Mad Lib Story Thread

[Jack Halyard]

...but suddenly the mood was altered as Ian awoke from his nap in front of the TV realizing it was not the mystical bird of legend but the NBC peacock. A promo for the latest Joaquin Phoenix movie was airing.
His thoughts turned to days gone by. His gazed turned to the portrait that hung on the wall. He arose and stood at the window. He now knew exactly what he needed to do and...

[Bandit]

...popped a couple of more of those little blue pills from the Doctor. While waiting for Johnny Carson to air, the reflections in the window became blurred with...

[InLove]

...fuzzy-edged images of birds of many feathers, and the face of a beautiful, dark-haired creature whose willowy fingers clutched a small revolver. Her perfectly arched brows furrowed above the intense colors below them, and she looked somehow familiar to Ian, an observation that frightened him so badly that he considered flushing the little blue pills down the toilet--again.

An avian symphony of some discord fell on his ears--mockingbirds mocked him; hoot owls lived up to their reputations as seers, as they pronounced their dark predictions; those big South American bursts of color held him with an almost human gaze--and above and inside it all were the cackles of a madwoman come with her faithful warriors and messengers--come for Ian, but WHY? .....

[InLove]

...Ian drifted. With eyes closed, he clearly saw the rag-tag alley cat that made its way up the branches of an old scrub tree. Hadn’t he chopped that damned thing down? No matter—it was there in his dreams again. Drifting, drifting…Drifter! Yes—it was Drifter, his childhood “pet.” Ian had promised his mother that he would take care of the tiny smash-faced oddity if he could keep him. But alas, he could neither keep him nor take care of him, as the cat would have none of it, except to return every now and then from whatever adventure had called this time to curl up in Ian’s lap for a precious half-hour or so before his next unscheduled departure.

Drifter scaled the unstable gray scaffold toward an irresistable destination. Like Ian, he could never curb his curiosity, even—no maybe especially—for his own good. He was always getting into trouble, evidenced by what little remained of his teeth and a tattered right ear that had nearly been chewed completely off in some midnight backstreet battle. Ian followed the cat’s intense, stalking gaze to a small nest that rested precariously in a fork of one of the top branches. As is possible perhaps only in dreams, he drifted above and ahead of the critter, and looking down into the teacup-sized refuge, he felt himself gasp in wonder and horror. For there, in a neat and inexplicable pile they lay, ready to finally reveal their meaning to him. But no, no, no—for once in his life, for some reason, he did not want to know! Of this he was sure.

But meaning had begun, and it was his own fault. Just as he had almost managed to wake himself from what was no doubt much more than a mere dream, here it came. He knew it would be a blue jay. He hated blue jays! He had always told Trudy they were just plain evil. He had watched them torture poor Drifter too many times not to think so! He had seen them raid the nests of sparrows and knock their eggs to the ground to die. Never mind that Drifter would have eaten them anyway—he was a cat, and that was to be expected. But for one bird to do that to another, well it was just wrong in Ian’s opinion. But then Ian had never been able to understand the habits of birds anyway, and it went without saying that they certainly had become more confusing to him of late.

He watched the jay swoop down over and over until the cat gave up and ran away into the mist of his mind once again. That was troublesome enough. But it was the gleaming, jewel-like jelly beans nestled there in the scrub that caused his stomach to turn, and the accusing screech of the bird’s declaration, “The book is opened! The book has been opened!” that at once raised his eyelids and sent him flying down the hall to anywhere else but there....

[InLove]

(Okay, time to post again.......it's been long enough....heh-heh...)


IV

Raven finished wiping down the oiled skin tablecloth and stuffed the tip into the pocket of her uniform, which was really just the one and only pair of jeans she seemed to own, and a used T-shirt that sported the faded logo, “Monnie’s Crowbar”. Monnie, she had learned, had actually passed on several years ago, but her husband, Old Jack, had kept the place running. It was just about the only place around that served breakfast, and it was not unusual to fill an order of sunnyside-ups accompanied by an empty shot glass under the table for those regular patrons who were in need of a hair of the dog that bit ‘em the night before, and would no doubt inflict the same wound again before sundown.

During the daytime, Monnie’s served as a diner, a greasy spoon that attracted the local desert rats and old Navajo and Hopi men who sat and talked politics and played cards for hours. A small number of tourists found their way off the beaten path on a fairly regular basis, and just last week, a busload of college students had descended on the small dive, hungry and tired from an archeological field trip. The place shut down for three hours in the afternoon, but by five o’clock, the picnic tables and iron chairs out front begin to fill up with an assortment of bikers and young men from the nearby reservations, some of them wielding custom pool cues and plenty of attitude. Sometimes there was live music, but most of the time the juke box played. Sometimes Old Jack put on CDs that had been given to him—everything from Jerry Jeff Walker to Steppenwolf , and once he even tried out Los Lonely Boys, but no one really noticed much except for a couple of scantily-clad young women who were there every night, creating a show on the so-called dance floor.

