The New Jersey Hag
A Strand-Writing Round Robin Story

[If you don't want to read this intro, click here.]
    I don't know if this is going to continue being called the New Jersey Hag, but considering its origins, it makes perfect sense.  Let me explain:
    One day in English, the strange Mr. Schurtz decided to do a two-day workshop on opening a piece.  So we chose a random place and thing- New Jersey and a carpet, and had to write the opening sentence of a piece involving it.  My original sentence was "The damp carpet glistened in the pale moonlight, as the New Jersey hag slowly bled to death, while the cackling demons hovered about her."  Twisted?  We then passed it around the room and people revised the sentence.  The next day we chose the best of each of our revised sentences and then wrote another.  This time it was passed around the room and a first paragraph was written, sentence by sentence.  Mine ended up as:

"The damp carpet glistened eerily in the pale moonlight, as the New Jersey hag felt her life's blood drain slowly from her body while cackling demons hovered about her.  The icy wind sliced through her torn clothes, riffling her bloodstained hair.  Her eyes fell upon the dim figure she once knew, collapsed in a lifeless pile at her feet.  "Oops," she muttered as she gazed upon the devastation brought on by her simple mistake.  However, she continued to bite into the carcass's soft flesh.  This hag had a name.  They called her Linda Tripp."

    [The different colors are different writers, blue being me.]  Now, I didn't like most of it, but what I did like, I kept and used to start the Strand's first Round-Robin.  And now here it is:

==== 
     The damp carpet glistened eerily in the pale moonlight, as the New Jersey hag felt her life's blood drain slowly from her body, while the cackling demons hovered about her.  The icy wind sliced through her torn clothes, riffling her bloodstained hair.  Shara's eyes fell upon the dim figure she once knew, collapsed in a lifeless pile far below her feet.  "Vashkari Damn It!" she muttered, as she gazed on the devastation a single mistake had wrought.  One of the demons heard her words and laughed, making crude gestures at her. 

~~~Penny
====

    Shara cursed again as the demon flew out the window behind her and into the torch lit marketplace. On it's way past it overturned a fruit merchants cart and knocked a torch into a canopy sending it up in flames. As she watched the townspeople douse the fire, Shara sunk into a nearby chair. "Now what?" she thought, "How do I explain this to the masters' back home?"

~~~Robin
====

    She realized instantly that she could never *go* back home.  The penalty for this sort of affair was long, drawn-out, and painful.  At the very least, she could expect to be drowned in caterpillars.
    Shara jumped out of her chair, and ran to the shelves in the other room.  Swiftly she yanked down clothes, books, and magickal supplies and shoved them into a pair of saddlebags.  She slung the heavy bags over her shoulder, and headed for the door. 
    Shara froze in her tracks as a series of knocks thundered on the flimsy wood of the door.  She turned and darted for the window, tossing the saddlebags out ahead of her, then she climbed on the sill and jumped, using *just* enough magick to let her float to the ground and not go smush.
     She grabbed the saddlebags, and ran around the corner, only stopping when she ran headlong into someone much larger.  She hit the ground with an audible "oof", and looked up at the person who had made such an excellent roadblock...

~~~Olwen 
====
     "Wassa white chick like you doin' in the ghettoes?" asked the formidable roadblock managing to completely butcher their ugly native language.  Shara desperately tried to decipher his meaning and got only "What is a white baby chicken such as yourself doing in the ghettoes?"  A white baby chicken?  These people have some strange sexual metaphors.
     "Whattayou deaf?  I asked you a question, white chick!"  The roadblock was definitely not someone to mess with.  Before she frame a suitable reply in the ridiculous language she heard voices shouting down the street.  The local idea of law-enforcement, by the sound of it.  If they were following her the enemy would not be far behind.
     Shara stood up and dusted herself off.  When she tried to run the roadblock performed his/its job.  Shara could sense the enemy closing in.  There was no time to bandy in a mockery of an already silly language.  Without thinking of the consequences she muttered a single word of power and felt herself whisked off into the ether, to the foolish native's astonishment. 
     Shara felt herself plummet out of the ether, miles away from that city, but still in that horrible land.  As she landed on the soft grass she wondered what that strange mooing animal was....

~~~Penny
====

That's all we have so far!  Tell us what you think!  Or, If you want to contribute, email me at helenaplaid@yahoo.com. Anyone can contribute!!

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This page last updated 9/6/01. -©- Penny and Robin.

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