©1999 by Michael D. Quadrozzi and Matthew Atanian
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
_Chapter One: Words from the Sponsor
6:42 PM. December 23, 1997.
6:42 PM. December 23, 1997.
A thin layer of snow had fallen that morning, covering the Springfield area with a pristine white blanket an inch and a half thick. It was only the second or third noticeable snowfall since the year's unusually warm winter season had begun. Of course, abnormal weather is considered perfectly normal in New England.
Yet, as the sun began its slow journey back behind the hills and dusk steadily approached, the splotches of yellowish green on the lawn of the Church in the Acres revealed that most of the snow had fallen victim to the heat of the day.
The old Baptist church, weekly meeting place of Troop 192, had been the site of many interesting and even strange occurrences in its time, many of them in connection with the members of the Boy Scout troop. So, on this night, had the building possessed the uniquely human capacity to be surprised, it would not have found it the slightest bit shocking that Mike Quadrozzi, Bill Hughes and Bill Gelinas were busy on its roof.
Well, actually, only two of them were on the roof. Bill Gelinas was standing shakily on the fourth rung from the top of an aluminum extension ladder.
"Almost set over there, Bill?" Mike called from his makeshift seat in the crook of a church gable. His breath was visible as a cloud of mist in the chill winter air.
On his second attempt at a response, Bill answered back, "No! Not yet!" His first attempt had failed because when his mouth started to move, so did his knees, and so in turn did the entire ladder he was standing on. He was still getting the hang of working twenty some odd feet up.
"Why the hell not?" called Hughes from his own workstation, "we're all done up here!"
"Keep your cows in line, Hickboy," Bill told him, "I've just got a couple more."
Mike nearly fell off of the roof laughing at his friend's sudden wit, and despite the noisy hysterics, Gelinas was able to brandish the staple gun and finish his task. Done, he looked everything over one last time before calling to the others. "All set," he said.
Bill shimmied carefully down the ladder, followed after a moment by Mike and Hughes.
The metal rungs creaked and clanged hollowly in the cold air and, reaching the bottom, the three of them assembled together, the snow crunching under their feet as only snow can. Clad in cold weather gear, they looked like either the picture of winter preparedness or live action versions of the South Park cast. Both Mike and Bill Gelinas wore woolen hats, Mike's pulled down low over his unbelievably grubby red Troop 192 baseball cap. Heavy coats, gloves and boots completed the ensembles. Hughes himself, with his wool-lined plaid jacket, beige hiking boots and ugly green hunting hat, complete with ear flaps, could've come directly off the pages of an L.L. Bean catalog. He might've even harvested the wool from a sheep himself. He did, after all, live in the hill town of Palmer.
Nevertheless, they stood on the church lawn, admiring their work.
"Looks pretty good," Mike said.
"Yep," Hughes agreed.
"Ready to turn 'em on?"
"Go for it."
"Hey, Swett!" Mike called.
Around the corner of the church wall, at the end of one hundred and fifty feet of bright orange extension cord, poked the head of fellow 192 scout Matthew Swett.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"Plug it in!"
At first, Matt didn't seem to understand. From where they stood, the others saw his head waver uncertainly. Then he called, "No way, guys, that would hurt, like, so... Oh, the lights! Right."
His head went back behind the wall, and with a flourish somehow inappropriately small compared to the amount of worked vested in its creation, the hundreds of Christmas lights strewn about the roofs and eaves troths of the Church in the Acres burst into colourful illumination.
"Wow," Mike said, "teamwork is pretty cool."
"Squid, the moral philosopher," quipped Hughes.
Bill Gelinas looked around. "Hey guys," he said, "where are our parents' cars?"
"They dropped us off," Mike said.
"I don't rememb..."
"Shut up, Bill!" They advised him.
Swett walked across the lawn to join Mike and the Bills, the light dusting of snow crunching under his own boots with each step. The four of them stood, bathed in reds, greens, blues and blinking whites, and admired the sight.
"Hey, guys," Matt said.
"What?"
He smiled. "This Christmas party's gonna kick ass."
"A Christmas party! Shit!" It was probably the first time those two phrases had ever been paired together. As defamation of both good sentence structure and religious beliefs, the phrase alone wouldn’t have stood up to criticism. But, adding insult to injury, the words had been spoken by Mr. Jack McGraw, one of the less eloquent members of the shadowy group known as the Troop Elders.
Just in case no one had heard him the first time, he said it again, louder and with more accentuation on the fourth word.
The adults of 192 had gathered in the church kitchen this night for an emergency meeting. So far, the agenda had not moved past the point of initial shock and outrage at recent events.
"Now, Mr. McGraw," said Mr. Bob Martin in his slightly wheezy voice, "it's not really all that bad."
"Not all that bad?" McGraw spat, gesturing towards the exterior of the church. "They're out there hanging decorative lights as we speak! Christmas lights!"
At the other end of the table sat Mr. Tim Walker, the deceptively slow Mid-western philosopher. The heels of his boots were propped up on the counter in front of him. He nonchalantly tipped his ten-gallon hat, adding, "And some of them blink."
Also in attendance was Mr. Ted McCarthy, the soft-spoken Troop Committee Chairman. So far, he had not offered his own advice.
"You hear that? Blinking lights!" Mr. McGraw cried. He was livid, gesticulating wildly. "How could we have let this happen? A Christmas party right under our noses!"
There was the flare of a match, and the four adults at the counter grew quiet as they looked over to their colleague standing in the corner of the room.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Mr. John Hawley said, extinguishing the match between thumb and forefinger. "This is not so big a problem as you make it out to be." He smoked the freshly lit cigar as the group waited for him to continue. When he did so, it was with all the authority that he commanded as Chairman of the Council Camping Committee. "You're not thinking things through properly," he said. "What could come of this?" he asked rhetorically.
He looked around the counter at the others, daring them to speak. His lip twisted into a foul smile. "Let the children have their little party. It's only Christmas."
The others sighed. "Yes, I suppose you are right," said Mr. Martin in an unintentional imitation of Marlon Brando from The Godfather. "After all, Justy will be there as an extension of our will, as will the troop's new Scoutmaster."
The others chuckled. "One clueless cog in a vast machine" Mr. Walker said, "utterly convinced of his own importance. We chose him well."
"Yes," Mr. Martin continued. "So there ought to be no problems at all." He paused and sat back in his chair with a grunt, forming his fingers into a steeple. "Though, I think I know what we are all thinking right now." He looked around the room and saw the agreement on the faces of his middle-aged associates. He nodded.
"Then it is agreed."
There was a sufficient period of silence, then:
"BAH!" The Troop Elders sneered in unison, "HUMBUG!"
Aaron Abdowmassy was in heaven.
Well, not actual Heaven or even a conglomeration of any of the dozens of similar afterlife Utopias envisioned by most of the world's major organized religions. To be there he would have to be dead, and Aaron was not dead. He was at the mall.
The reason he was in heaven was this: He was Christmas shopping. Okay, hold on, there's more to that reason. I mean, Christmas shopping at the mall can seem more like some alternate modes of spending eternity than Heaven sometimes, so just listen. The part of the shopping experience that contributed to Aaron's feeling of bliss was that he was shopping with Kirstin Porter. They were pretty much done with the shopping proper at this point, and now Aaron found himself outside the ladies' changing room in Sears and Roebuck's department store, waiting for Kirstin to come out with some new outfit, after which he would compliment her on it.
He was running out of adjectives.
Of course, any vestiges of impatience or annoyance that existed within him vanished as soon as Kirstin stepped outside the changing room wearing a cute knitted Christmas sweater with reindeer and things on it because he found himself struggling with basic motor skills every time their eyes happened to meet.
"What do you think of this one?" she asked him.
Beautiful! Fantastic! You are the most mystifying and radiant creature I have ever had the pleasure to gaze upon and admire, my dear, sweet Kirstin!
"Great," Aaron said.
She smiled, as if sensing his original thoughts, and Aaron melted into a gooey puddle.
Kirstin re-entered the changing room, and Aaron reflected on the fact that he would find Kirstin enchanting in a clown outfit, or dressed in slacks and a tee shirt. Or heck, she didn't even have to have any clothes on at all... What? Where the hell did that come from? You know damn well I didn't mean it like that! Aaron's mind whirled. Why the hell am I arguing with myself?!
He gathered himself together. "Hey Kirstin?" he called.
"Yeah?" he heard her call back.
"You're not actually planning on, like, buying all of this stuff, right?"
She laughed. "Good Lord, no! It's just fun to try it all on!"
Aaron smiled and settled back in the padded chair by the changing room door, joyfully fascinated by Kirstin Porter.
Matthew K. Atanian was dreaming.
At least, he was pretty sure he was. His mind was muddled. It was like his thoughts were swimming upstream, against the currents of his consciousness. He found it slightly hard to concentrate. Still, he could think clearly enough to fixate on two aspects of his environment that pointed towards the conclusion that he was dreaming.
The first was his present environment itself. It was completely featureless. Matt looked around, taking in everything, and all he saw was inky blackness. Everywhere, just... nothing. He could feel stable ground beneath his feet, but when he looked down, he looked down into emptiness.
The second strange aspect of this experience was the figure walking toward him out of the darkness. Well, perhaps walking wasn't the right word. Matt couldn't see any clear figure, only a shimmering outline that grew a little bigger and a little more distinct over time, as if it were traveling towards him.
After a few minutes, the figure became the sharp image of a man, an old man, perhaps in his seventies or even eighties. Matt watched, confused and fascinated as the man walked towards him. He was definitely walking now, his footsteps echoed hollowly, as if the blackness they were in was a great empty hall. Looking at the old man, Matt noticed he was dressed impeccably in a dark blue business suit, white shirt and red necktie. The mottling of gray hair on his head was turning white above the ears, but there was the slightest hint that at one point, long ago, it had been a sandy blonde in colour.
After a few more minutes, the man was standing right in front of Matt. He smiled broadly, and held out his hand to shake. "Hello, young man," he said in a soft voice, coupled with a melodious Southern accent, "glad to meet you. I'm former President of the United States Jimmy Carter."
Matt blinked. He'd never met a President before. Yet, since he was dreaming, the event didn't seem quite as important as it probably should have.
Matt took the man's hand and shook it. "Um, it's an honour, sir."
Jimmy Carter chuckled. "Oh, well, don't think much of it, son." He lifted his hands, and Matt was surprised to see that each of them held a tall glass of iced tea. "Would you care for a beverage?"
Matt took one of the glasses. "Oh... thanks," he said. He sipped it, and was surprised again to find that it was very good, perfectly mixed and chilled.
"Well, don't just stand there, son," Jimmy Carter said, "put your feet up. Relax." Matt looked, and now the former Commander-in-Chief was seated in an old armchair. He looked behind him and was surprised a third, record-setting time to find that he also had a comfortable looking armchair to sit in. He took advantage of it.
"So," Jimmy Carter started in his soft Georgia drawl, "I understand that you yourself are interested in pursuing public office."
Matt was so off balance, what with the dream, the iced tea, the former President and the comfortable arm chair, which he now noticed was light mauve in colour, that he merely nodded. A second later, he actually realized that a question had been asked and said, "What?"
Carter blinked. He seemed suddenly unsure. "Why, son," he started, "aren't you George W. Bush?"
"Um... No."
"Oh. Oh, son, I'm terribly sorry." He laughed softly and held up his hands in apology. "I seem to be in the wrong, here. I believe there's someone else who'd like to speak with you. I'm sorry."
In an instant, he was gone, as if the President, the chairs and the tea had been only piles of sand and had blown away in a sudden gust of wind. Once again, Matt was alone in the empty darkness.
Or so he thought. Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he spun around. As he did so, the inky blackness snapped smartly into the pristinely frigid landscape of Antarctica. Immense mountains of rock and ice shimmered brightly in the distance. A parade of penguins marched by him, not five feet away, and dove head first off of an icy cliff into the water below.
Matt suddenly came face to face with another old man, who he immediately recognized as Jimmy Stewart.
"Well, howdy, sport!" Jimmy Stewart said, taking both of Matt's hands in his. "How the hell are you?"
Matt was getting bewildered. He had trouble forming words. "Er..."
"Oh, hey, there's no trouble now, sport," Stewart told him in a jumpy, low-pitched, interrupted stutter that sounded more like Dana Carvey's exaggerated impersonation of Jimmy Stewart than the legendary actor himself. "I don't know what that guy was doing here, anyway, I mean, he's not even dead. Only served one term, too."
Matt found the words he'd been looking for. "Um, what's going on?" he asked.
Jimmy Stewart smiled. "Oh, hey sport, I'm just here to give you some advice! Yeah!"
"Oh," Matt said. "Advice on what?"
"Well, heck, sport, you're having a Christmas party, aren't you? Tomorrow night?"
"The troop Christmas party? Well, I was planning on showing up, yeah, but I'm not really having it."
Jimmy Stewart arched his eyebrows. "Well, that's no excuse, sport. You're having it."
"Um, I'm not sure I follow..."
"I'll tell you what you're going to do, sport! You're gonna get involved, I mean, you're gonna have a Christmas party! Yeah!" The deceased actor grinned broadly.
Matt noticed that it had begun snowing large, Christmas-type snowflakes, which was odd, because he could remember reading that it was almost always too cold to snow in Antarctica. "What, you think I should call the others and..."
"I think you should do it all, sport!" Stewart threw his hands up into the air in an expansive gesture. As if on his command, two dozen red and white candy canes, each at least thirty feet tall, sprang up all around them. Matt, instead of wondering how they might've gotten below the polar ice cap, found himself with a sudden craving for peppermint.
"This is a rare occasion!" Jimmy Stewart was saying, the volume of his voice escalating. "It's an event! Christmas comes but once a year, sport! Make the most of it!"
And suddenly, Matt woke up.
He was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. He dimly remembered deciding to take a quick nap after getting home from work.
"Wow," he said to himself, "Jimmy Stewart is sponsoring the troop's party." He felt oddly honoured.
There was a quick knock on the closed door to his room. He rose, walked to his door, pulled it open a crack, and looked out.
"Nice nap?" asked Matt's father, Mr. Heidi Atanian. "It's late. You probably won't get to sleep, now." His footsteps proceeded into the kitchen.
Matt sat up and stretched. After a moment, he smiled.
"This Christmas party's gonna kick ass," he said.
Then he got up and started rifling through the piles of stuff that covered the floor, because he knew he had a copy of It's a Wonderful Life somewhere, and he knew he had to watch it.
"Hey, sis!" Nicole Porter called, standing up from where she had knelt by the bed. Under the bed had been the first place she'd looked, and the second time around had yielded the same results.
"What?"
Nicole walked into the kitchen where her older sister sat surrounded by cardboard boxes. Sarah looked up from here seat on the floor. "What is it?" she asked again.
Nicole sighed, obviously more upset over asking for help than the actual problem. "Have you seen Neko-chan around anywhere?"
"No," Sarah answered, "not recently." She smiled. "I would've figured it would be kind of hard to loose a cat in a place this size."
"Well, I can't find him anywhere."
Sarah continued with her work, not looking up. "Didn't you let him out before?"
"Oh... yeah," Nicole said, frowning. She'd let him outside that afternoon. Neko-chan had seemed keen on getting some fresh air. Hadn't she let him back in, though?
Sarah could see the frown forming on her younger sibling's face. "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll turn up tonight, scratching at the door, just like last time."
Nicole sighed again. "Yeah, I bet you're right." She sank down to the floor, taking a seat next to Sarah. "So, what're you doing?"
Sarah looked around the room at the boxes she'd brought up from the basement of their building. "Oh, just unpacking our winter stuff. I figured since there's actually a bit snow on the ground now it's finally time to start bringing it all out."
Nicole smiled, giving the boxes an appreciative glance. Some of them lay opened, spilling their woolly contents on the floor. She decided to change the subject. "So," she began slowly, picking her words with care, "Were you planning on attending the party tomorrow?"
Sarah didn't look up. "And what party would that be?" she asked.
"The Boy Scouts' Christmas party."
Sarah looked up. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Oh, come on," Nicole said, "Aaron and the guys invited us. It'll be fun." She saw that she wasn't impressing her sister. "Besides, what else are you going to be doing tomorrow night?"
"I don't know," Sarah said, pulling the lid open on another box. "Maybe I've got some more shopping to do."
Nicole smirked. "I happen to know that you finished all of your shopping weeks ago."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, really."
Sarah sighed. She threw a glance, briefly, at the ticking clock on the wall. "All right, fine," she said, "I'll go. Maybe Matty Hayes will be there."
"See now, that wasn't so hard, was it?" her sister chided. She got up to leave the room, then a thought struck her. She smiled. "I believe that was a Nicole Porter counseling session, sis. I'll charge you for the hour. You owe me!"
"Just put it on my tab."
The room was dark. The lights were off and the shades on the windows were down, blocking out any light from outside. It was late, so late that it might have been early.
But Matthew Atanian didn't care. He sat in his room, wide-eyed, staring, bathed in the flickering light of his television. Nothing else moved, there were no other sounds except the voices of the people in the movie and Matt's slow, steady breathing.
For the fifth consecutive time, he heard Jimmy Stewart say to his young daughter, "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!" It was the scene at the end, the joyous Christmas scene when everyone in Bedford Falls gets together and has a merry time. And young George Bailey finally knows the worth his life has.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right," Matt said. He was scribbling furiously on a spiral bound college-ruled notebook.
And then he was staring at a static-filled screen. The movie had ended. It was a wonderful life.
Matt blinked and leaned forward to eject the tape. It popped out of his VCR with an electronic whir. He looked at the display on the VCR. The little green numbers read: 2:37 AM.
He smiled. It was Christmas Eve!
And then, quietly, he opened the door to his room and walked out into the hall. He headed towards the basement, where all the wrapping paper and holiday decorations were kept.
He had work to do.
Yet, as the sun began its slow journey back behind the hills and dusk steadily approached, the splotches of yellowish green on the lawn of the Church in the Acres revealed that most of the snow had fallen victim to the heat of the day.
The old Baptist church, weekly meeting place of Troop 192, had been the site of many interesting and even strange occurrences in its time, many of them in connection with the members of the Boy Scout troop. So, on this night, had the building possessed the uniquely human capacity to be surprised, it would not have found it the slightest bit shocking that Mike Quadrozzi, Bill Hughes and Bill Gelinas were busy on its roof.
Well, actually, only two of them were on the roof. Bill Gelinas was standing shakily on the fourth rung from the top of an aluminum extension ladder.
"Almost set over there, Bill?" Mike called from his makeshift seat in the crook of a church gable. His breath was visible as a cloud of mist in the chill winter air.
On his second attempt at a response, Bill answered back, "No! Not yet!" His first attempt had failed because when his mouth started to move, so did his knees, and so in turn did the entire ladder he was standing on. He was still getting the hang of working twenty some odd feet up.
"Why the hell not?" called Hughes from his own workstation, "we're all done up here!"
