667's Exquisite Corpse - Full story on Page 4!
Sept 14, 2013 11:17:17 GMT -5
Shelly and BSam like this
Post by Sixteen on Sept 14, 2013 11:17:17 GMT -5
667's Exquisite Corpse
The lair was cold and dark, but for the Beast it was home. He stumbled through the mounds of bones that lay scattered on the floor, making his way to the surface. Peering out from under the rocks, he sniffed the air. Yes, they were coming. It was as if he could taste them already. He wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
“ROAD TRIP!” Rellim screamed, jumping up and down. The others were busy packing but she was too excited. It had been almost a year since she suggested a 667 road trip but now the day had finally arrived. They were almost ready to leave.
“Can somebody give me a hand with these?” Willis asked, struggling to carry five cases to the car.
“I’ve got it,” Sixteen said, taking the lightest case from the top of the pile. Willis sighed and got back to work.
“Hey dicks,” Pandora said, entering the room with a flourish.
“Great to see you, Pandora,” BSam shouted from the kitchen as he prepared snacks for the journey.
“Sorry I’m late, guys,” Sophie said as she ran towards the gang. “Thanks for waiting. Is everybody here?”
“Yeah, we’re ready to go,” said Rellim. “We’ll meet the others on the way.”
Everybody piled into the car. It was a tight squeeze with all of their luggage, but they made it. It was time to hit the road. The journey was uneventful for the first hour until Pandora and Sixteen started arguing over which road they should take. Eventually the whole gang was arguing and the noise distracted Willis, causing him not to notice the deer that had jumped across the road. He swerved at the last second but the car went careening off the road into the forest. They hit several trees as the car tumbled down a hill.
Finally it came to a rest at the bottom of a valley alongside a stream.
“Is everybody okay?” Rellim asked compassionately. She looked around and saw that all six of them were fine, if a bit shaken by the ordeal. Sophie was helping BSam out from under the seat. Rellim wondered how they were going to meet the others now.
“Where do we go from here?”
“I have no idea where to go“, Willis said.
“Maybe we should try to phone the others first“, Sophie suggested. Sixteen took out his phone, but there was no phone reception. They were in the middle of nowhere, all they could see was that stream, a few hills and some trees.
“If we walked up one of the hills we could maybe see more“, Pandora said, and after a short discussion about which hill they were going to walk up they started.
At the same time the others were preparing everything they needed, not knowing that their friends wouldn't arrive at the time it was planned.
Bee helped Sherry Ann reading through her files again and taking out the important pieces of information, Lemona and Linda were taking all the furniture out of the kitchen, and Bandit was gone to the supermarket to get more toothpicks.
Charlie and Mister M were trying to find the sunglasses Terry Craig had talked about in his message, but they couldn't find it. “I hope we'll find it before they come“, Mister M said, looking under the sofa. His had fallen off for the seventh time that day, and it began to irritate him. “Why do we even need them?” Charlie asked. “What can be so special about a pair of sunglasses with blue stripes? Can't we just call Bandit and tell him to bring normal sunglasses from the shops? Then we wouldn't have to look for.... Heeeyyyy! Look what I've found! The next series of avatar! How did it get here? Wow, that's awesome, we have to watch that now!” Mister M rolled his eyes. “Maybe you still have time to watch it when we have found the sunglasses.” “Which sunglasses? Oh, the sunglasses. Okay.”
It was slowly getting darker, and the group in the valley still had a good part of the hill in front of them. “It's much bigger than it looked“, Rellim said, “we should have picked a smaller hill.”
“Now we have already picked this one“, BSam said.
“Did you hear that noise?” Pandora asked suddenly. Everyone was quiet for a moment. “What noise? There is no noise. We have no time to care about noises that don't exist if we want to reach the top of the hill before midnight.” Sixteen was about to continue walking, but then it was there again, louder than before. It sounded like nothing they had ever heard before, not like an animal, but also not like a car or any kind of machine, and it seemed to approach them slowly. “Maybe it's something dangerous,” Willis said after they all had just stood there and listened for a while. “But maybe it could also help us,” Sophie said. “Let's just pretend it's not here and try to reach the top of the hill.”
