“Suicide At The Newseum”
May 5, 2008 at 7:51 am
Welcome to our first-ever user-generated short story. We hope you help us write the story by adding comments below. We’ll kick it off with the opening few sentences, then turn it over to you, the readers, for developing the story. Just add the next sentences as comments, and let the story grow. Here’s the beginning.
It was a dark and stormy night. I wanted something sensational to do. I didn’t much feel like another tour of the White House or Congress. I’d seen them many times before. Instead, I felt like having a new thrill. So I went down to the Newseum. But I didn’t have any money on me. I sat outside on the curb and asked people walking by for a buck. I would need $20 to get in. After an hour of panhandling, I had enough cash. I proudly walked up to the Newseum entrance. “One, please,” I told the attendant in my strongest voice. “That’ll be twenty dollars,” she said. “No problem. I have it right here.” I gave her twenty dollar bills, then entered the Newseum, giddy with excitement about seeing the newest museum in town. But little did I know at the moment, that would be the biggest mistake of my life. Within an hour, I’d be dead.
Now it’s all yours to keep the story going. Just add a comment…
richarda said,
May 5, 2008 @ 9:00 am
Who’s going to hold the copyright on this?
Michael Silence said,
May 5, 2008 @ 9:44 am
There were no signs warning visitors they would have to actually read newspapers.
It’s now known as the Newsoleum.
SemiPundit said,
May 5, 2008 @ 10:32 am
Suddenly I felt an eerie chill around me and the sensation that I was being watched. I turned to find, not even an arm’s length away, the curator–a kindly looking old gentleman of perhaps seventy-five or eighty. He asked, in a polite, concerned voice, “Welcome, sir. If you are ready, we shall begin our tour.”
The ghost of H. L. Mencken said,
May 5, 2008 @ 11:01 am
I’d read about stuff like this all my life, but nothing like it had ever happened to me before. Sure, there was the time I was trapped in the girls’ locker room while the cheerleaders were all taking showers, but that was a happy kind of a surprise. This, on the other hand, had all the charm of the latter half of Citizen Kane which, I reminded myself, was possibly the greatest movie about American journalism every made by Hollywood.
I took two steps forward toward the old man.
lplimac said,
May 5, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
“I would like to introduce you to my Associate, Jenlinda, who will accompany us on the tour” he says. I look over as, stepping out of the shadows, a twenty something woman, dressed in a plain suit with her hair pulled back into a bun, greets me.
“Hi! Call me Jen… or Linda!” she says in a bubbly voice. ” It’s about time you got here!” she says. I look at her with a confused expression on my face.
ErinZ said,
May 5, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
“Wow, the view from this rooftop terrace is amazing. Look there’s the Capitol!
SPLAT.”
Peter Pulitzer said,
May 6, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Regrettably, I had dropped the $12 latte I purchased at the Newseum snack bar over the side of the building, where it landed on the head of a tourist from Kokomo, Indiana. He was not pleased. Nor was I — anyway you look at it $12 is real money.
Jenlinda took a step toward me, reached out and steady my arm. “You’ve never done this before?” she asked, breathing heavily.
SemiPundit said,
May 6, 2008 @ 4:23 pm
“No, I haven’t”, I replied almost apologetically. “But the latte–I paid twelve bucks for that and didn’t even take the first sip. And the man from Kokomo. He looked strangely familiar as he looked up at me through the spatter on his Ray-Bans.”
“Forget Kokomo. Forget lattes. Soon neither will matter.” She then raised her hand slightly above her head, snapped her fingers sharply, and called out, “Bernard! Bring the car around.”
O. O. McIntyre said,
May 7, 2008 @ 9:00 am
“A car, here on the roof,” I thought to myself. “Something is not right, not at all.” Suddenly, a bright light swept over me and the voice of Pinch Sulzberger boomed out from all around. “Do not be afraid,” Pinch said. “Just look into the light. Look into the light.”
I felt myself drawn to the light, its warm glow bringing me closer and closer as the hypnotic, nasal, heavily-accented voice of Pinch had a strangely calming effect upon me. I was about to loose all sense of time and space when the sound of a Washington, D.C. Metro bus plowing over several pedestrians brought me back to reality. Sensing the danger, I grabbed Jenlinda by the arm and pulled her toward the stairs, intending to flee what I now knew to be a horrible — and increadibly overpriced (for the experience so far anyway) — place.
Matt said,
May 7, 2008 @ 2:41 pm
As we fled from the roof deck where time was non-linear and the laws of neither God or Man applied, we nearly toppled over the old man who was just emerging from the stairwell.
“Whoa, whoa, what’s the rush,” he wheezed at us. “It took me fifteen minutes to get up those damned steps and I’m not about to go back inside.”
Jenlinda began rambling, “you see, Herr Gutenberg, the thing is, there was a minor Mocha Kokomo Cocoa Latte Drop incident involving an Indianan . . . an . . . Indianananite. We don’t know what he has inside that Pacers fanny pack but we know we don’t want to find out - - we’ve got to get inside!”
“I emphatically concur,” I emphatically concurred.
As we made our way down the stairs, I found myself thinking that something must have been slipped into the latte that slipped from my hands. It’s the only explanation for the moments of memory that even now are missing from my recollection of these events.
Where did those lights come from? That disembodied voice? How did I get up on the roof in the first place??
Something was definitely rotten here, and all the fishwrap in the world couldn’t conceal the stink.
SemiPundit said,
May 8, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
We reached the bottom of the stairs and took a quick left turn that should have led to the lobby. Suddenly we found ourselves face to face with the mysterious tourist. One hand rested nervously on his fanny pack while tha other rested deep inside his coat pocket.
“One moment, my friends; we should not be in such a rush. There is much to talk about, particularly the mutual friend we share.”
He motioned with a tilt of his head toward the front door, brightly lit with daylight. A large passenger car pulled up to the curb and parked. The driver got out, came around, opened the rear curbside door and smiled as he gestured to us to get inside. We complied and within moments the three of us were speeding along the busy city streets. I noticed that there were no door handles on the inside and the radio was playing Bluegrass music. “Odd”, I thought.
J May said,
July 25, 2008 @ 9:38 am
“Driver, take us to the Washington Kastles game,” the tourist said.