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OK, let’s start a story and the next person will continue it. The only catch is that it is not allowed to get cliched or stray towards stereotypical issues. And any characters that are introduced must remain in the story, otherwise the story will get far too random. It has to stay on track. Let’s see how far we get! I will start:
The rain was coming down, relentlessly steady, beating a heavy tattoo on the ground. The streets ran muddy with rainwater; carts and barrels spilled over, rivulets running down the sides in miniature waterfalls.
A small group of people trudged through the torrential downpour, their coats heavy and dripping wet. They were travellers, having just arrived in the town only minutes previously, and were now searching for lodgings and a warm fire.
They had travelled long and far, their journey having begun far in the north, and with barely a rest stop along the way. Now, drenched to the skin and shivering in their sodden clothes, they were tired and hungry.
The leader of the small group stopped suddenly, and looked up. A sign hanging outside a building told them they had arrived at an inn. The promising prospect of hot food and a proper bed excited their weary spirits.
After entering the inn and removing their heavy boots and changing into comfortable fluffy slippers [it was way before crocs], they sat down round a table their hands wrapped round warm glasses of tea.
“what do you say to the latest decree?”one of them asked the innkeeper. “What would suggest we do in order to persuade the poritz to change his mind?”
Just as the innkeeper was about to reply, one of the travelers spoke up. “Hush, I just heard a strange noise in the courtyard.” His fellow travelers inclined their ears toward him. “A kind of a clanking, it was. Like iron shackles.”
The innkeeper drew back in fright. “The spies are everywhere. They seek to ruin our town. Quick – tell me where you spent last night.”
“We spent the night in the fields, but were in Michaelovets not a few days ago.” A man with a shaky voice spoke up. “We started out in Poruba weeks ago.” He sighed. “It has been difficult to leave our families behind, but if we do not accomplish our mission, they will all perish anyhow.”
The innkeeper thought a second. “It is not safe for you here. I will have to hide you. If what you heard what I fear it is, the soldiers are coming and none of us will be safe if they find travelers such as you here.” He urged them to finish their drinks quickly and then beckoned them to follow him into a dark entrance in the back wall of the inn.
The man who had heard the noise, Brodrick, shot out his hand as the innkeeper headed towards the back, stopping his fellow travelers in their tracks.
“I don’t trust this man,” he whispered to them. “Spies? Why is HE so interested in our travelings? I think we should discuss this first amongst ourselves before we decide to blindly following him into G-d knows what trap.”
Bodrick, who had snuck up behind the innkeeper, swung a large battle ax and chopped off the innkeeper’s head.
He ran from the tunnel carrying the head aloft. “Here!”, he shouted to the people outside, “I have slain the innkeeper.”
The poritz’s men, who were waiting outside and had made the noises which had scared the travelers burst into loud guffaws. “Now, now,” they said…
(continued)
…but were interrupted by the innkeeper’s head which began talking.
“Dkaj adjlk aiowl cjmial,” said the head.
The poritz’s men screamed and ran in terror down the tunnel since that was the closest opening.
(continued)
…Vadim, the fastest of a fat lot reached the opening of the tunnel first, where he promptly tripped over Brodrick’s axe. He was still cursing when he slid head first into the fire grate.
(continued)
The fire grate burst into flames, lighting up the tunnel and lighting Vadim on fire. The travelers (there were two left, since Bodrick was still outside arguing with the head) leaped towards Vadim and beat him (pretending they were trying to put the fire out).
Meanwhile, Bodrick and the head were in a full shouting match.
Bodrick: Why did you sell me substandard beer?
Head: ajwio nmmaolile lkmkmoioillioli
Bodrick: That doesn’t change anything, he is MY son!
Head: jalief mamioe mioi
Bodrick: (in a lower voice) Oh, I understand now.
(continued)
Brodrick slowly turned around and realized the entire population of the village, albeit fewer than 50 all told, were staring at him in a a way that made him think perhaps the head was not really partaking in his heated conversation at all. He quickly dropped the innkeeper’s most valuable possession and bolted into the dark of the night.
(continued)
Zaidy, was the head really talking? How can that be?