"Keep your cows in line, Hickboy," Bill told him, "I've just got a couple more."
Mike nearly fell off of the roof laughing at his friend's sudden wit, and despite the noisy hysterics, Gelinas was able to brandish the staple gun and finish his task. Done, he looked everything over one last time before calling to the others. "All set," he said.
Bill shimmied carefully down the ladder, followed after a moment by Mike and Hughes.
The metal rungs creaked and clanged hollowly in the cold air and, reaching the bottom, the three of them assembled together, the snow crunching under their feet as only snow can. Clad in cold weather gear, they looked like either the picture of winter preparedness or live action versions of the South Park cast. Both Mike and Bill Gelinas wore woolen hats, Mike's pulled down low over his unbelievably grubby red Troop 192 baseball cap. Heavy coats, gloves and boots completed the ensembles. Hughes himself, with his wool-lined plaid jacket, beige hiking boots and ugly green hunting hat, complete with ear flaps, could've come directly off the pages of an L.L. Bean catalog. He might've even harvested the wool from a sheep himself. He did, after all, live in the hill town of Palmer.
Nevertheless, they stood on the church lawn, admiring their work.
"Looks pretty good," Mike said.
"Yep," Hughes agreed.
"Ready to turn 'em on?"
"Go for it."
"Hey, Swett!" Mike called.
Around the corner of the church wall, at the end of one hundred and fifty feet of bright orange extension cord, poked the head of fellow 192 scout Matthew Swett.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"Plug it in!"
At first, Matt didn't seem to understand. From where they stood, the others saw his head waver uncertainly. Then he called, "No way, guys, that would hurt, like, so... Oh, the lights! Right."
His head went back behind the wall, and with a flourish somehow inappropriately small compared to the amount of worked vested in its creation, the hundreds of Christmas lights strewn about the roofs and eaves troths of the Church in the Acres burst into colourful illumination.
"Wow," Mike said, "teamwork is pretty cool."
"Squid, the moral philosopher," quipped Hughes.
Bill Gelinas looked around. "Hey guys," he said, "where are our parents' cars?"
"They dropped us off," Mike said.
"I don't rememb..."
"Shut up, Bill!" They advised him.
Swett walked across the lawn to join Mike and the Bills, the light dusting of snow crunching under his own boots with each step. The four of them stood, bathed in reds, greens, blues and blinking whites, and admired the sight.
"Hey, guys," Matt said.
"What?"
He smiled. "This Christmas party's gonna kick ass."
"A Christmas party! Shit!" It was probably the first time those two phrases had ever been paired together. As defamation of both good sentence structure and religious beliefs, the phrase alone wouldn’t have stood up to criticism. But, adding insult to injury, the words had been spoken by Mr. Jack McGraw, one of the less eloquent members of the shadowy group known as the Troop Elders.
Just in case no one had heard him the first time, he said it again, louder and with more accentuation on the fourth word.
The adults of 192 had gathered in the church kitchen this night for an emergency meeting. So far, the agenda had not moved past the point of initial shock and outrage at recent events.
"Now, Mr. McGraw," said Mr. Bob Martin in his slightly wheezy voice, "it's not really all that bad."
"Not all that bad?" McGraw spat, gesturing towards the exterior of the church. "They're out there hanging decorative lights as we speak! Christmas lights!"
At the other end of the table sat Mr. Tim Walker, the deceptively slow Mid-western philosopher. The heels of his boots were propped up on the counter in front of him. He nonchalantly tipped his ten-gallon hat, adding, "And some of them blink."
Also in attendance was Mr. Ted McCarthy, the soft-spoken Troop Committee Chairman. So far, he had not offered his own advice.
"You hear that? Blinking lights!" Mr. McGraw cried. He was livid, gesticulating wildly. "How could we have let this happen? A Christmas party right under our noses!"
There was the flare of a match, and the four adults at the counter grew quiet as they looked over to their colleague standing in the corner of the room.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Mr. John Hawley said, extinguishing the match between thumb and forefinger. "This is not so big a problem as you make it out to be." He smoked the freshly lit cigar as the group waited for him to continue. When he did so, it was with all the authority that he commanded as Chairman of the Council Camping Committee. "You're not thinking things through properly," he said. "What could come of this?" he asked rhetorically.
He looked around the counter at the others, daring them to speak. His lip twisted into a foul smile. "Let the children have their little party. It's only Christmas."
The others sighed. "Yes, I suppose you are right," said Mr. Martin in an unintentional imitation of Marlon Brando from The Godfather. "After all, Justy will be there as an extension of our will, as will the troop's new Scoutmaster."
The others chuckled. "One clueless cog in a vast machine" Mr. Walker said, "utterly convinced of his own importance. We chose him well."
"Yes," Mr. Martin continued. "So there ought to be no problems at all." He paused and sat back in his chair with a grunt, forming his fingers into a steeple. "Though, I think I know what we are all thinking right now." He looked around the room and saw the agreement on the faces of his middle-aged associates. He nodded.
"Then it is agreed."
There was a sufficient period of silence, then:
"BAH!" The Troop Elders sneered in unison, "HUMBUG!"
Aaron Abdowmassy was in heaven.
Well, not actual Heaven or even a conglomeration of any of the dozens of similar afterlife Utopias envisioned by most of the world's major organized religions. To be there he would have to be dead, and Aaron was not dead. He was at the mall.
The reason he was in heaven was this: He was Christmas shopping. Okay, hold on, there's more to that reason. I mean, Christmas shopping at the mall can seem more like some alternate modes of spending eternity than Heaven sometimes, so just listen. The part of the shopping experience that contributed to Aaron's feeling of bliss was that he was shopping with Kirstin Porter. They were pretty much done with the shopping proper at this point, and now Aaron found himself outside the ladies' changing room in Sears and Roebuck's department store, waiting for Kirstin to come out with some new outfit, after which he would compliment her on it.
He was running out of adjectives.
Of course, any vestiges of impatience or annoyance that existed within him vanished as soon as Kirstin stepped outside the changing room wearing a cute knitted Christmas sweater with reindeer and things on it because he found himself struggling with basic motor skills every time their eyes happened to meet.
"What do you think of this one?" she asked him.
Beautiful! Fantastic! You are the most mystifying and radiant creature I have ever had the pleasure to gaze upon and admire, my dear, sweet Kirstin!
"Great," Aaron said.
She smiled, as if sensing his original thoughts, and Aaron melted into a gooey puddle.
Kirstin re-entered the changing room, and Aaron reflected on the fact that he would find Kirstin enchanting in a clown outfit, or dressed in slacks and a tee shirt. Or heck, she didn't even have to have any clothes on at all... What? Where the hell did that come from? You know damn well I didn't mean it like that! Aaron's mind whirled. Why the hell am I arguing with myself?!
He gathered himself together. "Hey Kirstin?" he called.
"Yeah?" he heard her call back.
"You're not actually planning on, like, buying all of this stuff, right?"
She laughed. "Good Lord, no! It's just fun to try it all on!"
Aaron smiled and settled back in the padded chair by the changing room door, joyfully fascinated by Kirstin Porter.
Matthew K. Atanian was dreaming.
At least, he was pretty sure he was. His mind was muddled. It was like his thoughts were swimming upstream, against the currents of his consciousness. He found it slightly hard to concentrate. Still, he could think clearly enough to fixate on two aspects of his environment that pointed towards the conclusion that he was dreaming.
The first was his present environment itself. It was completely featureless. Matt looked around, taking in everything, and all he saw was inky blackness. Everywhere, just... nothing. He could feel stable ground beneath his feet, but when he looked down, he looked down into emptiness.
The second strange aspect of this experience was the figure walking toward him out of the darkness. Well, perhaps walking wasn't the right word. Matt couldn't see any clear figure, only a shimmering outline that grew a little bigger and a little more distinct over time, as if it were traveling towards him.
After a few minutes, the figure became the sharp image of a man, an old man, perhaps in his seventies or even eighties. Matt watched, confused and fascinated as the man walked towards him. He was definitely walking now, his footsteps echoed hollowly, as if the blackness they were in was a great empty hall. Looking at the old man, Matt noticed he was dressed impeccably in a dark blue business suit, white shirt and red necktie. The mottling of gray hair on his head was turning white above the ears, but there was the slightest hint that at one point, long ago, it had been a sandy blonde in colour.
After a few more minutes, the man was standing right in front of Matt. He smiled broadly, and held out his hand to shake. "Hello, young man," he said in a soft voice, coupled with a melodious Southern accent, "glad to meet you. I'm former President of the United States Jimmy Carter."
Matt blinked. He'd never met a President before. Yet, since he was dreaming, the event didn't seem quite as important as it probably should have.
Matt took the man's hand and shook it. "Um, it's an honour, sir."
Jimmy Carter chuckled. "Oh, well, don't think much of it, son." He lifted his hands, and Matt was surprised to see that each of them held a tall glass of iced tea. "Would you care for a beverage?"
Matt took one of the glasses. "Oh... thanks," he said. He sipped it, and was surprised again to find that it was very good, perfectly mixed and chilled.
"Well, don't just stand there, son," Jimmy Carter said, "put your feet up. Relax." Matt looked, and now the former Commander-in-Chief was seated in an old armchair. He looked behind him and was surprised a third, record-setting time to find that he also had a comfortable looking armchair to sit in. He took advantage of it.
"So," Jimmy Carter started in his soft Georgia drawl, "I understand that you yourself are interested in pursuing public office."
Matt was so off balance, what with the dream, the iced tea, the former President and the comfortable arm chair, which he now noticed was light mauve in colour, that he merely nodded. A second later, he actually realized that a question had been asked and said, "What?"
Carter blinked. He seemed suddenly unsure. "Why, son," he started, "aren't you George W. Bush?"
"Um... No."
"Oh. Oh, son, I'm terribly sorry." He laughed softly and held up his hands in apology. "I seem to be in the wrong, here. I believe there's someone else who'd like to speak with you. I'm sorry."
In an instant, he was gone, as if the President, the chairs and the tea had been only piles of sand and had blown away in a sudden gust of wind. Once again, Matt was alone in the empty darkness.
Or so he thought. Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he spun around. As he did so, the inky blackness snapped smartly into the pristinely frigid landscape of Antarctica. Immense mountains of rock and ice shimmered brightly in the distance. A parade of penguins marched by him, not five feet away, and dove head first off of an icy cliff into the water below.
Matt suddenly came face to face with another old man, who he immediately recognized as Jimmy Stewart.
"Well, howdy, sport!" Jimmy Stewart said, taking both of Matt's hands in his. "How the hell are you?"
Matt was getting bewildered. He had trouble forming words. "Er..."
"Oh, hey, there's no trouble now, sport," Stewart told him in a jumpy, low-pitched, interrupted stutter that sounded more like Dana Carvey's exaggerated impersonation of Jimmy Stewart than the legendary actor himself. "I don't know what that guy was doing here, anyway, I mean, he's not even dead. Only served one term, too."
Matt found the words he'd been looking for. "Um, what's going on?" he asked.
Jimmy Stewart smiled. "Oh, hey sport, I'm just here to give you some advice! Yeah!"
"Oh," Matt said. "Advice on what?"
"Well, heck, sport, you're having a Christmas party, aren't you? Tomorrow night?"
"The troop Christmas party? Well, I was planning on showing up, yeah, but I'm not really having it."
Jimmy Stewart arched his eyebrows. "Well, that's no excuse, sport. You're having it."
"Um, I'm not sure I follow..."
"I'll tell you what you're going to do, sport! You're gonna get involved, I mean, you're gonna have a Christmas party! Yeah!" The deceased actor grinned broadly.
Matt noticed that it had begun snowing large, Christmas-type snowflakes, which was odd, because he could remember reading that it was almost always too cold to snow in Antarctica. "What, you think I should call the others and..."
"I think you should do it all, sport!" Stewart threw his hands up into the air in an expansive gesture. As if on his command, two dozen red and white candy canes, each at least thirty feet tall, sprang up all around them. Matt, instead of wondering how they might've gotten below the polar ice cap, found himself with a sudden craving for peppermint.
"This is a rare occasion!" Jimmy Stewart was saying, the volume of his voice escalating. "It's an event! Christmas comes but once a year, sport! Make the most of it!"
And suddenly, Matt woke up.
He was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. He dimly remembered deciding to take a quick nap after getting home from work.
"Wow," he said to himself, "Jimmy Stewart is sponsoring the troop's party." He felt oddly honoured.
There was a quick knock on the closed door to his room. He rose, walked to his door, pulled it open a crack, and looked out.
"Nice nap?" asked Matt's father, Mr. Heidi Atanian. "It's late. You probably won't get to sleep, now." His footsteps proceeded into the kitchen.
Matt sat up and stretched. After a moment, he smiled.
"This Christmas party's gonna kick ass," he said.
Then he got up and started rifling through the piles of stuff that covered the floor, because he knew he had a copy of It's a Wonderful Life somewhere, and he knew he had to watch it.
"Hey, sis!" Nicole Porter called, standing up from where she had knelt by the bed. Under the bed had been the first place she'd looked, and the second time around had yielded the same results.
"What?"
Nicole walked into the kitchen where her older sister sat surrounded by cardboard boxes. Sarah looked up from here seat on the floor. "What is it?" she asked again.
Nicole sighed, obviously more upset over asking for help than the actual problem. "Have you seen Neko-chan around anywhere?"
"No," Sarah answered, "not recently." She smiled. "I would've figured it would be kind of hard to loose a cat in a place this size."
"Well, I can't find him anywhere."
Sarah continued with her work, not looking up. "Didn't you let him out before?"
"Oh... yeah," Nicole said, frowning. She'd let him outside that afternoon. Neko-chan had seemed keen on getting some fresh air. Hadn't she let him back in, though?
Sarah could see the frown forming on her younger sibling's face. "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll turn up tonight, scratching at the door, just like last time."
Nicole sighed again. "Yeah, I bet you're right." She sank down to the floor, taking a seat next to Sarah. "So, what're you doing?"
Sarah looked around the room at the boxes she'd brought up from the basement of their building. "Oh, just unpacking our winter stuff. I figured since there's actually a bit snow on the ground now it's finally time to start bringing it all out."
Nicole smiled, giving the boxes an appreciative glance. Some of them lay opened, spilling their woolly contents on the floor. She decided to change the subject. "So," she began slowly, picking her words with care, "Were you planning on attending the party tomorrow?"
Sarah didn't look up. "And what party would that be?" she asked.
"The Boy Scouts' Christmas party."
Sarah looked up. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Oh, come on," Nicole said, "Aaron and the guys invited us. It'll be fun." She saw that she wasn't impressing her sister. "Besides, what else are you going to be doing tomorrow night?"
"I don't know," Sarah said, pulling the lid open on another box. "Maybe I've got some more shopping to do."
Nicole smirked. "I happen to know that you finished all of your shopping weeks ago."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, really."
Sarah sighed. She threw a glance, briefly, at the ticking clock on the wall. "All right, fine," she said, "I'll go. Maybe Matty Hayes will be there."
"See now, that wasn't so hard, was it?" her sister chided. She got up to leave the room, then a thought struck her. She smiled. "I believe that was a Nicole Porter counseling session, sis. I'll charge you for the hour. You owe me!"
"Just put it on my tab."
The room was dark. The lights were off and the shades on the windows were down, blocking out any light from outside. It was late, so late that it might have been early.
But Matthew Atanian didn't care. He sat in his room, wide-eyed, staring, bathed in the flickering light of his television. Nothing else moved, there were no other sounds except the voices of the people in the movie and Matt's slow, steady breathing.
For the fifth consecutive time, he heard Jimmy Stewart say to his young daughter, "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!" It was the scene at the end, the joyous Christmas scene when everyone in Bedford Falls gets together and has a merry time. And young George Bailey finally knows the worth his life has.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right," Matt said. He was scribbling furiously on a spiral bound college-ruled notebook.
And then he was staring at a static-filled screen. The movie had ended. It was a wonderful life.
Matt blinked and leaned forward to eject the tape. It popped out of his VCR with an electronic whir. He looked at the display on the VCR. The little green numbers read: 2:37 AM.
He smiled. It was Christmas Eve!
And then, quietly, he opened the door to his room and walked out into the hall. He headed towards the basement, where all the wrapping paper and holiday decorations were kept.
He had work to do.
Chapter Two: Something Completely Different
10:23 a.m., December 24, 2007
10:23 a.m., December 24, 2007
It was the day before Christmas, and the sun rose slowly over the rolling foothills of the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. This sun, seemingly incapable of shedding any warmth on a typical winter's day yet remaining stubbornly bright in the sky, rose up and banished the night to the other side of the world. Light streamed across the sky and gleamed off the low-hanging, foreboding clouds. Mustering all its strength as a celestial furnace, the sun prepared to melt any lasting vestige of ice and snow from the ground and leave the inhabitants of Springfield a reminder of winter in the form of ankle deep puddles of frigid water and dirty brown mush by the side of the road.
But all that was unimportant to Mike Quadrozzi, because where he was, it was raining.
It was raining heavily, actually, quite heavily. This sort of rain wasn't due to start for months, yet here he sat, on a comfortable Chesterfield in the middle of a cricket field, huddled under an umbrella as frogs fell from the sky.
"Bloody frogs," Terry Jones snorted, looking up at the darkening sky. "How can we get any writing done with this rot?"
"It's all right," Michael Palin told the other in his high-pitched, passive voice. "It'll pass over."
"Bound to," John Cleese nodded.
They were, all four of them, Mike and the three Pythons, sitting together in a comfortable living room setting, which just happened to be in the middle of a cricket field.
A frog landed on Mike's umbrella with a wet plop, bringing him out of his reverie. "Well," he said, "I suppose we should continue."
"Right," the others agreed.
They were working on the last scenes of the latest Python film, a romping jaunt into the fringes of taste and reality tentatively titled The Queen Mother's Left Nipple. It was the group's first cinematic venture in about fourteen years, and they were all excited how well it was going so far.
"So where we are," Cleese was saying, flipping through his pages of notes as a recently bowled cricket ball careened just millimeters over his head, "Leonardo DiCaprio has just fallen off the Eiffel Tower into a giant bowl of lemon meringue." He looked up. "Right?"
"Yep," the others agreed.
"That was a really great idea," Mike said. "Whose was that, again?"
"Wasn't it Terry's?" Palin offered. "I think it was Terry's. Sounds like Terry."
"I particularly like the part where the little snot goes off the tower," Cleese said. "Do you think that will translate well in the film? It's a rather timeless concept."
"I think so," Mike Quadrozzi offered, "every culture has a Leo. But whose idea was that?"
"Well, I think it was sort of a group thing, really," Jones started, "When we..." But he didn't get any further, because at that point all three of the Britons stood upright in fits of apoplectic rage and savagely ripped their own eyes from the sockets. Blood poured everywhere as they twisted in agony, screaming in terror.
