TELEPHONE: An Experiment in First Lines
This is a beta version of a large project that Flatmancrooked will start later this year. We thought it best to try this out ahead of time, see if people were interested.
Here are the rules.
- Each contributor may add no more than 500 words to the narrative.
- For this story, we’re trying to create a genuinely compelling narrative with multiple authors. So, please try to embrace the narrative that came before your contribution, adding to the story, limiting non sequiturs, addition of random characters, and the like.
- Editors will edit, real time, watching for spam, and the afore mentioned non sequiturs.
- Additions will be reviewed in real time, but in hopes for an honest experience, we have (reluctantly) turned off auto-hold on comments and will moderate as we go. This post will stay open for, roughly 4 days.
The story begins with the lines below. Add as you, the reader/writer, see fit . . .
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Bill saw the whole scene through window in the back office. The clerk was fidgeting, tending to other customers, ignoring Jim, who was waving obnoxiously. Finally, he couldn’t be avoided. He was scaring off other patrons.
What is it, Jim.
Jim said, I’ll take one of each.
Each?
Rifle, Jim said and pointed to the display, some fifty firearms, standing neatly on the rack that stretched the length of the wall.
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May 10th, 2010 at 9:31 am
The clerk motioned Jim to the far right of the counter, “I think you’ll actually like these better.” Jim followed, leaving the other customers behind and started digging into his pockets.
The young man stopped at the end of the counter and looked at Jim. “God damn Jim, a little discretion please. Well?”
Jim withdrew his hand from his pocket and produced a credit card and his drivers license. He slid them to the clerk.
“Anything else?”
Jim stared at him, and after a few moments, reached into his shirt pocket. His eyes never left the clerk’s. Jim handed him a business card illustrated with a single yellow duck.
Bill continued to watch the two men. They left the sales floor and into the back supply area, and another young lady started helping the customers.
Bill picked up his cell phone and pressed the buttons. He stood up to look out different window, “Yes, it has started.”
May 10th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Meanwhile, the clerk had led Jim through a maze of loaded pallets and warehouse shelving to a spot near the loading dock that opened onto the store’s back lot. Jim was still squinting in response to the low, dusty light of the back room when the clerk walked to the roll-up door and pressed the open button. The flood of sunlight blinded Jim for a second before it revealed to him two pallets full of boxes emblazoned with Mossberg, Remington, Smith & Wesson. Every caliber, sighting option, barrel configuration, stock style was represented — with two cases of ammunition for each,
Turning back from the door to face Jim as he surveyed this munition cornucopia, the clerk stared into his eyes. “I hope you have a forklift at home.”
May 10th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
“Forklift? A forklift?! You gotta be joking, right? Look, man, my guy didn’t say nothing about no damn forklift. My ID, my credit card. That was the deal. Nobody said nothing about me taking all this somewhere. I don’t have a forklift. Don’t have a home neither. Where’s Bill?”
“Look,” the clerk said, “nobody gets to talk to Bill except for me and, uh, look, he’s not here. Won’t be here for a while—weeks maybe. You need to just calm down. Bill told me we only have 12 hours to get all this merchandise off his property once we run your credit card. So take this business card to Jerry over at that U-haul place on Flushing Avenue.”
He offers the duck-embossed business card back to Jim.
“Hey,” Jim said, “what’s with this yellow duck anyway?”
“You don’t want to know, Jim. Now get over to Jerry’s so we can get all this stuff on the road. Get the biggest truck he has over there.”
The clerk led Jim out the back, into the alley, and hoped that the next few days would go more smoothly.
As his unlit cigarette bobbed to his words, the clerk mumbled to himself, “Bill needs to recruit some of those straight edge kids in college before these hillbillies and ice-heads get us all killed.”
May 10th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Jim arrives at U-haul and goes into the office to ask for Jim. “He will be right up.” Says the woman behind the counter.
Jim is wondering around the waiting area in the office. He spots a vending machine filled with chips and candy. Jim grabs himself some cheesy Doritos and a reeses peanut butter cup. Must have the munchies.
Just as he stands back up from bending over to grab the delightful food he sees a reflection of a rather muscular man with a look that made you shiver inside. You couldn’t stare at him for too long. Hes eyes would pierce your soul. A man you would not want to piss off.
“Hello Jim. My name is Jerry. Need to pick up a U-Haul?”
“Yes i do. I have some important packages to pick up and it needs to be done quick. If we could get this going that would be great!” Jim replies.
Jerry pulls him outside to where he will be picking up the truck. “Watch what your saying Jim. You could blow it for all of us! You don’t have to get pushy with me i know how this works.” Jim proceeds in the truck and speeds off to pick up the goods.
May 10th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
When Jim rolled into the back lot of Bill’s store with his newly acquired U-Haul truck, the loading dock door was rolled back down. The sun was setting on the other side of the building. The shade covered the lot, and the shadow sent a chill through Jim like drug test on a Monday morning.
There, leaning against the loading dock, dragging luxuriantly on his Pall Mall, the clerk nodded nonchalantly at Jim first and then at the cargo container twenty feet away from him.
“You were gone too long. We had to tidy up.”
“What!!!” Jim jumped down from the cab of the U-Haul and ran at the clerk with homicidal intent — until he remembered the conditions of his parole. He walked the remaining ten feet and stuck his face six inches away from the clerk’s before yelling at 100 decibels, “I just wasted an hour getting a truck that won’t in ANY fucking way transport that box!!!”
The clerk snapped the butt of his cigarette to the ground, ground it out with the sole of his Tony Lamas, and turned to walk toward his ‘79 TransAm as he cajoled over his shoulder, “Well, you shoulda been a little quicker on the uptake, fucktard.”
May 11th, 2010 at 5:56 am
“Fucktard?! Lemmie tell you something Mr….Jones.” as he reaches for the clerks name bag laying atop his buttoned two toned shirt. “I have been through a lot to get that truck! Now you will give me the box i need or you will be hating life.”
“Excuse me? Did you just threaten me? Listen here. I have enough amo and guns in here to blow you to bits so i suggest you back the fuck off!” “Now i must tell Bill that you could not complete the transaction. Id clean up your mouth before meeting him or feel the pain of getting your tongue ripped out.”
“ALRIGHT!” Jim replies.
Jim takes the U-Haul and drives on home. He pulls up to his falling apart motor home and goes inside to sit and wait for the dreadful phone call on where he is supposed to meet Bill. The stench of his house makes you gag. A combination of burnt meth, weed, and urine like he couldn’t find the bathroom in time. Hes sits on his couch waiting anxiously for he has no idea what he is about to go through. The phone rings and he picks it up shaking vigorously.
“He…Hello?” Jim says.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
“HELLO! finally you decide to answer the phone! I want you to meet me, at the gas station on the corner of Reno Street and Wellington Avenue, in seventeen minutes” shouted Bill through the phone.
“In seventeen minutes! That gas station is all the way across town! There is no way I can make it there in time.” Jim gasped.
“I don’t care what you can or can’t do, I said be there in seventeen minutes! Now you have sixteen minutes your wasting your own time, don’t be late… OR ELSE!” Bill said to Jim and then hung up.