Punchline (Demo)

Prologue

Four guys walk into a bar.

One of them arrives ten minutes late. He is the godfather, the veterinary assistant who rented his suit on 98th avenue to achieve "cost efficiency." Yet, he ordered four Coronas (lime, always) with a wiseass grin and a maxed-out credit card.

Next was the soon-to-be husband to a high-maintenance, really gorgeous woman who has called fiancee over the last ten months. He was the first to arrive, his necktie hung loose like a snake's tongue after eating black licorice. Duke found him collapsed by himself, as he nodded at his request for "the usual."

That is when the next guy chimes in. Plaid shirt, and messy hair, the groom had warned the plaid playboy about the importance of etiquette. You'd think the plaid guy would learn after his breakup with Bebe. Blood vials around their necks, PDAs on airplanes, Bebe turned this once conservative church-goer, mommy's boy into a full-time freak. Now the plaid dude wants to be the person he was before Bebe: bland, intelligent, and mildly depressed. (or a "realist," same thing.)

The last guy of the group makes one hell of an entrance, bumping shoulders with a classy-looking woman. She yells at him, making a rude gesture, but this cool-as-a-cucumber slick waves a hand in dismay. He sits next to the groom, congratulating him on getting hitched, before ending the sentence with "would not wanna be you."

The night unravels like a knot—those Corona bottles should have been illegal in El Tejano.

Someone had told a secret.

The guy in the suit laughs with nerves as he takes a sip from his Corona. No one notices the slight tremble as he struggles to keep the bottle wedged between his stubby fingers.

Guess what? There is no punchline. This is the way things go. One of them is a murderer.

The guilt eats them from the inside, the four guys—when they've been five, three days ago.