Collabrative Story

issue 12 :: July 2007

FICTION: Collabrative Story

Below is a collabrative story I started through email in 2005; an exquisite corspe. I supplied the initial line and three character names. I asked people, mostly from the FLUXLIST discussion group, to write the next line of the story, knowing only the previous line and the three character names. The following were the writers: mIKAL aND, Ben DiNino, Bibiana Padilla Maltos, Melissa McCarthy, Jennifer Ronsen, Carol Starr, Roger Stevens, Seth Tisue and Kim Van Winkle.
- Josh Ronsen

On a day like this, anything could happen. No one was prepared, however, for the furry chickens that were about to band together and march through the city streets. Tammy liked feathered chickens, but feared and despised the furry mutant birds that had terrorized her family for generations. She still remembered that fateful day when her little brother had come home from his janitorial job at the genetics lab with that weird little baby chick in an erlenmeyer flask. Little baby chicks always reminded Tammy of whisky, so it was lucky she had her own flask handy as she listened to Timmy's story about mopping floors and cleaning up after genetically modified domestic fowl.

The flask was a gift from her old boss at the poultry lab, and she never let anyone else drink from it. It contained the putrid liquefied gizzards of four Buff Orpingtons, the venom of a poisonous Quail and the bile of two beheaded cockerels from a voodoo initiation ceremony. ("This is it," thought Tommy, "it's the stuff dreams are made of.") With a little hot sauce--the really lethal green stuff--it was delicious. Timmy, Tammy and Tommy then began begging for water. "A tongue's worth is all we need," they explained.

Tommy started to cry with such feeling, like when you feel a hole in your heart and you let lemon drops fall on it. Just then the doorbell rang and Tommy answered it to find a big valentine heart with the word FLUXUS embroidered in red satin pulsing on the doorstep. An explosion rattles the room & the clouds part to reveal the monacled & grinning Maciunias looking dapper & devilish in his role of trouble-maker of the heavens. Maciunias scratches himself with his black-pearled monocle holder, grins that sly grin that has got him into so much trouble in the past, and produces a scroll, its scarlet edges singed with smoke, and, clearing his throat, begins to speak -

"Only an immense book can teach people why the stars have tongues."

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Contact:

Josh Ronsen
joshronsen (ate) yahoo (dote) com
2001 Brentwood
Austin, Texas 78757 USA