You stuff the letter into your pocket and googlemap the address.

After a brisk walk you arrive in front of a plain brick building with a purple door.  There is no sign and not even a number on the door, but you assume this must be it.  You open the door and walk in.

You are standing in a white room with a small white desk in the corner.  A women in her early 50s is sitting behind it sporting a Madonnna-like headset.  She has an unruly head of curly red hair and bright green glasses covered in silver crystals.  She appears to be wearing some sort of purple lycra unitard.

"Excuse me," you say, suddenly a little hesitant and feeling you may be the centre of some sort of joke.  "I..uh..I got this letter in the mail this morning..." you say, rooting around your pocket.

"Are you..." She looks at you excited.  "Why yes, it must be you. Well, we've all been waiting, I must tell you that..." she says standing up and fumbling with papers.  Her hair flies around wildly and she isn't even really looking at you.  "Please, please just wait here a moment.  I'll go get Doug.  He's going to be so excited to meet you..oh, please, help yourself to some macaroons..."

The woman quickly leaves through a small white door behind her desk.  She has to crouch down just to get through it.

You look at the bowl of macaroons sitting on her chaotic desk...

RATE THIS BRANCH!

Author guidance for This story

You know all that irritating bulk mail you have to dig through to reach your bills and court summons every day? I was picking up my mail one morning and thought about what would happen if I actually followed the directions inside of one of those blasted things.

As an aside, let's try and keep at least one "avoidance" thread going as long as possible, even if it forks this way and that. I'd love to see how many different ways our protagonist can avoid following the suggestion of the award notice. It's good for comic relief. :)

updated Jan 22 '11 by nickb