More Blasts fom the Past...

Storytelling Game, circa 2015

Title: The Girl Wore Skinny Jeans
Genre: Mystery
Situations: A thorn bush growing in a ship's cabin, a man hiding under the stairs, someone trying to push someone else off of a gang plank
Characters: Dovie Dean (a snoopy teenager), Paul (a young Frenchman), Celeste Dupin (the famous botanist), and the greedy Cyrus Brown

By Emily (Barry) Lightner

The mystery was, why was there a big dry thorn bush growing in a pot in the ship's cabin? Dovie Dean, the typical nosy teenager with her skinny jeans and her battered paperback Tintin shoved in her hoodie pocket, stood with her nose pressed against the window glass and speculated. "Dovie!" her father called, "get over here! We're supposed to be fishing!" Dovie sighed, rolled her eyes and ambled over to where her father stood by the railing and cast his line into the ocean.
From his hiding place under the stairs, the young Frenchman Paul watched Dovie and her father continue to fish as night fell. They had only caught a spiny puffer fish that was impossible to eat. Paul smiled as he thought of how Dovie had so narrowly escaped disaster. "Dad's gone to bed," Dovie thought aloud letting R.R.T slide from her knees. "I'm going to find out why that thorn bush is in the cabin." She tiptoed across the deck and nudged the cabin door. It wasn't locked. She slipped inside, and tripped over something warm, and yielding on the floor. Paul jumped up and caught her even as she fell and pinned her in his arms, smothering her scream with one hand. "I've got you now, you little snooper. You were trying to steal a cutting from my mother's rosebush."
"Don't know - what you're talking about - " Dovie choked.
"My mother is Celeste Dupin - the famous botanist. She married the greedy Cyrus Brown, who stole all her money, everything we had except that priceless rosebush. And now you think you can take that from us?" Paul dragged Dovie out of the cabin, across the deck, and tried to push her off the gang plank into the ocean. Dovie finally screamed, and ran for the cabin. She snatched up the rosebush. "Come any closer and I'll smash your plant." She gasped.
"No!" Paul screamed and jumped to catch it. In the struggle, Dovie's hair got tangled in the thorny bush. At that moment Dovie's Dad appeared in the doorway. One punch from his fist flattened Paul, and Dovie stumbled into her father's arms through the tangling thorns and shattered potter. There's no telling how badly she would have been scratched if she hadn't been wearing skinny jeans.


Title: Billy My Kid
Genre: Comedy
Situations: Loosing a shooting competition, Sitting in a bedroom closet pondering deep matters, sitting on the front porch playing The Story Game
Characters: Miranda Black (a chicken Farmer), Mohammed Mohammed (Miranda's arch enemy), Jessie Wilcox

By Sarah (Barry) Kolster

Miranda Black was a chicken farmer who lived out west all alone, because ever since she'd lost a shooting competition with her arch enemy Mohammed Mohammed she had scorned modern society. She would often spend her days sitting in her bedroom closet pondering the mysteries of life and rare chicken diseases. Her only friend and the one who sympathized with the misfortune of losing a shooting competition to the nasty Mohammed Mohammed was the slightly deranged, wizened, old rancher Jessie Wilcox. Wherever Jessie was in that part of the desert, she would often drop in on Miranda and they would sit on the front porch and play The Story Game for hours. Miranda's stories always spoke of a gentle young goat she would call "Billy My Kid," and she always read her stories with wistful emotion as though she was longing for pet goat of her own to be her companion for the long winter evenings when the snow kept Jessie from visiting. Finally, one day Jessie came for a visit and in the back of the wagon was the gentlest, sweetest goat you ever saw, and Miranda was never lonely again and her days in the bedroom closet were over.


Title: Midnight Vibes
Genre: Romance
Situations: Falling off a waterfall, driving in a jacked up Dodge Ram, watching 19 Kids and Counting, trucks blowing up
Characters: Lola Marx, Bob, Prissy Missy the Peacock

By Abigail Barry


Lola Marx screamed as she began to slide. Suddenly she no longer felt the rock beneath her and she was falling into a sheet of water 50 feet down. After hitting the water she bobbed  to the surface and screamed for help. Just then a large crane swung out over the water and a young man attached by a rope reached down to rescue her...somehow he looked vaguely familiar but she didn't know why. "Thank you so much!" she exclaimed when she was finally safe on shore. "My pleasure" said the young man and he smiled at her."If you don't mind me asking how did that happen?" Lola Marx blushed a crimson red and looked away. "It was all the fault of that stupid peacock Prissy Missy! I was so intent on getting one of her feathers that I didn't notice the waterfall and before I knew it I was plunging to what I was sure was certain death! The last thing I saw was that stupid peacock with her head tilted to the side and the prissiest expression I have ever seen on her face!" Bob (for that was the young man's name) just smiled and offered to take her home. By this time it was really quite late..only ten minutes until midnight. So Lola Marx and Bob began to walk back to Bob's jacked up Dodge Ram. They rode in silence and Lola shivered in her seat. Her clothes were only damp now but she was very cold. When she got to her house she invited Bob to come in. "We might as well make a date of it!" Said Bob. So they sat in the living room eating popcorn and watched an episode of 19 Kids and Counting called "The Duggars' House." It was very romantic.
The next day Bob came to visit and offered to take her for a drive. As they drove down the highway they were shocked to see trucks blowing up all around them. Lola was so scared but Bob promised to keep her safe and he assured her that they would not blow up. And so they days slipped by and Lola and Bob were fast falling in love. At the end of the month they were engaged and three months later they got married. It wasn't until many years later that Lola realized who Bob had reminded her of...it made so much sense! He had rescued her with a crane and his name was Bob. That night she asked him, "Honey, what is your real name?" "Bob the Builder," he said with a smile.


Bonus Story:

Title: Flight of the Bumblebees
Genre: Comedy
Situations: Girl playing the piano while holding a screaming baby, a man falling off a cliff while saying "all is well," Jumping from one moving car to another
Characters: Hubert Jones, Carson Fletcher, Kissin' Kate Barlow, Baby

By Emily (Barry) Lightner

They called them, "The Bumblebees," the baddest, if not the biggest gang in the all of Chicago - Hubert, Carson, Kate (known as Kissin' Kate for reasons better left unmentioned) and Baby. No one had pulled off more stings, flashed more rings (counting teething rings) or inspired more fear than those four.
On a typical night at "The Hive," Kate would play jazz tunes on a battered piano while bouncing the screaming Baby on her lap (Baby provided a false sense of security to customers), while Hubert and Carson did their bit of ensuring that no one who walked through The Hive's entrance left with more than his life and occasionally his trousers.
The Night Al Capone and his gang busted into The Hive started like any other night - but it ended with the final flight of the Bumblebees. Kissin' Kate tucked Baby into his basked behind the piano just as the first shots were fired, almost as if she expected an ambush. With Kissin' Kate, you never knew. Hubert tossed him a cigar to chew on. Carson necklaced Al Capone with the Hives' only art piece, and Hubert, Kate and Carson ran for their lives. They jumped into two cars and sped off, Hubert at one wheel, and Carson at the other. In a moment, Hubert realized that his car's tire was flat - and that Kissin' Kate was pointing a gun at him from the backseat. He lept up and jumped into Carson's car just as it passed him. Kate waited for Al Capone to come pick her up, and then they both went to get baby, who had fallen asleep.
Hubert and Carson didn't see the warning sigh for the curve until it was too late. Hubert's last words, "We are rid of Kate and that Baby at last! All is well," still hung in the air as their car crashed over the embankment.