Yonaleh, zat is vat happens ven you let Pupoh into ze Shtory. Now let me continue.
(this story got good in a hurry)
Veltz Meshugener Stop interupting
On the screen, the images of Brodrick and the innkeeper’s head faded, and words began to appear, letter by letter, clicking like an old time laptop keyboard.
Is the innkeeper really dead?
Who is this mysterious Vadim?
What are the poritz’s men after?
Your first mission: Capture and interrogate Brodrick.
The words faded, and Henry shut the screen off with a wave of his hand.
“What do you think?” he asked, turning to Mohammed, his tall, dark complexioned companion.
“I don’t even know what I’m looking at!” Mohammed exclaimed.
“It’s a prototype of our next big release, Shtetl II: Baalagolah’s Triumph, for Xbox and Playstation.”
“Shtetl II? When was Shtetle I? Did this title come from another developer?”
“Shtetl I was in Eastern Europe from about 1200 to 1938.”
“Oh.”
The next day,
Henry: How do we know that this is an accurate shtetl?
Muhammed: I have gone back in time with my bein hazmanim machine and witnessed it myself.
Henry: There is no such thing as a bein hazmanim machine! There is only a bein hazmanim radio!
Muhammed: I invented it based on a similar technology. I use the radio waves to heat up the air which makes the molecules move quicker around me, which means that time passes more quickly around me, which means that I am giong back in time. To return, I heat up myself so that I am moving faster. Let’s try it out.
The two of them enter the machine, and push 1632. The machine whirs, and…
The land in a small village on a rainy night. They peer out from the bushes and see a horseman in dirty clothes moving at breakneck speed and holding a golden crown.
Henry turns to Muhammed and asks, “By the way, did you buy that chair at Gimble’s?”
Muhammed: What are you talking about?
Henry: Never mind. How did you know we wouldn’t die from that extreme heat?
Muhammed: I experimented first with a cat; don’t worry, it wasn’t mine. I borrowed it first from Shloime.
After a few moments, they hear a multitude of hoof beats nearing on the road; the entourage that follows is clearly of an aristocratic nature. A beautiful carriage is drawn by four well-bred horses, and is surrounded by several knights. They are clearly pursuing the crown. Peering through the window of the carriage, they see a well-dressed man with an intent look on his face. But there is another strange individual in the carriage with the aristocrat. He is (continued)
Brodrick! (continued)
He is the cat which Muhammed had sent previously. And he is mad!
He leaps from the carriage and jumps on Muhammed’s face, and claws him viciously. Then, he leaps on Henry’s face, and claws him too! Then leaps on the bein hazmanim machine and claws it until it is broken to bits.
Then he purrs softly at them, and says, “Muhammed, I have waited for this moment for 400 years.”
Muhamed says, “you mean for negative 400 years?”
The cat, whose name is Nancy, says, “yes, but I say 400 years because years are just as long in one direction as in the other, and it is harder for people and cats to conceptualize negative years.”
Henry is so shocked, that he chokes on his chewing gum, and falls into a coma, from which he may or may not ever awake.
seems popa and I added the about the same time, which one are we going with?
Simple. The name of the cat is Brodrick.
ten years later…
There was a Knock on mohammud’s door, it was Henry out of breath. Mohamud looked at him, shocked, “What happened? How did you get here? We thought you were…” “There is no time,” Henry replied, we have to…
(I propose that when and if there is a conflict due to multiple posts going up at the same time, the next person to post be the one who decides where the story goes; he/she doesn’t need to specifically say whose storyline they are following; it can either be implied or they can just ignore the issue completely and continue on their own way. If you have a better idea for conflicts, please share.)
“There is no time,” Henry replied, we have to…
“We have to get back to the original timeline, before the innkeeper’s head was chopped off!” He mixed a forgetfulness potion and prepared mugs for himself and Mohammed. “To the future’s past, drink up, drink up.” Both men lifted the mugs to their lips to drink when there was a banshee wailing at the window and they turned in unison.
A dark shape filled the window as the wailing got louder. Forty screaming babies couldn’t have made a more chilling sound. “Allah, save us,” Mohammed cried. “HaShem, reveal the mournful creature who disturbs us,” Henry pleaded.
