Fire in the Hole

  People from the duck wedding didn’t miss the withering looks from the more elaborate party, and in the marble-floored, plush lobby of the wedding factory, sides were drawn.

  Duck wedding people and champagne-and-ring people would be like oil and water. Montagues and Capulets. Johnson walked out of the cocktail party that currently held Beth’s people and found Dove.

  Duke was mid-belching contest with ten of his cousins when Johnson’s smooth, loud voice was in her ear. “You look amazing.”

  She turned and felt her tongue go numb again, He was so polished and handsome and in a tuxedo. There should be angels singing whenever this man moved from place to place. And he’d tasted her vagina. Her skin heated up thinking about it.

  He smiled at her as though he knew what she was thinking. “How was the wedding?” He touched a lock of her hair and moved it behind her ear.

  “Crazy. Funny crazy. How was yours?” She brushed away some invisible dust from his shoulder just to have an excuse to touch him.

  Johnson watched her hand and lifted an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

  “There wasn’t anything there. You’re impeccable.” She looked at her feet and could hear Duke and his cousins start up a singing rendition of the burping.

  “Our wedding was typical. A little boring.”

  “Do you have to go back soon?” She nodded toward the fancy ballroom that he’d come from.

  “Yes. But I’m having trouble caring. You’re a far better view than anything going on in there. Are you staying tonight?” Johnson stepped into her personal space—not touching her, but clearly wanting to.

  Holy crap.

  It was as if he knew what his nearness did to her toothless camel lips. Lady parts. Girly garden.

  As they looked longingly into each other’s eyes, a shrieking woman nearly blew out their eardrums.

  “Number four tux! What’s his name? Johnson! If I have to find you again… Get back in there! We’re doing the wedding cake photos.”

  “Already?” Johnson rolled his eyes. “This is the wedding planner,” he said to just Dove.

  “Well, they’re not eating the cake yet. Of course. Keep up. Right now we’re having the pre-reveal cake pictures. You’re required.” She tapped her wrist where a watch would be if she had one on. “Chop, chop.”

  Johnson addressed Dove. “Sorry. Today seems unprecedented.”

  “It’s nice to do this for your friend.” Dove shrugged.

  “Well, actually, I don’t even know these people. They were light on groomsmen, and I didn’t want the numbers to be uneven. Stupid, I know.” Johnson touched her hair again while the wedding planner snorted.

  “That’s even sweeter. You’re a nice guy, Johnson Fitzwell.” She wrinkled her nose as she smiled, delighted by his attention.

  “I was a fool for tweeting you instead of just telling you what was going on. I’m sorry. God, to think I could lose you because of the Twitter.” Johnson seemed like he was going in for a kiss when the wedding planner’s claw-like hand clamped onto his biceps.

  “Now!”

  Dove grabbed the woman’s hand. “Quit bossing him around or I will make you start planning funerals—starting with your own, God damn it.”

  The woman stepped backward like Dove had burned her. “Well! I never.”

  Dove gave her the middle finger. “Ass fungus.”

  The planner stomped away.

  Johnson started laughing. “No way. You are legitimately our road rage curser forever.” He looked shy for a second. “I mean, if I ever get to be in a car with you again.”

  He leaned down and gave her a kiss on her cheek before walking away. She touched her cheek where his lips had been. When she looked up she locked eyes with Duke, who was no longer part of the burp concert. She realized that Duke had waited her out. He could have waltzed up and disrupted her conversation with Johnson, but he hadn’t. Duke shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet.

  Dove walked over to him. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  She waited for him to make a crack about Johnson, but he didn’t. “Did you win the contest?”

  “The burp situation? Under normal circumstances, I, of course, would win. But I let Pissboy have the crown on his big day.” Duke bit his bottom lip.

  “So what’s next for us today?” Dove went up on her tiptoes and tried to see where the duck avatar was next on the wedding factory’s gold framed LED screen.

