1:27 p.m. - 01.18.2003
Updike made me do it!
Today is bad fiction day, and I have a little to share.
A few years ago there was this writing competition on the internet. John Updike provided a title and opening sentence to a book. Then people could submit a new paragraph or two, and each week there would be a winner. The story would grow and grow until John Updike would take over and write the last few ending paragraphs. I don't know whatever became of the project. It was called "Murder Makes the Magazine". Below is my horrible submission.
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Murder Makes the Magazine
by Amishboy (with contributions by John Updike)
Ms. Polk alighted from the elevator at 10:10 and into the tiled hallway with a sense that something was wrong. She stared down the hallway and it looked exactly as she did - empty. Ms. Polk lived knowing that she did so without a certain degree of want or direction for herself. Just day after day of empty choices. In fact, sometimes the emptiness was so overwhelming she would actually wish a terminal disease upon herself, just so her life would take some kind of direction. Not that she wanted to die, but then at least she knew what to expect - what to look towards. Living is hard. It's the dying who have it easy. Decisions seem a lot easier to make when one is making them for the last time.
But tonight, none of those thoughts crowded her mind for once. Tonight was different for Ms. Polk. On the nineteenth floor, a murderous air was taking shape. Now she WANTED that emptiness inside her, or rather, considered herself lucky she had it. What with all the murders happening in the area of late, she was just glad that emptiness distinguished her as one of the living. That was direction enough these days.
As her heels clapped on the olive tiles she let out a sigh of anxiety to herself, "What people won't do to sell a magazine these days."
***
Fantastic or what? Or what is right. My friend has a kick-ass middle-school era poem on her site. Definately worth a read!
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