The curtain parted and a shape pushed at its margin. Nancy the cat slid in. “Do not drink from the foul cup,” she hissed. “It is tainted with Brodrick’s curse.” The men dropped their mugs as Nancy pounced on the floor between them.
“Brodrick’s curse?” Mohammed asked. “Is that as bad a punishment as no Internet for a week because I bought Henry’s chair from Gimbles?”
Simple. The name of the cat is Brodrick.
IDK if you realized but popa named him nancy
“we have to leave this house immediately cuz the dead body of Brodrick the cat is buried under this house! He does not like me and his spirit will haunt this house until i leave! And i plan on taking it up with this cat once and for all!”
Not going to participate, but have to say, this is good stuff. ^_^
So Henry and Muhammed and Nancy left the house. The banshee followed them, but did not make any noise. They left the town, and wandered through the fields with no apparent direction, muck like the B”esht’s horses.
As the walked along, Henry began to sing:
“The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
his torch is at thy temple door,
avenge the patriotic gore, that flecked the streets of Baltimore,
and be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland!
Soon they came upon a clearing in the woods, where the horseman with the crown and the wagon chasing him, were stopped and conferring quietly. OneOfMany seemed to be leading the discussion, from which the words “morgul”, “genius”, and “short subtitle” could be heard out of context.
Henry boldly walked into the group, and strode up to the horseman. “In the name of Muhammed, I demand the crown.”
The horseman looked scornfully at him, and responded:
“In spite of ice, in spite of snow,
in spite of all the winds that blow,
in spite of hail, and biting frost,
take thyself and get thee lost.”
Muhammed also wanted the crown, since he had always fancied one. So he sidled up to the horseman’s horse, and put a burr under its saddle.
(continued) (you’ll participate if I say you will)
(Lol, I forgot he named her Nancy.)
(Arggggh, you got me…)
The horse began spasming and frothing in terrible agony – for it was the Dread Thorne of Thee Unspeekable Plague, which infects those it pricks with incurable Rhyme-on-a-Dime-itis. The horse, now under the Dread Thorne’s hold, was unable to express his agony in anything other than butchered dactylic dimeter:
NEIGHwinnyNEIGHwinny
SNORThumphgruntBLEURGHshinny
PFFFTnumpfrumpKREEhinny
NEIGHwinnySNORT
Our heroes (and villains) understandably hadn’t a dingbat’s wiffle as to what was going on, which was this: Mohammed, who had accidentally manufactured this cursed talisman in his taboo experiments with the bein hazmanim machine, was unintentionally (well…except for the horse) infecting the timeline with his deadly spores. This extraneous and anachronistic drivel bulged through the seams of Common Sense, creating a Plot Hole (the one that had previously swallowed up Henry’s coma) which was rampantly swallowing up vital plot elements and and spewing banshees, unnecessary (and yet so augustly titled) purple geniuses and paisley couches. This corruption of the timestream would eventually cause all of time to collapse on itself, with the end result being the world would implode and reform as a disc on the backs of four elephants on a turtle. Our cast, being completely unaware of all this, was now engaged in a confused (not to mention poetically discordant) tussle over a golden crown which kept inexplicably shifting into different tints of vintage marmalade.
Except Nancy, that is. Handily, Nancy, who had previously contracted and cured a mild form of this plague as consequence of being Mohemmed’s unwilling test subject, was instantaneously able to divine the gravity of the situation. And she knew exactly what to do.
(Continued…)
(This seems to be forming into some crazy breed of A Hitchhikers Guide and Doctor Who – it makes me smile 🙂 )
And some Discworld and some Twain. ^_^
And then the cat, Nancy Brodrick, who had recieved that last name from marrying a Russian cat named Vladimir Brodrick mentioned that she knew how to fix bein hazmanim machines. After paying her shadchan a few mice for setting her up with Vladimir she took a course in time travel so that she could travel to the twenty first century and go to seminary in Yerushalayim since cats often get married while still in highschool. Using her understanding of bein hazmanim radio waves she managed to put together the machine and transport everyone to the time of the first Beis Hamikdash. She was careful not to raise the heat too much since the last time she burnt herself and had to take advntage again of her nine lives which she had already used three times.
