The Story Game

[Assertion]

I don't know if anyone here knows how to play, but its usually quite fun. I start by writing a paragraph, then someone else fills in the blanks. We continue the story until someone writes us into a corner. Anyone can post on it, and you can turn the story into whatever you want (just don't jump randomly from Victorian Britain into outer space, year 21xx)

Daylight broke on the old apartments in orange. The heat was less desirable than the insects, but that meant little to anyone. Patrick Doss woke to the blinding sunlight and pushed aside his girlfriend in a rush to fill his stomach. Carmine shifted herself back under the sheets and blocked out the sunlight. After enough heat poured on the blanket, much like syrup on a pancake, she rose from her vain attempts at a second nap. Patrick reached up for a bowl of cereal, and pulled down a human head. At first he thought nothing of it as he poured the blood from the neck into his bowl, yet something didn't feel right. Once he realized blood did not equal cereal, he dropped the head, walked outside and got in his car. Carmine got up to see what he was doing, and noticed the head on the floor.

[La Chat Noire]

"Damn," Carmine thought. "He never puts anything back where it belongs." She picked up the severed head and returned it to the shelf. With a sigh, she looked at all the perfectly good blood Patrick had wasted. "Next time it'll be his head, I swear," she mumbled to herself.
Patrick had known Carmine was a killer going into this relationship. In fact, it had been one of the reasons he was initially attracted to her. A long time fan of horror, Patrick found Carmine's work glorious and intriguing when she described it. But he soon discovered that hearing about her kills and actually seeing them were two completely different things. The occasional finger or ear was tolerable, but heads were a bit too much. And he realized that blood didn't taste nearly as good as he had once hoped. At least not when it wasn't hot. Sure, he could microwave it or heat it up on the stove, but by then it had already lost that fresh blood flavor. Lately, he just wanted plain old milk for his cereal. He worried Carmine would recognize that they were beginning to grow apart. And so he drove, not really knowing where he was going, in order to clear his head.

[Vodstok]

Patrick slammed on the brakes. "What the HELL?!" he screamed when it all came into focus. He'd been in a fog for months, but he had decided to lay off the booze the night before, and the past few months came back to him. He'd been drinking blood and living with a killer? What was wrong with him? He couldn't remember what it was about carmine what had drawn him in so deeply. Maybe he was soft in the head; maybe his dad had been right. Plus, Carmine sounded less like a woman's name and more like an Italian mobster.

He heard a pop and stared in confusion for a fraction of a second at the hole and sudden spray of red that appeared on his windshield, then slumped forward against the steering wheel.

Carmine looked up from the scope on her rifle. She figured it was only a matter of time before Patrick woke up. She sighed, trying to swallow her disappointment.

[Juvenile Sims]

As Carmine sat there for a moment enjoying another kill, her disappointment turned into emptiness. For this was the first time she'd ever killed someone with a gun and she found it to be most unsatisfying. She preferred the intimacy of a knife. Being able to see the fear in her victim's face as the knife pierced through the skin. Hearing them beg for their lives with terror in their voice. Still "a kill is a kill", she thought. Too bad I won't be able to keep the head of this one. "Damn gun", she laughed to herself.

[Papillon Noir]

Satisfied, Carmine returned home. Placing her rifle on kitchen table she noticed Patrick's cereal bowl. She sighed deeply, fingering the bowl lightly. Killing him didn't quite have the satisfaction she had anticipated. Could she have really liked this guy? No. Out of the question. She was a serial killer, not so love-struck teenager. Carmine flung the bowl across the room, where it shattered on the far wall. "Get a grip, Carmine." She muttered to herself. All she needed was a distraction.

She picked up her binoculars and went over the window. The view was of the park outside filled with people gathering in the late afternoon. She sees a young couple walking happily together. "Yes," she says to herself, "A new distraction."