Walkie Talkie

THE BEAST

I recheck the address on my phone, and then I ring the doorbell.

The front door flies open, "Finally! I thought you forgot about the time, hurry up so we can discuss the game plan!" He wiggles his fingers michieviously while giggling. 

He takes me by the wrist, and we run to a room with 3 others that has a large table in the middle with a make-shift map on top.

"These are my cousins!" He points excitedly to the 3 others in the room. Each of them give an awkward wave. the one at the very end with a cowboy hat on winks at me.

"This one here is Cedar, he is very good with maps." He gestures to the first one, who comes up to me and shakes my hand with a single finger. He quickly retreated and pulled out a hand santizer from his man-bag.

"...And this is Journey, probably coincidental, but she has a great memory about locations and landmarks." Journey goes in for a fist bump, then switches it into a peace sign, effectively snailing me.

"last but not lea-" The cowboy interrupts him. "Doug. That's what they call me, but you... You can call me anytime." He winks, suddenly pulling me in for a ballroom spin and dip. My head hit the table. He never apologized. 

"-You good? Ok, cool. Anyways the so called 'hillbilly' is the one who knows the most about animals, he knows everything, from tracks to bones." Doug winks at me again. I give him a thumbs down. He tips his hat in rejection.

Journey pops in front of me, I blink, she blinks, we both blink. It turned into a blinking contest. I think she forgot what she was going to say.

"Ah! that's what it was. lol. Whats your name?" 

I blink- blank. I blanked. I forgot what my name was. "..Uhhhhhh, Perry." I remembered. 

I nudge the guy who brought me in here, I forgot his name too. I keep his name as 'doofenshmirtz 🥸' in my phone. He has a big nose, and hes evil.

"Really? We've literally known each other for two- ..nevermind. It's Richard." 

Cedar mumbles just enough so we can hear him. "...Dick," he says. Dick gets mad about being called Dick. Doug calls him a dickhead for being mad. 

"SH! We are wasting time." Dick pulls out a hot pink dry erase marker. It's one of the scented ones. "Cedar! do your magic while I discuss the plan." He hands the marker to Cedar, who takes it diligently with a clorox wipe in hand.

 I saw him sniff it when he thought no one was looking. I sniffed it too. Smelled like joe mama.

Richard clears his throat. He starts coughing. Journey slaps his back. He stops.. Wow.

"A-Anyways! As a reminder, we are looking for the INFAMOUS, the TYRANNICAL, the SCARIEST monster in the woods! My aunts pet guinea pig named Beast. He ran away yesterday."

"What does it look like?" I ask. Journey pulls out a missing guinea pig flyer with a black and white image of Beast. The flyer has the words "PLEASE FIND MY BABY BOY :(((" written on it.

"Is it.. Black and white?" I think they ran out of ink to color in the photo. 

"Oh.. Nahhh, he's actually white with pink spots on him, my mom used that pet dye stuff." Journey takes the marker from Cedar and fills in the spots with pink. "Fixed it." She says.

Cedar snatches the marker back with a huff, and another clorox wipe.

"...Beast ran away while Cedar was cleaning the cage, and also while Doug left the door open to sit on the porch pretending he's from the wild west, or something. I still don't know how Doug never noticed." Richard shoots a glare at Doug, who supposedly lost a pink guinea pig.