Mike pulled himself away from the scene, gripping the edges of the comfortable Chesterfield and nearly clawing the cushy material to shreds. Through the horrible plumes of gore, he could just barely discern the figure of Sam Neill from Event Horizon. "Where we're going," he said in a voice that would've made Clint Eastwood shit his pants, "we won't need eyes to see!"
Thankfully, before the carnage could continue, Sam Neill's right temple exploded, killing him instantly. He fell, and over his lifeless body stepped FBI Special Agent Dana Scully. She lowered her smoking Sig-Sauer p228 and brushed a stray strand of red auburn hair back behind her ear. She blew at the barrel of the gun, stopping the ebb of black smoke.
Then she looked at Mike, and ran towards him, leaping gracelessly over the bodies of all four incredibly talented actors. Mike watched as the movement accentuated the svelte curves of her feminine yet steely physique until the G-woman came to a halt in front of him, breathing heavily.
"Michael," she said between breaths, "Thank God I've found you."
"Um ... why, yes it is," Mike said.
Scully held him at arms length, her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes, twin pools of luminous blue, looked right into his own. Strands of red auburn hair reached out from her brow to affix themselves to her sweaty cheek. "I need you ... to do something for me," she said.
"Okay."
"It's very important."
"Anything."
"I want you," she said in a heavy voice, "to go down to the store and get some milk?"
"What?"
"Could you get a gallon of milk?" his mother asked him, standing over his bed.
"Whaza... gahfscully?" Mike said.
"I mean, you've slept long enough and we've got everyone coming over for dinner tonight and somebody,” (by this she meant probably her son or in fact anyone in the world besides her,) “used up the rest of the milk last night."
"Whatsa, 'ime?" Mike said, his brain fighting consciousness as best it could. He leaned over in bed to see the time on his alarm clock radio and then gasped in incredible pain that only his fellow males could understand and that we won't go into right now for obvious reasons.
"It's nearly half past ten," Sandra Quadrozzi told her son. "I'd really appreciate it if you got up and did me this one small favour today."
"Ho-kay," Mike said weakly, "Fine." After a few more minutes, he was able to get up out of a foetal position and move slowly towards the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Matt Atanian, whose own dream sequence had had at least a little relevancy to the plot, was still busy in his basement.
He was stooped over a disorganized jumble of wrapping paper, the empty cardboard tubes that are left when you finish a roll of wrapping paper and a mountain of assorted Christmas what‑have‑yous and knick-knacks.
"Tape," he said softly. "Out of tape. More tape."
And he laughed.
Kenneth E. Pendrell opened the door to his room and walked in, blinking briefly as he entered a shaft of sunlight filtering in through the blinds on the one window. Resettling his glasses on the bridge of his nose, he quietly shuffled past all the accoutrements of a normal young person's room: his bed, a bureau where he kept most of his clothes, and a closet. As he walked past his tidy desk, he took a small remote control out of the top drawer.
The remote was about eight inches long, flat and black, with many small buttons on it of varying sizes and colours.
He pressed one button, turning on his tape player, preset to the big band classic, "Assembly Line." With another press, the short, upright pod in the corner of his room opened silently. Kenny stepped inside, pressed a third button, and rocketed into the subterranean caverns of earth below his home.
Kenny guessed, and guessed correctly, that if any of the other scouts in Troop 192 were to ever see his laboratory (pronounced "luh-BOR-ah-tor-ee") they would be very surprised and almost definitely shocked, perhaps even astounded. Not that Kenny usually cared what other people thought. He'd gotten used to being a shadow, a person easily overlooked and seen through. And yet, it seemed to be different with Mike and Aaron and the others. They noticed him. For the first time in his memory, he belonged.
The pod slowed to a stop and hit the ground below with a soft thump. Kenny stepped out onto the bare concrete floor and flicked a nearby switch. With a loud hum, the generators kicked on, and enormous amounts of electricity began to power Kenny's lab.
He smiled and readjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.
Sanctuary, Kenny thought.
The room was so big you couldn't even call it a room. It was immense, gigantic, and cavernous. The far wall was indistinct, the ceiling faded away in a cloudy haze. Machines and instruments crowded every open space atop shiny aluminum counters and cabinets filled with scientific journals and essays of all sorts. There were scores of bookshelves, hundreds of test tubes and thousands of multicoloured beakers and flasks. Giant pipettes stood next to voltronic pacificators and double glass refibulators and dozens of other devices that would tongue-tie Dr. Seuss, himself.
Kenny came down here often, to escape the world above. He found solace in this place, his laboratory where he could explore and devise and create. Yet, today he was not here to create. He was looking for something.
Standing by his 54' by 21' poster portraying the complete Periodic Table of the Elements, Kenny surveyed the area closely. Where he could he have left it?
There it was. He walked over to the gravimetric thermo-dynamometer and knelt down to pick up his left rubber winter boot. I can be so forgetful sometimes, he thought.
Kenny Pendrell walked back to the squat pneumatic tube, flicked off the lights, stepped inside and returned to the world above.
In the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, which lies roughly in the centre of the western part of the state, snuggled up against the great blue cut of the Connecticut River, there are many fine institutions, both of learning and of the arts and entertainment, of which the community (population of about 160,000) is most proud. The list includes the many colleges, museums, the vast park system and, perhaps most notably, the Basketball Hall of Fame. However, there is one fine institution that you will not find on this list of places to see. It deserves, but doesn't get, any publicity at all. Indeed, it doesn't even ask for any. Relying on simple word of mouth alone, it has slowly prospered and attracted its own unique clientele. A more quaint and humble store you couldn't hope to find.
The Card and Comic Company lies at the intersection of two main roads in one of the more commercialized sections of the very uncommercialized neighborhood of Sixteen Acres. It is a comic book store that also sells cards and other collectibles, which explains why it wasn't on the aforementioned list.
Not to say it isn't a respectable place of purveyance. The staff, for the most part, is pleasant and knowledgeable, and the selection of comics, cards and other collectibles is vast and well organized. For years it has been a haven for hobbyists and fans of the graphic novel.
And now, back to the dialogue.
"You're just not listening, Hector," said Ed, "I've already gone into that."
"Well, obviously not very well," Hector retorted.
Ed sighed. He so tired of this debate. "The reason that the faerie nobles couldn't possibly defeat the Amazon priestesses is because the nobles possess the Jewel of Ren-Dac."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, Hector. It's as simple as that."
Hector was elated. He would now prove his friend wrong. "Then I suppose you missed the November issue of Duelscrye Gamer Monthly?"
Ed swallowed. The damned fool had found his weakness. "Actually I had, I meant..."
But Hector cut him off, moving in for the kill. "Then you also missed the article by Robert Wembley in which it is proven decisively that the Jewel of Ren-Dac loses its potency when it leaves the Valley of the Forty Seven Torches of Count Dragoon."
"Well, then," Ed began, "The faerie nobles would have no trouble overpowering the Amazon priestesses, seeing as they so recently lost the Battle of Shundrack's Bayou."
"Indeed," Hector said, taking off his inch-thick glasses to give them a polish.
"Well, that's what I've said all along."
"What?! You..."
"Hey, guys," the man working the counter at the Card and Comic Company interrupted, "would you mind keeping it down? This is a store, not a debate hall." He watched as the two left their place by the window and moved over to the shelves of manga near the back, then settled back in his chair behind the counter to return to his duties as clerk.
The bells over the door jingled loudly, and in from the cold stepped Mike Quadrozzi, a half gallon of 2% milk in his hand. He wiped the dirty brown slush of the heels of his boots and walked over to the immense rack of comic books, along the entire far wall of the store. He'd decided to make a brief side trip on his way home after buying the milk. It wasn't that far out of the way.
Looking over the hundreds of titles, he suddenly realized who the person next to him was. "Hey," he said, "how you doing, Becker?"
Jon Becker didn't answer because he had his headphones on and was nearly oblivious to everything and everyone around him. Mike leaned over slightly and shook him by the shoulder. Becker turned around. "Hey, Squid!" he said very loudly.
"Hey, Becker, how you doing?!!"
"Fine!! I'm here for my weekly Magic fix!!" Becker reached into his pocket and took out a couple of recently purchased packs. They'd already been ripped open. "I need it!!" he shouted, "It's like heroin!!"
"You gonna be at the party tonight?!!"
"You bet!!"
"Great!!" Mike said. "See you tonight!!"
Becker turned back to the rack of comic books, and Mike left him to walk over to the counter and make his own purchase. He slowly scanned the shelves of products behind the counter before deciding on a couple packs of Mirage. It was a deck he was collecting, trying to make a complete set.
While Mike was thinking, the clerk had walked over to him, paying the lad little attention as his own face was buried in the latest issue of Duelscrye Gamer Monthly. Mike, ready to lay down some cash, called to the man, who raised his head to look at the young customer before saying in a cold, deadly voice, "You!"
Mike's face lit up with recognition. "Roy!" he said. "Hey, long time no see!"
The former Camp Moses Trading Post manager's eyes narrowed to slits. "We don't sell Slim Jims, here."
Mike smiled. "That's okay, Roy, because today I believe I'll be buying three packs of Mirage, if you don't mind."
"I do."
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Roy."
Three packs of Mirage flew across the counter and hit Mike square in the forehead. Roy held out his hand for payment. "That'll be six dollars and fifty cents," he said.
Mike put down the half gallon of milk and dug in his jeans pocket for the money. As he did so, he looked out the front window and noticed something odd about the store next door.
"Hey! Bruno's Pizza is gone!"
"Yep," Roy said.
"Is anything going to replace Bruno's?"
"Maybe."
"Do you know what?"
"Six dollars and fifty cents, please."
Mike promptly handed Roy six one-dollar bills and fifty cents even. He smiled. "Merry Christmas, Roy," he said.
You'd think it was impossible, but somehow the receipt of Mike's brief transaction flew across the counter and hit him square in the forehead.
Warm water rushed out of the tap, and Matthew Atanian began to wash the papier-mâché off of his hands. Using the bar of soap by the sink, he scrubbed off the bits of it that had dried to his skin and washed them down the drain. Once satisfied that all was clean, he grabbed a dishtowel and began a slow, steady pace around the kitchen.
Humming the tune to It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Matt tried to think of things that he might've forgotten to do while preparing for the party. Something suddenly occurred to him, a thought so obvious and rudimentary that he mentally slapped himself upside the head for not thinking of it right off the bat.
Matt looked at the digital display on the microwave. It was nearly half past eleven. He didn't have much time.
It would do the reader no justice to describe in detail what happened next, for the facts themselves are hard to reconstruct and therefore irrelevant at best, but suffice it to say that somehow, in one swift motion, Matthew Atanian donned his coat, hat and shoes and catapulted himself out the door.
"Again?" Aaron Abdowmassy asked, exasperated.
"Uh-huh," Kirstin said.
"We just did it!"
"But I need more."
He sighed. "I'm getting kind of tired."
"Already?"
"It was your idea to go in the long way!"
She looked down at him, pouting. "Please, Aaron?"
"Fine. But this is the last one, right?"
Kirstin smiled. "I promise it won't take long."
"Just back to Pembroke's and that's it?" He asked, looking around at all the other weary last-minute shoppers that were at the mall with them this morning.
She nodded.
"Okay." Aaron hefted the two bags of gifts they'd bought for the party that night and stood up from the bench. "Let's go."
"Come on!" Kirstin called to him, ten steps ahead. She pranced away down the crowded pathway. Aaron eventually had to get up to a light jog to keep up.
Walking briskly along the side of the road, Mike Quadrozzi pulled up the collar of his jacket against the bitter winter wind and switched the half-gallon of milk to his other hand. He didn't mind walking most of the time. Getting out in the fresh air was all part and parcel with being a scout. Yet, most of the time didn't include today. It was bloody cold.
With every step, his boots splashed in murky brown puddles of icy water, the melted remnants of the light snow of the day before. Even though the sun had battered winter's precipitation to dirty cold slop, winter's chilly wind continued to whip at pant legs and sting unprotected faces.
Mike trudged along, thinking quiet thoughts about nothing much at all, mostly oblivious of the traffic whizzing by. Then, snapping him alert, one car raced very close by and sprayed him with a frigid deluge of cold puddle water.
At first, Mike thought nothing of it except unkind comments about the unknown driver of the reckless automobile. But then, mere seconds after he realized that much of the water had soaked his clothes and was running down his back, he was a squirrel.
Damn, Mike thought, shaking his whiskers irritably.
Sitting back on his bushy gray tail, he tried to think of what he could possibly do next. Pictures of nuts flashed through his mind and made him hungry in a weird way but offered no further insight.
Another car raced by dangerously close, and Mike scampered out of the way, bracing himself for another icy waterfall. But, instead of a splash of puddle water, he heard the screech of brakes and the opening of a car door.
Mike looked over and realized that the car, an old blue sedan in pretty bad shape, had come to an abrupt halt not twenty feet away. Someone was getting out of the driver's side. He looked up at the tall person, and Mike's tiny black eyes recognized hiking boots, army fatigues and before he knew it Dan Wellington had scooped him, his clothes and his half-gallon of milk up and deposited the bunch in the back seat of his car.
Mike chattered gratefully as Dan got back behind the wheel and returned to the traffic flow. When they were on their way, Dan looked over his shoulder and offered the squirrel a large Styrofoam cup. "Does coffee work?" he asked.
Within minutes, Mike was human and fully clothed once again. "Thanks a lot," he said. "But what made you stop?"
A lopsided grin splashed across Wellington's face. "Well, you know, I see a lot of squirrels, and quite a few of them carry groceries. But the dirty red hat was a dead giveaway."
Mike laughed. "Well, this was a nice coincidence." A thought struck him. "Hey, did Matt tell you about the troop's Christmas party tonight?"
"Yeah, I was planning on stopping by."
"Cool." Mike scanned the back seat of the Wellington-mobile, and noticed for the first time that he was rather packed in amongst the tons of equipment. Besides the gloves and pads, masks and tubes, nozzles, cans and containers of compressed what-have-you, there was a lot of flammable stuff that Dan might not want on him should the police decide to pull him over.
"Jeez," Mike said, "you could start a one man firestorm, and then probably put it out yourself, too."
Dan smiled that same smile again. It was a smile that would've sent thoroughly sane insurance salesmen scampering off into the trees, never to be seen or heard from again. "Well, you know," he quipped, "one should always be prepared."
Matt Atanian sat on his haunches. He recalled reading somewhere that in a situation like this, one should definitely sit on one's haunches. It was a position of preparedness, signifying that you were ready for anything, ready for action.
Matt raised himself up and stood in a normal manner, deciding that whoever had made up that rule about sitting on your haunches had had stronger haunches than his. Exhaling slightly, he brought himself back to the situation at hand, the one that had made him think of sitting on his haunches in the first place.
Looking into the oncoming crowd, little more than a tumultuous wall of moving flesh and clothing now, Matt scarcely took another moment to think before he crouched down again, gathered his limbs tightly round himself and lunged headfirst into the flood of bodies.
Purses hit him in the face, arms battered him. At one point he thought he had hit the ground, but found himself over someone's head. Then he fell, only he seemed to fall up, then sideways, then up again. Someone stepped on his hand and he gave a yelp of pain.
Matt's face smacked the tile floor, and he lay where he had fallen, not daring to move.
After a few minutes, he decided to take his chances. Lifting his head, he watched the crowd move down the mall avenue toward the Sears department store, away from his sprawled form. He was safe.
He spotted his fedora on the ground a few meters away. Someone had stepped on the brim, leaving behind a light brown tread mark. Matt got up shakily, then walked over to his hat and brushed it off, trying to remove the mark as best he could.
He put it back on and said, "Damn."
Matthew Atanian had just experienced a rare phenomenon of our society: the pack of crazed last minute Christmas shoppers. You see, when last we observed life at the mall, it was slow, perhaps even peaceful. Weary gift gatherers looked forward to an afternoon's rest. But that time has passed. Matt had chosen a most unfortunate time to visit the mall, indeed. He had entered the world of the last minute shopper, the desperate, under-nourished, primal creature what stalks the aisles and sifts through the bargain bins, searching in an hysteric frenzy for any kind of gift at all.
Matt noticed something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. There was a lump on the ground, across the way from him. He walked over to the lump to see if it was all right and noticed that it was a person, sprawled on the ground much the same way he had been, and that he knew her.
"Carolyn?" Matt said, kneeling down. "Are you okay?"
Carolyn Ede opened her eyes lazily and looked up at him. "Whew," she sighed, "what a rush!"
A few minutes later, the two friends were sitting at a table in the food court, or what had been the food court until a few hours previous. From the overturned chairs and tables, the spilt soft drinks and the complete lack of anything of value, they surmised that the mob had already been through this way.
Matt was just taking his chair, having returned from a quick exploration of the food court to see if there was anything left to eat or drink.
"Is that it?" Carolyn asked.
"Yup," Matt said, taking a sip from the bottle of Nestlé’s chocolate milk he'd managed to barter from one of the few food vendors who hadn't escaped before the first pillaging. He passed the drink across the table to Carolyn. "Well," he said, "it's a good thing we ran into each other, today."
"Isn't it always?"
"Of course, but now I can ask you something."
Carolyn smiled. "Ah, yes. A riddle. Ask of the ancient sage."
"Well, I'm here doing some last minute shopping. For Sarah, in particular."
"Yes?"
"And, ah..." Matt floundered. He didn't know how to put it, so he just spat it out. "What do women want?"
Of all the responses he might've expected, thunderous laughter was not one of them, but Carolyn did it anyway.
"Wow," she gasped between chuckles, wiping her eyes, "you sure can pick 'em, Matt. Why don't you just go ahead and ask me the Meaning of Life or the square root of negative four?"
Matt blinked.
"Okay, philosophy aside," Carolyn said, "whatever you get Sarah, it's obviously got to be special, right?"
"Yes, but I don't really know how she feels," Matt said. "I know how I feel, but a gift could tip the scale on her side either way."
"A dilemma."
"By definition."
"So you want to get her something that shows how you feel, but doesn't go overboard, and is enough to try and make her think that there might be something between you."
"Any ideas?"
"Sorry. None whatsoever," Carolyn said, and checked her watch. "But, hey, you've got four and a half hours, yet."
Matt smiled. "Thanks."
Bill Gelinas was sitting on the couch in his living room when his mother walked in the room, engaged in her motherly household tasks.
"So, Bill," Pat Gelinas said to her son, "you all set for the party tonight?"
Bill was totally engrossed in his favourite television program. "Yup," he said absently.
"Cool. Is everyone going to be there?"
"Yup," Bill said again. Pikachu said, "Pika?"
Mrs. Gelinas turned to walk back in the kitchen, and that's when Bill sprang the question on her. "Hey, mom," he said. "Why do you always put the vegetable peels in a pot of water and then dump them out window?"
His mother blinked and glanced down at the pot of hot water and carrot peelings she held in her hands. "No reason," she said.
