It’s been just over a year since we started our chain story, creatively titled Tune In Next Time. To celebrate part 100, we’re going to write this one together! We’ll also use a longer list of prompt phrases, just to make it fun.
Jen will start things off and she’ll hand the keyboard over to Kent as soon as she incorporates the first prompt phrase. He’ll hand it back after he includes a prompt snippet. And so on.
This is not actually how we write our novels, at least not so far. But if it works well today, who knows?
- punches a screwdriver into the paper
- agreed that she could “take other lovers”
- clutching his free hand
- not managed to untie the convoluted ribbon
- I can imitate any kind of a bird or beast
- kind of a lingerie feeling
- (who’s also probably looking at porn)
- you wave the red flag
- I just don’t have enough middle fingers
- pressed her thumb against her lips
Tune in next time part 100 Click Here for Earlier Installments
“How long do I need to keep this up?” I panted to Fleur, wiping my sore and sweaty hands on my embroidered trousers. John was even worse off than I was, confined as he was inside the furry and constrictive rabbit costume.
My wife waved vaguely at a large, colorful piñata hanging from one of the pillars. “You will stop when my father punches a screwdriver into the paper effigy of the hare. If candy spills out, it means that we succeeded and I am pregnant.”
As the pyroclastic yams accumulated in pots of water around the battleground, I wondered about my wife. We’d spent very little time together, going our separate ways immediately after the honeymoon when I agreed that she could “take other lovers,” mildly amused at her insistence that I make air quotes when I said it.
She never made air quotes when she said it about me, but she generally didn’t seem jealous. Would things change if she was indeed now pregnant? Would I be expected to stay in Contraria and play a part in the child’s life?
As I ran around the perimeter of the courtyard with a flaming tuber, I looked at Fleur, trying to imagine her with a baby. She stood beside her father who held a large screwdriver, Fleur was clutching his free hand which I saw now was wrapped up like a mummy’s in a bright blue ribbon.
The ribbon’s color seemed significant, but try as I might I couldn’t recall whether Contrarian custom associated blue with boys or girls. Did my warlord-in-law foster the stereotypical hopes for male issue, or was he hoping for the next generation to emulate his formidable daughter? John began another frenzied lap with his next yam, bunny mask askew and fluffy tail darkened by soot and dirt. How would all these exertions matter, if the piñata determined the outcome? Then I saw the second hare-shaped paper sculpture, discreetly poised for substitution. I poured on a burst of speed, realizing my victory relied on Fleur having not managed to untie the convoluted ribbon from her father’s hand.
Needing to gain an advantage over my cunicular foe, I let loose the shriek of the Himalayan Snowcock. John has had a deep-rooted terror of that bird ever since his childhood misadventures in the Tibetan monastery. John dropped his flaming yam and clapped his smoldering paws over his ears (the human ones, not those of his fanciful costume). Fleur looked at me agape as I snatched up John’s root vegetable from the dust and dunked both it and my own into the ceremonial pot, quenching them in a hiss of steam.
I smiled and said, “Something you may not know about me is that I can imitate any kind of a bird or beast.” And then, just to be a dick, I did the Snowcock cry again and watched John flounder on the ground. It took him several minutes to fully recuperate, time I used to extend my lead.
The blue ribbon now trailed almost to the ground between my wife and her father, the two of them smiling smugly at one another. If they were pleased, that was a good sign for me. I hoped.
I lapped John again, feeling regretful for exploiting his weakness when he was already encumbered. “Gotta be miserable in that suit,” I muttered as I passed.
“Eh, it’s not so bad,” he panted. “Has a nice lining, silky, kind of a lingerie feeling.” I sped up so I couldn’t hear the rest of his explanation.
Fleur’s father waved his now benuded hand in the air and shot a look at the scorekeeper, the rotund man who wore a flowing silken caftan, the man who held my future in his hands, the man who was keeping tally of our yams on his ipad (who’s also probably looking at porn). The rotund man nodded slightly.
By now the water in all the pots was boiling from the residual heat of the incendiary root vegetables piling up in them. I watched the rotund man, barely paying any attention to where I was running. I stared at him, willing him to end this before all the blisters on my hands burst open. You’re my favorite person right now, I thought, because when you wave the red flag I can stop doing this.
But there was no red flag. Instead, my father-in-law strode across the temple courtyard and stabbed his enormous screwdriver straight into the heart of the rabbit piñata. He awkwardly worked his middle fingers into the resulting hole, enlarging it.
“Who made this damn thing?” he bellowed. “I just don’t have enough middle fingers to make the hole big enough!”
Fleur scampered over to him and plunged her own impudent digits into the paper maché rodent, and suddenly the ground was covered with brightly colored gummy babies, the only Contrarian export.
A blare of trumpets rang out from all around the walls, in honor of the good news. Fleur scooped up handfuls of the sticky candy and skipped over to where I had slumped in the dirt. I spotted John hopping away. My father-in-law raised his arms in triumph. I smiled up at Fleur.
I began to speak, but she leaned down and put one of the dusty gummy babies in my mouth. She pressed her pinky against my lips, and pressed her thumb against her lips, and made puckery little noises at me. I was too tired to ask what it meant, and too grateful that the ordeal was over to even care.
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good-natured patience and gentle eye-rolling
lifting me up like a garage door