1000 people to write a story

Dufflecoat Fanny

Had a funny idea let's give it a try. 1000 people contribute to a story that can go anywhere. One person gives a few hundred words or a paragragh and let it evolve.

pixelburp

Sounds like it could be fun; presumably confined to this forum, right?

pixelburp

Wanna get the ball rolling then Dufflecoat?

Man with broke phone

There was nothing ringing except an infernal blasting squeel, defecating in his eardrums, churning around in a cement mixer skull.
There was no light shining except a single stinging ray, piercing a shade without slowing down and pointing into a skull that was imbalanced and tumbling.
Bucking liberals he snarled for no good reason, checking around him for his weapon. Bucking liberals and republicans.

Man with broke phone

The first five steps in the morning, or mid afternoon lately, is the great test for how many years your body has left. Every bone creaked. Every muscle misfired. He sweated so much it stang. His movement was punctured.

He looked deep into the mirror. Past his stupid red eyed blurry head and into beyond.

"What' ll I do next?"

The sink rattled with the echoes of the old tiles.

"Who gave birth to me, where will my life go?"

"Get off your lazy ass and control me."

He pulled four tablets from the edge of the sink where people normally keep toothpaste and made them disapear. Today will be same as yesterday.

Man with broke phone

All low rent chinese restaurants now. Addicts with crying kids in buggies, sitting on benches, drinking outside the few pubs left on a forgotten stretch just off O Connell street.

Everyone here disgusted him, workers, addicts, shop owners and women pushing prams with bags hanging off them. They all made him sick. Sick with guilt because he was the worst of them.

There was a carpark just up past the maternity hospital. Once he got up there, got what he needed and got his buzz on he could start work again. The guilt he felt before was nothing to what he felt now. He had debts that couldnt be paid with an honest job and he had a habit that consumed everything else.

That squeeling noise started again rattling his head, when he had time he would figure out how to change it, he pulled the phone from his pocket.

4 communists living in a flat at 14 b Pearce Plaza. Sort it.

That was the chaos of it all, half the time he pulled the trigger he wasnt sure if it was the right people. Nobody ever told him otherwise. He wasnt sure how he got the phone. The bills just started getting paid when he did what he was told.

Man with broke phone

He was a college kid once. Different guy then. Big georgian freezing house in Drumcondra. Damp in his lungs, in his wardrobe, in his nostril, in his food. Bread turned to mould after a day in these cupboards.
Bread rarely lasted a day though with 4 pay for nothing beatnicks sharing the icebox. Watching his shopping habits, knowing when he was arriving and what day brought what treats. He only got 4 slices from a pain and when he turned his back itd be had by one of them.
It drove him mad at the start, he was near counting his salt granuals to catch them until one day he found something else to care about. Something else to keep you busy.

Soon enough the 4 pay for nothing ice box slimers were complaining of things going missing and chores not doing.

Man with broke phone

He was a child before that. Never really felt happy or sad. Wanted to make other people not sad or angry, after that he wanted to be told he was good at stuff, anything. Sometimes people praised him for being well behaved, hard working, good stamina, being funny but when they didnt praise him it stung, it was because they were jealous, they were trying to make the popular guy feel good by only giving him the praise, bunch of pigs.

Always running him down by ignoring his achievements. Even the manager of the local football team always telling him what he should have done, rarely told everybody how good he was.

He didnt like that much. He didnt want to play their silly popularity games anyway.

Man with broke phone

Big leafy trees, a wide thoroughfare, two bicycle lanes in each direction, a stretch of grass and oak down one side, Ed Fleck stands looking at his dog with a little plastic bag in his hand. Theres nowhere hed rather be, well nowhere except his local gym, the one place he feels welcome.

It will be a while before that will be open though. The only place he can leave the house without people looking at him with fright, wondering what drugs his pregnant mother took, warning their kids not to slag him or laugh, would be for the dogs benefit.

He was training his broad thick back last night. A crazed loon had came scrambling in sideways and out of control, like he was on trolley wheels, Ed looked at him, he looked back and carried on rolling by until he tumbled over a bench.

Tom Murtagh came limping over demanding to know what the issue was. He started up this gym twenty years ago when he wanted to make a difference, he hated the place now. Couldnt bring himself to refill the soap in the dispenser most days.

The nutjob pulled a gun right in front of Ed and told Tom Murtagh, local hero, that he should have a more ethnically diverse hiring policy and shot him once in the chest and once in the face.

He turned to Ed and mumbled sorry, turned and bundled back out. All Ed would be good for, for the next few days would be walking his dog.

Man with broke phone

An elderly woman drudged through a laneway between a church and school in a north Dublin sink estate.

Decades ago they filled the estate with working class people as part of social houseing.These people were given the opportunity to buy these houses and get on the property ladder.
The workers and people with aspirations bought the houses and sold them back to the council, the houses then went to the children of the people who didnt work or didnt have aspirations.

An elderly woman showed how young she still was by shifting her weight to her right foot and pivoting anticlockwise to avoid a firework shooting past her shoulder. Three or four more shots rang out from the laughing youth who suddenly seemed bored and just carried on walking the opposite direction down the alley.

It wasnt her first rodeo and when angry people knocked on her door to complain her children were causing trouble she told them where to go, so she wasnt going to go knocking on anybodies door dishing out parenting advice. Its not her business.