Lemona checked her watch. She was beginning to worry. “The others should already have arrived half an hour ago,” she said. The kitchen was completely empty now, and they had enough toothpicks, but the sunglasses still couldn't be found anywhere. Charlie was still annoyed that they couldn't just take normal sunglasses, but Mister M wanted to keep searching. “Maybe we should call the others“, Linda suggested and dialled Willis' number first, then Sophie's. But of course nothing happened, and they could try Pandora's or Sixteen's or BSam's or Rellim's number too, but still nothing would happen, because they still had no phone reception on that hill.
“I know! I could try getting a signal in the attic!” exclaimed Linda.
“Good, you can also look for the sunglasses while you're there,” said Mister M.
Charlie glared at him from across the kitchen. So while the two were now stacking the toothpicks into a neat pile, Linda headed upstairs. The attic was only accessible through a small door on the ceiling of the first floor. Linda opened that door and pulled out the attached ladder with a creaky wooosh!. Linda went carefully up the ladder and into the darkness. It was completely dark except for a small area that was lit through a single, quite small window on the other side of the attic, and the little bit of light coming from Linda's cell phone screen. There were still no reception bars. Linda kept looking at the screen hoping for a signal to suddenly appear and take her out of the dead zone they were stuck in and let her contact her friends. It is often useless to wait for help in this egocentric world, and better to do things you want to achieve yourself, even if it means to go out of your way. But this is not always possible, and right when you are about to give up and accept that you are on your own, there just may be a couple of pixels indicating reception appearing out of the blue on your cell phone screen.
“Yess” said Linda happily.
Quickly she dialled Sixteen's number. There was a short pause before the ringback tone started. She waited five tones for Sixteen to pick up.
“Come on.”
She waited another three and decided to call someone else. She called BSam, but as soon as the number was dialled there appeared a busy signal. She went back to her contacts list and dialled Terry Craig's number. Four rings. Five.
“Linda?” Terry's voice appeared on the speaker, “I've been trying to call you!” He sounded tumultous.
“We barely have any reception up here. Where are--” began Linda.
“Listen,” Terry interrupted Linda rudely, “I'm on my way, but whatever you do, do NOT open the door to anybody else! They're all--”
The reception died. Linda cursed and sprinted to the small window to get the signal back when she heard something outside. She looked out the window and saw somebody on the doorstep.
The door bell rang.
“Finally!” said Lemona as she darted to the door.
“Wait, don't open the door!” shouted Linda hurrying down from upstairs.
“Well it's about time you guys showed—” Lemona couldn't finish her sentence when she saw that the slack-jawed BSam in front of her, while exquisitely dressed, looked more like a corpse rather than a living person.
“BSam?” Lemona asked when she regained speech.
BSam didn’t answer.
“BSam!” Lemona shook him, but BSam only slumped in her arms.
“What the - ”
“All right, stop, I confess!” Linda said from the stairs, head bowed in defeat, “I just can’t take the pressure. It was me. I killed BSam.”
“What are you talking about? He’s not dead, he’s just drunk. Listen, you can hear his unsteady heartbeat.”
Linda listened.
“By golly, you’re right! He’s not dead!”
“Then what’s this about killing him?” Lemona asked.
“Oh, it was just some toxin Pandora and I put in his drink. It’s supposed to raise your blood pressure so much that your body can’t handle it and just shuts down, but neither of us are ones to trust labels.”
“Well, that’s a relief!” Lemona and Linda gave two nervous laughs, then looked down at the drunken BSam.
“So, what should we do with him?” Lemona finally asked.
“We could bring him upstairs,” Linda suggested, “And find him a comfortable cot.”
“I was thinking we take him to the dungeons,” Lemona mused, “Besides, walking upstairs is hard, especially whilst carrying another person.”
Linda nodded. “So we’re in agreement.”
And so Linda and Lemona hoisted a dying (though still exquisitely dressed) BSam into their arms and proceeded down the winding staircase into the dungeons, where Hermes was waiting with a scalpel and two metal prongs. But before the surgery could begin, Hermes let out a long sigh and shook his head in a conflicted manner. “I... I just don’t think I can do this,” he managed, eyeing BSam’s goriness.
Smirking, Lemona said, “What, are you afraid of the blood? Come on, it’s just a flesh wound. Linda and I don’t have a problem with it.”
