We’re starting 2015 with an experiment in collaborative writing. What happens when you ask ten academics to write a story together? Taking our cue from the Exquisite Cadaver game played by Surrealist artists and poets in the 1930s, we’ve asked our authors to contribute to a story in progress. We gave them free rein: no restrictions on style or genre. Just file 300 words that continues the story. The results, we hope, will be fascinating.

Marguerite Johnson, a classicist at the University of Newcastle, gamely volunteered to start the experiment. Read her first instalment below. All going well we’ll be publishing a new instalment every week day for the next fortnight. As the story takes shape, we’ll be running a series of stories on creativity this month.

One

The exquisite corpse floated. The golden head bobbed as the water moved beneath it. Blood seeped from its chest.

The exquisite corpse was a man minutes ago. He had swum with his mate. Bathed in the heat. Caressed by the coolness. Blessed by the gods.

He stared at it. Naked and without its dog tags. The body never looked as beautiful alive as it did dead.

The exquisite corpse is composed. Adjective, noun, verb, adverb. Bloody body sinks swiftly. Adjective, noun, verb, adverb. Corrupted corpse falls fast. Sonnets printed. Songs penned. And cut-up scraps. To make sense of the senseless.

The exquisite corpse was foreseen by the blind bard. Blasted amid the catastrophes on Troy’s plains. Once past. Once future. He knew of the man who screamed to the heavens and shook the earth. He warned of his return. He knew of the man who now held the cadaver and kissed its lips.

The exquisite corpse began to sink. Air in the lungs gave way to water. It rolled. Faced the sand. Looked blindly for the portal on the ocean floor. That which leads to Hades.

The exquisite corpse is bathed in moonlight, glorious. The ghosts of corpses past and present swim up to greet him. Surrounded now by thousands like him. Death, in glory and in vain.

Perpetual cycles of bloodshed. Act one: one hero mourns, keening and wailing through the night. Act two: another returns to the trenches.

Keep calm and carry on.

The exquisite corpse drifts out to sea with the dawn. Mourning waits. Waits for the news to be told in a faraway land. Tea and sympathy in the kitchen. Tears at the six o’clock swill.

The exquisite corpse becomes iconic. Progeny from faraway come in droves. They pour regenerative ales to cleanse the earth. To honour the fallen. To claim the land and proclaim to all: “The exquisite corpse shall drink new wine”.

First instalment by Marguerite Johnson

Check back on this page tomorrow for the next installment…

Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.