Edit: Just ‘Cause I’m Compulsive, here’s the intro from Splotchy’s blog

This has probably been done before, but that is not stopping me, oh no.

Here’s what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don’t know how realistic it is, but that’s what I’m aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it’s okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that’s five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.

Oh, and if you pass it along & comment on splotchy’s page he’ll draw you a little something.

I, Splotchy: This Story Is A Virus :

Here’s what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don’t know how realistic it is, but that’s what I’m aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

MathMan has tagged me to add to the story, which reads….

I woke up hungry. I pulled my bedroom curtain to the side and looked out on a hazy morning. I dragged myself into the kitchen, in search of something to eat. I reached for a jar of applesauce sitting next to the sink, and found it very cold to the touch. I opened the jar and realized it was frozen. (Splotchy)

“That’s strange,” I said out loud to no one in particular. My fingers slowly reached towards the jar again. My body experienced a wave of apprehension as weighted blanket covering me as I did so. The jar was completely frozen.

I picked it up and stared at it, my fingers stung with little knives of chill. “What the…” again I spoke aloud. Then I realized what had happened with a shock. Suddenly the jar flew from my hand. It shattered creating a collage-like mixture of frozen applesauce and glass shards on my kitchen floor, the lid lazily rolling to a stop across the room. (FranIam)

I stood for a moment considering what all this meant. Oh, I knew what it meant, I didn’t need to waste time thinking about it. He was back. And he was mad.

I ran down the hallway and flung open the door at the end. I was immediately hit with a blast of cold. I took a step back as I tried to catch my breath. I bent over, hands on my knees panting. He always had this remarkable effect on me. After so much time, it no longer scared me, but it was a shock nonetheless……

“You know,” I panted, “There’s no need to break things to get my attention.” (DCup)

I woke up in the same position as in my dream, on my knees. I was sweating even though room was freezing. (mathman6293)

I was used to the house being quite cold in the mornings, as the night log usually burns out around one AM when I am dreaming cozily under my covers, not normally waking to put a new one on until morning. I was surprised because on the rare occasions that it actually had reached sub-freezing temperatures in the house, I had awakened in the night to restart the fire. I would have been worried about the pipes before P-Day, but there hadn’t been running water in two years and that was one of the few advantages to being dependent on rainwater, no pipes. (Freida Bee)

The nightmares began during the following spring. The apple trees came to life in my dreams. At first the trees spoke and I thought they were amusing. That changed when the messages arrived. Lately, their anger was directed at me. (mathman6293)

The sound of the front porch floorboards creaking snapped me out of my reverie. I stood up, grabbed my shotgun and made sure a round was chambered, then quietly made my way into the front room and over to the window. As I peeked out past the closed curtains, my heart began to beat rapidly.

It can’t be, the incredulous thought came, I saw him die last year!

(Phydeaux)

There was no doubt it was him. I knew the minute he tried to meow and managed only a croak. I could feel him purring before he even reached my leg. As he started to rub against me I bent to pick him up but that’s as far as I got. I smelled her perfume. I didn’t see her and the scent was very faint, but a man doesn’t forget the smell of a woman like her. As my arms pulled Sylvester to my chest my eyes were closed. The smell of her was strong on him, and my mind carried me back to the last time I’d buried myself in that heady fragrance. “Sorry I took your cat”, she said.

(Brave Sir Robin)

For a minute, all I could do was stare at her gape-mouthed in the manner of a man seeing a ghost. Finally, I found my tongue.

“I’d invite you in for coffee, but everything is frozen”.

‘That’s all right” she said “I like it iced now”.

Over what can only be described as black coffee slushies, she told me the story of how she stole my cat and ran away to make her fortune as a curandera in the jungles of Bolivia. After nearly a year of sweltering heat and bugs, the only magic she had left was the cat’s ability to freeze things. She could no longer produce the raised eyebrow of doom or break ear drums with her sarcastic cackle. When I asked her why she returned, the story got even more convoluted.

” After being run out of Bolivia, I found work at a brothel in Buenos Aires. By the way, your cat learned a few new tricks there. I suggest never saying the words frozen chicken in Spanish to him, you may not like the results. At the brothel I met this tango dancing hamster named Ruby. She told me that the only way I could get my powers back was to…( Red Queen)

…return the cat’s heart. I am sure I don’t have to tell you how long it took me to figure that out. That effing feline always liked you best…but my powers dwindled in him absense…I needed him. So I left the frozen rabbit on the lawn in hopes you would think he had self-destructed finally.

But it was a dangerous addiction, and as my cackle grew stronger, so did his hold on me. Slowly our roles reversed, and he began freezing more often and…just more…while my own powers dwindled slowly over the months. That is how I wasn’t able to keep my cover in Bolivia. He has siphoned all my abilities…and if I hadn’t lucked upon that oddity of a hamster, I would have been dead in two day’s time.”

And now here she sat.

And here I was.

(歐陽丹)

Sitting on a folding metal chair that was covered in a thin sheet of frost in the shack we’d called home. I shivered but not with from the cold – it was something inside much deeper than that. She is here. With another shiver I felt it – my heart was starting to thaw. She was breaking down the walls I’d meticulously built to forget her. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before looking her and curtly asking, “Why are you here?”

“I think you know why”

(canukistanian)*

“No way am I going to Peru, I retorted. “ That damn hamster is more trouble…”

When I first met Ruby, she had just scurried through the crumbling bricks of an apartment house under renovations in the Pacific Northwest. She scampered over my feet, stopping to gnaw through my left shoelace. As she hurried on her way, she suddenly stopped & turned around. She looked at me quizzically & asked,

“Well, are you coming with me or not?”

As I stood there, shocked, and searching for the words to reply, she unfastened from around her neck what appeared to be a thick elastic band with clasps on the end. She quickly strung it through where my shoelace had been and fastened the ends. The she clapped her paws, as if to say “all done”, and turned to leave with a flick of her whiskers. I felt somehow strangely compelled to follow.

Months later, as I sat, dazed on the steps of St. Basil’s Cathedral, blinking at the midday sun, i wondered how a case of mistaken identity could have gone so far.

The cat had joined us somewhere along the way, New Orleans, or Austin, I can’t remember which. We discovered his freezing power when he saved us from a kitchen fire somewhere in Georgia. We had all taken jobs in this little diner off I-75 and since we had no place to stay, the manager was letting us sleep in the storeroom. One night nobody remembered to turn off the grill, and we woke to the smell of fireworks and frying bacon.

Almost instantaneously, the temperature dropped below zero, and the hot oil spewing from the fry vats solidified in mid-air, flying across the counter to land on the tables and booths like greasy hailstones.

But that was a long time ago.

And that morning in Moscow, Ruby said, as she packed fresh cedar chips into her pillowcase, “I’m so sorry for any inconvenience. The cat doesn’t want to go with me, so I hope you’ll look out for him. He can be awfully naive.”

(Wonder)

***I Tag ‘Chelle & Jovial