“His whole belly’s torn open!” exclaimed Hermes exasperatedly, gesturing towards the messy yet exquisite figure of BSam. His entire torso was caked with blood, and most of the skin around the wound was splayed out to make the entire disaster look worse than it probably was. “This is like trying to save John Hurt’s character in the movie Alien!”
“Exactly!” Linda agreed. “Just pretend it’s that. And, if you chicken out, we can always do it ourselves.” Glaring, Hermes turned back to the almost-corpse and got his scalpel ready.
Lemona nodded. “Good. Progress. Now, Linda and I have to go upstairs to deal with that jousting incident we’ve left behind.”
Back up the winding staircase, the castle dinner hall had become total chaos since Linda and Lemona had left with BSam’s body. Riderless horses galloping aimlessly around, weak-ankled royalty tottering back and forth trying to find shelter from the disorder, pitiful knights lying on the ground with jousting lances still protruding from their abdomens.
“What a mess,” said Linda and Lemona in unison, admitting to themselves that all of this was completely their fault. “Hey, at least BSam might live,” they continued in unison. They added in unison, “But first we have to fix this problem.”
Taking action immediately, Lemona pulled her megaphone out of her pocket and turned it on. “Attention everyone!” she shouted to the panicked mass of people. A few half-dead knights looked up curiously as they continued to bleed out. “A new, slightly less dangerous party game is about to commence! Whoever can perform first aid on all the victims of jousting attacks in this room, gets a special prize! Go!”
The crowd immediately set off into a frenzy of CPR and the bandaging-up of wounds. Feeble princes that were determined to be heroes donned makeshift nurse uniforms, and all the lazy jerks slipped out the front door while everyone was distracted. Soon enough, almost the entire hall was back in an orderly condition. So soon, in fact, that the LL Girls hadn’t had enough time to put together a surprise. It was like episode one of season three of the US version of the TV show The Office all over again.
“We want our surprise! We want our surprise!” the crowd began to chant, growing angrier and angrier by the second. The day had been pretty awful so far, and they weren’t about to take any crap.
Thinking quickly, Linda ran back downstairs to find Hermes with his face squinched up, poking randomly at BSam’s body in front him. When he heard Linda coming, he dropped all his surgical tools defeatedly and crumpled onto the ground.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he cried apologetically. “It’s just so disgusting!”
Linda dismissed Hermes with a wave of her hand and grabbed ahold of BSam’s velvet tuxedo.
“Never mind the surgery, I just need this suit,” she said anxiously, looking back up the staircase to make sure there weren’t any rebels on the way down. “I know BSam’s dying wish was to be dressed in truly exquisite attire, but this is an emergency.” And with that, Linda grabbed the tux by one hand and Hermes by the other hand, pulling them both up the stairs with her.
“Look!” she exclaimed when she reached the top, showing the angry mob the suit she was carrying. “It’s your beautiful surprise! An expensive piece of clothing!”
Somebody in the back shouted, “But it’s all tattered! That’s stupid!”
Linda shrugged. “I had to get it off a probably-dead body in a hurry, okay? Just take it.”
She threw the tux into the crowd and everyone scrambled to grab it, tearing and barking at each other like a pack of dogs fighting over a squeaky toy, or maybe a slab of meat. “Quick, Lemona and Hermes, shoot for the exits!” shouted Linda, leaving the disaster scene behind her.
“What about B--” started Lemona, but it was too late.
"B--Breakfast," Lemona said quietly to herself.
She stood forlornly by the table, the sounds of the tux hungry mob right behind her.
Hermes was caught in the middle, looking at both the ladies in turn, Linda, running like hell for the exit, and Lemona slowly starting to put away the breakfast bowls and plates. He was actually quite hungry so he did sit down at the table.
"Lemona, can you please pass the Corn Flakes? I think I will have some breakfast, after all it is the most important thing."
Lemona smiled and poured a bowl. She then put on some toast for herself, buttered it, and sat down next to Hermes.
Linda realised she was now on her own, and tux-less, this couldn't end well for her.
Looting another nearby corpse, she found some replacement top clothes, and a fancy sword. She decided that she was now a pirate!
Boarding the nearby ship, she challenged the captain to a duel, and won easily. Now she was a Pirate Captain! She called her good friend Pandora, who had also recently become a Pirate Captain, they teamed up and were kickass, sailing around and robbing authority.