"Neko-chan!" Nicole Porter cried, kneeling down to scoop the cat up off of the front step and into her arms. "I knew you'd be back!"
Neko-chan purred contentedly as Nicole held the cat close to her and scratched its head. She began talking to it in a silly baby voice, which she probably wouldn't have used if she had known that her pet could actually understand her. "We just have to keep a closer eye on you, don't we? Yes, we do!"
Nicole stepped back through the front door. "Come on," she continued to the purring feline, "let's go back inside."
His third shot veered sharply to the left, and as he heard the sound of breaking glass, Matthew Swett decided that today just wasn't the day to be hitting golf balls at the college and started to head back home.
Swett lived, quite conveniently, on Wilbraham Road, just minutes from basically everything in Sixteen Acres and right across the street from the Church where Troop 192 met weekly.
The few golf balls he hadn't hit jumped in his pocket as he crossed the busy street at a quick trot and walked the very short distance to his house. Reaching the back steps, he stood the battered three wood against the porch railing and stepped inside his house.
Swett looked at the clock on the wall and saw that he still had buckets of time until the Christmas party started, and decided he didn't want to stay inside for the duration. He looked around for his roller blades.
He hadn't been able to skate much this winter, but now that that miserable little bit of snow had melted away he could resume his past time.
A few minutes later, the driver of an elderly El Dorado convertible, on his way home on Wilbraham Road, was surprised when a young man on roller skates zipped across his lane, going backwards, and waved to him cheerily.
The day had been perfect. Fantastic. Almost half a day he'd spent with Kirstin Porter, and it had seemed like minutes. But minutes of bliss, nonetheless.
But now, standing in the living room of his home, Aaron Abdowmassy felt his face reddening as the flaming anger washed over him.
"Derek," he said softly, "where did it go?"
Aaron's younger brother was hanging from the ceiling fan making monkey noises. "What?"
"You know what!"
"How can I know what if you won't tell me what?"
Aaron's fists clenched and unclenched. "My bag."
"What bag?"
"MY BAG OF STUFF FOR THE PARTY!"
"I hid it."
"YOU KNOW WHAT PARTY, YOU... What?"
"I hid it," Derek repeated, and laughed a high-pitched impish laugh of scornful delight. After a few seconds of laughing, he lost his grip on the ceiling fan and fell to the floor because Aaron had thrown a football at his head.
Aaron watched as the hell spawn sat up slowly from where he lay on the carpeted floor, regarded his older brother coldly, smiled and wailed, "MOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!"
Mrs. Sue Abdowmassy reacted immediately to her child's cries of distress. She ran into the room, a dishtowel over her shoulder. "Aaron!" she said to her eldest son, "don't you have anything better to do than pick on your little brother?"
Aaron opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again. He turned on his heel and walked away towards his room. He figured he'd start getting ready for the party.
But all that was unimportant to Mike Quadrozzi, because where he was, it was raining.
It was raining heavily, actually, quite heavily. This sort of rain wasn't due to start for months, yet here he sat, on a comfortable Chesterfield in the middle of a cricket field, huddled under an umbrella as frogs fell from the sky.
"Bloody frogs," Terry Jones snorted, looking up at the darkening sky. "How can we get any writing done with this rot?"
"It's all right," Michael Palin told the other in his high-pitched, passive voice. "It'll pass over."
"Bound to," John Cleese nodded.
They were, all four of them, Mike and the three Pythons, sitting together in a comfortable living room setting, which just happened to be in the middle of a cricket field.
A frog landed on Mike's umbrella with a wet plop, bringing him out of his reverie. "Well," he said, "I suppose we should continue."
"Right," the others agreed.
They were working on the last scenes of the latest Python film, a romping jaunt into the fringes of taste and reality tentatively titled The Queen Mother's Left Nipple. It was the group's first cinematic venture in about fourteen years, and they were all excited how well it was going so far.
"So where we are," Cleese was saying, flipping through his pages of notes as a recently bowled cricket ball careened just millimeters over his head, "Leonardo DiCaprio has just fallen off the Eiffel Tower into a giant bowl of lemon meringue." He looked up. "Right?"
"Yep," the others agreed.
"That was a really great idea," Mike said. "Whose was that, again?"
"Wasn't it Terry's?" Palin offered. "I think it was Terry's. Sounds like Terry."
"I particularly like the part where the little snot goes off the tower," Cleese said. "Do you think that will translate well in the film? It's a rather timeless concept."
"I think so," Mike Quadrozzi offered, "every culture has a Leo. But whose idea was that?"
"Well, I think it was sort of a group thing, really," Jones started, "When we..." But he didn't get any further, because at that point all three of the Britons stood upright in fits of apoplectic rage and savagely ripped their own eyes from the sockets. Blood poured everywhere as they twisted in agony, screaming in terror.
Mike pulled himself away from the scene, gripping the edges of the comfortable Chesterfield and nearly clawing the cushy material to shreds. Through the horrible plumes of gore, he could just barely discern the figure of Sam Neill from Event Horizon. "Where we're going," he said in a voice that would've made Clint Eastwood shit his pants, "we won't need eyes to see!"
Thankfully, before the carnage could continue, Sam Neill's right temple exploded, killing him instantly. He fell, and over his lifeless body stepped FBI Special Agent Dana Scully. She lowered her smoking Sig-Sauer p228 and brushed a stray strand of red auburn hair back behind her ear. She blew at the barrel of the gun, stopping the ebb of black smoke.
Then she looked at Mike, and ran towards him, leaping gracelessly over the bodies of all four incredibly talented actors. Mike watched as the movement accentuated the svelte curves of her feminine yet steely physique until the G-woman came to a halt in front of him, breathing heavily.
"Michael," she said between breaths, "Thank God I've found you."
"Um ... why, yes it is," Mike said.
Scully held him at arms length, her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes, twin pools of luminous blue, looked right into his own. Strands of red auburn hair reached out from her brow to affix themselves to her sweaty cheek. "I need you ... to do something for me," she said.
"Okay."
"It's very important."
"Anything."
"I want you," she said in a heavy voice, "to go down to the store and get some milk?"
"What?"
"Could you get a gallon of milk?" his mother asked him, standing over his bed.
"Whaza... gahfscully?" Mike said.
"I mean, you've slept long enough and we've got everyone coming over for dinner tonight and somebody,” (by this she meant probably her son or in fact anyone in the world besides her,) “used up the rest of the milk last night."
"Whatsa, 'ime?" Mike said, his brain fighting consciousness as best it could. He leaned over in bed to see the time on his alarm clock radio and then gasped in incredible pain that only his fellow males could understand and that we won't go into right now for obvious reasons.
"It's nearly half past ten," Sandra Quadrozzi told her son. "I'd really appreciate it if you got up and did me this one small favour today."
"Ho-kay," Mike said weakly, "Fine." After a few more minutes, he was able to get up out of a foetal position and move slowly towards the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Matt Atanian, whose own dream sequence had had at least a little relevancy to the plot, was still busy in his basement.
He was stooped over a disorganized jumble of wrapping paper, the empty cardboard tubes that are left when you finish a roll of wrapping paper and a mountain of assorted Christmas what‑have‑yous and knick-knacks.
"Tape," he said softly. "Out of tape. More tape."
And he laughed.
Kenneth E. Pendrell opened the door to his room and walked in, blinking briefly as he entered a shaft of sunlight filtering in through the blinds on the one window. Resettling his glasses on the bridge of his nose, he quietly shuffled past all the accoutrements of a normal young person's room: his bed, a bureau where he kept most of his clothes, and a closet. As he walked past his tidy desk, he took a small remote control out of the top drawer.
The remote was about eight inches long, flat and black, with many small buttons on it of varying sizes and colours.
He pressed one button, turning on his tape player, preset to the big band classic, "Assembly Line." With another press, the short, upright pod in the corner of his room opened silently. Kenny stepped inside, pressed a third button, and rocketed into the subterranean caverns of earth below his home.
Kenny guessed, and guessed correctly, that if any of the other scouts in Troop 192 were to ever see his laboratory (pronounced "luh-BOR-ah-tor-ee") they would be very surprised and almost definitely shocked, perhaps even astounded. Not that Kenny usually cared what other people thought. He'd gotten used to being a shadow, a person easily overlooked and seen through. And yet, it seemed to be different with Mike and Aaron and the others. They noticed him. For the first time in his memory, he belonged.
The pod slowed to a stop and hit the ground below with a soft thump. Kenny stepped out onto the bare concrete floor and flicked a nearby switch. With a loud hum, the generators kicked on, and enormous amounts of electricity began to power Kenny's lab.
He smiled and readjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.
Sanctuary, Kenny thought.
The room was so big you couldn't even call it a room. It was immense, gigantic, and cavernous. The far wall was indistinct, the ceiling faded away in a cloudy haze. Machines and instruments crowded every open space atop shiny aluminum counters and cabinets filled with scientific journals and essays of all sorts. There were scores of bookshelves, hundreds of test tubes and thousands of multicoloured beakers and flasks. Giant pipettes stood next to voltronic pacificators and double glass refibulators and dozens of other devices that would tongue-tie Dr. Seuss, himself.
Kenny came down here often, to escape the world above. He found solace in this place, his laboratory where he could explore and devise and create. Yet, today he was not here to create. He was looking for something.
Standing by his 54' by 21' poster portraying the complete Periodic Table of the Elements, Kenny surveyed the area closely. Where he could he have left it?
There it was. He walked over to the gravimetric thermo-dynamometer and knelt down to pick up his left rubber winter boot. I can be so forgetful sometimes, he thought.
Kenny Pendrell walked back to the squat pneumatic tube, flicked off the lights, stepped inside and returned to the world above.
In the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, which lies roughly in the centre of the western part of the state, snuggled up against the great blue cut of the Connecticut River, there are many fine institutions, both of learning and of the arts and entertainment, of which the community (population of about 160,000) is most proud. The list includes the many colleges, museums, the vast park system and, perhaps most notably, the Basketball Hall of Fame. However, there is one fine institution that you will not find on this list of places to see. It deserves, but doesn't get, any publicity at all. Indeed, it doesn't even ask for any. Relying on simple word of mouth alone, it has slowly prospered and attracted its own unique clientele. A more quaint and humble store you couldn't hope to find.
The Card and Comic Company lies at the intersection of two main roads in one of the more commercialized sections of the very uncommercialized neighborhood of Sixteen Acres. It is a comic book store that also sells cards and other collectibles, which explains why it wasn't on the aforementioned list.
Not to say it isn't a respectable place of purveyance. The staff, for the most part, is pleasant and knowledgeable, and the selection of comics, cards and other collectibles is vast and well organized. For years it has been a haven for hobbyists and fans of the graphic novel.
And now, back to the dialogue.
"You're just not listening, Hector," said Ed, "I've already gone into that."
"Well, obviously not very well," Hector retorted.
Ed sighed. He so tired of this debate. "The reason that the faerie nobles couldn't possibly defeat the Amazon priestesses is because the nobles possess the Jewel of Ren-Dac."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, Hector. It's as simple as that."
Hector was elated. He would now prove his friend wrong. "Then I suppose you missed the November issue of Duelscrye Gamer Monthly?"
Ed swallowed. The damned fool had found his weakness. "Actually I had, I meant..."
But Hector cut him off, moving in for the kill. "Then you also missed the article by Robert Wembley in which it is proven decisively that the Jewel of Ren-Dac loses its potency when it leaves the Valley of the Forty Seven Torches of Count Dragoon."
"Well, then," Ed began, "The faerie nobles would have no trouble overpowering the Amazon priestesses, seeing as they so recently lost the Battle of Shundrack's Bayou."
"Indeed," Hector said, taking off his inch-thick glasses to give them a polish.
"Well, that's what I've said all along."
"What?! You..."
"Hey, guys," the man working the counter at the Card and Comic Company interrupted, "would you mind keeping it down? This is a store, not a debate hall." He watched as the two left their place by the window and moved over to the shelves of manga near the back, then settled back in his chair behind the counter to return to his duties as clerk.
The bells over the door jingled loudly, and in from the cold stepped Mike Quadrozzi, a half gallon of 2% milk in his hand. He wiped the dirty brown slush of the heels of his boots and walked over to the immense rack of comic books, along the entire far wall of the store. He'd decided to make a brief side trip on his way home after buying the milk. It wasn't that far out of the way.
Looking over the hundreds of titles, he suddenly realized who the person next to him was. "Hey," he said, "how you doing, Becker?"
Jon Becker didn't answer because he had his headphones on and was nearly oblivious to everything and everyone around him. Mike leaned over slightly and shook him by the shoulder. Becker turned around. "Hey, Squid!" he said very loudly.
"Hey, Becker, how you doing?!!"
"Fine!! I'm here for my weekly Magic fix!!" Becker reached into his pocket and took out a couple of recently purchased packs. They'd already been ripped open. "I need it!!" he shouted, "It's like heroin!!"
"You gonna be at the party tonight?!!"
"You bet!!"
"Great!!" Mike said. "See you tonight!!"
Becker turned back to the rack of comic books, and Mike left him to walk over to the counter and make his own purchase. He slowly scanned the shelves of products behind the counter before deciding on a couple packs of Mirage. It was a deck he was collecting, trying to make a complete set.
While Mike was thinking, the clerk had walked over to him, paying the lad little attention as his own face was buried in the latest issue of Duelscrye Gamer Monthly. Mike, ready to lay down some cash, called to the man, who raised his head to look at the young customer before saying in a cold, deadly voice, "You!"
Mike's face lit up with recognition. "Roy!" he said. "Hey, long time no see!"
The former Camp Moses Trading Post manager's eyes narrowed to slits. "We don't sell Slim Jims, here."
Mike smiled. "That's okay, Roy, because today I believe I'll be buying three packs of Mirage, if you don't mind."
"I do."
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Roy."
Three packs of Mirage flew across the counter and hit Mike square in the forehead. Roy held out his hand for payment. "That'll be six dollars and fifty cents," he said.
Mike put down the half gallon of milk and dug in his jeans pocket for the money. As he did so, he looked out the front window and noticed something odd about the store next door.
"Hey! Bruno's Pizza is gone!"
"Yep," Roy said.
"Is anything going to replace Bruno's?"
"Maybe."
"Do you know what?"
"Six dollars and fifty cents, please."
Mike promptly handed Roy six one-dollar bills and fifty cents even. He smiled. "Merry Christmas, Roy," he said.
You'd think it was impossible, but somehow the receipt of Mike's brief transaction flew across the counter and hit him square in the forehead.
Warm water rushed out of the tap, and Matthew Atanian began to wash the papier-mâché off of his hands. Using the bar of soap by the sink, he scrubbed off the bits of it that had dried to his skin and washed them down the drain. Once satisfied that all was clean, he grabbed a dishtowel and began a slow, steady pace around the kitchen.
Humming the tune to It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Matt tried to think of things that he might've forgotten to do while preparing for the party. Something suddenly occurred to him, a thought so obvious and rudimentary that he mentally slapped himself upside the head for not thinking of it right off the bat.
Matt looked at the digital display on the microwave. It was nearly half past eleven. He didn't have much time.
It would do the reader no justice to describe in detail what happened next, for the facts themselves are hard to reconstruct and therefore irrelevant at best, but suffice it to say that somehow, in one swift motion, Matthew Atanian donned his coat, hat and shoes and catapulted himself out the door.
"Again?" Aaron Abdowmassy asked, exasperated.
"Uh-huh," Kirstin said.
"We just did it!"
"But I need more."
He sighed. "I'm getting kind of tired."
"Already?"
"It was your idea to go in the long way!"
She looked down at him, pouting. "Please, Aaron?"
"Fine. But this is the last one, right?"
Kirstin smiled. "I promise it won't take long."
"Just back to Pembroke's and that's it?" He asked, looking around at all the other weary last-minute shoppers that were at the mall with them this morning.
She nodded.
"Okay." Aaron hefted the two bags of gifts they'd bought for the party that night and stood up from the bench. "Let's go."
"Come on!" Kirstin called to him, ten steps ahead. She pranced away down the crowded pathway. Aaron eventually had to get up to a light jog to keep up.
Walking briskly along the side of the road, Mike Quadrozzi pulled up the collar of his jacket against the bitter winter wind and switched the half-gallon of milk to his other hand. He didn't mind walking most of the time. Getting out in the fresh air was all part and parcel with being a scout. Yet, most of the time didn't include today. It was bloody cold.
With every step, his boots splashed in murky brown puddles of icy water, the melted remnants of the light snow of the day before. Even though the sun had battered winter's precipitation to dirty cold slop, winter's chilly wind continued to whip at pant legs and sting unprotected faces.
Mike trudged along, thinking quiet thoughts about nothing much at all, mostly oblivious of the traffic whizzing by. Then, snapping him alert, one car raced very close by and sprayed him with a frigid deluge of cold puddle water.
At first, Mike thought nothing of it except unkind comments about the unknown driver of the reckless automobile. But then, mere seconds after he realized that much of the water had soaked his clothes and was running down his back, he was a squirrel.
Damn, Mike thought, shaking his whiskers irritably.
Sitting back on his bushy gray tail, he tried to think of what he could possibly do next. Pictures of nuts flashed through his mind and made him hungry in a weird way but offered no further insight.
Another car raced by dangerously close, and Mike scampered out of the way, bracing himself for another icy waterfall. But, instead of a splash of puddle water, he heard the screech of brakes and the opening of a car door.
Mike looked over and realized that the car, an old blue sedan in pretty bad shape, had come to an abrupt halt not twenty feet away. Someone was getting out of the driver's side. He looked up at the tall person, and Mike's tiny black eyes recognized hiking boots, army fatigues and before he knew it Dan Wellington had scooped him, his clothes and his half-gallon of milk up and deposited the bunch in the back seat of his car.
Mike chattered gratefully as Dan got back behind the wheel and returned to the traffic flow. When they were on their way, Dan looked over his shoulder and offered the squirrel a large Styrofoam cup. "Does coffee work?" he asked.
Within minutes, Mike was human and fully clothed once again. "Thanks a lot," he said. "But what made you stop?"
A lopsided grin splashed across Wellington's face. "Well, you know, I see a lot of squirrels, and quite a few of them carry groceries. But the dirty red hat was a dead giveaway."
Mike laughed. "Well, this was a nice coincidence." A thought struck him. "Hey, did Matt tell you about the troop's Christmas party tonight?"
"Yeah, I was planning on stopping by."
"Cool." Mike scanned the back seat of the Wellington-mobile, and noticed for the first time that he was rather packed in amongst the tons of equipment. Besides the gloves and pads, masks and tubes, nozzles, cans and containers of compressed what-have-you, there was a lot of flammable stuff that Dan might not want on him should the police decide to pull him over.
"Jeez," Mike said, "you could start a one man firestorm, and then probably put it out yourself, too."
