A picture is worth a thousand words.

[Davey Rootbeer]

So tell me a story of about 1,000 words here. go ahead...be damn creative.

Conditions: It has to have SOMETHING to do with the picture to some extent. also, please, please try to keep this on topic. it's a really helpful writing excersise for anyone interested, and it's fun to compare writing styles.

If no one replies, you will make baby jesus cry.



so...ready and....


<img src="http://www.roomwithamoose.com/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=12670&stc=1">

[Mecha Wolf]

<i>Oh shit, here we go again.</i>
Jack could feel the nausea coming back with a vengeance. He had to fold himself over where he sat on the couch to prevent himself from screaming out in pain. Yeah, as if he could scream, he couldn't even cough, his lungs were too weak to produce anything but a high-pitched wheezing sound. Blood trickled down from his lips and onto his pants. What the hell was wrong with him? The doctor wasn't talking. This was bad. Not chemo therapy bad, but the kind of bad where your name ends up on a new disease.
<i>Olsen's disease.</i> His lips contorted into a grin, but it quickly turned into a grimace as his lungs let out another wheeze. There was an inhaler on the table. What a fucking joke, like camphor flavoured water could make him feel any better. He tried to smack it away with his hand, but it only rolled away a few inches before stopping just out of his reach. He could feel his lungs protesting the action.
He pushed himself up to sitting position again, reaching for the TV remote. He idly flicked through the channels, being careful not to move too much. <i>57 channels and nothing on, why do I even bother?</i>
Then the worst thing possible happened: The doorbell rang. Unfortunately, it was the 80's, and it wanted it's stereotypically melodramatic writing back. Thus the story ended, and everyone lived happily ever after, except Jack who died of Jack Olsen's disease two days later.

The End.


Well, I was somewhat on topic, but sorry anyway, it's a bit short. I == teh sukc :P

[Lord Koopa]

Blah blah blah... The bad guy is defeated and the guy gets the girl.

[Davey Rootbeer]

12:00. Fuck. I don’t know whether it’s morning, or evening. The little light next to the numbers is supposed to indicate the time of day. AM if it’s on, PM if it’s not. But 12 AM and 12 PM are all just the same to me. I can’t tell the goddamn difference. Either way, it’s too early or too late.

What the fuck WAS I doing last night?

<i>It’s like a Polaroid. That's it....</i>

It was at 3:00 in the morning. I was sitting in the wicker chair. Green, I remember green. Very distinctively. It was a dark, drab...more like olive tone. I looked down on my lap, it was all olive. Like the martini. That was on the glass, but the olive was running down my legs…

There was a hole in the middle, in that olive. Huge fucking hole, right at the knee. It was reddish and ragged, torn to threads around the fray. Huge chunk of knee right there.

<i>It’s all white and blurry.</i>


Ugh...my knee. It’s all purplish and scabby right now. But there was a dull red before…smells like rotting meat. On the wicker chair, it was running down my leg. Inside and out, staining the olive. The meaty pit in the hole. The sweaty blood of my leg.

..Sweat?

<i> You wave it around a few times, a picture starts to appear. </i>




It was hot, and uncomfortable. I stuck to the back of the chair with my shirt. White shirt, wet stains on the back. Red on the knee of the olive pants. But no, it wasn’t red, it was purple…

Wine, sloshing itself into a storm of fury. It was in a perfect, chiseled glass container. Rocking. Crashing, tinkling, spilling. The wine was on the table. The bottle was almost out. The glasses were out. Why was it back here…? I remembered it on the table there…

It’s not the same fucking thing. It was back in the room, after the party. There was no choice but plastic. A cup, like a fucking 10-year old. Drinking wine out the same cup you use to drink a fucking soda, it’s not the same. We were dignified gentlemen and ladies, having a conversation about politics and foreign affairs. A venerable salon. The ambiance ruined by the cups.

Never got around to drinking it…it was ruined before I put my lips to it.

