Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Ideas Come From the Strangest Places...

I have recently read blogs about writing stories and where there ideas possibly come from. While listening to the morning show on a local "classic rock" station, the announcers were asking people to call in with Newfoundland urban legends. Below is a sampling:

-the ghost of a nun that haunts a the gymnasium of a former Catholic school.
-a man who once drove a car off a cliff to win a bet for a bucket of chicken.
-a light at sea representing a woman thrown overboard from a ship.
-the "headless guy" that haunts the area of a church on Queen's Road.
-story of children keeping loose change in pockets to stop fairies from stealing them away.

Somewhere in there a strange story has to exist...

7 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

The strangest has to be the bucket of chicken guy. :O

Alan W. Davidson said...

And there's a good chance that's true as a couple of others called in substantiate the tale...mind you the car plunged off different cliffs at different coves in their stories. My favourite was the fairies stealing away children.

Anonymous said...

Right.

Guy, without so much as a penny to his name, really wants a bucket of chicken and agrees to drive the car off a cliff. His dad begs him not to, ever since mom ran off to Canada to be a moose wrangler, the young fella is all he has, the rock he's anchored his life to.

The young guy tells dad to get bent so dad runs to the church, hoping to find Sister Agnes, the only one who could ever get his son to do anything. But sister Agnes isn't there, she's "busy" at the gymnasium with the young men on the wrestling team. They're reaching for something holy, and heaven's not in the sermon.

Back at the cliff. Obviously the young guy's not stupid, so he checks over the edge of the cliff to make sure he's going to land in the sea and not on the rocks... or on that ship with the woman on the deck. That would be a disaster...

Everything is going fine, he's gunning it to the edge of the cliff but before he knows it he's fighting off a crazed fairy without so much as a nickel to appease it.

Out of control, and now eerily driver-less, since the young man has been snatched away to fairy land (there's your sequel, right there) for lord knows what fate, the car sails through the air, finally impacting on the ship. It skids across the deck, stopping just short of the far edge, but not before fatally smacking the woman's broken body overboard.

When word finally reaches the father, still at the church, that his son has gone missing, presumed dead, and that, worse still, his wife, returning from Canada with a moose wrangling trophy, was the only other victim of the accident, he takes a length of wire rope and climbs to the roof of the church. Securing one end of the fine wire rope about the steeple and the other about his neck, he jumps intending to hang himself. But the wire rope cuts through his neck like a hot knife through butter, sending his blood gushing head in one direction, and his body in another.

Sister Agnes, just returned from the gym, only has a split second to reconcile what's she's seeing as the father's head lands twenty feet in front of here. She has no time to react before the body strikes her down, crumbling her like the used rag she is.

I think we can get Samuel L Jackson for the father. He'll pretty much do anything at this stage.

Anonymous said...

Jackson's out. He says give Nicolas Cage a call.

I know...

We cut our losses, mix up the stew a little, and concentrate on the nun's story. See if we can get Sasha Grey interested.

Alan W. Davidson said...

Hey, that was pretty creative, Anton. Sort of a comedic horror. Or perhaps a horrific comedy. Those of us around here know that we just don't mess around with moose.

Cathy Olliffe-Webster said...

That was a GREAT story, Anton!
what a retro column this is -- Alan, what's up with your cartoon head? And is that Anton writing? He's been so scarce lately ... and he doesn't have a little white head -- he has a little beige head.

Anonymous said...

Who WAS that imposter?