Dan smiled that same smile again. It was a smile that would've sent thoroughly sane insurance salesmen scampering off into the trees, never to be seen or heard from again. "Well, you know," he quipped, "one should always be prepared."
Matt Atanian sat on his haunches. He recalled reading somewhere that in a situation like this, one should definitely sit on one's haunches. It was a position of preparedness, signifying that you were ready for anything, ready for action.
Matt raised himself up and stood in a normal manner, deciding that whoever had made up that rule about sitting on your haunches had had stronger haunches than his. Exhaling slightly, he brought himself back to the situation at hand, the one that had made him think of sitting on his haunches in the first place.
Looking into the oncoming crowd, little more than a tumultuous wall of moving flesh and clothing now, Matt scarcely took another moment to think before he crouched down again, gathered his limbs tightly round himself and lunged headfirst into the flood of bodies.
Purses hit him in the face, arms battered him. At one point he thought he had hit the ground, but found himself over someone's head. Then he fell, only he seemed to fall up, then sideways, then up again. Someone stepped on his hand and he gave a yelp of pain.
Matt's face smacked the tile floor, and he lay where he had fallen, not daring to move.
After a few minutes, he decided to take his chances. Lifting his head, he watched the crowd move down the mall avenue toward the Sears department store, away from his sprawled form. He was safe.
He spotted his fedora on the ground a few meters away. Someone had stepped on the brim, leaving behind a light brown tread mark. Matt got up shakily, then walked over to his hat and brushed it off, trying to remove the mark as best he could.
He put it back on and said, "Damn."
Matthew Atanian had just experienced a rare phenomenon of our society: the pack of crazed last minute Christmas shoppers. You see, when last we observed life at the mall, it was slow, perhaps even peaceful. Weary gift gatherers looked forward to an afternoon's rest. But that time has passed. Matt had chosen a most unfortunate time to visit the mall, indeed. He had entered the world of the last minute shopper, the desperate, under-nourished, primal creature what stalks the aisles and sifts through the bargain bins, searching in an hysteric frenzy for any kind of gift at all.
Matt noticed something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. There was a lump on the ground, across the way from him. He walked over to the lump to see if it was all right and noticed that it was a person, sprawled on the ground much the same way he had been, and that he knew her.
"Carolyn?" Matt said, kneeling down. "Are you okay?"
Carolyn Ede opened her eyes lazily and looked up at him. "Whew," she sighed, "what a rush!"
A few minutes later, the two friends were sitting at a table in the food court, or what had been the food court until a few hours previous. From the overturned chairs and tables, the spilt soft drinks and the complete lack of anything of value, they surmised that the mob had already been through this way.
Matt was just taking his chair, having returned from a quick exploration of the food court to see if there was anything left to eat or drink.
"Is that it?" Carolyn asked.
"Yup," Matt said, taking a sip from the bottle of Nestlé’s chocolate milk he'd managed to barter from one of the few food vendors who hadn't escaped before the first pillaging. He passed the drink across the table to Carolyn. "Well," he said, "it's a good thing we ran into each other, today."
"Isn't it always?"
"Of course, but now I can ask you something."
Carolyn smiled. "Ah, yes. A riddle. Ask of the ancient sage."
"Well, I'm here doing some last minute shopping. For Sarah, in particular."
"Yes?"
"And, ah..." Matt floundered. He didn't know how to put it, so he just spat it out. "What do women want?"
Of all the responses he might've expected, thunderous laughter was not one of them, but Carolyn did it anyway.
"Wow," she gasped between chuckles, wiping her eyes, "you sure can pick 'em, Matt. Why don't you just go ahead and ask me the Meaning of Life or the square root of negative four?"
Matt blinked.
"Okay, philosophy aside," Carolyn said, "whatever you get Sarah, it's obviously got to be special, right?"
"Yes, but I don't really know how she feels," Matt said. "I know how I feel, but a gift could tip the scale on her side either way."
"A dilemma."
"By definition."
"So you want to get her something that shows how you feel, but doesn't go overboard, and is enough to try and make her think that there might be something between you."
"Any ideas?"
"Sorry. None whatsoever," Carolyn said, and checked her watch. "But, hey, you've got four and a half hours, yet."
Matt smiled. "Thanks."
Bill Gelinas was sitting on the couch in his living room when his mother walked in the room, engaged in her motherly household tasks.
"So, Bill," Pat Gelinas said to her son, "you all set for the party tonight?"
Bill was totally engrossed in his favourite television program. "Yup," he said absently.
"Cool. Is everyone going to be there?"
"Yup," Bill said again. Pikachu said, "Pika?"
Mrs. Gelinas turned to walk back in the kitchen, and that's when Bill sprang the question on her. "Hey, mom," he said. "Why do you always put the vegetable peels in a pot of water and then dump them out window?"
His mother blinked and glanced down at the pot of hot water and carrot peelings she held in her hands. "No reason," she said.
"Neko-chan!" Nicole Porter cried, kneeling down to scoop the cat up off of the front step and into her arms. "I knew you'd be back!"
Neko-chan purred contentedly as Nicole held the cat close to her and scratched its head. She began talking to it in a silly baby voice, which she probably wouldn't have used if she had known that her pet could actually understand her. "We just have to keep a closer eye on you, don't we? Yes, we do!"
Nicole stepped back through the front door. "Come on," she continued to the purring feline, "let's go back inside."
His third shot veered sharply to the left, and as he heard the sound of breaking glass, Matthew Swett decided that today just wasn't the day to be hitting golf balls at the college and started to head back home.
Swett lived, quite conveniently, on Wilbraham Road, just minutes from basically everything in Sixteen Acres and right across the street from the Church where Troop 192 met weekly.
The few golf balls he hadn't hit jumped in his pocket as he crossed the busy street at a quick trot and walked the very short distance to his house. Reaching the back steps, he stood the battered three wood against the porch railing and stepped inside his house.
Swett looked at the clock on the wall and saw that he still had buckets of time until the Christmas party started, and decided he didn't want to stay inside for the duration. He looked around for his roller blades.
He hadn't been able to skate much this winter, but now that that miserable little bit of snow had melted away he could resume his past time.
A few minutes later, the driver of an elderly El Dorado convertible, on his way home on Wilbraham Road, was surprised when a young man on roller skates zipped across his lane, going backwards, and waved to him cheerily.
The day had been perfect. Fantastic. Almost half a day he'd spent with Kirstin Porter, and it had seemed like minutes. But minutes of bliss, nonetheless.
But now, standing in the living room of his home, Aaron Abdowmassy felt his face reddening as the flaming anger washed over him.
"Derek," he said softly, "where did it go?"
Aaron's younger brother was hanging from the ceiling fan making monkey noises. "What?"
"You know what!"
"How can I know what if you won't tell me what?"
Aaron's fists clenched and unclenched. "My bag."
"What bag?"
"MY BAG OF STUFF FOR THE PARTY!"
"I hid it."
"YOU KNOW WHAT PARTY, YOU... What?"
"I hid it," Derek repeated, and laughed a high-pitched impish laugh of scornful delight. After a few seconds of laughing, he lost his grip on the ceiling fan and fell to the floor because Aaron had thrown a football at his head.
Aaron watched as the hell spawn sat up slowly from where he lay on the carpeted floor, regarded his older brother coldly, smiled and wailed, "MOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!"
Mrs. Sue Abdowmassy reacted immediately to her child's cries of distress. She ran into the room, a dishtowel over her shoulder. "Aaron!" she said to her eldest son, "don't you have anything better to do than pick on your little brother?"
Aaron opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again. He turned on his heel and walked away towards his room. He figured he'd start getting ready for the party.
Chapter Three: The Party (S’Bout Bloody Time, Eh?)
5:37 p.m., December 24, 2007
5:37 p.m., December 24, 2007
The Church in the Acres stood, starkly silhouetted against the darkening evening sky, and let the cars speed by on Wilbraham Road. The only lights on in the building were the ones in the main hall, which had been turned on by Matt Atanian. He'd gotten there early. In the front yard, much the same as they had been the night before, stood Mike Quadrozzi and Bill Gelinas.
"Okay, Swett!" Mike said, his words accompanied by mist in the chill air. "Turn 'em on!"
"Right!" came the reply, from around the wall.
Bill and Mike stood, waiting.
They waited some more.
"Plug 'em in, man!"
"I did!"
"What?"
"I plugged them in, already!"
Bill and Mike stood on the lawn.
"Oh, come on," Bill shouted at the decorative lights. "Not now!"
"Shit!" Mike said.
Matt Swett was walking over to the other two. "We got a problem, huh?" he called.
"Shit!" Mike said, louder.
Swett was about ten yards from them, near the front of the church, when he noticed the plug on the ground. He laughed as he re-plugged the orange extension cord into the socket connected to the string of Christmas lights.
The lawn was bathed in reds and greens and blinking whites, as it should have been before. Mike relaxed. Bill let out his held breath.
There was a flare of headlights, and the three of them turned to see who was pulling in the driveway. The blue van pulled to a stop in the parking lot, a short distance away, and the door opened. Jonathan Becker stepped out, waving.
"See ya later," he said to his mother.
At the steering wheel, Mrs. Becker called, "Hi, boys!"
Mike, Bill and Swett waved.
As the van pulled away, Becker joined the group, and that's when the others noticed the horrible difference.
Bill Gelinas screamed.
Matt Swett looked at him.
Mike stared at Becker. "Jon," he said softly, "you're not wearing your headphones!"
Becker grinned. What he said next wasn't a shouted interrogatory phrase, it was, "Nope. I'm giving them up, at least for tonight, anyway."
"Oh. Cool."
A sudden gust of cold wind blew across the parking lot, assaulting the four Boy Scouts standing on the front lawn.
Jonathan Becker began twitching. It started at the corner of his right eye, and then moved slowly to the muscles surrounding his mouth. His body was racked with spasms. His eyes blinked intermittently and his lips drew apart in a grimace. Finally, when it seemed the very soul of the young man would be torn asunder, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "AAUUGH! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" He threw a hand into an inner recess of his winter coat and took out his headphones, which were apparently already connected to playing music, and fastened them securely around his head, sighing contentedly.
"You're a weak man, Becker," Mike said.
"WHAT?!"
The double front doors of the church hall flew wide open, and Matt Atanian took a few steps outside. "Hey, guys!" he shouted, "You gonna stand in the lawn all night? The lights look great! Come on in!"
"Well," Matt asked the others as the group entered Walker Hall, "what do you think?"
The first thing Mike Quadrozzi noticed as he looked around the room was the sheer number of Christmas wreaths there were hanging on the walls. The second thing he noticed made him wonder how he could have possibly noticed the wreaths first. He opened his mouth to say something, but Matt Swett beat him to it.
"Those are the two second biggest candy canes I have ever seen."
The ornaments he spoke of stood at the front of the hall, in front of and to each side of the stage, where the flags usually stood. Each red and white striped candy cane was ten feet tall, and appeared to be made out of papier-mâché.
Mike, Bill, Swett and Becker balked.
Matt Atanian beamed proudly. "It was Jimmy's idea," he said. Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he turned to regard Swett. "Second biggest?" he asked.
"Forget about it."
"Well," Mike began, "it looks like you've been busy, Matt."
Atanian shrugged. "Well..."
The double front doors swung wide, interrupting him, and the five turned around to see the top of a large fir tree enter the hall. Well, it almost entered the hall. The double doors were large, but they were hardly designed with large fir trees in mind, and so the plant became wedged about halfway up its length.
"Hello?" a voice from the tree said. "Little help, here?"
"Whoa, weird, Matt," Swett said. "Talking trees! Wacko Christmas party!"
Matt sprang forward. "All right!" he called. "Perfect timing!"
Everyone helped together, and the tree was able to successfully enter the room, suffering only minimal damage and needle loss.
Now that both ends of the tree were inside, the people who had brought the tree were able to enter, as well.
"Hey guys," Mr. Mark Abert said, taking off his gloves and wool hat, "Troop 180 comes bearing gifts!"
The scouts of 192 greeted the adult leader, whom they had not seen since summer camp. Becker said, "WHAT'S WITH THE TREE?!"
"We got your message, Matt," Mr. Abert motioned towards the fir tree, lying on the floor. "I hope this one's big enough!"
Matt was still beaming, but now he did it at the tree. "It's perfect," he said.
"Wow, this is great," Mike said.
From around the tree walked two other members of Troop 180. There was Matt Abert, son of the adult leader. There was also Derek "The Leprechaun" Provost, who wore a black beret that made him look like some sort of short, wiry renegade commando. On crack. "Want us to get the stand?" he asked.
"No, Derek," Mr. Abert said flatly, "I think it looks good right here, don't you?"
Provost raised an eyebrow. "Um... no, not really."
Matt Abert smacked him upside the head, and the two of them walked back outside to retrieve the stand from their vehicle.
"Okay." Matt Atanian struck a thinking pose and said, "Let's move it... near the far wall." He pointed. "Over there."
The group obliged, and with little effort, the tree was moved. That was when Mr. Mark Abert noticed Matt's art projects.
"Wow," he said, "those are the two second biggest candy canes I have ever seen!"
Matt frowned.
Between the eight of them, it didn't take very long to stand the giant Christmas tree up, and as boxes of ornaments and lights were brought in, the rest of Troop 192 began to arrive, as well.
First, of course, as seems always the case, were the crazy little midgets, the younger scouts who have nothing better to do with their time than to run around in circles, ignore you when you tell them to stop, and then blame you when someone gets hurt.
It's best to ignore them, and that's exactly what the older scouts did.
Food and gifts began to compile, which Matt Atanian directed would all be placed on the tables Mike and Bill Gelinas were setting up until the appropriate time.
Sometime later, unfortunately, the McGraws showed up.
"Jesus H. Chrysler!" were the first inexplicable words out of Jack McGraw's mouth as he entered the hall, and he said them because an overly excited midget scout ran across his path, almost making him lose his bitter old man demeanour out of sheer surprise.
The next thing he did was bark at his wife, Mrs. Joan McGraw, who entered close behind him with a crock pot of something or another.
And so began the Troop 192 annual Christmas party.
Justy Yung, Senior Patrol Leader of Troop 192, stood on the top stair of the stage at the front of the great hall and surveyed his kingdom wearing a grin that somehow stretched beyond the mere confines of his face.
"Look at them, Proctor," he said giddily.
His assistant was a step or two below him. "Yes, Captain," Proctor said, and looked at them.
"They're just swirling masses, now. Pouring into my hall, eager to hear my words of wisdom and do my bidding!"
"I think they're here for the party, as well, sir," Proctor said.
"They're here to hear me speak and do my bidding!" Justy said, "They just don't know it, yet!" To validate these statements, he let loose with a bout of maniacal laughter.
"Well done, sir."
"Someone should've told that psycho the party was tomorrow," Bill Gelinas said darkly. He was standing about twenty feet away from the front of the stage, along with Mike Quadrozzi and Aaron Abdowmassy. Kenny Pendrell had also recently arrived, and was thoroughly engrossed in a tome entitled, The Complete and Total Guide to Every Iota of Philosophical Thought, Ever: The Unexpurgated Version, Volume 83.
"Agreed," Mike said, his arms folded.
"Leave it to Justy to turn Christmas into an ego trip," Aaron concurred.
Justy stopped laughing and wiped the spittle from his lips. He searched through his pockets, frowned, searched them again, frowned deeper and then regarded Proctor. "My notes seem to have misplaced themselves. I need them for my Ultra Important Holiday Speech, Proctor." He pointed towards the stairs. "They may be down there! Find them!"
Proctor saluted smartly, turned on his heel and trotted away like a completely loyal and perpetually stupid dog.
"There goes the lackey," Bill said.
"Schmuck," Aaron said.
Mike Quadrozzi smiled. "Hey guys," he began, "follow me. I've got an idea."
It was a good thing that some caretaker of the past had had the foresight to equip the Church in the Acres with an adequate sprinkler system, because Dan Wellington showed up next.
"Hey, everybody!" Dan proclaimed upon entering the hall. Stepping slightly to the side, he regarded the young man who had followed him in and said, "Look what I found!"
As Matt Atanian walked over to act as greeter, he noticed the tall, lanky young man with the thick five o'clock shadow and glasses and said in delighted surprise, "Colin!"
Colin Pekruhn smiled. "Hi, Matt!"
Colin had long been a leader in the Boy Scouts, but, as often times happens, had also come across other interests, as well. He had never completely left Scouts, however, and was currently becoming more active once again, but before this he hadn't been seen for quite some time.
Also, he had an uncanny resemblance to a walrus. Yes, a walrus. You see, Colin Pekruhn wasn't fat, he wasn't hairy, and he didn't have huge tusks protruding from his upper lip. Yet, despite this complete lack of any of the dominant characteristics of the large arctic sea mammal, everyone who knew Colin swore that he just plain looked like a walrus. It was weird.
The three friends stood by the double doors and were soon lost in conversation. They had come up in scouting at about the same time, and together, they formed a demonic trio. Matt was the Hell Scout. Dan was the Pyro. Colin, the Walrus.
Cuckoo ka-chew.
Dan Wellington looked over and saw the giant Christmas tree that the members of Troop 180 were busy festooning with decorations.
"Hey!" he called to them, running over. "Want me to help you light it?"
Mr. William Schmuler, Scoutmaster of Troop 192, showed up promptly in raggedy jeans and a faded sweatshirt about a half of an hour past when he ought to have arrived in order to be unfashionably late. He came with his son Will, who promptly ran off to go do God-Knows-What in the most annoying way possible.
Mr. Schmuler cleared his throat a couple times, shuffled his feet, and then took his dutiful place at the front of the stage and proceeded to do what came to him naturally: absolutely nothing in the most obtrusive and ineffectual manner possible.
Little did he know that that was exactly what he was supposed to be doing.
Matt Swett had brought his stereo from his house, and soon the hall was filled with an assorted variety of Christmas and party music.
Slim McGraw snarled. It appeared as though he had met his match.
Will Schmuler, son of the Scoutmaster and Human Cartoon, stood before him. The two Scouts, easily the most annoying people in Troop 192, if the not the world, were standing by the food and beverage table.
Slim had just finished yelling a dizzying array of insults at Will which were designed to enflame those primitive emotions of conflict that are so prevalent in the young. Much to Slim's increasing fury, Will wasn't even flinching. He was busy with his own line of offense, which was to spin around and make bleeping noises.
Spittle flying from his mouth, Slim was down to mere vulgarities. "You stupid cock!" he screamed at Will.
"Cock, heh heh," chuckled Homer, Slim's dim sidekick. He stood a few steps away.
Thankfully, before a confrontation of cosmically annoying proportions could begin, Troop 180 member Derek "The Leprechaun" Provost stepped between the two of them.
"Out of my way, guys," he said, stepping towards the punch bowl, "and watch the language, huh?"
The three little freaks scurried out of the way, intent on going on with the ceremony elsewhere.
