arisia | Arisia Surprise Ministory Writing Challenge (Reply)

At 6pm this evening, I, along with Michael McAfee, Melissa Scott, Suzanne Palmer, Clayton McNally, and Shira Lipkin (

shadesong), did the "Surprise Ministory Writing Challenge." Several folks in the audience shouted out various and sundry story notions -- strip Scrabble, temporal jeopardy, and tempura -- but in the end the only story elements that were required were "a factory" and "sports." We then each had 15 minutes to write said story.

Fifteen minutes later, this is what I came up with. You have been warned....

It was a quiet day in the factory when Alberto found the dead body.

At first, he wasn't sure quite how to react. He'd seen Law & Order, and people were always coming across dead bodies on Law & Order, and usually they screamed or something and then they faded to the opening credits with that annoying music.

Because they did that, Alberto hadn't the foggiest idea what was supposed to happen next. They'd roll the credits and then the detectives were standing all around looking at the body and talking about fingerprints and splatter patterns and other things. But what did the people do first?

Call 911. That was it. He even had a cell phone. He just needed to make his arms work so he could pull it out of his pocket.

Dead bodies were a lot nastier in real life than they were on television. For one thing, they didn't move. Alberto hadn't realized just how much living people were in motion even when they were standing still. His stomach didn't rise or fall, he didn't blink, his mouth hung open in the exact same position...

Alberto noticed that his breathing was getting rapid, and he knew, just knew that if he wasn't careful he'd start hyperventilating, and he didn't have a paper bag with him.

He took a step back and almost tripped on the baseball bat. Only then did he notice that the dead body was wearing a baseball uniform. He wasn't sure why he hadn't noticed that at first, especially since Alberto was a huge Cubs fan.

This wasn't a Cubs uniform, though. The uniform had an image of the moon on it. Didn't look like any major-league team Alberto knew about—but maybe it was a minor-league team. They had weird names.

Take out the cell phone. Call 911. His brain kept insisting on that, but his arms weren't interested in taking the message.

Enzo, the foreman, came around the corner, talking with Freddie. "So then the bear says: 'You didn't come here to hunt, didja?'" Enzo started guffawing loud enough to shake the pipes that ran across the ceiling.

Freddie just said what he always said when somebody told a joke: "I don't get it."

However, Enzo had noticed the dead body in the baseball uniform. "What the fuck is that?"

"It's a body." Alberto's voice came out as a very unmanly squeak. Last time he sounded like that was when he'd tried to sleep with that girl after swimming in the pool and found out that the whole shrinkage thing was not an urban myth. She just pointed and laughed and…

I'm free associating again. Jesus Christ, it's a dead body!

Enzo whipped out his own cell phone. "Fuck me sideways, that's a fucking dead body!"

Alberto was relieved that he was spared the necessity of calling 911—but then Enzo held the camera up at the body and started taking pictures with his camera phone.

"Uh—aren't you gonna call the cops?"

"Yeah, yeah, in a minute," Enzo said. "I gotta get this for the wife. She loves this shit."

Alberto remembered meeting Enzo's wife at a barbeque once. She frightened him. Now he started to understand why.

Enzo called 911 and within half an hour the cops arrived. They put up yellow tape around everything and made Enzo, Alberto, Fredide, and the rest of the day shift—all of whom had come to look at the dead body—stand back.

The body hadn't moved. At all. It was just spooky.

Two men in suits arrived shortly after the uniforms. "I don't recognize that uniform," one said.

"Big fuckin' deal. Maybe it's a Halloween costume."

"It's May."

"What-the-fuck-ever."

Then, suddenly, the body did move. It was minor at first—he just started breathing again.

When he sat up, everyone—including the cops—gasped. Enzo screamed, "Jumping Jesus Christ on a goddamn stick!"

"Where am I?" the corpse asked.

"Uh, you're at a car factory," Alberto said in another squeaky voice.

"No, what year is it?"

"Two thousand fuckin' seven," Enzo said. "What the fuck?"

"Dammit. I'm gonna be late for my strip Scrabble game."

And then he started to glow and disappeared.

Everyone stood around for several seconds after that.

Finally one of the cops said, "I didn't see shit, I don't know about you people."

"Oh yeah."

But the bat was still there...