Tuesday, October 4, 2011

A Regular Peculiar Day

A Triple Play By, Paul Phillips, Absolutely*Kate & Harry B. Sanderford

Once upon a tome in a bustling bookshop far, far away, toiled a man who loved fast cars and loathed slow books. Peculiar customers with peculiar customs were a regular occurrence for this regular man but one morning, all records were broken for kookiness. As was the fashion, customers milled lazily about the rows of neatly stacked volumes with little intent of purchase while this regular man in his regular way ignored them, skimming Cliff's Notes on Othello, (being extra careful not to crinkle the corners thereby rendering it un-saleable) just as typical as Tuesday until the most horrendous metal twisting chrome crunching crash interrupted this regular man's regular morning and he looked up to see the huge black Hummer backing slowly away from the rear of his formerly pristine 1967 California Special as if seeking a better vantage point from which to fully appreciate the modern sculpture it had just made of the Mustang's rear bumper. CRASH went the California Special - CRUNCH went the chrome - COLLAPSE went the Cliff's - CLANG went the taut strings of the heightened heart palpitations of the regular man who owned the bustling bookshop where peculiar customers milled lazily and swift skimming was the secret rage ~ no typical today taunted this tainted Tuesday! Arising from his chair, this regular man swept all the peculiar customers aside on his way to the exit, palpitating heart bashing harder and harder against his chest, his stride becoming faster and faster, his face becoming redder and redder, until he made his way outside to the parking bay (parking bays were reserved for one car at a time, right?) to confront the definitely UNregular but extremely peculiar owner of the Heavy Metal Lunchbox On Wheels who had just turned his California Special into the short wheel-base model. He was boiling with rage, ready to read the regular riot act to the rear ending road hog but when the driver’s door popped open he watched the tallest teal heels and the most beautiful legs slide into view for the longest time before being followed by the shortest skirt, well, his heart went BOOM and when he saw her standing there, the way she looked was way beyond compare, and suddenly there was syncopation to his palpitation, and as his heart skipped a beat to the cha-cha samba rumba, he gazed into her beautiful eyes and spoke the words his heart could not, “Might have known it, woman driver!”

Check out:

7 comments:

Kevin Michaels said...

Excellent and fun read (kind of like Roald Dahl in a muscle car... a fractured fairy tale for 2011). Good threesome!
KM

John Wiswell said...

I know I'm guilty of asking this a lot, but how the heck did the three of you conspire on this one monolithic paragraph? Who got the keyboard and who backseat drove? I hear sounds of Kate in there.

Harry said...

Hi John, it really was just one person wrote a sentence and the next picked it up from there, added to it, and passed it on to the next. No real planning. It is monolithic. We originally did it as a Six. We deliberately went with looooooooooooooooooong sentences and joked we were told we'd be paid by the word.

Thanks for reading guys!

Stephen said...

Good work, you three. The way Harry described the process, it sounds like it was a ton of fun watching how this thing evolved from person to the next. A nice little boy-meets-girl, though I wonder if it'll work out for them. Maybe it will if he lets her be in the driver's seat going forward. Like he would have much choice in the matter.

Jodi MacArthur said...

Ha! These are always so fun. For some reason I keep hearing "Tainted Love" coming from the Heavy Metal Lunch Box on Wheels. Fun times!

Stephen said...

Hi there everyone -- a real feel of sound and place in here, built up with the rolling poetry of it all. Loved the journey of boiling rage to 'oh, hello?' of the arrival of the legs. Seemed strangely musical too, in reference and in feel. Amazingly, given your working process, it's a rounded story. Proof of psychic writing? I think so. St.

Madam Z said...

You three make a team that would qualify for the Super Bowl of Collaborative Writing! I'm so glad I bought a ticket.