CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE BY COMMITTEE

Hi there,

I'm writing a story with help from friends and strangers on the internet. Every weekday, I'm posting 100-600 words and soliciting votes for what the main character should do next. This is all happening on my G+ feed (which, sorry, sometimes has non-story stuff on it too). I'd love it if you participated. I'm making the entries public, and if you don't know me, that's okay-- I just want as much participation as I can reasonably get. There's not really any solid rules established; I typically update between 10am and 1pm Mondays - Fridays, and wherever the votes stand when I start writing is where I start. In order to be fair, and so you don't think I'm making it up as I go along just to dick around with the reader, I want to assure you that I do have a general framework of the events outside of the main character's control, where things are going, and what and where other characters are, even if you can't see them.

I screwed up the first entry and didn't make it public, so here it is now:

There is a locked door behind the television set in the living room of your apartment. When you moved in here, months ago, with your roommate, you'd been uncertain as to where this door might lead. You'd asked your roommate whether she'd received a key.

'Did you receive a key?' you asked her.

'No,' she replied.

You moved the television in front of it, and arranged your couches (too many couches) and lived. You hung art, photos of the Robie House, a cheap watercolor by your mother's friend. You sewed curtains and stocked the fridge. The rooms became smaller, comfortable, sovereign. Your roommate sighed, often.

Now it is August. Again. Cicadas buzzsaw in the tree outside your window; sweat soaks through your clothes in familiar shapes. You take cold showers, lie still-wet before the box fan, and cannot breathe. Right now your roommate is gone.

The telephone rings. You pick it up, and wonder what your roommate does for work.

'Your apartment is burning down,' your mother says into the phone.

DO YOU:

A. Laugh, and ask about Peter.
B. Look out the window, and up, and into the night.
C. Smell the stairwell, tentatively, for smoke, stretching the phone cord across the kitchen.
D. Climb onto the fire escape, abandoning the telephone.

I'll try to update this blog periodically with links to new installments, but if you want to participate please do so on Google+. Thanks!