  “Well, the big money gets a few more events right now. My cousin got the basic. So we have about two hours to kill before the reception. You sleepy? We had quite a night. You hungry? We could go find some sausage.” Duke took his hands out of his pocket to rub them together.

  “Well, we have to stay pretty fancy -- a nap is out of the question.” Dove looked around the lobby. The employees seemed to want the duck wedding participants to go somewhere else.

  “I can nap anywhere, wearing anything. Come upstairs; I’ll teach ya.” Duke winked at her.

  “Maybe we should check on your sister? I didn’t see her at the wedding. Did you?” Dove was suddenly alarmed.

  “No. Shit. Well, we better go get her. She can come to the reception. I hope she didn’t take another SleepSom. She’s made that mistake before. Are we sure you locked up her pills? When she’s groggy, she takes another.”

  Dove made a face. “Um…”

  Duke grabbed her hand and rushed to the closest elevator. “She’s not strapped down.”

  A quick ride to the fifth floor answered some of their questions but added a ton of new problems to their day. Helena was gone. Her SleepSom bottle was tipped over in the bathroom.

  In the distance, somewhere in the bowels of the hotel, Helena’s screams about fuzzy puppets echoed with sheer anger and terror.

  Johnson posed again with Beth. It was as if they were inventing more and more reasons for him to have to stand next to his ex-girlfriend. The pre-reveal cake photo was something he’d never heard of before.

  When it was over, there was another private cocktail hour in a small, plush room with couches. There was the gentle murmur of dignified conversation. Johnson recognized the ambience from his childhood. There were many times when he’d had to sit through his parents’ dinner parties, doing his best to be seen and not heard. He’d counted then, just like now, to pass time. Numbers did something to his subconscious, soothing him with their predictability.

  He felt like a jerk sitting there, pretty much bullied into participating because he knew weddings were a big deal to girls, and he hated when he somehow made them cry.

  The wedding Dove was attending looked like a ton more fun, if a tad on the wild side. He sipped his beer. He needed to come up with a better plan to convince her to pick him over the neighbor. And he’d determined it pretty much came down to that. All the possessive stare-offs Duke had forced on Johnson had made that abundantly clear.

  And he just liked Dove a lot. He liked the way she looked at him as though he’d hung the moon. Her enthusiasm in bed had been off the charts. She was the polar opposite of Beth.

  He was thrilled Dove hadn’t married Duke, but he watched her leaning into him when she didn’t know Johnson had caught sight of them.

  Dove had lied in the past—about the Twitter, about who she was—and that was a tough pill to swallow. Johnson excused himself, pretending to need to use the restroom, when instead he just wanted to see Dove again. Maybe touch her shoulder or something. When he got to the center of the lobby and scanned it for her, he was rewarded with a half running/ half panicked Dove coming right into his arms.

  “Oh, thank God. Listen, we think Duke’s sister is missing. I mean, we know she’s not in her room and the SleepSom bottle was tipped over; we think she may have taken an extra pill or two when she wasn’t totally awake this morning.” She finally took a breath.

  “Do you have the pills with you?”

  “No. Shit. That’s a good idea. They’re upstairs.”

  “Well, the most common side
effect of SleepSom is sleeping, hopefully she didn’t get too far.” Johnson patted Dove’s forearm.

  “Actually, a common side effect for Helena is a sort of sleepwalking, night-terror situation. She has to be strapped down for the evening. But, bottom line, she may have taken extra SleepSom, and we think she’s loose.” Dove narrowed her eyes and looked around the expansive lobby.

  “We probably shouldn’t judge her morals just yet.” Johnson thought about the peek he’d had of the lady strapped down BSDM-style in Dove’s room the night before. “Oh, it wasn’t a threesome last night, then. With you and her and Duke.”

  She looked at him as if he was speaking a different language. “No. No. No! Wow. You thought that? Okay, maybe I can see your point. We had our signals crossed yesterday.”

  “Sounds like Helena takes far too great a dose of her sleeping medication if she requires that much force to remain in bed. Where’s Duke?” Johnson hated to ask.