Moshe stopped writing and google talked Bentzion. “Nu, so how do you like my story? I think we managed to do a good job talking about a character named Mohamed in a story about jews without making his probable arab-ness relevant in any way. I bet you didn’t think that was going to happen.”
Bentzion chatted back (continued)
Very entertaining. No fantasy adventure story is complete without a talking cat!
“But Zaidy I don’t understand is it your story or moshes story”
“Yonaleh, zat is vat happens ven you let Pupoh into ze Shtory again. Now let me continue.”
This name is already popa bar abba?
(NAS – the pyschic bunnies of doom can only make an appearance if the ant of the apocalypse does as well…)
&:#=
“But Zaidy I don’t understand is it your story or moshes story”
“Yonaleh, zat is vat happens ven you let Pupoh into ze Shtory again. Now let me continue.”
Nancy knew that the bein hazmanim radio waves could jeopardize her remaining 6 lives and she would be joining Vladimir in cat-olam haba. Feh! He was a grumpy old cat anyhow and she didn’t miss him much, that old tuna-breathed, mangy cuss. Besides, although she chose to transport everyone to the time of the first bais hamikdash, she realized that the lazy 21st-century humans were unsuited to hard work requiring physical labor other than pushing virtual buttons. She paused to groom her flank then spoke to the crowd.
“People, listen up. And someone get me some catnip. There’s a crisis brewing in Tinseltown, a massive crisis. The holiday movie releases are coming out and, if I must say so myself, they are all B-O-R-I-N-G. No masterful felines (as in “Bringing Up Baby”) and no cartoon cats (as in the intro to “The Pink Panther”).” She licked her tail suddenly with a convulsive movement that caused the humans to shrink back. “We’re here, back in time, to rectify this foul (and I don’t mean chickens or turkeys) situation.”
“Now here’s the plan.”
Chaim wake up, its time for yeshiva.
and has he slowly woke up, washed nadel vasser and got dressed,Chaim thought to himself, was it all a dream? Or is there some element of navoa to all this?
The menacing laugh from under his bed made him shudder and he slowly bent down to see where the laughter was coming from. When he saw the 2 green eyes glowing back at him and white teeth flashing to the menacing laughter, he passed out…
(NAS – the modern Prometheus springs to mind here… North Pole, anyone?)
Continued Nancy Brodrick, our feline hero, “The reason we are here, my friends, is to prevent a tragedy that will befall humankind in the year 2015 if the timeline were to progress as is. If things were to go as is, the entire state of Wisconsin will turn into giant killer ants on August 14, 2015; they will then proceed to take over the world and force us, one by one, to watch the entire show of Twilight while listening to Justin Bieber on repeat, thus killing any brain cells of value.”
“Now this apocalypse is only able to occur because of an event that occurs in 1837, at which my ancestor, Brodrick B. Brodrick, was present. It is at this point in time that Vadim, a man notorious for eating red ants by the handful, is thrown into a furnace; this is no ordinary furnace, either. This is a deep furnace that connects to the very bowels of the earth, and as everyone knows, Wisconsin is the gateway to the core of the earth. Brodrick saw this event, and this information has been passed down to me, through 170 difficult years of persecution and sped up devolution from man to cat.”
“Now this is where we come in. The first red ant that Vadim ever ate came from a shtetl named Beerandcholent, and this shtetl’s roots go back to the time we find ourselves in now, i.e. the first beis hamikdash, and to a Persian town called Awannakillya. The only way we can prevent the red ants from breeding is to…
The only way we can prevent the red ants from breeding is to…
…give them some family-appropriate entertainment! Let’s put on a show!!! It worked for Mickey Rooney… and he had 9 lives (or was that 9 wives?) so it should work for us.”
Now, the travelers were skeptical about the idea of a show and started to grumble. “What if they don’t like vaudeville?” Dov Winnie-the-Pooh Ber complained.
“If I do my soft shoe shuffle, I may crush them” siad Heshy “Hot Foot” Hoppleheimer.
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