Abandoned Landscapes, Round Two, Chapter Two

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(Above is my picture of a few of many many dead trees (remember the 1988 fire?) in Yellowstone)

Hi.  I am the second leg in the blog-fiction-ongoing-online-game of Consequences. See below for the complete rules and participating writers, recruited by, as Sam J. Miller said before me, “the steady curatorial hand of Wah-Ming Chang.”

Basically, one writer writes a 250 word post/story/fragment and then tags another writer, etc., etc. We can write whatever we want, so long as our posts begin with the last line of the previous post (in bold here) and are linked to a central theme; in this case, “Abandoned Landscapes.” Kind of like literary relay! Except with awesome writers. (You can imagine the athletic hot pants and glistening quadriceps)…

*

My head hitting a tuft of soft dead grass; a door slamming; howls out windows as the car screamed off.

I know folks who would open their eyes immediately upon being thrown out of a car in the middle of nowhere, gotten the lay of the land, a possible glimpse of the car, and hatched an escape plan, but I kept my eyes closed until the sound of tires on gravel and the timpani of the engine was long gone even though it was that very reaction that had gotten me captured in the first place.  I lay there, blind to the world, without shame, until the dust finished raining down.

When I opened my eyes there were no buildings, no signs, no road, not even an airplane flying overhead—behind me was a meadow, the tall grass bent into tire tracks, and in front of me, dark against the blushing dawn was a forest of trees, each tree indistinguishable from the others, from which a deer emerged.

“Get out of the open and into the forest!”  The deer’s voice reminded me of the surface of lakes, smooth and deep.

“Did you just speak?”

“Yes, haven’t you heard a deer before?  Get the hell out of the meadow and into the forest—the army’s coming through shortly.”

“But deer don’t speak,” I gasped, running into the forest, noting his very large antlers.

“And opossums don’t speak either but here you are, in the DMZ.”

This is where playing dead landed me.

*

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THE FULL LINE-UP, IN ORDER (Completed posts in bold)….

1. Sam J. Miller: samjmiller.com/blog
2. Jade Park: jadepark.wordpress.com
3. Jane Voodikon: wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com
4. Lisa Silverman: One-Eyed Woman
5. Anna Shapiro: wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com
6. Mark Krotov: the art of waking up
7. wmc: wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com
8. Alexander Chee: koreanish.wordpress.com
9. Viet Dinh: iheartdisaster.blogspot.com
10. Lucas Green: porousborders.wordpress.com
11. Jedediah Berry (manualofdetection.com): Third Archive

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THE RULES….

• Start with the last line of the previous entry.
• Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction.
• 250 words.
• Thematically linked
• Link to the next person on the list, as well as those who posted before you.
• Post something within four or five days of the most recent piece.
• Posts should start with an explanation, with links to the previous posts as well as the next.

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