loose in a nursery. If my time in that scenario were represented by plump, tasty babies and there weren’t any cops on hand to save some of my baby time.
What drove me down that long abandoned road of creativity is a rekindled desire to write the zombie story that is buried somewhere within me. I also remembered a short series of stories that I began in the game, and considered digging them up and seeing if there was anything worthwhile to them. Anything I could use. I looked all over my computer to see if I had them stashed somewhere, but I couldn’t find them, so I decided to go back to the source, if it still existed.
It does, but it hasn’t been touched by anyone since 2005. I could almost see dust and hear an echo when clicking around. Made me kind of sad.
I found the story. When I say “a short series” it turns out it’s shorter than I remembered. The first part came up in round 3 and the second in round 4, and then like many things it was abandoned.
If you are interested in reading both parts, it’s after the jump, unmodified in all its glory. Well, maybe not “glory” exactly. I still like it though…