  “He’s seeing if the hotel has security footage he can view.” Dove put her hand on Johnson’s shoulder while she continued to look around. “She’s obsessed with furry puppets. And she screams and runs a lot. Terrifying. I was her roommate for about an hour yesterday, and I think I can submit a fairly elaborate screenplay to the Twilight Zone based on it.”

  Johnson laughed and watched a touch of a smile curve on her lips. Duke interrupted the moment.

  “It’s worse than we thought.” The man loosened his tie, his eyes also scanning the lobby. “There’s a convention of sports mascots here today. Full-on, head-wearing mascots that are fuzzy and walking the halls in full regalia. Helena is going to be scared shitless. Last I heard, they were taking a group photo.”

  The screaming became a chorus then. The haunting, echoing sound of mortal fear. Not from a woman, though. From a herd of sports mascots running out of a conference room. Two were on fire, one was missing a furry limb—though his human arm was still intact—and yet another fainted just outside the doorway.

  Duke commented first. “Well, pretty sure we just found her.”

  Dove’s jaw dropped as the noises of horror coming from inside the heads betrayed the familiar mascots’ ever-smiling faces. Duke took off running first, heading hard into the traffic of fur to find his sister. The yeti with the large hammer probably didn’t mean to knock Duke unconscious, but with his perma-grin, it was hard to tell.

  Dove wanted to say she threw her body over his to protect him from the mascots who obviously had a limited line of sight that was chock full of blind spots, but in truth, she tripped over Duke’s foot. Once she was on top of Duke, she went ahead and protected him because she was already there.

  Johnson’s feet appeared on either side of Dove’s head, the handsome pharmacist using his long legs to make a bridge over Duke and Dove as the army of furries ran from Helena. Dove was able to glance at the attacker who was still in her pajamas while wielding what looked like a samurai sword and a long-sticked propane lighter. Well, they’d found Helena, at least.

  Bearing down for the reality that stuffed animals were possibly going to trample her to death, Dove started to pray.

  When she got to the second verse of her prayer, she realized it was a Miley Cyrus song. Miley turned out to be a decent deity because the abundance of running mascots tapered off.

  “Go subdue Helena! I’ll give Duke CPR!” Dove pointed at the gorgeous sister.

  Johnson looked uneasy.

  “You can do it. She’s suffering from a side effect. Be the medicine, Johnson. You are a pharmacist!” She pointed hard at Helena, who looked pretty badass holding her weapons while she was high as balls.

  Dove looked at Duke’s face. She hated that he was dying. Dove also realized all she knew about CPR was the correct placement of the letters in the acronym.

  She smacked Duke’s face instead while calling his name. She did it again and again until he opened his eyes and caught her hand. “Whoa!”

  “You’re alive!” Dove put both her hands on either side of his face. “Thank God.”

  “Helena?” Duke tried to sit up, and Dove helped him, scooting down his legs a bit.

  She pointed to where Johnson was dancing around the well-armed Helena.

  “Stay seated for a minute; you were out cold. I’ll help Johnson.” Dove got up and inched around Duke’s sitting form in the doorway. Carefully approaching Helena, she tried not to make any sudden movements.

  Johnson was flailing his arms and humming.

  Helena spoke her truth to Dove. “Shh. Those are the fucking hairy puppets. They will bait you until they can get their fake, furry limbs in every hole they can find.”

  Dove opened her eyes wide.

  Helena nodded, her eyes slightly out of focus. “Yup, even that hole.”

  Dove knew she should try to talk the woman down but instead she said, “Helena? The hairy puppets are coming! The hairy puppets are coming!” Dove put her hands on Helena’s shoulders.

  “You’re right. God, they make the most awful faces when they cum.” Helena stepped toward Dove.

  “I can protect you! Give me your weapons!” As Dove held out her hopeful hands for Helena’s instruments of terror, Duke ran past her and tackled his sister. Dove noticed he took the brunt of the hit, rolling under her so that Helena was not injured.