<i>It’s all Sepia-toned, and dim.... </i>



The glass splinters in my leg were put there by accident, of course. It had to have been, the cutting of my leg an isolated incident. There’s really no telling where it could have come from, but I always thought it had been there before. But not the same…as a tiny hole perhaps, just trying to escape. 2:58 AM. I put the glass to my lips, the glass that was to be splintered across my body. The knee opens up a bit more as I shift my weight uncomfortably in the heat. The sweat’s still there. I see myself as a red and green entity. My pants brownish green, my short white and wet, my face a glowing crimson ball of sweat and hair.

It was 2:58 in the morning, and it was outside a nightclub. I was sitting in the chair facing the street, my arm on one side of the unsightly table. It rocked. Back and forth, waves that created the ocean, that sent the sea into fury. Weak, nervous, wet, tired.

It hit me. The air formed together into a giant, unbreatheable ball, and lunged at me, my throat, my lungs burned with anticipation of oxygen they’d never get. They tightened, and I burned. The red face.

<i>The more you shake at it, the more appears. Until it’s all there.... </i>


It was a minute and a mile away. The gray periscope with a red cap, the difference between life and death. Struggling against the current that tried to sweep me backwards, peeling myself out of the seat, I lunged.

2:59 in the morning. The glass became a guard, preventing me from reaching the precious inner sanctum of the temple. The martini stood aside, indifferent. It didn’t care. The wine was the only thing in my way. Shapes and colors all went their separate ways. The purple became olive and vice versa, the red came out of nowhere and landed on everything. Bright red, dulling itself intervally in seconds after it landed, and flying back up, backwards, and out again, over and over. Time becomes nothingness, as the bright red lunges back and forth, in the air, over and over again. Numbness of the leg becomes soreness. I grapple with the spiny porcupine, digging it out of my red-streaked fingers as I undo the sacred seals and naturally put it to my mouth.

Time passes. The fire in my lungs slowly, gradually, extinguishes itself, giving way to the pain of the leg. Splinters of glass all around, I see for the first time. Red splotches on the green.

3:00 AM, it was then.

It smells horrible now. Like leftover fish. Seagull food. But back then, it was nothing. Just another patch of color. Stiffly walking back to the room with the people I came with, and the clear plastic cups? Chatting like a gentleman, hiding my throbbing leg behind the thin veil of fabric?

It could only last so long before it erupted. They had already left, every last one of them. The wine stopped moving and was placid. The periscope lay beyond it, in precarious reach should the need again arise. The pants went off in a random direction. And the throbbing became a jackhammer. There was no pain. Just throbbing.

<i>Until you see the whole fucking picture. </i>


It’s 12:01. Fuck.... The only way I’ll know for sure would involve getting up, and looking outside the window. The picture’s still there, though.

I’m going to put it up on my wall later, so that I don’t forget. Because, a picture’s worth a thousand words.

[Mecha Wolf]

Nice writing, you certainly have a way with descriptions (seriously).

[robot]

Theres aomethign and outthis way theis is writf she siad as she crumbled out the biday... she fekkkk in the dibay in such a hodd manner i think
it was a bit ofa lip and fall

she said

bun she was in so far that her knees and legsand feet were stiuckin out she say
and he waslked aout of the hall in his andcing show and nighttime sleepin xcothrs and theres something on the floor so he gives it a throw
wat in the ghells that he stmamers

and shesaus that theuyer pants ahnd that he right near thre wthe shit at the piianna
and he says tharts no piannnay! thatots right ne3ar a television sayt, yahearme
and she replies yes hes righ ysees and she goes right on about doing herself a little of the business

and she stammers that he near broke the pianna

and he goes through the bit with the TV again you see

and he explains yo her that he was aiming for the plastic bag behind the tv
well how do you suppose youd actully hirt the damned pants into the plastic bag now there?