Derek Provost took a plastic cup off a stack of plastic cups on the table. He picked up the ladle that was propped up against the inside of the punch bowl and proceeded to fill his glass.
He then dropped the ladle. It fell back into the bowl with a tiny splash. He also dropped his cup.
Derek Provost screamed.
Within the punch bowl, floating innocently in the cold pink fluid amidst frozen chunks of ice, was a can of Kiwi Mocha Fruit Juice.
Derek began to panic. In his fevered mind, he all of a sudden remembered the incident at camp. The pain, the blood, the weeks of therapy to regain the use of his lips. He began sweating profusely, all the while trying to tell himself that it wasn't the same can. It couldn't be the same can. No, no, no, NO!
He looked again, and his eyes widened in stark, unhindered terror as he saw the scratch marks, the broken tab, and the indentations where his teeth had touched the aluminium.
It was the same can.
Derek Provost screamed, turned, and ran.
Meanwhile, Proctor was downstairs, intent upon his errand.
He was standing in the main hallway on the ground floor of the Church in the Acres. He could vaguely hear the sounds of the Cub Scouts as they had their own holiday fun a few doors down the corridor.
Proctor looked around, turning his head from side to side. His uniform was neatly pressed. His smiled stupidly lopsided. His eyes held... nothing. He had but one purpose, one passion and one all-encompassing force that drove him through life: following orders. Only when following orders was he truly content, and now he was able to loose himself in thought as his mind drifted and turned over in its quest for Justy's notes. After all, for Proctor, there was no choice. He was not trying to find these notes. He was going to. He had to. There wasn't anything else.
He turned the corner, walking back down the hall from which he'd come, towards the back of the church and the storage room where Troop 192 kept much of its equipment. Perhaps the Captain had left his notes in there.
As Proctor walked by, three heads looked around the corner and watched his departure. They belonged to Aaron Abdowmassy, Mike Quadrozzi and Bill Gelinas.
"Ready?" Mike asked the other two.
"Go for it." Bill told him.
The three stepped around the corner and trotted after the ASPL. They could hear him opening the door of the storage room and flicking the lights on.
"Hey, Proctor!" Mike called.
There was a split second of hesitation, and then Proctor walked back into the hallway. "Did you call?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Aaron. "We've got to tell you..."
"I'm looking for the Captain's notes," Proctor said, dismissing them. It was a talent he'd learned from observing Justy.
"But we found them," Mike said.
Proctor stopped in mid-military turn. He looked back at them, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. The others were surprised. They hadn't known he was capable of that specific emotion.
"You did?" he asked.
"Yeah," Mike continued. "They're in that room over there." He pointed to the heavy door across the way. It led to the church's ancient boiler room. "Justy must've left them there while he was thinking so hard about his speech."
Aaron winced. Mike might've gone too far on that one.
But, no. It had worked. The lopsided grin returned to Proctor's face. "Gee, thanks," he said. He walked over to the heavy door and opened it.
He turned back to them. "The lights aren't on," he said.
"I think there's a switch just inside, on the wall," Mike told him.
Proctor leaned into the room, searching the inside wall with his hand. Slowly, he stepped through the doorway. His back foot passed over the heavy wooden frame just as Mike, Aaron and Bill rushed forward and heaved. Proctor heard the sound of the door close behind him just as he turned to inquire once more about the lights.
Proctor found himself in complete darkness, and pounded on the door. "Hey! Hey, guys!"
There was a click.
"Hey! What happened?"
"Proctor?" It was Mike.
"Yeah! Guys, what happened?"
"The door closed! Can you get out?"
Proctor searched the door's surface for a handle, found it, and turned it frantically. "No! It's locked."
"Okay!" It sounded like Aaron. "We'll try to find the key!"
"All right!" Proctor answered them. He heard their footsteps grow fainter as they walked away down the hall. Proctor backed away from the door. "I'll be right here!" he called.
"That was way too easy," Aaron said as the three of them walked back up the stairs to Walker Hall and the Christmas party.
"But not so easy that it wasn't fun," Mike said.
"Point," Aaron conceded.
Upstairs, the holiday festivities were running smoothly. Almost everyone from Troop 192 had shown up, and the only expected guests that hadn't arrived thus far were the Porters.
As Justy Yung paced the stage, waiting for Proctor to return with his speech notes, Mr. Mark and his son Matt Abert stepped back from the Christmas tree and admired their work.
"Looks good," Matt Abert said.
"Yeah, that's a pretty nice-looking tree," his father replied, scanning the blinking lights and ornaments. "Something's missing though." He looked again, and his eyes settled on the tree's barren apex. Mr. Abert snapped his fingers. "The top."
"Didn't we have an angel thingy that goes on top?"
"Yeah, I seem to recall an angel thingy, Matt."
Matt Abert scanned the empty boxes around them. "I don't see it anywhere."
"Did we leave it in the car?" Mr. Abert asked, and he turned around to help look, coming face to face with an old man in a dark blue uniform with a cardboard box under each arm.
"Harris Tanner!" Mark Abert exclaimed. "I haven't seen you since camp."
The elder scout leader smiled a wry smile. "I believe this is yours," he said, handing one of the boxes to Mr. Abert.
"Hello, Mr. Tanner," Matt Abert said. He took the box and looked inside it. "Hey, you found our angel."
"I seem to have come across it," Tanner said. He was leaning on his signature walking stick, which he carried not so much for balance as for a symbol of authority.
"Mr. Tanner!" Matt Atanian walked over from across the hall, a plate of red and green-frosted sugar cookies on a plate in his hands. "It's good to see you. What are you doing here?" He held up the plate. "Cookie?"
Harris Tanner declined and indicated his uniform. "I'm here for a meeting," he said.
Atanian looked at the dark blue fabric, the shiny buttons and the distinctive cap. "Civil War Veterans?" he asked jokingly.
Tanner smiled. "Re-enactment group," he said, and his voice was that odd curious pitch, somewhere between lilting and gravely. "I'm not that old."
Matt Abert took a cookie.
Matt Atanian had had one hand behind his back throughout the conversation, and now took it out. He held a red and white costume, immediately recognizable.
"It's Santa time," he said, looking hopeful. "I promised the Cub Scouts."
Matt Abert nudged his father in the stomach. "It's the part you were born to play, dad."
His father gave him a look. "Ha ha," he said. "No thanks, Matt." He checked his digital watch. "We should actually get going in a little while. We've got company coming for dinner."
"Oh," Atanian said.
He smiled and looked at Harris Tanner, who frowned.
"Now, Matt, don't go getting any crazy ideas," the old man said.
The double doors at the front of the hall swung wide, and everyone turned to see last year's dining hall Steward and one of this year's Camping Commissioners, Norm Jacques, enter the building.
"Norm!" everyone called to the tall, dark-haired, sunglasses-wearing man as he walked among them. He waved and continued on his way, towards the door at the back.
Trying to steal some attention for himself, this year's dining hall steward, a bright young chap named Dave, leaped out of the door at the back and took an illustrious bow to thunderous booing from the audience.
Everyone liked you if you had been steward. No one liked you if you were steward.
Dave smiled good-naturedly and walked back into the kitchen. Norm stopped for a brief moment to pick up a red rose that someone had thrown. He smelled it and thanked the crowd heartily before continuing on his way. He obviously had business to attend to in the kitchen.
Dave, acting on impulse, went for a second chance at applause and ran out from the kitchen door. The crowd hissed and leered at him. Luckily, it had been decided early on that the eggnog was a little off, and Dave was chased out the double doors by a group of ornery Secondclassmen brandishing the spoiled holiday beverage.
Norm reached the kitchen door, which was dutifully held open by Kenny Healy and his father, Sare, the Camp Moses cooks. They, too, waved cheerfully, and then left the room, closing the door behind them.
The Porters joined the party soon after, stepping in from the cold night. Kirstin soon made her way towards Aaron and the others, and Nicole, with Neko-chan purring contentedly in her folded arms, flitted from conversation to conversation. Sarah Porter took off her hat and gloves in favor of an appropriate holiday smile, which she wore as if under duress.
"WHAT'S WITH THE CAT?" Becker asked Nicole at a couple hundred decibels.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, there aren't many other pets here tonight," Mike said.
"But he's just the life of the party now," Nicole said, and nuzzled Neko-chan, who continued to purr as if purring was about to be made a federal crime, punishable by hanging and a $5000 fine billed to the estate of the deceased.
Kenny Pendrell spoke without looking up from his book. "It's been suggested by leading minds in the medical field that pets actually lower the blood pressure of their owners considerably."
The others looked at him.
Mike looked at Neko-chan.
Neko-chan looked back, daring him with feline arrogance.
"So, how have all of you guys been, lately," Nicole asked. "How's Matt?"
Mike shrugged. "We're fine," he said. He looked around. "Come to think of it, where did Matt get off to?"
"Merry Christmas."
"Matty!" Sarah Porter exclaimed, visibly brightening. "Merry Christmas! How are you?"
"Can't complain," Matty Hayes replied.
The two friends began talking as they moved slowly around the room, weaving amongst other small groups of people and avoiding young members of Troop 192 as they dashed from here to there.
"You know, it's about time we got together, again." Sarah was saying.
"Yeah," Matty smiled, "I really enjoy our little outings."
"What are you doing for New Year's?"
Matty feigned thought, trying not to get too excited. "Not much," she said.
"Great! Me neither. It's a date!"
They laughed.
Walking alongside Sarah, Matty decided the conversation had gone on long enough, and tactfully began the feature presentation. She cleared her throat, which wasn't so tactful, but since Sarah had no idea what she was about to say or what, if any, kind of ulterior motive she could possibly have, the brief lapse in poise went completely unnoticed.
"So," Matty started, "run into Matt Atanian lately?"
Sarah's brow arched slightly, but she was not suspicious. "Why?"
"Oh, just curious," Matty replied and glanced around the hall. "He's around here somewhere." She leaned towards Sarah conspiratorially. "I think he's looking for you."
This time Sarah definitely darkened. "Oh, great. Just what I need."
Matty swallowed, taking the blow nicely despite the sudden increase of acid content in her stomach. "Don't be so hasty. It might not be a bad thing."
Sarah chuckled. "How could it not be, with that guy? I mean, did you see those candy canes? What's with that?"
"Hey, papier-mâché takes patience."
"Whatever it takes, Matt Atanian has given me nothing but a series of very weird encounters, starting at summer camp."
"He seemed intent on talking to you when I saw him."
"Why Miss Hayes," Sarah said, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were on his side."
Matty smiled. "Well, you know, it is Christmas Eve."
Derek Provost began to salivate. "Oh, wow," he slurred, "Who is that?"
"Who?" Mike Quadrozzi asked casually. The two of them were chatting near the back of the hall, along with Moses kitchen help Jim Anderson, who had just arrived at the party.
"That girl over there," Provost said, pointing with a limp hand. His eyes were glazing over.
"The one with the red hair?" Jim asked.
"Yeah, the shorter hair."
Mike Quadrozzi followed Provost's line of sight, expecting another testosterone trip from Troop 180's resident pervert. He sipped his drink casually and glanced at Sarah Porter and Matty Hayes. His throat contracted immediately as his brain caught up with his eyes, making a horrible gurgling sound.
"Um ..." Mike choked.
Provost was grinning. "I like her," he said, "she jiggles."
Mike regained his composure, knowing he had to act fast to deflect the leprechaun. "Hey, I don't think you want to go there, Derek," he said.
"What? Why not?"
Mike motioned with his hand for a private conversation. Derek leaned closer to hear the other's whispered speech. His eyes widened as Mike pointed towards the females and shook his head. The corners of his mouth drew back in a frown.
"Damn," he said after Mike finished, "all the good ones seem to go that way."
Matty Hayes smiled as she watched Sarah walk away, leaving the room. At least she's thinking about it, she thought. Could've gone worse.
She turned to go her own way, towards the kitchen and the pot of warm water waiting on the stove, when a loud noise behind her made her look back. The double doors at the front of the hall had been thrown open, and in from the cold had stepped...
"Kuntz!"
Taylor Kuntz wore a leather jacket over his rumpled Boy Scout uniform, obviously the nicest outfit he owned. His hair had been slicked back with far too much gel, and he was holding a small stack of three by five-inch index cards in his ungloved right hand. He glanced quickly around the room of people before his eyes settled unsettlingly on Matty Hayes. He smiled his best smile, which was pretty bad.
As Matty stood, trying to spit out words of any kind and calm her reeling mind, Kuntz pranced over to her like a peacock on amphetamines and kneeled in front of her.
"My red-haired goddess!" he said. "At last I've found you, and on the Eve of Christmas!"
"Wh-wh-what the hell are you doing here?!" Matty finally got out.
"I've come to sweep you off your feet, my love, to swoon your heart," Kuntz replied gooilly, and consulted his index cards. He cleared his throat, and looked upwards at Matty. "Ahem... Shall I compare thee to some summer's hay? Thou art more lovely and more temperament!"
"WHAT?"
By this time, a crowd had begun forming, a crowd which Mike Quadrozzi and Aaron Abdowmassy were quickly trying to push their way to the front of.
Kuntz continued to mangle poetry. "Roof winds to shake the darling birds of May, and summer's lice hath all too short a date!"
Finished, he looked up at her. "Now, my red-haired goddess, I shall catch you as you collapse, love-struck, into my arms!"
"What the hell are you doing at our Christmas party you little freak?!" Matty yelled at him.
Kuntz was genuinely surprised. "Come on, collapse! That was Shakespeare! The Bird!"
"That's Bard, you idiot!" Mike Quadrozzi told him. "Now get the hell out of here!"
Aaron Abdowmassy stepped in, as well. "None of us can quite remember inviting you to the party, Kuntz."
Taylor Kuntz stood up and ran a hand down his rumpled uniform, as if to straighten it. "This crowd has obviously made you uncomfortable, my goddess. You feel you cannot express your true feelings for me."
"Get lost before you lose something, creep," Matty told him.
Kuntz pranced towards the door, but not before throwing Mike and Aaron an evil look. "I'll be back," he said, to the two of them as much to Matty. "I won't keep you waiting, my love!"
The double doors closed behind him.
Mike fumed. "That guy ..."
"Maybe we ought to keep our parties more confidential," Aaron said.
"Go on," the mother said, giving her child a gentle push forward. "It's all right."
The young boy shook his head, no.
"Come on, now," the mother cooed, "it's Santa Claus."
The boy gripped his mother's hand, and she brought her face down to his. "E's not Santa," the child told her as if divulging a secret.
The mother smiled. "Of course it is, Eric," she said. "Now, go on."
The boy shook his head again vehemently. "E's too skinny to be Santa," he told his mother and backed towards her.
The two of them, mother and child, were in one of the large, carpeted rooms on the ground floor of the Church in the Acres, specifically, the one in which the Cub Scouts of Pack 192 met for their weekly meetings. Across the room from this small altercation sat its subject, Mr. Harris Tanner, who sighed heavily.
It had started off all right. He'd donned the outfit, gotten himself into a reasonably jolly mood and came down here ho-ho-ho-ing it up. It seemed pretty simple, a good bit of service from the elder Boy Scout leader. A few children came up, excited out of their little minds to talk to Santa in person, and told him what they'd like for Christmas and were given a nice red and white candy cane wrapped in red ribbon. All right, good show. Drinks all around.
Some of them, he had found, were even interested in patch trading.
But, every so once in a while, there was a child like this one right here. A child who just plain refused to suspend disbelief and talk to a tall, skinny, ancient-looking Santa Claus with a beard that didn't quite fit his face at all and a voice that sat somewhere between lilting and gravely.
What was the world coming to, anyway?
Harris Tanner checked his watch and sighed again. "Ho, ho, ho," he said.
The double doors were thrown wide open, and everyone braced themselves. However, instead of spotting a greasy-looking wannabe poet or other such monstrosity, the partygoers of 192 saw a young Asian man dressed in yellow. An umbrella poked from the pack on his back. The bandanna he wore around his forehead was also yellow.
The figure slumped on the threshold, obviously worn out from some journey or another. "Akane!" he cried, suddenly full of energy. "I'm here! I made it, I..."
The young man glanced around the room and came to the conclusion that of all the people who were staring back at him, he knew no one.
"Oh," he said darkly. "Sorry." He turned to leave.
"Hey, wait!" Someone called.
The man looked back and faced Kirstin Porter as she walked towards him. "You look tired," she said. "Want some punch?"
The Asian man was utterly surprised. "Um... sure." He smiled. "Thank you."
Proctor sat, leaning against the heavy wooden door of the church's boiler room. He was still waiting for the others to return, but he'd grown a little tired. He was almost asleep, dozing, when he heard the click of the door being unlocked.
He leaped to his feet. "Guys! Is that you?"
No answer.
Proctor tried the door. It opened easily, and he stepped outside.
There was no one there. "Hello?" Proctor called. "Guys? Captain?" He heard nothing in response against the muted noises of the party going on upstairs.
But there was something... what was it? Proctor glanced down the hallway. He realized that there was smell in the air, a familiar odor, foul and full of ash.
It was the faint smell of cigar smoke.
Slowly, the annual Troop 192 Christmas Party was winding to a close, and so came the merriest part of the evening, the present swap.
Everyone who had attended the party had been required to show up with a small gift, which was to be swapped at random in the traditional fashion. Of course, there were always a few gifts that turned out to not be so random at all.
Mike, Aaron and Bill Gelinas were somewhat dismayed to discover that Proctor had somehow escaped their trap, but they were relieved when Mr. Schmuler, in an incredibly rare display of authority, told Justy that it was probably too late to begin his Ultra-Important Holiday Speech. It would have to wait till the next holiday.
"Oh, piffle," Justy Yung said.
"We were all looking forward to it, Captain," Proctor told him, and meant it. "If it's any consolation, Merry Christmas, sir." He handed Justy a small gift-wrapped package in the shape of a stick.
Justy snatched the package and tore it open. "What's this?" he asked, holding the stick in his hand. It was about a foot long, black and had a leather strap at one end.
"It's a sort of baton, Captain..."
"I know what it is!" Justy interrupted, smacking his assistant over the head with his new toy. He admired the object and its potential for dispensing pain and subversion.
"Thank you, Proctor," he said. "How thoughtful."
Proctor rubbed his head. "You're welcome, Captain."
Most of the other gift swapping was not as exciting. Many of the items were simply small doodads or gift certificates to the cinema or a local restaurant. Mike Quadrozzi opened his gift and found a small sign, made of the same material as dry erase boards. Its use completely escaped him, and most likely it had escaped whoever had been desperate enough to bring such a thing as a gift, too. Elsewhere, Kirstin Porter shared a meaningful look with Aaron after receiving a cute knitted Christmas sweater with reindeer and things on it from an anonymous person.
Elsewhere still, Matt Swett turned around after unwrapping the jar of peanut butter he himself had donated to the gift-swap in the first place to come face to face with a man dressed in the distinctive dark brown khakis of the United Parcel Service.