  Johnson leapt forward and disarmed Helena. The woman curled into a ball and started to sob.

  Dove felt bad for her as the police entered the scene. Johnson set the weapons down and held up his hands. Dove did the same, realizing that the instructions for “hands in the air” wasn’t just for Helena; the police obviously hadn’t determined who was whom yet.

  And that was how Dove, Johnson, Duke, and Helena wound up facedown and in handcuffs at a wedding factory.

  Duke’s head was fuzzy. Or maybe it was his sister’s shrieking about fuzzy puppets that was making him feel out of sorts. All he knew was that she was safe for now. He turned his head so he could see Dove, who was already looking at him.

  “Did she hurt anyone?”

  The arresting officers were busy looking for other assailants.

  “Assuming the ones who were on fire were able to put themselves out somehow, it seems okay.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Johnson cleared his throat before announcing, “Officers, the woman here is suffering from a possible overdose of SleepSom. Her room number is 514 and you can find the bottle of pills she is prescribed there, and she needs an ambulance and possible stomach pumping.”

  The officer nodded. “Thanks. As soon as we get a statement from the dolphin, we’ll get her looked at.”

  “Not to be too forward, but her pupils are widely dilated, and I think she may be going into shock. I’m a pharmacist, and I feel her hallucinogenic reaction might only worsen. Please. Call an ambulance.”

  Duke hated Johnson, but he could have kissed him full on the mouth when paramedics were waved into the conference room and his sister was uncuffed.

  The dolphin was super observant and was able to corroborate the story that Duke, Dove, and Johnson had shared from the floor. They were uncuffed as well. Duke had to go with his sister in the ambulance, leaving Dove to Johnson’s adoring attention. It sucked.

  He told her he would text her updates, and Dove pulled her phone from her cleavage to show she would be waiting for information. On the way through the lobby, he saw a bride standing in front of the marble indoor fountain—which was filled with the charred remains of at least two mascot costumes—speaking into a microphone looking at a cameraman.

  “Just moments ago, while at my very own wedding, I was eyewitness to a horrible mascot-related crime. Luckily, my cameraman was not too inebriated to shoot the following footage of some of our most beloved characters running through the lobby engulfed in flames before thankfully jumping into the fountain to save their lives. On a side note, who knew mascots were naked under their fur? More at eleven.”

  She signed off and smirked at her camerama
n, who looked more drunk than he should. “Well, that better be worth a goddamned Emmy.”

  In the ambulance, Duke held his sister’s hand as the paramedics discussed the incident while monitoring Helena’s vitals.

  “I can’t imagine how she got that sword and flamethrower,” the bearded one wondered.

  The female paramedic answered his question, “I used to work there. In the back they have all different implements to cut wedding cakes. There’s always a few each week who used the sword. Thought they were special. And that wasn’t a flamethrower; it’s a tall candle lighter.”

  Duke brushed the hair off Helena’s forehead. Maybe it was time for a reevaluation of her dosage. He looked out the ambulance window and noticed that night had come. And he had not.

  Dove.

  Shannon inhaled and smelled all the musky notes of what Preston was about to do and a few of the less-than-musky notes of what he’d done on the road trip down. It was awful mixed with righteousness.

  Preston released her and in the twinkling headlights from I-95 bouncing off his hair, Shannon knew there had to be a God. No one this brave could be created without some sort of organized religion.

  He nodded and took his pants and undies off.

  “I shall conquer Big Peter pantsless.” Preston turned his bravado to the roller coaster and pointed to its apex. “Just like he has conquered me at night when I was held helpless in night’s unconscious grasp.”

  The coaster was roped off lame-ass style. Apparently Big Peter didn’t worry about lawsuits from passing vagrants or stupid teenagers or even warriors like Preston. He began climbing the beast, every once and a while humping the air. Shannon gave him a fist pump of solidarity and also kept the fist up so she could block the less than flattering view of her fiancé’s no-no parts.