"well he says "i didnt wuite nknow thse were plastic pants you know

and she tells him hes cazy and he knows shes right so he tkes another sip of the wine
the wine he was drinking, just so you know
the bottle saat so clearly on the desk drawer you get it and the cup was there with it too ebfore he snatche d to it out tho to take the grapes hjucie you see and there were some other objesct but who kowswhat ahtat ight be

and she stabbed him with asword

there is no swords uin theius poicture notlike the ones you other hae

[robot]

oh my god you cant read anyof the.at. i am so god damned high... jesus christ

[MST3Kakalina]

Amy's apartment was always a mess.

Not an acceptable level of mess, mind you. Not just some dirty dishes in the sink or orphaned bank statements on the coffee table. I mean crossing-the-threshold-into- some-absurdist-play kind of mess, some vortex of pure chaos generated by the non stop parties in her shitty little apartment.

I knocked, got no reply, and let myself in--Amy was probably in so much of a hungover daze that she wouldn't really notice or care if I nestled myself among the puzzling array of garments that had slowly accumulated on her couch. A bottle of--extremely surprisingly--unfinished wine caught my eye, suggesting some early morning imbibements. I gripped the neck of the open bottle between my toes--a party trick I taught myself back in college, not very hard really, but drunk women seemed to find it hysterical, and something about that temporary flash of fame and recognition ("Oh, look, look, show Erin here...Erin, look at this, this guy pours drinks with his feet!") kept me warm long after their looks would glaze over and look for someone to take home, who was invariably never me--and poured myself a drink in the conveniently placed plastic cup. I took a few sips, ignoring the fact that it was room temperature and wholly unpleasant, and waited for Amy.

It took her a while to stumble into the living room, probably around fifteen or twenty minutes, but she was just so charming that when she appeared, any irritation I might have fostered melted instantly. While Amy's figure was tall, willowy, and decidedly mature and grown up, her pink cotton panties and Winnie the Pooh shirt (cut just above the navel) were very much manifestations of an inner, Puckish nature I couldn't help but love. After all, was there another woman in the world would stumble out of their bedroom in that hellish morning-after condition and not be at all phased by the fact that they weren't wearing pants in the presence of a man they had never fucked, and would never have any intention of fucking?

Amy nodded acknowledgement at my existence and shuffled to the kitchen. I watched her tangled pile of chestnut rock from side to side as she considered the various breakfast possibilities, disappear behind the counter as she found something only to reappear moments later. I averted my eyes before she could catch me looking at her, and instead listened as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. Probably Trix. Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.

"So how was my party last night?" she asked. <i>Crunch crunch crunch.</i>

I shrugged. "I guess it was all right. I don't know, I didn't go."

"Huh." <i>Crunch crunch.</i> "Becuase I don't remember a damn thing. I thought maybe you could tell me."

"Nope, sorry."

Amy picked her way through lampshades and beer bottles to the couch, resting one pale foot and its delicate heel on the edge of the table, the nails painted a faint and feminine pink.

"Why don't you ever go to my parties, Brian?" <i>Crunch slurp crunch.</i>

I shrugged and leaned forward, elbows on khaki-encased knees, chin in hands.

"Don't you like them?" <i>Crunch slurp slurp rattle. </i> She had finished already.

"No, but it's nothing against you. I just don't like parties."

Amy swung her swimsuit-model leg off the table and disappeared into the kitchen to put away her dirty dishes. "Why not? You used to, back in school."

I didn't know what to say about that. She and I had been quite the rowdy pair, it was true, though there was a distinct difference in the qualities of our hell-raising. I went to parties to watch people. I liked to see them removed from their everday context in my world, to see what kind of Jekyll/Hyde transformation went on at night. I guess I drank a lot--there were plenty of mornings where I woke up feeling like I had tangoed with a bulldozer--but it never really made any trouble for me. That was my party experience--people watching and drinking myself numb, tainted with the faint hope of getting a nice piece of tail.

