Matt

Chapter 19- The Tournament part 2

I remember telling myself earlier this week that if I tried to expect the worst that I'd be much more mentally prepared for what came my way this week. I should have told myself that I'm an idiot. Seriously, this week was way worse than I had imagined.

First off, there was the digging. It turned out that creating a ring ten meters across was a much taller order than we originally thought it would be. The sheer amount of dirt that Alex and I had to dig up just for it to be enough was insane...INSANE! Serena basically brought us to the grassy hill near Judy's house and told us to start digging. Judy was nice enough to provide a truck driven by one of her uncles that would dump the dirt near some unspecified location near the school. It took us a good five hours of straight digging to gather enough dirt for the job. That wasn't enough, of course, because we also had to remove any grass, roots, rocks, worms, bugs, and trash that we could find in the dirt, which was an impossible task. When we were finally done gathering all the dirt, it took most of Wednesday and Thursday to do.

And that wasn't all. When I got home after doing that, I had chores to do as well, which included cleaning both the garage and the attic. Both places had a ton of stuff that obviously wasn't needed by anyone, so I had to sort through all of it and bring it outside to be thrown away. I also had to sweep and dust both places and do it quickly. This was basically because John ordered that I didn't get to eat until I finished the chores, which had to count as cruel and inhumane. Smelling that delicious cooking while trying to clean out the garage was torture! If there was any plus side, it was that there was a lot of stuff in there that belonged to Serena when she was young, including some old pacifiers, baby bottles, pajamas and even a baby blanket that obviously had been chewed on when it was being used. I'm so going to tease her about that later.

Meanwhile, while I was slaving away, Serena, Alexis, Judy, and Clara were busy undergoing a massive underground marketing campaign to make sure as many people as possible showed up to the contest. Serena swiftly had flyers printed up (care of the school's printers) and got herself and Clara dressed up as bunny girls. They were sure to stand outside of the school grounds while they handed out flyers to all the students who were leaving the school (its a crazy miracle how no teacher seemed to notice). There was also a massive word of mouth campaign as well, which was taken care of by Judy. She pretty much talked to every person she possibly could, her outgoing personality obviously making it easy for her to get the word out. Overall, it was an incredibly impressive marketing campaign done all in the time span of two days by a mere four high school girls all while having to worry about the other aspects of the preparation for the mud wresting tournament. If this didn't draw in a lot of people, I don't know what would.

In any case, it was now Friday, the day of the tournament. There wasn't anything left to do except wait for the right time to create the ring and set up all the things we needed. I still wasn't sure if we could pull this off. Even if we managed to bring in a massive crowd of people, how we would pull this off without the school itself interfering was beyond me. Just the thought of cleaning up our mess seemed like a nightmare. To be honest, it seemed highly unlikely that this was going to go off without a hitch. That would be a good thing in my mind since I really didn't want to battle Alex in this contest. Just the thought of it made my skin crawl. Not only that, but Serena would have to cancel her plans to go to the convention, and we'd all be spared the enormous embarrassment that would likely happen should she confront that old geezer.

At this point, I was still comfortably asleep in my bed, completely tuned out to the world. I would have happily stayed this way as long as I possibly could, but as always, a certain diabolical woman had decided I didn't deserve to be well rested. I soon felt something pushing onto my forehead. Before I knew it, I felt the muscles in my forehead cramp up and twitch. It was incredibly painful. I instinctively slapped my forehead to rid myself of whatever was hurting me. I felt nothing there. Still mostly within the depths of my subconscious, I simply tried to fall back to sleep. I then felt something push into my neck. Once again, the muscles twitched involuntarily once again. This time, it hurt really badly, as the skin around the neck is really sensitive. I was now awake, reaching for whatever was hurting me. I failed to grab it, but I was able to barely touch it. It was metal and tube-like. Unfortunately, there was no way I could tell what it was without looking. Just as I was about to open my eyes and look, I felt it poke my cheek, causing the annoying pain to serge through there, too. Frustrated and annoyed, I finally opened my eyes and sat up.