Back at the breakfast table, Lemona and Hermes tidied up after themselves before being torn apart by the rabid mob of genetically modified bunny rabbits which suddenly broke into the kitchen. They were hungry, bloodthirsty and merciless. Their sharp teeth ripped apart Hermes and Lemona’s skin easily. Hermes lost an arm and Lemona lost her leg. “Lemona”, Hermes cried, “I love you”. “Hermes”, Lemona screamed, “we’ll always have Paris!” They lay on the cold floor, on the now red tiles. Just as he breathed his last breath, Hermes saw him: Dante, his old enemy. They hadn’t seen each other in over 10 years and Hermes had forgotten about him, but Dante holds his grudges forever. He planned his revenge well. Ever since Hermes moved away from 667 after marrying Lemona, Dante had been researching and learning about genetics. He bought 100 rabbits and his experiment was successful. He swore to find and kill Hermes then take over 667. Why? They had disagreed once when discussing “The Slippery Slope”. Dante had it his way or no way at all. He stepped on Hermes’ face and said “I win this argument!”, while enthusiastically shaking his fist in the air.
Tragedy sat on his bed. It was noon, but he had just woken up. He was the ruler of 667 Dark Avenue yet he did nothing all day and nobody really cared. The people of Dark Avenue got on fine without him. Trag heard some noise coming from the living room of his mansion. Quickly, he grabbed his baseball bat that happened to be in his room. He carefully walked towards the noise. In his living room he found unexpected guests: Pandora, Bee and Dante. Also a lot of rabbits that looked angry. “salsa!”, Pandora said. “See what you did? You woke him up. Look dude, we don’t want to take over 667. We just want to rob this place. That’s what we do. We’re kickass pirates. What part of kickass pirates don’t you understand?” “HEY HEY HEY! What is going on here? Also what is up with the rabbits”, asked Tragedy, but as usual nobody cared much for what he had to say. “BUNNIES ATTACK”, commanded Dante and the rabbits killed Tragedy. “Yo. That was severely potato ed up, man”, Bee uttered. “Go. Now. And I might let you live”, Dante replied and they were out of there before he even finished the sentence. Dante went on to search for a throne in the mansion only to find out there wasn’t one. He was disappointed.
Meanwhile in the streets of 667, a protest happened, unaware of the events that took Tragedy out of command. "I have a dream", said Sherry Ann, standing on a stage, "of a 667 ruled by an active leader. That deals with our troubles concerning the Penthouse. That discusses things with the people and posts every now and then”. A crowd looked back at her. Amongst the protesters was Lady Whatever, a great supporter of the movement. And Willis, aka Sherry Ann’s cheer squad. When the speech was all over, the three of them, good friends, met and went out for drinks. The bar’s television was going to show a special announcement from the admin, on all the channels. They got excited, expecting their protest to be recognized by Tragedy, finally. Dante showed up on the screen instead, confusing them all. “Hello 667, I am your new leader. The one you know as Tragedy is dead. I’m now going to install a dictatorship and get things real bad, like some 1984 stuff. Bye now.” Sherry Ann knew she was the one that had to stop Dante’s evil plan.
As everyone else stared at the screen in shock, Sherry Ann seized the opportunity to creep out the door unnoticed. With each step she took down the hall she felt the burden of this mission weigh heavier on her shoulders, reminding her of a time she’d worked hard to repress in her memory. Sherry Ann knew she was the one that had to stop Dante’s evil plan because no one knew Dante like she did. Sherry Ann was almost certain that part of Dante’s intent with this plan was to draw her to him. What many others didn’t know was that Dante hadn’t always been evil. What Sherry Ann feared most was that she may have been the one that drove him to it…
Before Sherry Ann had become a renowned Snicketian, she had first been a little girl in Snicket School. From her very first years Sherry Ann was recognized for her quick wit and keen eye, always winning first place in the various academic sports that were popular at the school, such as Variable Vocabulary Tournaments and Ferocious Flow-chart Fights. Though she grew to be a subject of jealousy and resent from her classmates, Sherry Ann was unbothered by them. She had more important and far more interesting things to worry about.
