Beach Writers: September Starter Sentence

For the record, I NEVER hated writing.  But since Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, went to High School with me, I thought the cartoon appropriate to depict me doing my writing homework.  You see, as if I didn't have enough to do in my "real" life, I helped found a neighborhood writer's guild.  One of the challenges at each meeting is to write 2 paragraphs that follow a starter sentence.  The September prompt was "Last night while walking through East Beach..."  This is what my muses came up with.  

     Last night while walking through East Beach, a glint of white caught my eye.  There, peeking out through the mulch piled around Mrs. Dietrich’s Klems Hardy Gardenias.  I stopped and picked up a tile, about the size of a domino only twice as thick.  I turned the cool and smooth item in my hand as I walked.  Within a few steps I was near enough a streetlight to stop and inspect the tile closer.  Hmmm.  One side had markings.  Chinese characters, to be specific, in blood-red ink.  But having never taken a single lesson in Chinese, the symbols meant nothing to me. 

   Thinking it might be of some importance to Mrs. Dietrich, I walked back up 28^th Bay and up the steps then clip-clopped across the sprawling southern porch.  Just as I was about to ring the doorbell, I heard strange noises from inside.  Not strange to the average home, perhaps, but strange for Mrs. Dietrich.  There was a party going on inside.  Odd, that, because the aging gracefully southern belle had become a recluse since her husband’s passing a year ago.  Good for her, I thought. Not wanting to intrude, I decided to leave the tile on the arm of the porch rocker, which happened to be painted in the same blood-red that was on the tile in my hand.  She’d find it in the morning when she stepped out to get her paper.  But then curiosity—for both the party and the tile—got the better of me and I rang the doorbell.  Mrs. Dietrich answered. I held my hand out, tile face up.  She took one look at it, and yelled, “Three crack!  Mahjongg!”   

Up next for October..."'Twas the night before Halloween and a thick fog rolled in..."  Feel free to try either of them yourself, and post your paragraphs int he comments section.