Directions: Spin the game wheel. Begin telling an automatic story using the words or images which the wheel lands on. At a point that feels natural, pass on the game wheel to the next player, who continues the story. (Players: SC, HC, AM, JF. Board created by ML.)
THE EARTHWORM
Last evening I was going through the woods and I saw such distinctive foliage. It was green, and yellow, and it seemed to bubble out from the back of the woods. It almost had a fizz, yes, like a fizz from a coca-cola, and yet green. I have a hard time explaining. And as I was walking through these woods, I looked down, and I saw an earthworm that was pulling along a key. I went to grab at the key, but the earthworm told me no. He said that this key was for a very special box hidden deep underneath the base of a tree. And that it held something very important. I asked the earthworm what was so special about the thing which the box held. And the earthworm told me that it held the scale of Ancient Alligator, who’s body had been used to create everything on this earth. At the same time, I was undergoing experimental hypnosis. I just didn’t know what to think what to think of all this. I didn’t really know if I trusted the earthworm. Thought that maybe he was underdressed. His nakedness was very strange to me. And so I stuck him inside a pyramid, an upside own pyramid in fact, and then I spun it all into the air, without care. And it became a polka dot, inside of cloud. Black, sliming, and then…at that very moment, he awoke. Such a strange dream about earthworms, and keys, and alligators! He sat up in his bed, and looked down at his ordinary frog legs. He jumped out of bed, and got breakfast. He was happy to be just a normal frog again, in a frog world.
THE BUTTERFLY DAUGHTER
My daughter was a butterfly. She had white wings with black spots on them. And she hungered for the nectar of the flowers in the meadow next to our small abode. She wanted me to take her out to those flowers, so that she could have some moments of peace. I agreed to take her to this field of flowers. We were dancing lightly among the petals, sipping in the scents, tasting the dew. It was all very peaceful, until suddenly something awoke in the darkness, in the darkness beneath us. It was a bat, and in the bat’s mouth? There was one protruding wing. The wing of my daughter. Despairing, I went in for a dip. A dip into the cold, black pond. There were no tadpoles there, or at least, they had all now gone. Becoming fragrant, without their butterflies. That saltwater salamander… As I waded there in the pond, contemplating loss, I saw that salamander open his mouth. And I swear to god—it was human teeth that I saw in there. And all of this…the wings of my daughter…the bat with human teeth…it all overwhelmed me. I fled that field of flowers, which had used to beckon me so. It had now become only a symbol of despair and death and injustice. And I fled into the pond, and I became a frog there, and I swam down to the silt at its very bottom and then buried myself. Now, I only come out every once in awhile, when I have to feed. And when I look over at that meadow of flowers, I feel the pain of what used to be… The worst part of it all? I know that everything has human teeth.
