March 5, 2008
First lines
…of stories I might write. So far the first lines are all I have.
– It was Easter and I killed a man.
– “Draw me,” she said, but I didn’t have a pencil.
– I would drive, except for my foot.
– She sure brings fruit ever time she comes.
– I went to the funeral the hard way.
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35 Responses to “First lines”
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Not that I have any business poking into your business and all, but have you considered:
– It was Easter and I killed a squirrel.
– “Draw me,” she said, but I didn’t have a squirrel.
– I would drive, except for my squirrel.
– She sure brings squirrels ever time she comes.
That last one –
– I went to the funeral the hard way.
– you could prolly keep it like it is and bring the squirrel into it later. Deron seems like he has some ideas.
oh, I’ve got some ideas, but for the love of god, you can’t tell Cindy.
No, no, no. That would be what they call a ’spoiler’.
Since we’re playing this game now, here’s my list (or 2):
-”If the chain is long enough everyone is guilty, even God.”
-Either, everything you are about to read is a lie, or that was a lie.
and now…
-Everything was going great, but then, the squirrels came.
The squirrels faked it.
That was one whip-smart crack, Mr. Smith.
I’m fucked. I’m so totally fucked.
Yeah, the way I see it, Deron, is: You’re fucked.
Deron, you had a good run.
Deron
That is a great first line!
I have no idea who any of you are, but this I do know:
- No matter how hard you try to keep things on the down-low, the squirrels always find out. Always.
- The squirrels fuck everything up. Every time. Damn them.
Jennifer, none of us have any idea who we are either.
Daryl, those are great. Why can’t they be one sentenced stories? Ya know, really short stories for the attention deficient. I think you’d have a market with this Y Generation.
The real question is: do the squirrels know who we are? If they do, we’re all fucked, and it won’t matter if they’re faking it.
[...] least 3 of 5 first lines to stories Daryl Scroggins of clusterflock might write are better than anything that’s ever passed my [...]
I would like to see a sort of clusterflock “cadavre exquis” played out here. Our own novel built from “mental contagion.”
“It was Easter and I killed a man.”
+
“I thought I’d change the world that morning but instead I cleaned my glasses on his shirt and waited for him to die.”
=
Time to build suspense…
It was Easter and I killed a man.”
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“I thought I’d change the world that morning but instead I cleaned my glasses on his shirt and waited for him to die.”
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“Or did I?”
Time to build suspense…
It was Easter and I killed a man.”
+
“I thought I’d change the world that morning but instead I cleaned my glasses on his shirt and waited for him to die.”
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“Or did I?”
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I’d been lucky enough to catch him jay-walking and the guy was smashed to hell, but his hand gave a little jump and he took a breath.
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He looked up at me, still partially under the rear of my F250 and he apologized, “it’s my fault,” I almost felt bad, or maybe it was guilt; I almost felt guilty.
#
It was Easter and I killed a man.”
+
I thought I’d change the world that morning but instead I cleaned my glasses on his shirt and waited for him to die.”
+
“Or did I?”
+
I’d been lucky enough to catch him jay-walking and the guy was smashed to hell, but his hand gave a little jump and he took a breath.
+
He looked up at me, still partially under the rear of my F250 and he apologized, “it’s my fault,” I almost felt bad, or maybe it was guilt; I almost felt guilty.
+
The man’s name was Jesus, or at least this was the named embroidered on the blue patch on the breast pocket of his tattered overalls.
Well, I said to myself. Fucking . . . What is it with these people? We don’t name our fucking kids Jesus, for fuck’s sake.
+
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a hand-shaped sugar cookie with a red dot in the center.
And I thought, Yeah, that’s it. Hung up on death. Like those sugar skulls they make for that muertos day. Fucking Aztec sacrifices, that’s what’s in their heads. They’re so fucking morbid.
+
Then, he said something in a foriegn language, but it didn’t sound like spanish. I just shook my head and grabbed the cookie, “speak english, this is America.”
“My name . . . [cough] . . . is Heineken . . . [cough] Wolfrey,” he choked out, and then I realized that he hadn’t been speaking a foreign language at all. He’d just had a piece of cookie stuck in his throat.
I went to the funeral the hard way, trapped inside the coffin with the dead man.
+
Jesús looked into my eyes. “Save the squirrels,” he said. “Salve las ardillas.”
I went to the funeral the hard way, trapped inside the coffin with the dead man.
Coop– Twilight Zone / episode starring Michael Parks (I think). Guy works in a prison with an old man (civilian) who makes coffins for dead inmates. He gets the old man to agree that when a person next dies, the guy will slip into the coffin, the old man will bury him in the cemetary outside the walls, then come back at night and dig him up. That happens–except the guy is burried in the coffin, wondering when he will be dug up, and he strikes a match to look at his watch. That’s when he sees that the person he is burried with is the old man who was supposed to come and dig him up.
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In my mind I had the image of a smallish furry animal, a little like a rat without the hard exoskeleton, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember exactly what a squirrel looked like.
+ Right at that moment a squirrel climbed my leg and snatched the stigmata cookie from my hand. I tried to get my pistol out but only managed to shoot myself in the groin. I looked up at the sky. Too late to think that Luck had anything to do with this.
I thought about something India once said to me, “It’s a terrible curse to know the future.”
Michael Parks! “Then Came Bronson”? Hehehe. You mean I just shared an electrical impulse with Rod Serling?
So utterly fucked.
This is the most fucked up comment string I’ve ever seen.
Coop, do you remember that show “Then Came Bronson”? I watched every episode. But my opinion of it was damaged when some of the older guys I worked with in construction jobs–bikers from way back–started to joke about the show. In one episode Michael Parks takes a wrong turn on his Harley Sportster, out in the wilderness, and ends up crashing down a cliff. He spends the whole show trying to fix his bike enough to get it back up to the road, his frustration generating a wide range of emotions in him. So the next day one of my co-workers–Donny–who had built a number of fine motorcycles, was rolling up extension cords so we could go home, and I asked him if he had seen the latest “Then Came Bronson” episode. “Yeah,” he said. “Now I’m going to go home and fix my bike with a fucking rock and cry the whole time.” That kind of took something out of it for me from then on.