Raven did not really care about the goings-on around her. She was there for one purpose only—to make enough money to get out of town and on her way to wherever it was she was supposed to be. The only things that interested her in the least (and in a disturbing sense, for that matter) was the character of Old Jack and the wooden carvings that hung on the walls of the dive. There was something good about this man, she thought. His spirit seemed to shine out of his blue-gray eyes, and the bird carvings were, well….

[InLove]

...mesmerizing. Dark and highly polished reliefs gazed sternly out upon a seemingly indifferent clientele, while the raw cottonwood renderings, fragile and friendly, somehow survived alongside generic napkinholders and salt shakers made out of empty beer bottles. Perhaps it was her imagination working overtime again, but Raven could almost...

[lunamoth]

taste the lemonade, sweet and tart and fresh. If only her dreams of running with the lionesses were true, then she could...

[Ciel]

....release her skin embodiment and blend with the light of the sun in radiant syzygy, transparency, sylph like sybarite in everchanging multiple hues, and free of shoes. She could be.......................

[Jack Halyard]

...sitting in that romantic bistro in Paris drinking absinthe with her handsome companion Jules, discussing Marcel Proust while the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli wafted from an ancient Victrola.
But no, here she was in Monnie's, somewhere along Route 66, slinging hash and making small talk with whomever happened to strike up a conversation.

After the last customer ambled out of the cafe she collected her tips and stepped outside into the midnight heat, lighting up a Camel and sipping on a lukewarm can of Schlitz, when a Jeep missing one headlight pulled off the highway and into the makeshift parking lot.

Raven at first couldn't make out the figure in the dust covered vehicle but slowly she began to recognize the face of someone from her past. She knew that she knew this person but couldn't recall the name to save her life. As the figure slowly emerged into the glare of the neon light she heard a familiar voice. "Trudy?"...

[InLove]

She watched as the tall, tan figure emerged from the jeep. A photo flashed in her mind of a darkening desert highway and a looming shadow on a double yellow line, and the words, "Do not pass" seemed to take over the moment.

He was calling out to her, using that name that haunted her. As he walked toward her, she observed the folded newspaper in his hand. What did he want with her?

"Trudy Dove?" the man asked.

Raven wavered under the possibility. Was she?

"No! Leave me alone!" she cried, backing away. Hurling the empty beer can toward him, she turned to run, but....

[Jack Halyard]

...stopped cold in her tracks and turned around to face this person who had called her by a name vaguely familiar to her.

"Trudy, don't you remember me?" he asked.
"I am, I am....trying to remember," she said, but she couldn't.

She thought to herself, "Trudy....Trudy. That's not my name.
My name is Raven, Raven Fortitude.......I think."
At least she...

[Pathless]

[At least she] still had half the Camel. She put it to her lips and pulled the smoke deep into her, squinting through haze and layers of wishy-washy memory here under the electric light of midnight outside Monnie's Crowbar in New Mexico. The man, wavering a moment ago, now stepped closer and she held her ground.

"Trudy. Listen. I need you to come home now." These words were thick, getting thicker at the end, pitch-shifting down into grotesque tones. The image of the man before her flickered like a glitchy hologram. Thunder roared miles away, followed by heat lightning. In the space between the sound and the light, the overhead electric light buzzed out, and a strange, descending tone came from everywhere at once, seemingly.

As if she inhabited some shimmering, flickering Pink Floyd universe, the voice continued, delayed and tweaked: "I need you--to come home--to come home--I need you--I need you--to come--home--home--home." Trippy, thought the woman, and in that moment the flash of a more whole name came to her: True Dove Raven Fortitude. Behind her, the neon title of the bar sputtered and fritzed, leaving a new name for the place. With more than half the letters gone, the pink flourescence now spelled: "I ' Crow."

A clue?

[InLove]

(Kewl, Pathless. WB to your thread--was wondering if you'd stop by! )

Originally Posted by Pathless

[At least she] still had half the Camel. She put it to her lips and pulled the smoke deep into her, squinting through haze and layers of wishy-washy memory here under the electric light of midnight outside Monnie's Crowbar in New Mexico. The man, wavering a moment ago, now stepped closer and she held her ground.

"Trudy. Listen. I need you to come home now." These words were thick, getting thicker at the end, pitch-shifting down into grotesque tones. The image of the man before her flickered like a glitchy hologram. Thunder roared miles away, followed by heat lightning. In the space between the sound and the light, the overhead electric light buzzed out, and a strange, descending tone came from everywhere at once, seemingly.

As if she inhabited some shimmering, flickering Pink Floyd universe, the voice continued, delayed and tweaked: "I need you--to come home--to come home--I need you--I need you--to come--home--home--home." Trippy, thought the woman, and in that moment the flash of a more whole name came to her: True Dove Raven Fortitude. Behind her, the neon title of the bar sputtered and fritzed, leaving a new name for the place. With more than half the letters gone, the pink flourescence now spelled: "I ' Crow."

A clue?