"Good evening," the UPS Guy said.
"Hey, how you doing," Swett replied.
"So where would you like the order?"
"What?"
UPS Guy indicated the cardboard box near his feet. He consulted his clipboard. "Er... a shipment of ECWCWWF EXTREME THUNDEROUS ATTITUDE II. Can you sign for it?"
Matt Swett hardly blinked before he smiled and reached for the man's pen. "Why, of course, my good man."
Matt Atanian sat on the front steps of the Church in the Acres, looking out on the wide church lawn, bathed in the reds, greens, blues and blinking whites of the Christmas lights strewn about the church's roof. Next to him sat Sarah Porter.
"I'm here against my better judgement," she told him, her breath escaping as mist in the cold night air.
"Well, thank you," Matt said.
That sat in silence for a moment. The sky was utterly clear that night, and the stars twinkled overhead.
Matt cleared his throat. "I really just wanted to give you this," he said, and extended a small, neatly gift-wrapped box to Sarah.
"Well, Matt," Sarah said, "I really don't... uh..." She saw that Matt was only watching her intently, and she began unwrapping the present. After removing the red and green wrapping paper, she lifted the small tabs on the box and peered inside.
Of all the reactions Matt had foreseen, the one he actually got was the simplest and yet the best one he could have ever hoped for.
Sarah Porter smiled. "Oh, Matt," she said softly. "This is... perfect. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
And then, as if on cue, one single, tiny snowflake fell from the sky, dancing in the bitter wind before it landed on the church lawn.
"Look, everyone!" A voice called from behind them, "it's snowing!"
In a flood of bodies and hastily donned coats and hats, everyone from the party rushed outside onto the steps. Matt and Sarah's conversation was drowned out as the members of Troop 192 and all their guests joined them to watch the snow begin to fall. Mike, Aaron, Bill Gelinas and all the other members of Troop 192, Kirstin and Nicole Porter, the Aberts and Troop 180, Harris Tanner, the Moses folks and Matt and Sarah all looked up into the starry evening sky together.
And somewhere up in heaven, Jimmy Stewart smiled.
"Okay, Swett!" Mike said, his words accompanied by mist in the chill air. "Turn 'em on!"
"Right!" came the reply, from around the wall.
Bill and Mike stood, waiting.
They waited some more.
"Plug 'em in, man!"
"I did!"
"What?"
"I plugged them in, already!"
Bill and Mike stood on the lawn.
"Oh, come on," Bill shouted at the decorative lights. "Not now!"
"Shit!" Mike said.
Matt Swett was walking over to the other two. "We got a problem, huh?" he called.
"Shit!" Mike said, louder.
Swett was about ten yards from them, near the front of the church, when he noticed the plug on the ground. He laughed as he re-plugged the orange extension cord into the socket connected to the string of Christmas lights.
The lawn was bathed in reds and greens and blinking whites, as it should have been before. Mike relaxed. Bill let out his held breath.
There was a flare of headlights, and the three of them turned to see who was pulling in the driveway. The blue van pulled to a stop in the parking lot, a short distance away, and the door opened. Jonathan Becker stepped out, waving.
"See ya later," he said to his mother.
At the steering wheel, Mrs. Becker called, "Hi, boys!"
Mike, Bill and Swett waved.
As the van pulled away, Becker joined the group, and that's when the others noticed the horrible difference.
Bill Gelinas screamed.
Matt Swett looked at him.
Mike stared at Becker. "Jon," he said softly, "you're not wearing your headphones!"
Becker grinned. What he said next wasn't a shouted interrogatory phrase, it was, "Nope. I'm giving them up, at least for tonight, anyway."
"Oh. Cool."
A sudden gust of cold wind blew across the parking lot, assaulting the four Boy Scouts standing on the front lawn.
Jonathan Becker began twitching. It started at the corner of his right eye, and then moved slowly to the muscles surrounding his mouth. His body was racked with spasms. His eyes blinked intermittently and his lips drew apart in a grimace. Finally, when it seemed the very soul of the young man would be torn asunder, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "AAUUGH! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" He threw a hand into an inner recess of his winter coat and took out his headphones, which were apparently already connected to playing music, and fastened them securely around his head, sighing contentedly.
"You're a weak man, Becker," Mike said.
"WHAT?!"
The double front doors of the church hall flew wide open, and Matt Atanian took a few steps outside. "Hey, guys!" he shouted, "You gonna stand in the lawn all night? The lights look great! Come on in!"
"Well," Matt asked the others as the group entered Walker Hall, "what do you think?"
The first thing Mike Quadrozzi noticed as he looked around the room was the sheer number of Christmas wreaths there were hanging on the walls. The second thing he noticed made him wonder how he could have possibly noticed the wreaths first. He opened his mouth to say something, but Matt Swett beat him to it.
"Those are the two second biggest candy canes I have ever seen."
The ornaments he spoke of stood at the front of the hall, in front of and to each side of the stage, where the flags usually stood. Each red and white striped candy cane was ten feet tall, and appeared to be made out of papier-mâché.
Mike, Bill, Swett and Becker balked.
Matt Atanian beamed proudly. "It was Jimmy's idea," he said. Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he turned to regard Swett. "Second biggest?" he asked.
"Forget about it."
"Well," Mike began, "it looks like you've been busy, Matt."
Atanian shrugged. "Well..."
The double front doors swung wide, interrupting him, and the five turned around to see the top of a large fir tree enter the hall. Well, it almost entered the hall. The double doors were large, but they were hardly designed with large fir trees in mind, and so the plant became wedged about halfway up its length.
"Hello?" a voice from the tree said. "Little help, here?"
"Whoa, weird, Matt," Swett said. "Talking trees! Wacko Christmas party!"
Matt sprang forward. "All right!" he called. "Perfect timing!"
Everyone helped together, and the tree was able to successfully enter the room, suffering only minimal damage and needle loss.
Now that both ends of the tree were inside, the people who had brought the tree were able to enter, as well.
"Hey guys," Mr. Mark Abert said, taking off his gloves and wool hat, "Troop 180 comes bearing gifts!"
The scouts of 192 greeted the adult leader, whom they had not seen since summer camp. Becker said, "WHAT'S WITH THE TREE?!"
"We got your message, Matt," Mr. Abert motioned towards the fir tree, lying on the floor. "I hope this one's big enough!"
Matt was still beaming, but now he did it at the tree. "It's perfect," he said.
"Wow, this is great," Mike said.
From around the tree walked two other members of Troop 180. There was Matt Abert, son of the adult leader. There was also Derek "The Leprechaun" Provost, who wore a black beret that made him look like some sort of short, wiry renegade commando. On crack. "Want us to get the stand?" he asked.
"No, Derek," Mr. Abert said flatly, "I think it looks good right here, don't you?"
Provost raised an eyebrow. "Um... no, not really."
Matt Abert smacked him upside the head, and the two of them walked back outside to retrieve the stand from their vehicle.
"Okay." Matt Atanian struck a thinking pose and said, "Let's move it... near the far wall." He pointed. "Over there."
The group obliged, and with little effort, the tree was moved. That was when Mr. Mark Abert noticed Matt's art projects.
"Wow," he said, "those are the two second biggest candy canes I have ever seen!"
Matt frowned.
Between the eight of them, it didn't take very long to stand the giant Christmas tree up, and as boxes of ornaments and lights were brought in, the rest of Troop 192 began to arrive, as well.
First, of course, as seems always the case, were the crazy little midgets, the younger scouts who have nothing better to do with their time than to run around in circles, ignore you when you tell them to stop, and then blame you when someone gets hurt.
It's best to ignore them, and that's exactly what the older scouts did.
Food and gifts began to compile, which Matt Atanian directed would all be placed on the tables Mike and Bill Gelinas were setting up until the appropriate time.
Sometime later, unfortunately, the McGraws showed up.
"Jesus H. Chrysler!" were the first inexplicable words out of Jack McGraw's mouth as he entered the hall, and he said them because an overly excited midget scout ran across his path, almost making him lose his bitter old man demeanour out of sheer surprise.
The next thing he did was bark at his wife, Mrs. Joan McGraw, who entered close behind him with a crock pot of something or another.
And so began the Troop 192 annual Christmas party.
Justy Yung, Senior Patrol Leader of Troop 192, stood on the top stair of the stage at the front of the great hall and surveyed his kingdom wearing a grin that somehow stretched beyond the mere confines of his face.
"Look at them, Proctor," he said giddily.
His assistant was a step or two below him. "Yes, Captain," Proctor said, and looked at them.
"They're just swirling masses, now. Pouring into my hall, eager to hear my words of wisdom and do my bidding!"
"I think they're here for the party, as well, sir," Proctor said.
"They're here to hear me speak and do my bidding!" Justy said, "They just don't know it, yet!" To validate these statements, he let loose with a bout of maniacal laughter.
"Well done, sir."
"Someone should've told that psycho the party was tomorrow," Bill Gelinas said darkly. He was standing about twenty feet away from the front of the stage, along with Mike Quadrozzi and Aaron Abdowmassy. Kenny Pendrell had also recently arrived, and was thoroughly engrossed in a tome entitled, The Complete and Total Guide to Every Iota of Philosophical Thought, Ever: The Unexpurgated Version, Volume 83.
"Agreed," Mike said, his arms folded.
"Leave it to Justy to turn Christmas into an ego trip," Aaron concurred.
Justy stopped laughing and wiped the spittle from his lips. He searched through his pockets, frowned, searched them again, frowned deeper and then regarded Proctor. "My notes seem to have misplaced themselves. I need them for my Ultra Important Holiday Speech, Proctor." He pointed towards the stairs. "They may be down there! Find them!"
Proctor saluted smartly, turned on his heel and trotted away like a completely loyal and perpetually stupid dog.
"There goes the lackey," Bill said.
"Schmuck," Aaron said.
Mike Quadrozzi smiled. "Hey guys," he began, "follow me. I've got an idea."
It was a good thing that some caretaker of the past had had the foresight to equip the Church in the Acres with an adequate sprinkler system, because Dan Wellington showed up next.
"Hey, everybody!" Dan proclaimed upon entering the hall. Stepping slightly to the side, he regarded the young man who had followed him in and said, "Look what I found!"
As Matt Atanian walked over to act as greeter, he noticed the tall, lanky young man with the thick five o'clock shadow and glasses and said in delighted surprise, "Colin!"
Colin Pekruhn smiled. "Hi, Matt!"
Colin had long been a leader in the Boy Scouts, but, as often times happens, had also come across other interests, as well. He had never completely left Scouts, however, and was currently becoming more active once again, but before this he hadn't been seen for quite some time.
Also, he had an uncanny resemblance to a walrus. Yes, a walrus. You see, Colin Pekruhn wasn't fat, he wasn't hairy, and he didn't have huge tusks protruding from his upper lip. Yet, despite this complete lack of any of the dominant characteristics of the large arctic sea mammal, everyone who knew Colin swore that he just plain looked like a walrus. It was weird.
The three friends stood by the double doors and were soon lost in conversation. They had come up in scouting at about the same time, and together, they formed a demonic trio. Matt was the Hell Scout. Dan was the Pyro. Colin, the Walrus.
Cuckoo ka-chew.
Dan Wellington looked over and saw the giant Christmas tree that the members of Troop 180 were busy festooning with decorations.
"Hey!" he called to them, running over. "Want me to help you light it?"
Mr. William Schmuler, Scoutmaster of Troop 192, showed up promptly in raggedy jeans and a faded sweatshirt about a half of an hour past when he ought to have arrived in order to be unfashionably late. He came with his son Will, who promptly ran off to go do God-Knows-What in the most annoying way possible.
Mr. Schmuler cleared his throat a couple times, shuffled his feet, and then took his dutiful place at the front of the stage and proceeded to do what came to him naturally: absolutely nothing in the most obtrusive and ineffectual manner possible.
Little did he know that that was exactly what he was supposed to be doing.
Matt Swett had brought his stereo from his house, and soon the hall was filled with an assorted variety of Christmas and party music.
Slim McGraw snarled. It appeared as though he had met his match.
Will Schmuler, son of the Scoutmaster and Human Cartoon, stood before him. The two Scouts, easily the most annoying people in Troop 192, if the not the world, were standing by the food and beverage table.
Slim had just finished yelling a dizzying array of insults at Will which were designed to enflame those primitive emotions of conflict that are so prevalent in the young. Much to Slim's increasing fury, Will wasn't even flinching. He was busy with his own line of offense, which was to spin around and make bleeping noises.
Spittle flying from his mouth, Slim was down to mere vulgarities. "You stupid cock!" he screamed at Will.
"Cock, heh heh," chuckled Homer, Slim's dim sidekick. He stood a few steps away.
Thankfully, before a confrontation of cosmically annoying proportions could begin, Troop 180 member Derek "The Leprechaun" Provost stepped between the two of them.
"Out of my way, guys," he said, stepping towards the punch bowl, "and watch the language, huh?"
The three little freaks scurried out of the way, intent on going on with the ceremony elsewhere.
Derek Provost took a plastic cup off a stack of plastic cups on the table. He picked up the ladle that was propped up against the inside of the punch bowl and proceeded to fill his glass.
He then dropped the ladle. It fell back into the bowl with a tiny splash. He also dropped his cup.
Derek Provost screamed.
Within the punch bowl, floating innocently in the cold pink fluid amidst frozen chunks of ice, was a can of Kiwi Mocha Fruit Juice.
Derek began to panic. In his fevered mind, he all of a sudden remembered the incident at camp. The pain, the blood, the weeks of therapy to regain the use of his lips. He began sweating profusely, all the while trying to tell himself that it wasn't the same can. It couldn't be the same can. No, no, no, NO!
He looked again, and his eyes widened in stark, unhindered terror as he saw the scratch marks, the broken tab, and the indentations where his teeth had touched the aluminium.
It was the same can.
Derek Provost screamed, turned, and ran.
Meanwhile, Proctor was downstairs, intent upon his errand.
He was standing in the main hallway on the ground floor of the Church in the Acres. He could vaguely hear the sounds of the Cub Scouts as they had their own holiday fun a few doors down the corridor.
Proctor looked around, turning his head from side to side. His uniform was neatly pressed. His smiled stupidly lopsided. His eyes held... nothing. He had but one purpose, one passion and one all-encompassing force that drove him through life: following orders. Only when following orders was he truly content, and now he was able to loose himself in thought as his mind drifted and turned over in its quest for Justy's notes. After all, for Proctor, there was no choice. He was not trying to find these notes. He was going to. He had to. There wasn't anything else.
He turned the corner, walking back down the hall from which he'd come, towards the back of the church and the storage room where Troop 192 kept much of its equipment. Perhaps the Captain had left his notes in there.
As Proctor walked by, three heads looked around the corner and watched his departure. They belonged to Aaron Abdowmassy, Mike Quadrozzi and Bill Gelinas.
"Ready?" Mike asked the other two.
"Go for it." Bill told him.
The three stepped around the corner and trotted after the ASPL. They could hear him opening the door of the storage room and flicking the lights on.
"Hey, Proctor!" Mike called.
There was a split second of hesitation, and then Proctor walked back into the hallway. "Did you call?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Aaron. "We've got to tell you..."
"I'm looking for the Captain's notes," Proctor said, dismissing them. It was a talent he'd learned from observing Justy.
"But we found them," Mike said.
Proctor stopped in mid-military turn. He looked back at them, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. The others were surprised. They hadn't known he was capable of that specific emotion.
"You did?" he asked.
"Yeah," Mike continued. "They're in that room over there." He pointed to the heavy door across the way. It led to the church's ancient boiler room. "Justy must've left them there while he was thinking so hard about his speech."
Aaron winced. Mike might've gone too far on that one.
But, no. It had worked. The lopsided grin returned to Proctor's face. "Gee, thanks," he said. He walked over to the heavy door and opened it.
He turned back to them. "The lights aren't on," he said.
"I think there's a switch just inside, on the wall," Mike told him.
Proctor leaned into the room, searching the inside wall with his hand. Slowly, he stepped through the doorway. His back foot passed over the heavy wooden frame just as Mike, Aaron and Bill rushed forward and heaved. Proctor heard the sound of the door close behind him just as he turned to inquire once more about the lights.
Proctor found himself in complete darkness, and pounded on the door. "Hey! Hey, guys!"
There was a click.
"Hey! What happened?"
"Proctor?" It was Mike.
"Yeah! Guys, what happened?"
"The door closed! Can you get out?"
Proctor searched the door's surface for a handle, found it, and turned it frantically. "No! It's locked."
"Okay!" It sounded like Aaron. "We'll try to find the key!"
"All right!" Proctor answered them. He heard their footsteps grow fainter as they walked away down the hall. Proctor backed away from the door. "I'll be right here!" he called.
"That was way too easy," Aaron said as the three of them walked back up the stairs to Walker Hall and the Christmas party.
"But not so easy that it wasn't fun," Mike said.
"Point," Aaron conceded.
Upstairs, the holiday festivities were running smoothly. Almost everyone from Troop 192 had shown up, and the only expected guests that hadn't arrived thus far were the Porters.
As Justy Yung paced the stage, waiting for Proctor to return with his speech notes, Mr. Mark and his son Matt Abert stepped back from the Christmas tree and admired their work.
"Looks good," Matt Abert said.
"Yeah, that's a pretty nice-looking tree," his father replied, scanning the blinking lights and ornaments. "Something's missing though." He looked again, and his eyes settled on the tree's barren apex. Mr. Abert snapped his fingers. "The top."
"Didn't we have an angel thingy that goes on top?"
"Yeah, I seem to recall an angel thingy, Matt."
Matt Abert scanned the empty boxes around them. "I don't see it anywhere."
"Did we leave it in the car?" Mr. Abert asked, and he turned around to help look, coming face to face with an old man in a dark blue uniform with a cardboard box under each arm.
"Harris Tanner!" Mark Abert exclaimed. "I haven't seen you since camp."
The elder scout leader smiled a wry smile. "I believe this is yours," he said, handing one of the boxes to Mr. Abert.
"Hello, Mr. Tanner," Matt Abert said. He took the box and looked inside it. "Hey, you found our angel."
"I seem to have come across it," Tanner said. He was leaning on his signature walking stick, which he carried not so much for balance as for a symbol of authority.
"Mr. Tanner!" Matt Atanian walked over from across the hall, a plate of red and green-frosted sugar cookies on a plate in his hands. "It's good to see you. What are you doing here?" He held up the plate. "Cookie?"
Harris Tanner declined and indicated his uniform. "I'm here for a meeting," he said.
Atanian looked at the dark blue fabric, the shiny buttons and the distinctive cap. "Civil War Veterans?" he asked jokingly.
Tanner smiled. "Re-enactment group," he said, and his voice was that odd curious pitch, somewhere between lilting and gravely. "I'm not that old."
Matt Abert took a cookie.
