Bored with swapping wives? Tired of pushy millionaire bosses? Running out of things to get made over, traded, nipped, tucked, renovated, or pimped? Is there nothing too weird for your daughter to marry any more? Then you'll love the newest reality show that takes you to the very edge of mortality!
This average American family has been injected in their sleep with the Ebola virus and whisked away to a fabulous, quarantined house in the California hills. And their teenage son has been given exactly two doses of antidote!
Watch as Sheldon and his wife Anka, their daughter Rosalind, their infant son Emil, and their dog Sparky deal with their impending doom, knowing that their boy Hugo holds their very lives in his vindictive palm. Will they beg? Will they plead? Will they nobly sacrifice themselves, asking only that he spare one of the others? Not during sweeps week, they won't!
[ November 10, 2004, 10:20 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Couldn't I be the forum crank? The one that sits on Hatrack's front porch and yells at everyone walking on my lawn?
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Chris, This is hysterical, yet I fear someone will read it and get an idea. Cripes, we have Mexicans battling for a chance for a green card, why not a modern, real life version of "The Lottery?"(shudder. That story still creeps me out)
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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ELizabeth, wasn't "The Lottery" one of the most lingering short stories you've ever read? I don't think I'll ever forget it. Amazing how many people have it lodged away in their memories.
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No kidding. I still have a mental image of this toddler waddling around with a stone to throw at his mom, all giggly and happy.
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Sara, when I read it as a kid, I had daymares for years, putting myself in her place. Sometimes I still have dreams that are similar to that story, that feeling of inevitable, impending doom. (shivering again)
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I think it was the first short story that jolted me, and I'd read a lot by then. The sick building dread, the awful realization ... oh, wow.
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Raise of hands, who read The Lottery in school? Ok, now who WASN'T totally freaked by it? (we read the play . . . but I had already read the short story)
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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That was pretty disturbing... while being funny...
And all this talk of disturbing books lingering in the subconcious has brought forth a memory...
A story about a town where everyone was afraid of this one kid who'd seemingly ripped the entire town out of time and space and could literally do anything. Even his parents tiptoed around him with faux smiles, too scared even to reprimand him. Lots of hints of other horrible things he made people do or had turned them into...
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Sorry, Troubador, I don't recognize the story. However, I did find a story called "The Lottery" online. The author is Shirley Jackson.
Chris, I'm glad you put in the bit in the end of the column about the family finding out there's no cure. I was going to have to complain about somebody just making up an antidote. Anyhow, this one was a bit darker than the others and I didn't laugh as much. I guess the disturbing thing is that I could almost see someone pitching this show to one of the networks. To quote Weird Al: "Next week on FOX watch lions eat Christians!"
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote: story about a town where everyone was afraid of this one kid who'd seemingly ripped the entire town out of time and space and could literally do anything. Even his parents tiptoed around him with faux smiles, too scared even to reprimand him. Lots of hints of other horrible things he made people do or had turned them into...
This sounds like a Twilight Zone-type episode that I liked. Might not have been TZ specificially. The kid demanded that it was his birthday every day and sent one relative into TV Land for not playing along, he wiped off the mouth of another for talking back, he managed to lure a woman from outside who eventually got through to him and got him out of the house.... but he still had his powers.
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