A Clusterfuck of a Holiday Special

Chapter 6

Duncan woke up to something cold and hard gripping his left wrist. He opened his eyes groggily to find that he had been handcuffed to the bedpost, and the key was nowhere in sight.

"What... what the fuck?!"

He sat up as much as he could and looked around. The house was completely silent. He was the only one there.

"Hey!" he called out. "If this is for a sex thing, I expect to be paid in full!"

He pulled out his phone and called Isadora. It rang several times. And then:

"If I don't answer your calls for a bit,
I'm probably writing couplets and shit.
Leave a message."

He hung up with a scoff, and then called Hector.

"Hi! You've reached Hector!"

A preteen girl's voice rang out: "And Izzy!"

And then a boy's voice added: "And Duncan!"

"Please leave a message."

Duncan cringed when he heard his own pubescent voice cracking on the last syllable of his name. Hector really needed to update his voicemail.

He put down the phone and sighed. There was only one way out of this room, and it wasn't going to be easy.

He got up and started making his way to the door, dragging the entire bed behind him slowly with a loud screech.

--

"Okay. So here's the question," said Sunny as Justin drove her and Barla down the street. "Whole Foods first or fun stuff first?"

"Fun stuff," said Justin without hesitation.

"I wanna go to the mall," Barla said apathetically.

"Ooh, good idea! We can get cinnabon!" Sunny said. "And then maybe we can go to the fair."

"Oooh! And we can go to the petting zoo and give the animals cinnabon!" Justin added excitedly. His phone started vibrating in his pocket, and he reached down and declined the call. "Shut up bitch, I'm driving."

"Can animals have cinnabon?" Barla wondered aloud. "Sunny, can animals have cinnabon?"

"Fuck if I know."

"Hey! No swearing!" Justin scolded. "I still see you as a baby."

"I'm eighteen," Sunny said, rolling her eyes. "Barla's sixteen. We can both swear if we want to."

Justin sighed. He was getting old. Then, he saw something that made him bring the car to a sudden halt.

"Ouch," Sunny said, rubbing the spot where she had been thrown against the seatbelt. "Justin, what was that fo..."

Her voice trailed off as she saw what Justin was staring at. Barla stared at it too.

Ludicrous Snippet here. Have you ever seen something so beautiful that it made you want to burst in the tears? I remember a time that I felt like that. It was when I finished my most perfect book of all, the Great American Novel, a Clusterfuck of Things Going Wrong. I wept tears of joy. And then I knocked it out of the park with its perfect sequel, and wept even more tears of joy. And now that I'm writing this... I don't know. I'll have to sleep on it.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah. What they were seeing was glorious. It was like a mirage in the desert, or a single flower blooming in a wasteland.

Justin's eyes welled up with tears as he looked at the giant banner that had been draped over the entrance of the local gay bar:

COMBINATION PIE EATING TOURNAMENT AND DANCE COMPETITION INSIDE

"Girls," he said with a teary-eyed sniff. "I know what we're gonna do today."