Please join me in telling a story. Below are two paragraphs—in the comment section add the next lines or a paragraph to continue the narrative and let’s see what our fertile minds come up with.
I opened the door to my apartment. My apartment—the one I always dreamed about. Location—overlooking the park where I could see trees display soft green buds in March and prepare for summer when they dressed in large leaves the color of jade. The dream began when I was eight and my mother and I walked along Park Avenue across from Central Park. We gazed at the buildings—buildings that touched the sky presided over by men in uniform who doffed their caps and opened highly polished wood and glass doors to the fortunate residents who lived in this magical place.
The ugly taxicab-yellow tape that kept me from my home was gone now and I was free to live my life alone. Free to do what I pleased with no one to stop me—no one around to say, “No.” The months since my lover was found dead had been the grimmest months of my life. I was a suspect. My past examined, my present scrutinized, my future unknown.
8 comments:
Cool idea, Elise. Here's my instalment:
Of course, it didn't help that the murder weapon was the baseball bat we kept under the bed... and that we'd had a terrible fight hours before James was murdered.
I'd gotten used to the instant suspicion, the sideways glances, the angling of mothers around their children--as if they were afraid I was going to lash out and destroy those they loved. The way someone had lashed out and destroyed the man I loved.
And he, or she, was still out there, unpunished.
I had as little clue to the murderer's identity as the cops did. But I did have one vital clue they'd missed. It wasn't me.
The baseball bat had my fingerprints on it, but we had used it just last week in a pick-up game in the park with his business partners.
I was enjoying the day so much that I was willing to disregard the exchange between James and Alexander Reigert behdind homeplate. Their heads were bent low and their speech was subdued, but at one point Alexander's hand wrapped around my husband's arm, and I swear there was a male struggle for dominance in that innocent gesture.
Was it my imagination or had Alexander flashed a pair of fangs during that altercation? And what about those puncture marks on James's inner thigh? The police insisted they were mosquito bites, but even the largest mosquito couldn't have sucked most of the blood from his body.
Did the police think I had taken James's blood? Drained it for what insane purpose?
This was my dream home, but I still shivered as I walked across the threshold. Once you've invited evil in, you can't bar the door.
Of course, it didn't help that I'd been stalking his mistress on the night that John was murdered.
Oh yes, I knew about his mistress. A dusky beauty with red, red lips and hair like a dark dream. The kind of woman who would turn any man's head, let alone an innocent like James.
I confronted him when I found her scented card, embossed with her return address, with the damning note:
"Come to me, James. I can wait no longer."
Thanks everyone. I enjoyed all the additions. Hope you all had fun too.
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