Little baxstard she she said slowly, good and loud, allowing her accent to show.

She checked she still had her bingo bag full of markers and on she went. Double night this week. She felt lucky.

Man with broke phone

Reeney Ross was touching sixty. She liked a game of bingo and played twice a week. Once in the local hall and once in whatever north dublin venue was offering good prize money at the time. She carried with her a small plastic bag that contained markers and a small clipboard. In her coat pocket she always carried a flick knife, she wasnt a psycho she just never felt safe since her teens, only when she was with Barney, when she got to her mid forties the worry got worse but as far back as she could remember if Barney wasnt there she felt like she was about to be attacked most of the time. Reeney could play a number of books at a time and if somebody was speaking in her company during a game they were told to shut up. Reeneys friends husband had a car most of the time and was always good for a lift.

Reeneys husband Barney never worked a day in his life. If you looked at the local pub on labour day he would be in there, you might tut and say that feckers always in that boozer, never works but in honesty he had 4 pints a week after collecting his dole since his forties.

Before his forties Barney Ross was a wild man. He apologised for nothing and nobody dared ask him to, except Reeney. Reeney would tear strips off him but hed be just as wild the next day.

Barney liked an afternoon a week on the slosh and Reeney liked the bingo.

Man with broke phone

The phone started ringing as Teresa Mangan was stubbing out a cigarette against the ground with her legs straight, back bent, stooped over on a busy street across from Connoly station. Her forehead was closer to the cigarette than her knees were. A fast stranger had to leapfrog her. She didnt notice.

She pulled it from her trousers pocket and spoke in snoring dog noises while she buzzed her leap card and headed upstairs on a Dublin Bus. Se was slightly overweight according to most doctors but carried it well enough. She wore spotless white shoes and a brand new tracksuit.

"Yeah Kevin gave me a cheque Im on the way back"

"Yeah I had to wait ages to cash the cheque"

"Ive to meet him again after the course tomorrow to see"

"Yeah I had to wait to get the cheque cashed thats why"

"No you can check me when I get back"

She hurriedly took a stack of blister packs from her pocket. Looked around the bus then gulped two tablets and kicked off her left shoe. The blister packs went in her perfectly white socks before her shoe went back on her foot.

A few minutes later she was looking at a huge hulking man who looked like his father rather enjoyed a pint cleaning dog poop on the leafy street below her window.

"If hes there tomorrow Im going to ask him what happened his face, but in a nice way, I dont want him to feel bad" she loudly mumbled to nobody, everybody, the 20 odd commuters that were fed up with the likes of Teresa wrecking the sense of decorum each day on the bus home from work heard her, thats for damn sure.

Man with broke phone

Nobody ever gave a toss about Kaya Duffy except his ma. His ma didnt really know much about anything though and raised him with the parenting guidebook of the prolateriat.

You are better than nobody and nobody is better than you.

You cant have a bike till you can show me you can defend it from robbers.

Dont try too hard in your job everybody will think you are a rat.

Dont be a rat. Dont rob washing lines. All drugs are bad but definatly dont touch heroin, thats for smellbags.

Stand up straight.

That sort of stuff. She had a different boyfriend every week and loved to guzzle whatever booze was fashionable. She liked to dance to reggae with a joint in her mouth and her eyes half closed. Most days she wore a dressing gown.

It was a miracle when Kaya got offered a place in a PLC course in the local TEC as far as the locals were concerened, but Kaya worked hard. He reckoned his da must have been a hard worker but he had no idea who he was.

He hoped to make ads or short funny films one day because he liked to make people laugh but he also wanted to have a fair world where everybody had the same shake of the dice.

Thats why Kaya Duffy was here looking at a penis poking through his letterbox and peeing all over his mat in the hall of his poxy apartment.

He ran to the door and nearly ripped the hinges off pulling it open, he was stabbed sixteen times before he realised the man with the phone wanted him to come barging out.

His mother would use this as an excuse to carry on drinking, his two friends would wake up shortly, one to find out why his head was getting banged and the other to find out what the commotion was.

All three lads would die for communism that day. Two of them didnt even really believe in it, they just liked the camararderie, the songs and having friends.

Man with broke phone

Another day in leafy Dublin. A crisp afternoon with a nice breeze blowing. A horse of a man with a plastic bag on his hand is watched by his dog as he cleans upafter him.

Lurch a giant of a hound needed regular walking, and Ed a man with a severly addictive personality needed something to walk, or something to lift, or something to eat. If he didnt he was likely to go looking for something to take or something to drink or something to smoke.

He hit rock bottom when the police arrested him for forcibly begging, he asked two teenagers for a euro politely enough but his huge size and unfortunate face had frightened the lives out of the two lads mitching from a private school up by Stephens green. They ran straight to a gaurd stationed at the gate and Ed followed to try and calm them, scaring them all the more with his drooling mouth and lack of grasp on the english language.

Lurch looked past him at the shuffeling shape of a young woman, a pair of scuffed runners, a tracksuit that looked like it hadnt seen the inside of a washing machine in days, in fact it looked like it had been slept in for days a pair of eyes that seemed closed and open at the same time and mouth that looked like it wasnt going to say anything coherent any time soon.

She ambled on to Ed Fleck and mumbled very loudly. What happened your face , I dont mind it.