For everyone who reads this piece—the idea here is to have you folks write a sequel Ficlet; that is, to pick up the story from where it’s been left off. And then when you’ve written yours, perhaps someone else will pick up where you left off, and so on.

Have fun!

Very nice. Many possibilities to where it could go.

Lost my first draft. Damn.

I probably should have looked a little harder to see if someone had already picked up the thread here before I started adding to the story… my bad.

Is there some way you/I could erase that?

Stacey, you’re perfectly free to write your own sequel—you don’t have to follow anyone else’s direction.

Scalzi, you didn’t leave much room for prequels, did you. :-)

I wrote a prequel to see if I could.

What happens if a string of prequels and sequels wraps around and connects? ficlets.com explodes? That would rock.

Thanks for this interesting hook!

Ok… I wrote my sequel… next writer up, please?

I’ll leave the prequels and sequels to finer wordsmiths than me, but I did wish to state that this is an excellent ficlet for launching other ficlets from. Open-ended and semi-directed, one could conceivably go anywhere with this piece. Brilliant.

You’ve got a talent for description – “humiliated beanwater”? That line has me about as close as I’ll ever get to rolling on the floor laughing.

I love the character’s complexity and the openness of the Ficlet.

You could have described me. I despise the bitter brew.