Random Writings

When times allows I am part of a local writing group. Over a year ago we broke from our usual routine and picked some random news clippings and images and spent about five minutes writing a quick story about them. Below is what I managed to write in the time allotted... didn't keep the scraps and image that was the inspiration:

My favorite place in the world is the amusement park by the sea. Why is it my favorite place? It is where I had performed the marriage of my best friend to his wife while still wearing my hospital gown.

It was a strange few days leading up to that point. On Monday I was driving to work and was thinking about my friend's upcoming wedding and wondering if his new wife had a sister. Music was playing on the radio and I tapped along with it on my steering wheel.

Unfortunately I have terrible rhythm and lost control of the car. I braced for impact and heard metal and plastic crunching as my car collided with a nearby van.

Inside the van were a group of terrorists who were planning mayhem on our fair city. My accidental intervention spoiled their plans.

As they prepared to get their vengeance upon me another person appeared, guns blazing. He wore a tuxedo and had a pistol in one hand and a plastic lawn flamingo in the other. He splattered the brains and innards of my adversaries across the landscape, a single eyeball bouncing down the road leaving little read splotches as it went.

I thanked the man for the rescue but he was totally drunk and fell into the nearby ditch. An envelope fell out of his pocket marked "Ultra Secret."

I opened the envelope... not sure why, but I learned of a terrible plot by an evil organization to take over the world and this drunk with the plastic flamingo was supposed to save the day.

As I decided what to do next the plastic bird began to speak. It was no ordinary lawn ornament but was a talking computer with built-in satellite phone and toaster.

The machine told me the next stop on the mission, a nearby yak breeding farm. From the map that printed out I saw that the farm was located deep in a desolate swamp far from the wandering eyes of civilization.

My car still operated so I proceeded to the swamp wondering what my next move should be. I was not -

(That's where it ended due to the time. We then took turns reading what we had wrote. I never went back to that story until I flipped through an old notebook to-day. Any comments?)