Mike Meginnis je pokrenuo književnu igru koja se odvija putem gmail chata. Dakle, igraju on i neki drugi književnik. Taj gost izabere jednu od ponuđenih tema, primjerice "tvoj brat ne govori", "nemoj ga ubiti čak i ako to traži" i sl. Nakon toga Meginnis opiše neku situaciju i traži od suigrača da nešto "učini", izabere primjerice što da neki lik učini - nešto kao "izaberi svoju pustolovinu". Meginnis onda predloži neki razvoj priče na što gost opet reagira i tako, uživo, dok im ne dosadi. Dosadašnje improvizacije su arhivirane ovdje. Evo primjera kako to izgleda:
~^: Your Brother Isn't Talking Version 0.9.2 :^~
Mike Meginnis + Blake Butler
m: You are in your living room.
It is mostly the way you remember your living room except for the
wallpaper and the ants that crowd the space around your father's leather
chair. The chair is splitting its skin. Your brother's in your father's
chair. You stand behind the chair: you can see the top of his head,
where the hair has thinned in a spiral and the roots are all
transparent. You can see the television set, its bent bunny ears, and
the glow of the program, though not the program. The ants are eating
what your brother has dropped at his feet. There is a lamp, which is
turned off. There are pictures on the mantle. There is a brown paper bag
in the fireplace that says your name. There is a television remote on
the chair's arm. Exits are south and east. Your brother is not talking.
b: push brother's head and say stop it
m: You push your
brother's head and tell him to stop, which causes him to change the
television program. You hear him breathe in and out once; before, you
understand, he was not breathing.
b: tell brother to get out of father's chair
m: Your brother does not get out of your father's chair.
b: tell brother again to get out of father's chair
m: Your brother pulls the
lever on the chair's side to make the chair recline, to lift his feet,
to make a point: to tell you he will not leave your father's chair. The
lever comes off in his hand. He lets it drop to the floor. The footrest
also falls to the floor, rather than lift his feet. The ants swarm the
lever to eat where it touched his hand. They eat the wood away in the
pattern of his hand.
b: look at the TV program
m: You have to get close
to see the TV program because the glow of the screen is too bright and
white. The TV program is a show about cowboys. The cowboys have been
tied down in the desert; there are two of them, and they've been
drizzled with honey, and ants now are coming for the honey. The cowboys
are going to let it happen in silence.
b: change TV channel
m: The television goes to
white noise. Your brother makes a grunt of protest and changes it back
to the cowboy show. In the instant of white noise, you see his face,
reflected on the screen or in the noise itself, your brother's face, his
blank stare, his glasses frames (no lenses), his birthmark on his face,
the one your brother always had.
b: approach brother
m: Your brother is
holding an empty plate and a silver fork. One of your mother's best.
There are crumbs on his face. His face is blank and strange but you
think, you feel, that he can still see his program through your body, as
if its glow passes through you, and you can feel that heat on your back
and on your chest, and you can see from his eyes that he has been
crying, and you can see he has not shaved today, he is your much older
brother.
b: take remote from brother
m: Your brother stabs
your hand with his fork as you take the remote, but you do get it away
from him. The blood drips on the floor among the ants. They eat the
blood. They are also on your feet. You are lucky to be wearing your
light-up Skechers sneakers. (They are lighting up every time you take a
step.)
b: get chair lever
m: You take the chair lever.
b: turn off TV w/ remote
m: You turn off the
television. Your brother lashes out again with the fork, and he takes
the second breath you've heard him breathe: the fork punctures your
thigh. You are lucky to be wearing your Wranglers-brand 38x24" blue
jeans. But there is blood.
b: hit brother with chair lever
m: The force of your blow
breaks his glasses frames (still no lenses) at the nose. The glasses
frames droop down his face, frame his cheeks. He begins to cry again.
b: ask brother what his problem is
m: Your brother rocks
violently from side to side until your father's chair falls onto its
right side. He sits in the chair that way
b: S
m: You go south. This is
your mother's kitchen. There is a pie on the counter that has been
half-eaten. The table is set with silverware and plates but all the
chairs are missing. There are the usual cupboards and cabinets. The sink
is full of sudsy dishes.
b: examine floor
m: The linoleum tries to look like tiles but it is really one long continuous sheet.
b: yell for mom
m: Your yell is much louder than you meant it to be. If someone has heard it then they know you are alone.
b: examine cabinets
m: In the cabinets there
are many of your favorite foods. There is Reeses Puffs Cereal. There is
cake mix. There is an unopened jar of pickles. There is Nutella. There
is canned cheese. There are also canned vegetables and many pie
fillings. There are salts and spices. There is a mix for pizza dough,
for pancakes. There is a bag of flour.
b: take reeses puffs cereal
m: You have the Reeses Puffs Cereal.
b: N
m: You go north. In the
living room your brother is still in your father's chair, on his side.
