Due date: the end of winter break (13 January 2009). Email Hilary your submission in .doc format.

Rules: Stories must include, somewhere within them, the scene setting we created, 3 of the 5 objects, 3 of the 5 verbs, and 3 of the 5 lines of dialogue, which are as follows.

Setting: A run-down old playground in England in the early 1900s. The playground is located in a not so well-to-do area, but it is still in use; its colloquial nickname is the "Don't you dare playground" because it is a little bit dangerous. We see it during an overcast day (a cold drizzle will probably start up soon) in the late afternoon, around dinnertime. There are not many people around. The school it used to service is abandoned; twenty-three years ago, on this day, the principal of the school went crazy and killed one of the students, making it necessary to shut the school down (although stories, of course, grow over time; now children will swear twenty kids were killed). Part of the back of the school has been burned down; the area seems to undergo these kinds of unfortunate events fairly often. Some people say that it is haunted.

*Please note: you needn't set your entire story here, the setting just must be incorporated into one scene at some point.

Choose 3 of the 5 following objects (categories were something metal, a food, something rectangular, something wearable, and something orange):

1. Anchor
2. Plum
3. Empty book cover
4. Slightly damp, balled up, expensive scarf
5. Orange tiger-eye marbles

Choose 3 of the 5 following verbs:
1. to scour
2. to admire
3. to scuff
4. to joust
5. to ignite

Choose 3 of the 5 following lines of dialogue:
1. "It's my turn now, you promised."
2. "Wait, how many marbles?"
3. "I don't need to know who they are to know what they say."
4. "I'll trade you two new fishhooks for it."
5. "My brother told me there were dragons here, once."