Matt Atanian had had one hand behind his back throughout the conversation, and now took it out. He held a red and white costume, immediately recognizable.
"It's Santa time," he said, looking hopeful. "I promised the Cub Scouts."
Matt Abert nudged his father in the stomach. "It's the part you were born to play, dad."
His father gave him a look. "Ha ha," he said. "No thanks, Matt." He checked his digital watch. "We should actually get going in a little while. We've got company coming for dinner."
"Oh," Atanian said.
He smiled and looked at Harris Tanner, who frowned.
"Now, Matt, don't go getting any crazy ideas," the old man said.
The double doors at the front of the hall swung wide, and everyone turned to see last year's dining hall Steward and one of this year's Camping Commissioners, Norm Jacques, enter the building.
"Norm!" everyone called to the tall, dark-haired, sunglasses-wearing man as he walked among them. He waved and continued on his way, towards the door at the back.
Trying to steal some attention for himself, this year's dining hall steward, a bright young chap named Dave, leaped out of the door at the back and took an illustrious bow to thunderous booing from the audience.
Everyone liked you if you had been steward. No one liked you if you were steward.
Dave smiled good-naturedly and walked back into the kitchen. Norm stopped for a brief moment to pick up a red rose that someone had thrown. He smelled it and thanked the crowd heartily before continuing on his way. He obviously had business to attend to in the kitchen.
Dave, acting on impulse, went for a second chance at applause and ran out from the kitchen door. The crowd hissed and leered at him. Luckily, it had been decided early on that the eggnog was a little off, and Dave was chased out the double doors by a group of ornery Secondclassmen brandishing the spoiled holiday beverage.
Norm reached the kitchen door, which was dutifully held open by Kenny Healy and his father, Sare, the Camp Moses cooks. They, too, waved cheerfully, and then left the room, closing the door behind them.
The Porters joined the party soon after, stepping in from the cold night. Kirstin soon made her way towards Aaron and the others, and Nicole, with Neko-chan purring contentedly in her folded arms, flitted from conversation to conversation. Sarah Porter took off her hat and gloves in favor of an appropriate holiday smile, which she wore as if under duress.
"WHAT'S WITH THE CAT?" Becker asked Nicole at a couple hundred decibels.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, there aren't many other pets here tonight," Mike said.
"But he's just the life of the party now," Nicole said, and nuzzled Neko-chan, who continued to purr as if purring was about to be made a federal crime, punishable by hanging and a $5000 fine billed to the estate of the deceased.
Kenny Pendrell spoke without looking up from his book. "It's been suggested by leading minds in the medical field that pets actually lower the blood pressure of their owners considerably."
The others looked at him.
Mike looked at Neko-chan.
Neko-chan looked back, daring him with feline arrogance.
"So, how have all of you guys been, lately," Nicole asked. "How's Matt?"
Mike shrugged. "We're fine," he said. He looked around. "Come to think of it, where did Matt get off to?"
"Merry Christmas."
"Matty!" Sarah Porter exclaimed, visibly brightening. "Merry Christmas! How are you?"
"Can't complain," Matty Hayes replied.
The two friends began talking as they moved slowly around the room, weaving amongst other small groups of people and avoiding young members of Troop 192 as they dashed from here to there.
"You know, it's about time we got together, again." Sarah was saying.
"Yeah," Matty smiled, "I really enjoy our little outings."
"What are you doing for New Year's?"
Matty feigned thought, trying not to get too excited. "Not much," she said.
"Great! Me neither. It's a date!"
They laughed.
Walking alongside Sarah, Matty decided the conversation had gone on long enough, and tactfully began the feature presentation. She cleared her throat, which wasn't so tactful, but since Sarah had no idea what she was about to say or what, if any, kind of ulterior motive she could possibly have, the brief lapse in poise went completely unnoticed.
"So," Matty started, "run into Matt Atanian lately?"
Sarah's brow arched slightly, but she was not suspicious. "Why?"
"Oh, just curious," Matty replied and glanced around the hall. "He's around here somewhere." She leaned towards Sarah conspiratorially. "I think he's looking for you."
This time Sarah definitely darkened. "Oh, great. Just what I need."
Matty swallowed, taking the blow nicely despite the sudden increase of acid content in her stomach. "Don't be so hasty. It might not be a bad thing."
Sarah chuckled. "How could it not be, with that guy? I mean, did you see those candy canes? What's with that?"
"Hey, papier-mâché takes patience."
"Whatever it takes, Matt Atanian has given me nothing but a series of very weird encounters, starting at summer camp."
"He seemed intent on talking to you when I saw him."
"Why Miss Hayes," Sarah said, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were on his side."
Matty smiled. "Well, you know, it is Christmas Eve."
Derek Provost began to salivate. "Oh, wow," he slurred, "Who is that?"
"Who?" Mike Quadrozzi asked casually. The two of them were chatting near the back of the hall, along with Moses kitchen help Jim Anderson, who had just arrived at the party.
"That girl over there," Provost said, pointing with a limp hand. His eyes were glazing over.
"The one with the red hair?" Jim asked.
"Yeah, the shorter hair."
Mike Quadrozzi followed Provost's line of sight, expecting another testosterone trip from Troop 180's resident pervert. He sipped his drink casually and glanced at Sarah Porter and Matty Hayes. His throat contracted immediately as his brain caught up with his eyes, making a horrible gurgling sound.
"Um ..." Mike choked.
Provost was grinning. "I like her," he said, "she jiggles."
Mike regained his composure, knowing he had to act fast to deflect the leprechaun. "Hey, I don't think you want to go there, Derek," he said.
"What? Why not?"
Mike motioned with his hand for a private conversation. Derek leaned closer to hear the other's whispered speech. His eyes widened as Mike pointed towards the females and shook his head. The corners of his mouth drew back in a frown.
"Damn," he said after Mike finished, "all the good ones seem to go that way."
Matty Hayes smiled as she watched Sarah walk away, leaving the room. At least she's thinking about it, she thought. Could've gone worse.
She turned to go her own way, towards the kitchen and the pot of warm water waiting on the stove, when a loud noise behind her made her look back. The double doors at the front of the hall had been thrown open, and in from the cold had stepped...
"Kuntz!"
Taylor Kuntz wore a leather jacket over his rumpled Boy Scout uniform, obviously the nicest outfit he owned. His hair had been slicked back with far too much gel, and he was holding a small stack of three by five-inch index cards in his ungloved right hand. He glanced quickly around the room of people before his eyes settled unsettlingly on Matty Hayes. He smiled his best smile, which was pretty bad.
As Matty stood, trying to spit out words of any kind and calm her reeling mind, Kuntz pranced over to her like a peacock on amphetamines and kneeled in front of her.
"My red-haired goddess!" he said. "At last I've found you, and on the Eve of Christmas!"
"Wh-wh-what the hell are you doing here?!" Matty finally got out.
"I've come to sweep you off your feet, my love, to swoon your heart," Kuntz replied gooilly, and consulted his index cards. He cleared his throat, and looked upwards at Matty. "Ahem... Shall I compare thee to some summer's hay? Thou art more lovely and more temperament!"
"WHAT?"
By this time, a crowd had begun forming, a crowd which Mike Quadrozzi and Aaron Abdowmassy were quickly trying to push their way to the front of.
Kuntz continued to mangle poetry. "Roof winds to shake the darling birds of May, and summer's lice hath all too short a date!"
Finished, he looked up at her. "Now, my red-haired goddess, I shall catch you as you collapse, love-struck, into my arms!"
"What the hell are you doing at our Christmas party you little freak?!" Matty yelled at him.
Kuntz was genuinely surprised. "Come on, collapse! That was Shakespeare! The Bird!"
"That's Bard, you idiot!" Mike Quadrozzi told him. "Now get the hell out of here!"
Aaron Abdowmassy stepped in, as well. "None of us can quite remember inviting you to the party, Kuntz."
Taylor Kuntz stood up and ran a hand down his rumpled uniform, as if to straighten it. "This crowd has obviously made you uncomfortable, my goddess. You feel you cannot express your true feelings for me."
"Get lost before you lose something, creep," Matty told him.
Kuntz pranced towards the door, but not before throwing Mike and Aaron an evil look. "I'll be back," he said, to the two of them as much to Matty. "I won't keep you waiting, my love!"
The double doors closed behind him.
Mike fumed. "That guy ..."
"Maybe we ought to keep our parties more confidential," Aaron said.
"Go on," the mother said, giving her child a gentle push forward. "It's all right."
The young boy shook his head, no.
"Come on, now," the mother cooed, "it's Santa Claus."
The boy gripped his mother's hand, and she brought her face down to his. "E's not Santa," the child told her as if divulging a secret.
The mother smiled. "Of course it is, Eric," she said. "Now, go on."
The boy shook his head again vehemently. "E's too skinny to be Santa," he told his mother and backed towards her.
The two of them, mother and child, were in one of the large, carpeted rooms on the ground floor of the Church in the Acres, specifically, the one in which the Cub Scouts of Pack 192 met for their weekly meetings. Across the room from this small altercation sat its subject, Mr. Harris Tanner, who sighed heavily.
It had started off all right. He'd donned the outfit, gotten himself into a reasonably jolly mood and came down here ho-ho-ho-ing it up. It seemed pretty simple, a good bit of service from the elder Boy Scout leader. A few children came up, excited out of their little minds to talk to Santa in person, and told him what they'd like for Christmas and were given a nice red and white candy cane wrapped in red ribbon. All right, good show. Drinks all around.
Some of them, he had found, were even interested in patch trading.
But, every so once in a while, there was a child like this one right here. A child who just plain refused to suspend disbelief and talk to a tall, skinny, ancient-looking Santa Claus with a beard that didn't quite fit his face at all and a voice that sat somewhere between lilting and gravely.
What was the world coming to, anyway?
Harris Tanner checked his watch and sighed again. "Ho, ho, ho," he said.
The double doors were thrown wide open, and everyone braced themselves. However, instead of spotting a greasy-looking wannabe poet or other such monstrosity, the partygoers of 192 saw a young Asian man dressed in yellow. An umbrella poked from the pack on his back. The bandanna he wore around his forehead was also yellow.
The figure slumped on the threshold, obviously worn out from some journey or another. "Akane!" he cried, suddenly full of energy. "I'm here! I made it, I..."
The young man glanced around the room and came to the conclusion that of all the people who were staring back at him, he knew no one.
"Oh," he said darkly. "Sorry." He turned to leave.
"Hey, wait!" Someone called.
The man looked back and faced Kirstin Porter as she walked towards him. "You look tired," she said. "Want some punch?"
The Asian man was utterly surprised. "Um... sure." He smiled. "Thank you."
Proctor sat, leaning against the heavy wooden door of the church's boiler room. He was still waiting for the others to return, but he'd grown a little tired. He was almost asleep, dozing, when he heard the click of the door being unlocked.
He leaped to his feet. "Guys! Is that you?"
No answer.
Proctor tried the door. It opened easily, and he stepped outside.
There was no one there. "Hello?" Proctor called. "Guys? Captain?" He heard nothing in response against the muted noises of the party going on upstairs.
But there was something... what was it? Proctor glanced down the hallway. He realized that there was smell in the air, a familiar odor, foul and full of ash.
It was the faint smell of cigar smoke.
Slowly, the annual Troop 192 Christmas Party was winding to a close, and so came the merriest part of the evening, the present swap.
Everyone who had attended the party had been required to show up with a small gift, which was to be swapped at random in the traditional fashion. Of course, there were always a few gifts that turned out to not be so random at all.
Mike, Aaron and Bill Gelinas were somewhat dismayed to discover that Proctor had somehow escaped their trap, but they were relieved when Mr. Schmuler, in an incredibly rare display of authority, told Justy that it was probably too late to begin his Ultra-Important Holiday Speech. It would have to wait till the next holiday.
"Oh, piffle," Justy Yung said.
"We were all looking forward to it, Captain," Proctor told him, and meant it. "If it's any consolation, Merry Christmas, sir." He handed Justy a small gift-wrapped package in the shape of a stick.
Justy snatched the package and tore it open. "What's this?" he asked, holding the stick in his hand. It was about a foot long, black and had a leather strap at one end.
"It's a sort of baton, Captain..."
"I know what it is!" Justy interrupted, smacking his assistant over the head with his new toy. He admired the object and its potential for dispensing pain and subversion.
"Thank you, Proctor," he said. "How thoughtful."
Proctor rubbed his head. "You're welcome, Captain."
Most of the other gift swapping was not as exciting. Many of the items were simply small doodads or gift certificates to the cinema or a local restaurant. Mike Quadrozzi opened his gift and found a small sign, made of the same material as dry erase boards. Its use completely escaped him, and most likely it had escaped whoever had been desperate enough to bring such a thing as a gift, too. Elsewhere, Kirstin Porter shared a meaningful look with Aaron after receiving a cute knitted Christmas sweater with reindeer and things on it from an anonymous person.
Elsewhere still, Matt Swett turned around after unwrapping the jar of peanut butter he himself had donated to the gift-swap in the first place to come face to face with a man dressed in the distinctive dark brown khakis of the United Parcel Service.
"Good evening," the UPS Guy said.
"Hey, how you doing," Swett replied.
"So where would you like the order?"
"What?"
UPS Guy indicated the cardboard box near his feet. He consulted his clipboard. "Er... a shipment of ECWCWWF EXTREME THUNDEROUS ATTITUDE II. Can you sign for it?"
Matt Swett hardly blinked before he smiled and reached for the man's pen. "Why, of course, my good man."
Matt Atanian sat on the front steps of the Church in the Acres, looking out on the wide church lawn, bathed in the reds, greens, blues and blinking whites of the Christmas lights strewn about the church's roof. Next to him sat Sarah Porter.
"I'm here against my better judgement," she told him, her breath escaping as mist in the cold night air.
"Well, thank you," Matt said.
That sat in silence for a moment. The sky was utterly clear that night, and the stars twinkled overhead.
Matt cleared his throat. "I really just wanted to give you this," he said, and extended a small, neatly gift-wrapped box to Sarah.
"Well, Matt," Sarah said, "I really don't... uh..." She saw that Matt was only watching her intently, and she began unwrapping the present. After removing the red and green wrapping paper, she lifted the small tabs on the box and peered inside.
Of all the reactions Matt had foreseen, the one he actually got was the simplest and yet the best one he could have ever hoped for.
Sarah Porter smiled. "Oh, Matt," she said softly. "This is... perfect. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
And then, as if on cue, one single, tiny snowflake fell from the sky, dancing in the bitter wind before it landed on the church lawn.
"Look, everyone!" A voice called from behind them, "it's snowing!"
In a flood of bodies and hastily donned coats and hats, everyone from the party rushed outside onto the steps. Matt and Sarah's conversation was drowned out as the members of Troop 192 and all their guests joined them to watch the snow begin to fall. Mike, Aaron, Bill Gelinas and all the other members of Troop 192, Kirstin and Nicole Porter, the Aberts and Troop 180, Harris Tanner, the Moses folks and Matt and Sarah all looked up into the starry evening sky together.
And somewhere up in heaven, Jimmy Stewart smiled.
The End
Disclaimer:
Okay. I know that nothing I could ever possibly say in this disclaimer could ever make up for the fact that this story is something like two or three months late. I also know that no excuse could possibly be good enough to appease the anger and sense of betrayal all of you loyal readers must feel.
Of course, I could be wrong. Try these on for size: I had a lot of homework to do. I was abducted by aliens. My car broke down on the way to Matt's. I had to do my Eagle Project. I was kidnapped by French Revolutionaries and told I was the only living heir to the throne of Belgium. I had to serve a three-month jail sentence for violating the restraining order put upon me by the lawyers of Gillian Anderson. My computer isn't Y2K compliant, heck it's not even Y1K compliant, and it blew up just before I could finish the story. My dog was run over by a cement truck. I overslept. Did I mention that just before my dog was run over by a cement truck that he ate the first draft of Part 13?
So, here's the only excuse I can give you, the only reason behind my incredible tardiness and the only other comfort I can give you besides the hope that the quality of this story will make up for everything:
It's all Matt's fault.
Of course, I could be wrong. Try these on for size: I had a lot of homework to do. I was abducted by aliens. My car broke down on the way to Matt's. I had to do my Eagle Project. I was kidnapped by French Revolutionaries and told I was the only living heir to the throne of Belgium. I had to serve a three-month jail sentence for violating the restraining order put upon me by the lawyers of Gillian Anderson. My computer isn't Y2K compliant, heck it's not even Y1K compliant, and it blew up just before I could finish the story. My dog was run over by a cement truck. I overslept. Did I mention that just before my dog was run over by a cement truck that he ate the first draft of Part 13?
So, here's the only excuse I can give you, the only reason behind my incredible tardiness and the only other comfort I can give you besides the hope that the quality of this story will make up for everything:
It's all Matt's fault.
Matt's Notes:
Oh, it’s all my fault, is it? How is it all my fault? And how is it that I could write three complete stories (14, 15, and ADM2) and get a start on another in the time it takes you to write one? Granted, it’s a long one... but... NO EXCUSES!!!
Only two or three months late? How Mike likes to delude himself! This story should have been out in the middle of the summer... It's so bloody late that, topically speaking, it's almost on time!!!
Oh, well. I forgive you... This was a hell of a story and quite worth the wait.
Now the usual... Jusenkyo curses and the character of Ryoga are borrowed without permission from Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½. Also, this story is written without the endorsement of the Boy Scouts of America, and if national ever found out about it, they’d make Mike’s dreams come true... including the bit where he wakes up to find his mum...
At first I was appalled to see that little yellow demon Pikachu in Boy Scouts ½ story. But then I realized that it is probably the best anime that Bill Gelinas would ever watch. I pity him, and pray for the death of that little piss coloured turd some day soon.
And lastly, some people are based on real persons, some people are based on exaggerated representations of real persons, and some people are just plain fictional. It’s up to you to guess which is which.
Only two or three months late? How Mike likes to delude himself! This story should have been out in the middle of the summer... It's so bloody late that, topically speaking, it's almost on time!!!
Oh, well. I forgive you... This was a hell of a story and quite worth the wait.
Now the usual... Jusenkyo curses and the character of Ryoga are borrowed without permission from Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½. Also, this story is written without the endorsement of the Boy Scouts of America, and if national ever found out about it, they’d make Mike’s dreams come true... including the bit where he wakes up to find his mum...
At first I was appalled to see that little yellow demon Pikachu in Boy Scouts ½ story. But then I realized that it is probably the best anime that Bill Gelinas would ever watch. I pity him, and pray for the death of that little piss coloured turd some day soon.
And lastly, some people are based on real persons, some people are based on exaggerated representations of real persons, and some people are just plain fictional. It’s up to you to guess which is which.
P.S. Disclaimer:
Just in case you're interested, the poem that Kuntz was mangling is Sonnet #18 by William Shakespeare. It's very nice.
That's it. It's over. Piss off.
That's it. It's over. Piss off.