Ring the Alarm

We’d each written the beginning of a short story on an index card. The name of the game was to create a conflict, then pass the card to the person next to you so they could contribute to your story by adding a climax. Finally, the card was passed to a third person to create a resolution to the conflict.

I wrote a paragraph of nonsense about hitting a cow on my index card, then passed it to the person at my left. When I received a new index card, I created conflict in a story about a little girl by injecting a creepy man offering her candy.

When the final index card came to me with a two paragraph conflict written and I was forced to add a resolution to someone else’s story, I didn’t know how to approach it. The story had begun with a dude named “Jake” who’d been stressing about his first year of classes. His biggest concern seemed to be that he wouldn’t be able to find his Chemistry class on the first day of school (if only life were this easy.)

The second person had written on the index card something to the extent of a fire alarm going off, and Jake seeing tons of people rush out the building he was supposed to have his Chemistry class in (he found it.) Amongst a large group of unfamiliar people he approaches a girl (described as wearing sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt…hmm…), who makes a wisecrack about how the fire alarms always go off in the dorms, too (freshman).

Faced with the decision of making the story violent and gory as other students had done to previous stories, or coming up with something slightly more upbeat appeared to be the conundrum. What did I do? 

What DID I do? I made a freaking lovesick fool out of myself. Behind the two previous paragraphs, I scribbled some sappy hubbub about how Jake and the girl in the baggy sweatshirt ended up engaging in an epic conversation, and Jake skips his first Chemistry class to talk to her. As if this weren’t bad enough, I went to the lengths of making the entire scenario into the speech that the best man was giving at Jake and Baggy Sweatshirt’s wedding. SHIT. All out of a fire alarm, that for all we know was pulled by Johnny McStoner on his way into class (for the sake of me writing 1/3 of said story, I’m stating that as the cause of the incident.)

I don’t know why — I DON’T KNOW WHY I did this. I know how much the instructor hates shit like this. I know. I was planning on writing my 6-page short fiction piece on a young couple that fall in love in college, sit in one another’s company at restaurants long enough to eat two meals, and sleeps on golf courses. Or something. That was, until she announced to the class how sick these things made her. Change of plans, I’m writing about a mentally disabled boy instead.

But really. Really!? Did I have to throw myself to the wolves like that, to display myself as a hopeless, pathetic and longing fool? I did — did I ever. I didn’t even beat around the bush. I’m really that pining.

So while others may take satisfaction in their tall tales of decapitation and meeting perverted hobos in jail, well — don’t get me wrong here. I love these things. Violence and corruptness, I’m all for it! Bottom line: When troubled with the decision of good vs. evil, you bet your bottom I’ll be a softy for the romance.

Meanwhile, the wolves consume me.