Since I started writing full time, I found a couple sites online geared towards writers, that give a “Daily Prompt” to get the creative juices flowing. The most recent one I did was really fun and I wanted to share it. The only requirement was that your story begin with

“The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.”

It had been a while since I was able to write so much on the fly with just two short sentences, and I’d really like to finish it. Unfortunately, in my authentic style, I got distracted with other things and wasn’t able to finish before the deadline, so I didn’t submit it for the prize money.

Since it is unfinished, I thought “Let’s have some fun and get the readers involved!!”

Do you all remember reading or seeing the Choose Your Own Adventure books back in the 80s and 90s? I LOVED THEM when I was a kid. The books were written in second person, making the narrator of the story talk directly to the reader. The whole plot changes depending on what you choose to happen. For example, at several points in the books your “choice” takes you to either Page 46 or Page 55. You’re not to bother caring about what’s going on in the pages you skip, you stick to YOUR story. It’s interactive and immersive and to my own delight as a young reader ALWAYS a good time.

Added bonus: It always counted as TWO BOOKS on my Pizza-Hut BOOK-IT reading challenge towards that FREE personal pan pizza.

Without further ado, below is my half-finished submission. Help me finish it!! I can’t decide if I want to make Mr. Ben a bad guy or if this is all a big misunderstanding. Help me create the adventure!

POST IN THE COMMENTS: Villian -OR- Misunderstanding

The room is unfamiliar.  I don’t know how I got here. 

I’ve lost sense of time and there are no windows to tell me if it’s day or night. The last thing I remember was sitting by the fire with Mr. Ben, he handed me a cup of coffee.  It was early afternoon, but I’d been up since before dawn chopping cord wood for winter and stacking it in the barn.  It tasted different, but I didn’t care because it was the perfect temperature.  I remember gulping the coffee greedily and my head lolling to one side heavily.  The flames of the fire began to blur and then black.

As I came back to my body, my nervous system began to tell me certain things.  I was still wearing the same work clothes I remembered putting on that morning.  The smell of this room was damp and dirty, lit by only one small lantern that sat on a shelf built into the wall.  The freezing concrete-walled tomb, was only ten-by-ten and most of it was taken up by splintered, sagging shelving along the perimeter.  Rows and rows of canned goods and bottled water took up one side.  I was in the root cellar, beneath the side of the house.  Mr. Ben had never brought me down before, but I myself had canned the green beans and tomato sauce that were lined up on one shelf.  I stood from the ground and saw the shadow of a wooden staircase. 

My body felt sluggish, and my brain didn’t quite feel connected to my own movements.  Each step I took towards the staircase felt like I was giving someone a piggy-back ride.  I felt like I couldn’t get a deep breath.  I crouched back down onto the dirt and convinced myself to take a moment to think. 

Mr. Ben had provided me room and board in exchange for my work on the farm.  I’d been living in the loft above the barn all summer. We were friends.  Why would he leave me down here? Did he drug me?

My breathing began to quicken as my brain started coming up with possible reasons why Mr. Ben would need to hide me in the root cellar.  I hastily started to comb through the previous days and weeks, searching my brain for anything that seemed out of order. 

Then it hit me.  The cell phone.  Mr. Ben had asked me almost a month ago if I would ride into town with him and help him set up an account.  The farmhouse only had a landline. It really made him prickly and cantankerous when there was work to be done around the property and he was forced to stay in the house waiting for an important call. I had been teasing him every chance I got about moving into the present with the rest of us and using a mobile phone. 

After the first few days of learning how it worked and where everything was stored, his grumpiness and confusion wore off.  We got his personal contacts set up and recorded his voicemail greeting. I downloaded a slot machine game that he loved.  He’d played it every night since, while he drank his bourbon on the porch.

Sitting in the dirt with my head in my hands on the bottom step of the staircase I heard it.  The sharp piano notes of the T-Mobile jingle.  Out of habit, my hands began to search all the pockets of my jacket and pants in response.  I began trying to remember if my phone had been in my pocket when I came into the house.  I’d been coming in to use the bathroom when he’d talked me into an afternoon pick-me-up and passed me the coffee.  I’d set it down on the table in order to take the coffee in my hands.   My brain was still foggy and delayed, but the details of my final minutes of consciousness were still there. 

As another wave of panic rolled over my body I tried desperately to control my breathing and to think.  I realized I was both thirsty and my bladder was full when I heard the piano jingle again, but this time it was louder.  I began to creep up the creaky wooden steps to the bulkhead doors.  If it were daytime I would be able to see light through the small crack between the door and the frame.  Like looking through a pair of binoculars, I forced my eye up to the crack and willed it to focus.  All I could see was the darkened sky, peppered with stars.  I turned my head to shift my ear closer to the crack and used every bit of focus I had to listen. 

“I’ve done a terrible thing.  I need you to come right now to the farm.”

“No, I’m not hurt, it’s worse than that.”

“There’s no time Celia!  Just come now.  Right now!”

He was panicked and shouting.  The words had been a lot easier to make out than she’d thought.  He had to have been more than half the distance between the front porch and the cellar door on the side of the house.  I could hear the crunch of dirt and gravel under his feet as he paced. 

Celia was his late wife’s best friend.  She was a kind woman.  I’d seen her every Sunday since I’d been here.  She arrived at 7am on the dot with homemade blueberry muffins, dressed in her best for church services at 9am. 

A sigh of relief escaped my throat. As I prepared to scream at the top of my lungs, I was again reminded of how thirsty I was, and my head was beginning to throb, no doubt a side effect from whatever was in my coffee.  I sat back down towards the middle of the staircase and massaged my tongue around my mouth, trying desperately to create spit.  I realized the screaming should wait until Celia arrived.  It would just be wasted breath on Mr. Ben.  He knew where I was. He’d put me here. 

The moment I heard echoes of crunching dirt in the distance I began to prepare to scream.  I would scream as loud and as long as I could.  I was bent over at the waste, directly under the cellar door, ready to scramble out as soon as it was opened.  The headlights of Celia’s car created a flashing prism of light through slats of the door frame. I heard the engine turn off and frantic steps scurrying towards the house. 

“HEEEEEEEEEEEELP!  Miss Celia!!  It’s Casey HELP!  I’m in the cellar!  PLEASE!  Let me out!”