Dante always sat two seats behind and one to the left of Sherry Ann. He loved the way she would push back her hair and furrow her brow when working on a difficult problem posed by their professor, Mr. Hermes. Dante could tell that Sherry Ann cared for nothing other than schoolwork, but he cared for nothing other than her. Since transferring to the Snicket School six months prior his grades started slipping because he couldn’t turn his attention away from Sherry Ann long enough to look at the board. Most of the other students made fun of him for always only barely managing to pass his exams or for wearing tweed suits or other eccentric outfits or for greasing back his hair, but the one girl he was always trying to impress never paid him any notice. He realized he had to start doing more than try to attract her with his body. That night he flipped through his commonplace book, admiring all the sketches he’s drawn of Sherry Ann’s face, and ripped out the very best one. He got to school early that morning so he could catch Sherry Ann in the library, where she always arrived exactly one hour before classes started. He managed to arrive five minutes before her and set the paper down at her seat before settling in on the other end of the table. He watched as Sherry Ann arrived and cautiously examined the paper before picking it up.
She gasped a little when she saw the beautiful portrait of her face. Then her face scrunched in confusion, soon replaced by anxiety as she looked tentatively around the room to see where it had come from. Dante gave her a little wave from the end of the table. Sherry Ann stood up confidently and marched toward Dante, demanding he explain the drawing.
“Sherry Ann,” began Dante, “You are so smart and so beautiful and there is nothing I want more in life than for you to love me.” He looked up at her nervously, eager for her response yet terrified of what it might be.
Sherry Ann watched Dante’s face for a few moments to determine whether or not he was actually serious. Slightly nauseated, she managed to sputter out, “But.. you’re so awful and dull! I could never love you!” before running out of the library.
That day in class, Dante never glanced once in Sherry Ann’s direction. He copied every note off the board. He became one of the highest performing students at the school, but not for the simple enjoyment of learning like Sherry Ann. If he couldn’t have Sherry Ann’s love, he was going to do everything in his ability to enact the most intricate of revenge plots. As Sherry Ann thought back to the how she had pushed Dante to evil by her rejection so many years ago, she realized that the only way to stop Dante’s reign over 667 would be death – either hers or his.
Sherry Ann reached into her messenger bag, and pulled out the dagger that Kensicle had given her earlier. Dante was still enacting his intricate revenge plot on the other side of the room, so he wasn’t paying much attention. Sherry Ann stabbed the dagger into Dante’s back. Writhing in pain, Dante sadly asked “Did you ever love me?” Sherry Ann looked down at him and said “It was always a pipe dream.”
Speaking of dreams, all of a sudden Sherry Ann woke up from the one she was having. It was elaborate and strange. It wasn’t until she looked into the mirror when she realized something was strange. “Oh my goodness, I’m an orange,” she thought because oranges can’t speak out loud. Now let’s take a moment to recap things. First of all, everything that happened previous to this was all part of Sherry Ann’s dream. Secondly, Sherry Ann is an orange.
So Sherry Ann was awake now and becoming acclimated to reality again. To make things easier, she invited her friends Kyle and Sophie over. They arrived right away. Kyle was a radish and Sophie was a human. The three of them were like "Hey, what should we do as best friends?” It was a nice day, so Sophie, Kyle and Sherry Ann all went to the beach.
They watched the sun make its descent below the horizon. Sophie was absentmindedly building a sandcastle as Kyle and Sherry Ann chased each other through the dunes. A gentle breeze blew in from the east.
“How strange it is,” Sophie whispered to nobody in particular, “to have vegetables for friends.”
The Beast watched from a distance, ready to strike. He had followed them at every step, watching from the shadows. The time was now. He stalked through the long grass and emerged onto the beach. Kyle’s leaves wilted and Sherry Ann nearly burst out of her skin. They ran hand in hand back to Sophie. The Beast bounded towards them and leaped through the air only to be impaled on the sword of Pirate Captain Linda.
“Ahoy, dicks!” Pandora called from the bow of their ship. The exquisite corpse of BSam was attached as a figurehead.
“We’ve come to save you,” Linda said, pulling her sword from the Beast’s chest. “It’s time to go!”
They boarded the ship and saw all of their old friends on deck.
The 667ers sailed into the sunset, ready for their next adventure.