Amy, on the other hand, was the kind of person everyone invited because she was just a hilarious drunk, with the added bonus of being gorgeous. I learned that if I woke up feeling especially hammered, it would be better to stumble to the dining hall on my own. That much drinking inevitably led to some stranger in Amy's bed, and as much as I liked to sit across from her on those mornings-after at breakfast, the awkwardness of walking in on her sharing her bed with someone I recognized only as a face from the night before and being the one to rouse them both to embarassed consciousness was enough to keep breakfast a solitary ritual.

So what had changed, then? I didn't know, but the nice thing about Amy was that when she asked questions like that, she didn't really expect an answer.

"I'm throwing another party tomorrow night, you should come." She padded out of the kitchen and back to her bedroom, presumably to put some clothes on.

"No, I'll pass, thanks."

The slink of sliding metal hangers. "Why? You never go out anymore, Brian. You just go to work and then stay inside all day. I'm worried about you."

"Don't you think there are better things to do than drinking yourself stupid at every available opportunity?"

<i>Rustle rustle zip.</i> "Oh, don't be such a spoilsport. We have plenty of time to get old and responsible." Amy re-emerged from her room, in the middle of a vicious fight with her hair. "Can you help me with this? I need to touch up my nails and I just don't have the time to deal with it."

I nodded and took the brush from her, following her as she made her way to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom for some nail polish.

"What colour?" She asked as I detangled her hair, too long and wavy for her own good.

"Why not pink like your toenails?"

"Sounds good to me." She turned smartly on her heel and nearly threw me off balance on her way towards the couch.

"So," she said, lost in her manicure, "why don't you want to come over tomorrow night?"

I didn't answer for a long time, lost in the rise and fall of her red-brown curls, as gentle and soothing as the ocean.

"Because we're not in college anymore?"

"But we're not old yet, either!"

"Some of us actually have to deal with the real world, Amy. Not all of us have parents willing to foot the bills when their daughter spent too much on clothes and alcohol to pay the rent."

Her back stiffened. She was used to my criticism by now, but there were times when she would prefer not to hear it, and apparently this morning was one of them. I took her silence in the face of my comment as my cue to leave.

"I'm going downtown today, you can come with me if you want to." I was at the door now. Amy didn't look at me, kept her gaze locked straight in front of her. Her hands were frozen in mid-manicure.

"I wish you would. I never really see you anymore." Pause. "I mean, <i>really</i> see you. I don't want to have to wade through one of your parties to shout a conversation at you over the bad music." Pause. She was still in that same position. "So. I'll have my cell phone on. Call if you decide to come with." I withdrew into the hallway, the early morning quiet magnifying the decisive click of the door shut behind me.

[Lord Koopa]

robot's story wins, regardless of whether or not he's faking it.

[zero_6ix]

I'm a touch trashed, but lets see where this goes...

Jack woke up slowly, letting the tendrils of drunken sleep wash away like so many stalks of seaweed. He had left his pants on the television, probably tossed there after an impassioned moment with the now nameless girl sleeping on the right side of his bed. Jack shook his head, clearing away the cobwebs of memory, and letting the sun filter in on the mystery girl’s name.
"Doris...her name is Doris."
Jack looked on the sleeping form of Doris and forced himself to remember everything that had happened the night before. He recalled a flash of tattoo, just above the small of a girl's back. Then buying a round for someone that looked like Doris and a friend. Then dancing, an endless back and forth swaying that left the balls of his feet sore from the repetition. Then there was the ride home, the revelation of extra booze, then sex. He remembered the sex quite clearly.
He looked again at the sleeping form of Doris. Doris...yes now he remembered. He had found her name to be kitschy and cute, a hard core looking lady with a domestic name to beat all domestic names. Almost like her parents decided that their daughter should be as sarcastic as possible. She didn't look like a Doris, no, but somehow, it all fit perfectly.


