A Story Written by You and Me

When I was in junior high I used to play this game with my friends at school and with my sisters on roadtrips. It's a writing game that can be a lot of fun. Here is what you do: the first person (in this case me) in a couple of paragraphs writes the beginning of a story. It doesn't matter what it's about, but ideally the author will stop writing right at a critical or suspenseful moment, and then pass the story to the next person. The next person picks up right where the first person left off, they write a few more paragraphs leaving a new suspenseful moment at the end for the next person to fill it in. And then the next person does the same thing, and so on and so forth. We usually passed it around several times so we all had lots of chances to write. When I played it with my sisters, we would get pretty mean, but looking back on them, they were hilarious!

Okay, so I have started the story and I hope that the rest of you will post your continuations of the story in the comments. Be sure to make the story pick up where the last commentor left off, and not where I did (unless you are the first person to comment). You are allowed to come back and post anytime you want. It should be a lot of fun-- so here goes! (Remember to keep it clean and inoffensive.)

The Story

It was a rainy evening and the children were finally in bed. The young and tired mother parted the curtains in her room to look down on her little street and listen to the rain. She reviewed her day in her mind-- it had been overcast and she and her children had been stuck inside all day long. Between watching Baby Einstein, breaking up little squabbles and wiping yogurt off of multiple types of surfaces, she hadn't had a moment to herself. And to top it off, it had been ramen special for dinner again. To say her day hadn't been glamorous would have been an understatement. Pretty unexciting and dull indeed. When would it end? she asked herself as she let out a sigh.

Right about now she would have loved to either curl up with a book or converse with her husband (who happened to be working on the computer in the next room), but she was so exhausted that she knew she must sleep instead. Oh well, she thought, another time, perhaps. She climbed into bed and closed her eyes. Sometimes at night as she fell asleep, she pretended that she was someone else. A princess or someone, and that her queen sized bed which seemed too small, was actually a huge four poster bed with a canopy and she was in a castle sleeping in a white nightdress on satin sheets. Tonight was no exception, and in her pretending she soon fell asleep and started to dream.

In her dream she was the royal princess that she had imagined. She was asleep in the four poster bed, and when she awoke in the morning it was a leisurely hour, and servants brought her children to her-- already bathed, fed and dressed. They played pleasantly together, the mother and her babes, until the toddler's diaper needed to be changed, at which point a nurse maid came and took care of it. Luxury! Lunch was taken in the dining hall, the Princess Mom did not have to think about it, prepare it or clean up after it. After the meal the children were put down for a nap, and the young mother had some time to herself. (Not that she had to wait for naptime to have time alone, she could have had anytime she wanted in this Fantasy Land). She was a bit tired, but instead of sleeping she decided to take a stroll in the garden. She got on her shoes and jacket and headed out. It was a crisp day, but as she approached the garden she saw something strange. It was something she had never seen before, and as she approached it--- oh my! It was a.....