The ants are crawling on his body but they are not biting him.
b: give brother reeses puffs cereal
m: Your brother ignores the Reeses Puffs Cereal. He looks expectantly down at his plate.
b: try to pull up brother
m: You successfully lift
your brother. However he clings to your father's chair, so in the end it
is upright and he is still in it.
b: pull brother east
m: You pull your brother
into a hallway. Exits are north, south, east, and west. There are brass
moldings of your baby shoes on a table up against the north wall. There
are framed pictures of your family hung up on the walls. One picture in
particular catches your eye. What is in the picture?
b: examine picture
m: The picture is an embarrassing memory. What do you remember?
b: remember pushing
brother off of roof of house thinking he could walk across the sand that
was coming out of the big sky hole, broke both arms and 4 ribs
m: Your brother is
fragile, he took years to recover. His first girlfriend left him for the
captain of the male synchronized swim team (and four other teenage boys
of similar body who moved exactly as he moved, when he moved, but
adjacent, so that when they went on a date the four other boys would sit
in nearby booths and talk with an empty other side while they ate what
he, the team captain, ate).
b: remember blaming
brother for falling rather than you pushing, so that in addition to
being damaged he was revoking allowance and grounded 1 year for taking
you up on roof, though it had been you who forced him, wanting to get
closer to the hole
m: He had been saving for
a GameBoy, but he did not get to buy a GameBoy. He has said in the past
that the absence of the GameBoy is the root of his unhappiness. The
unhappiness he feels most of the time when he is not watching the
television.
b: pull brother east
m: That is your parents'
room. You know he does not want to go there but he won't say it. Do you
want to go into your parents' room?
b: Y
m: You open the door to
your parents room and pull your brother inside in your father's chair.
Your parents are not here. The window is open but the blinds are down
and the curtains are drawn. You can feel the air that comes through them
(and you see the sand that has collected underneath the window on the
floor). Your parents' bed is a large circular bed with a mechanism that
can make it turn slowly clockwise. There is a red velvet blanket. Melted
candle wax has dried and scabbed in several places on the blanket.
Their dresser is against the east wall. Their bathroom door is north,
but closed. Your father's desk is piled with books and papers. Their
closet is filled with their clothes.
b: examine papers
m: The papers are mostly
lists of things you have eaten, or that your mother had bought for you,
or that your brother has eaten, or that your mother bought for your
brother. There is also one list of sexual positions, some of which have
been crossed off, some of which have not.
b: examine books
m: The books are
professionally bound and typeset collections of the lists, all in
hardcover without art, only glossy gold lettering: WHAT THEY ATE. WHAT
THEY WORE. WHAT THEY ATE 2. WHAT WE DID TO EACH OTHER, AND HOW IT WAS
DONE. Some of the books have been published by Penguin and others by
Random House.
b: open bathroom door
m: There are many
different tubes of toothpaste on the sink. They are some half-used and
some full, and some empty. There is baking powder all over the sink and
the floor. There is a mirror over the sink. You smell mold from the
rotting bath towels that hang on the wall. Your father sits on the
toilet, fully clothed, face in his hands.
b: tell father brother broke his chair
m: Your father looks up sharply. You can see that he's shaven half his beard and left half of it still there. "HE DID WHAT"
b: seeing your father's
reaction, realize you always wish you hadn't snitched on yr brother, but
keep doing it anyway; try to change subject by asking where is mom
m: "FORGET YOUR MOTHER
FOR A MOMENT JUST FOR ONCE FORGET YOUR MOTHER AND THINK ABOUT ME JUST
THIS ONCE WHAT HAPPENED TO MY ONLY CHAIR"
b: look at brother
m: Your father comes out
of the bathroom and there are wet spots on the inner thighs of his
pants. He is only a little older than your brother, only several years,
but he is much louder. He begins to shout at your brother.