There. Thats a little more than a thousand, but Im cutting it off here. I may ramble if left to my own devices.

[implode]

ramon stumbled his way out of bed, expecting to trip on the litter that was now strewn all about the house. but nothing. he even buckled his knee as to prepare for such a misfortune, but only ended up embarrassing himself in front of his cat. oh well. the cat's seen worse over the past few days.

it had been three days since ramon had gone blind in one eye.

he didn't remember doing anything to provoke it - other than living his life the way he wanted to live it. could that be the problem? could that be the explanation behind the sudden brilliant flash of light that he initially thought was coming from the TV, the thirty seconds of terrifying darkness that encompassed him after the fact, and the strange feeling perpetuating itself in the right side of his head now? he didn't know - he didn't know anything, anymore. he had been reduced to the state of a drooling infant, a half-blind drooling infant, not knowing what to do next and unable to help himself do whatever was needed to recover?

after the shock of the situation had faded a bit, ramon began to lose his better judgment - instead of seeking assistance, he got very, very drunk and passed out in the middle of the floor. when he awoke the next morning without pants with two simultaneous chainsaws ravaging the forest of his poor, misfortunate brain, all he could bring himself to do was cry. he looked at the floor and noticed the tear stain was still on the carpet - must not've been just tears, he thought. maybe there was already a stain there? maybe my tears brought it out?

it was of no matter. over the last two days, he had developed acceptance of his ailment. he vehemently refused to call 911, figuring they had bigger problems to deal with than a mere machine operator who lost the use of an eye. they'd probably ask him if he poked himself. ha.

there was still a little wine left in the bottle. he took a few misguided grasps at it, finally managing to make contact and knock it over on the third attempt, spilling the remainder of the wine all over the floor.

ramon looked at the ceiling. how funny it looked from only one side! he closed his one good eye and went back to sleep. he knew very well that if he went to sleep now, he might not ever be able to see that ceiling again. just like that, his eyesight would be completely eliminated, and he'd just be another blind guy who can't find his way out of his apartment to go grocery shopping, dead on the floor of starvation. humanity at its most pathetic.

he knew. but sleep came anyway. it always does.

EDIT: wow, 1,000 words <i>sucks.</i> i don't even know if this was 1,000 or not, i just knew i had to cut it off before anything could actually happen to the guy. yarr. can't do short stories, can't do novels... i better learn how to do scripts <i>quick.</i>

[Davey Rootbeer]

1,000 words IS kinda hard to do (and..it's s'possed to be 1000 words, not 1000 characters...i think my story is 1,000 words on the dot, i had to go back and put in a few extra things here and there to perk it up..)

...usually, in journalism, they only assign us 500-700 words per story. right now, we're actually learning how to edit....by a rather unorthodox means of simply trimming until we reach a set word count, reguardless of how relevent it actually is. teaches us about the "real world" of uncaring editors who justywant you to fill a space.

anyway, good works so far, more than i expected...you guys are awesome. Keep it up!

[implode]

it's s'possed to be 1000 words, not 1000 characters yeah, i came to that realization about two hours after posting the stupid thing. i threw out like half the storyline i had planned just to get it down to the size i thought it needed to be, and it turns out it probably would've been just enough. blarg.

[Retard Girl]

Dammit. I can't even write one hundred words.

The alarm blared in his ear, forcefully tearing him away from the passive bliss of sleep. His eyes snapped open, with clear thoughts overwhelming his mind. Just once, would he like to wake up without remembering everything, to groan and drag his body, not remembering the pain of life, but the simple pain of waking. Throwing his legs over the mattress on which he slept, (He had no bed, he could barely afford to live in his apartment.) he stood up and surveyed the hell he lived in.

Everything he saw generated a flash of memory, each one clearer and more precise, with nothing censoring his actions.


That's as far as I got.

[zero_6ix]

Well son of a bitch. My story has only 200. That'll teach me to count while drunk.