Oooh, can I be a judge?! :D

I'd love to join your contest, but... Basketball isn't really my thing. Maybe I'll wait.

Hey, r u still doing 2 do this???????????????????????????

I would love to participate (or judge), but I have absolutely no interest in basketball whatsoever. In fact, I don't even understand why it exists.

Good idea, only... basketball isn't really my thing. If other people were into it, I'd be happy to do it, but since most people aren't, maybe we should change the prompt?

yeah i'd love to do it to even though i hate basketball ill try it, are ghosts alowed in it? or id be happy to be a judge too will u give a different subject after this? how about this?

I had the game coming up and I was still hearing and seeing things. How could I consentrate when my dead Grandmother was cheering in the stands. Or while a phantom player is trying to steal a way the ball. How will I do this I asked myself for the hundreth time. I was feeling sorry for myself when my old, dead, dog Muffins walked through the door. I tried to pet her but my hand hand just went through her. It felt like I was sticking my hand in cold water than imeadently getting it dry when I pulled my hand away.

idk wat do u think of that? as a start

Alright! I wrote a story with the prompt. Dunno if this is still going but I'll post it anyway.

Uh, it does involve the undead, but it's not gruesome. It's leaning more toward satire. Hope that's ok. If not the Admin'll delete it so... *shrug* Onwards!

Oh, and I lost the game. While writing this. :(

*******

The 47th basketball game was a living nightmare.

Well, to be honest most of the basketball games that took place in the high-school gym of Carson High were living nightmares.

All right, all of them were.

But the 47th game of the year was a particularly nasty living nightmare.

Ordinarily the janitors- Joey and Zoë, Mick, and Bryant- did a fairly good job of keeping the gym at least somewhat normal. The days before home games were always marked by the four of them dashing around the school armed with silver chains, packets of salt, and iron shavings provided by the shop classes. They would coat doorways with the metal-and-seasoning mixture, lock the chains in place over storage closet doors and the three entries down into the boiler room.

Still, they couldn’t do everything. One or two of the ghouls always found a way into the gym, or a zombie wandered into one of the locker rooms to give the opposing team a scare.

Not that they were filled with school spirit, these unruly undead. Our teams were just too used to them to care.

Anyway. The day before the 47th basketball game, Joey and Zoë and Mick all managed to catch the flu, leaving Bryant to try to undead-proof the place alone.

Needless to say, he couldn’t cover the entire school all by himself.

So, when the buzzer rang to signal the beginning of the game, things didn’t go well.

One of the zombies- a fellow rather fondly known as “Pop” after his liking for Diet Pepsi- decided to sneak into the opposing team’s locker room and relieve their bags of any spare change. Being rather more clever than most of his kind, Pop made a beeline for the concession stand and bought himself the largest Diet Pepsi he could afford.

All of which would have been fine, as our principal made a habit of repaying our various opponents for any thievery or damage to their property done by the undead that roam our halls.

Pop, however, decided that the best possible place to drink his soda was the bench next to the opposing team’s coach and manager.

The players and spectators were so involved in their game that they didn’t notice Pop or the various other denizens of the night that were invading the gym (the undead, for reasons unknown to paranormal science, are absolutely addicted to two things- malls, and basketball games).

Mind you, the zombies, ghouls, ghosts, and skeletons that haunt the halls of Carson High are not vicious in the least. They never intend to cause harm. It’s just that they look so very terrifying- zombies especially.

So. Inevitably the ball flew out of court, and, rather unfortunately, knocked Pop’s head clean off his shoulders. Being undead he wasn’t hurt, and some junior girl took pity on him and reattached his head.

The damage was done, however, and the opposing team, its coach, its manager, and its friends and family finally noticed the undead crowding around the court. Well, our side noticed too, but our side didn’t react by screaming, rioting, and racing for the nearest exit, the coach shouting that he was never ever coming to Carson High ever again.

And to top it all off, we lost the game.

I am what my composition and literature teacher calls a "voluminous writer," so I don't think I'll make it. Kudos for your contest, though!

-EH