Collaborative Story
So, this is how it works. Read through the story, as far as it is. If you feel you can carry forward for another few pages, then submit your section via email (no attachments please). I'll pick the best submission (subjective decision by me) and add it to the story, with credit given where it's due.
I'm interested in seeing where this story will go, so please send in bits and pieces. Try to keep the same tone with which I started, if possible.
Without further ado, then.
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Jacob liked wandering through the woods in the evening. Usually anyway. Some evenings, he much preferred sitting with a good book in front of a warm fire. Maybe even playing the guitar or something else relaxing. Tonight (evening) he felt like walking through the woods. It wasn't much of a wood. He kept imagining how in the next year or two, some enthusiastic contractor would come along and turn it into condos or a shopping center or maybe some sort of factory. A small factory. The wood wasn't very big after all.
Yet he could picture the workers arriving in the morning, creating traffic along the narrow streets that existed here. He could hear the honking horns, the curses from the drivers, and the noise as the factory started up each day. Probably makes computer parts or something, he thought glumly. Jacob never did hold with the things. Couldn't stand them. He didn't sit for them either. In fact, he wished that the guy who invented the things had been hit with the urge to sit around and paint pictures of daffodils all day instead of messing with little electronic parts. Jacob was the sort who thought ENIAC meant psychotic. He'd seen 2001, and knew what would happen with those blasted computers, take over everything, that's what they do, then, when they decide that they don't need the humans anymore, pow, they shoot you out the spaceship like so much garbage.
Jacob didn't like garbage either. He saw a Hershey bar wrapper lying on the ground, and bent over to pick it up. Some fool leaving things here in the woods, his woods. (Actually, the woods weren't really his; he just thought of them that way.) Some day he decided, he'd get fed up with it all. Maybe he'd write a letter to the editor to complain about the lack of respect that people have nowadays, what with littering and computers and noisy cars and factories.
And there it was. Top that off with all the men in their clean white coats running around his apartment building inspecting this and cleaning that and checking to see that the lights were out at such and such a time, and Jacob felt that somewhere along the line, someone was making fun of him in a very big way. Maybe it was God, he thought. God has a really twisted sense of humor.
He realized that God must be laughing at him again, or at least smiling behind his hand at him, as he found that some fool had built a wall right in the middle of the woods. A big brick wall, with some sort of wire decorations at the top. Now why would someone stick a wall in the middle of the woods? Probably going to start building that factory now he thought.
He sighed despondently and started walking in the direction he had come from. He never noticed the cameras in the wall, nor did he even noticed the birds singing in the trees above him. He merely walked along muttering under his breath, talking to God and telling Him what a fool He was by allowing mankind to come up with computers and factories and brick walls and men in nice white coats and the whole of it.
"Creating the Universe was a mistake on your part, you know? You just had to make the universe, didn't you? Couldn't you have found something else to do? Couldn't you have gotten a date or something? After all, you are God. Who'd turn you down if you asked her out? Or do you not go in for that sort of thing? I know you've got priests who're celibate, so you might be to for all I know. For that matter, I may be talking to myself. Who knows if you're really up there. I sure don't care one way or another. But if you are up there, making factories, that was your big mistake. Should have left everyone in the caves, life would have been much easier. Just caves and cocker spaniels. Cocker spaniels are something that you did good on. I like cocker spaniels. Much better than factories, you know? Wish I had one-- a cocker spaniels that is, not a factory. Wouldn't want one, and wouldn't know what to do with one if I had it, meaning a factory. now a nice cocker spaniels, well that would be fun. It could go on walks with me through these woods, and maybe pick up the litter on the ground. Or maybe I could have it carry a little doggie bag so I could pick up the litter. Litter is another thing that you did wrong. Big mistake that. Shouldn'ta ever made litter. Trash is OK, but litter was bad."
Muttering in a continuous flow,