The hand off.

[dannoofthedead]

I forget what it was called in school but it was always a hoot and it seems appropriate for the fiction section. One person would start a story, writing a paragraph and handing it off to the one next to them. So, here is the beginning of a story and now someone else can take the next paragraph and so on. It doesn't have to be serious, romantic, funny, scary...just add a bit to it. Maybe it'll help get the creative juices flowing for some of us. So here's the story. You are a person (sex indeterminate for now) in the middle of a city and you've just found out the world is coming to a screaming halt. [insert clever story title here] So there I was, no place in particular really, in the smallest town in the smallest state in that particular region of the country when the news broke out. The anchor man on channel 4, the one with the bad comb over and ill fitting off the rack blue suit, was sweating bullets as new reports came through to him every few minutes. His big brown eyes darted anxiously from side to side as he read the updates aloud, stammering and studdering over every other word in shock over what he was reading. Marshall law was being declared all across the nation as thousands of corpses broke free from their slabs and began a homicidal march towards the nearest city they could find. He urged us all to seek shelter, stay inside with all the doors and windows bolted and wait for help to arrive. When in Rome being a philosophy I held dear, I started my walk back to my car jingling my keys in my hand with every anxious step. I'd parked about a block away from the store, near the park because it had been such a pretty day. Something crunched behind me, a sickening, wet, sloppy sound that made me regret my need for fresh air and sunlight. Slowly, I turned... {and now some one else can take it}

[Relic]

... and stared into the rotting face of my Uncle Bob. "Sffffistt," it growled. He was a big guy. Dressed in the tattered remains of the expensive blue shirt he'd been buried in eighteen months ago. His head was still too small for his body. Even in death, and the ravages of decay, there was a visible belly. Too much two-liters of Dr. Pepper and hours spent in front of his Xbox in grandma's basement. And yep, even in death, he still had that stupid look on his face. He was about ten steps away from, and stumbling forward, as if drunk. Which wasn't a stretch, even in death. Uncle Bob had always strived to give a whole new meaning to the word "lush." "U... Uncle Bob?" Behind him -- GOOD LORD -- was my cousin Vinny. My 'Nana Gramms, too. Jesus, it was a regular family friggin' reunion! All three of them were moving up around me now, enclosing. Encompassing. But Uncle Bob was the closest. Close enough, in fact, to jab at me. I sat, rooted to the ground, as he slowly reached out for me, the tip of his index finger closing the distance between the two of us. Four inches... Three inches... Two inches...

[rightwing401]

Just before that dried and shriveled finger could touch my skin, something snapped in my mind. It screamed run. "Whoa." I said, rolling away from Bob and hitting my back against the door of my car. Fumbling with my keys as I tried to open the door, I didn't dare take my eyes off of any of them. Uncle Bob, his rotting face derived of any form of expression, shuffled closer to me. "Sorry about this Uncle Bob. But I have to go." I told him when I finally got the door open. "Well you, you...um...ok." I stammered as I jumped inside and locked the door. Moaning, Uncle Bob threw himself against the window, clearly having no intention of ending this sudden reunion.