b: ask louder where is your mom
m: He tells you that your
mother climbed out the window while he begins to punch your brother and
stomp your brother's feet. He asks you have you been looking through
his private papers.
b: wield chair lever at father, tell father no mom didn't climb out window where is she
m: "SHE DID CLIMB OUT THE
WINDOW ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR ARE YOU THREATENING ME IS THAT PART OF
MY CHAIR YOU SAID YOUR BROTHER BROKE IT YOU SAID HE WAS THE ONE WHAT
HAPPENED TO YOU YOU WERE MY FAVORITE SON YOU ARE BETTER THAN YOUR
BROTHER DON'T YOU WANT TO BE BETTER" Your brother vomits a piece of
cherry pie, perfectly formed, onto his plate.
b: tell dad that dad is the one who broke the shitty chair with his shitty fat fucking ass
m: Your father begins to
beat your brother extra hard because you are being disrespectful and
undermining his authority in the eyes of your brother, who does nothing
to defend himself, only begins to bruise and bend where he is hit.
b: brandish chair lever at dad's throat and tell dad if dad doesn't calm down you will invoke the Hole
m: Your father tears your
brother's head off and holds it under his arm and looks at you like
There, That's Been Dealt With Now, and he waits for you to apologize for
being such a brat when he has been such a good father and watched your
diet so carefully and published his findings for all the other fathers.
b: press father against wall with the lever at his throat
m: Your father uses your
brother's head as a puppet to beg for mercy. The brother's head can talk
though your father cannot talk, cannot get enough air, though it is
your father's voice in the head. Your brother's head says "YOU'RE IN FOR
IT NOW YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO DAD NOW HE'S GOING TO LET YOU KILL
HIM UNTIL HE'S ALL DEAD AND YOU'RE ALL ALONE"
b: tell father you will
spare him if he sews brother's head back on immediately right now while
you watch him with the chair lever slightly on fire with your rage
m: Your father agrees to your terms.
b: ask Hole to wrap
around father and freeze him while you kiss brother's wounds and ask him
to forget that you squealed on him again
m: The Hole freezes your
father and your brother says he will never forget but he says that he
loves you now because now you are the father. You are bigger than your
brother now and you are bigger than your father now. The bed is slowly
turning clockwise. You have grown a full beard.
b: gather books and dump them in the mold tub and tell Hole to light them
m: Hole lights the books
on fire. They explode with crackling spores that become sparks that
become a certain smell. Now you can watch what your father eats and what
your mother buys for him at the store. (The Wal-Mart, the JC Penney,
the K-Mart, the Aldi Food, the Hot Topic, the GameStop, the Mall.)
b: kneel and give thanks to Hole
m: The Hole would like you inside it. The Hole would. The Hole.
b: go to window, part curtains, and sniff for mother
m: You smell your mother at the window. The Hole.
b: climb through window with yr eyes closed
m: You fall in the sand and all the sand smells of your mother, the Hole.
b: dig into sand
m: There is your mother's ankle.
b: kiss mother's ankle. tell her you are burning the books and soon the house will be clean
m: Your mother's ankle
opens a mouth that kisses you back. Then it fades away. But the ankle is
warm. There is sand as far as you can see, from the Hole. Your house
has two stories though you do not remember seeing stairs. There is a
front door though you do not remember a door that would go out.
b: shout back to brother that you will be right back and to lock all the doors from inside
m: Your brother might do that. He doesn't want to talk anymore so it's hard to tell.
b: swim in the sand using that particular stroke you have learned so well
m: Where do you swim? Is
it only just sand? Are you alone here in the sand where you swim? How
will it be? What will you do? Are you happy now, finally? Are you
hungry? What's buried here?
b: i want to swim to the
inverse version of the house, i believe it is out here, i have been out
here before once and i remember laying all those eggs, the eggs were
supposed to become the houses as had been promised, i plan to find the
earliest version, before all those cameras
m: Can you live without cameras? How will you know what you've done if there is no proof?
b: swallow the TV remote and tell it you are the father now bitch
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