love bites » marcelee.

12: Bad Together

Chapter Twelve: Bad Together

Tapping her fingers against the steering wheel, Marceline waited nervously in her car. She kept repeating the plan over and over again in her head. This had better work, or else there would be devil to pay. She checked her knapsack for the umpteenth time just to be sure that the items she needed were in it.

Just then, the car door opened and Marshall Lee climbed in the passenger seat with his own knapsack. He guided her with directions as she drove to the given address and several minutes later, they arrived. She parked the vehicle a stone's throw away from the house and killed the engine, taking a deep breath.

"Alright, you know the plan."

She nodded and they put on their black gloves and masks, pulling the hoods over their heads before stepping out of the car and into the cold night. They were both clad in black from head to toe, each of them carrying their own bag of "weapons". They moved fast to avoid being seen by any awake neighbors.

When they reached the front door of the house, Marceline's skin tingled with excitement as she held a flashlight and watched Marshall expertly picked the lock with merely a bobby pin and a paperclip. Within seconds, they heard a click in the latch.

"Smooth." she lauded as they entered, shutting the door behind them.

Marshall flicked a light switch on the wall, illuminating the whole room. And then they split up; Marceline went upstairs while he stayed on the ground floor, cutting the telephone wire. He went straight into the kitchen and pulled out a hypodermic syringe, which was fully filled with chili pepper extract. He began injecting the extract into fruits, vegetables, cakes, ice cream, and anything else he could find that was edible. After that, he slipped a few laxatives into a couple of drinks and loaded salt into the rest, then proceeded to loosen some of the pipings in the house using a wrench and glue all the windows shut.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Marceline had just finished painting the lightbulb. She turned on the light, bathing the bathroom in an eerie red glow. Then she put a chicken bouillon cube in the showerhead, squeezed out all the shampoo and replaced it with dye, filled half the bottle of mouthwash with vinegar, poured salt into the toothbrush and placed a handful of talcum powder into the blowdryer.

She took out a bottle of synthetic blood and spattered it everywhere. On the tiled floor, walls, bathtub, sink and mirror, which she then cracked using a hammer. She knifed the shower curtains, making it seemed like a beast had clawed it. The whole bathroom transformed to look like a scene from a horror movie, as if someone had been gruesomely murdered, or devoured by an unknown creature in here.

Time for the finishing touches. Marceline pulled out a can of black spray paint and started painting a huge pentagram on the wall. She kept a straight face but inside, she was giggling wildly. On the broken mirror were the three words that she wrote out with fake blood:

I SEE YOU.

"Woah!" Marshall hollered when he stepped into the bathroom, pleasantly astounded by the ghastly sight before him. "Sick tag."

Marceline sneered in satisfaction, placing a sticky note with a message below the mirror. "Thanks."

Before heading downstairs, Marshall poured itching powder all over the bed. Removing any traces of evidence, the duo switched off all the lights and closed all the doors in the house. In the dark, the house looked the same as it was when they first came in (except for the bathroom) so they were ready to go. Just as they were about to leave through the front door-

"Gah!" Marceline immediately pushed Marshall back into the house and locked the door when she saw Donny slamming his car door shut.

"Donny's here!" she whispered loudly.

"Get to the back!" he whispered-shouted.

"Ow!" they interjected simultaneously when they collided into each other, unable to see clearly in the dim room, before hastily rushing toward the back door of the house, which was unfortunately locked with no key around.

"Quickquickquick." Marceline's bones were jittering and her heart leapt to her throat as she shone the flashlight for Marshall to pick the lock.

Click. Click.

They heard the key turn in the front door latch.

"Alright."

He turned the doorknob and she pushed him out the moment the front door opened. They ran to the side of the house, where they were unlikely to be spotted in the night.

"That was too close," Marceline removed the mask and breathed out. "Why is he back so early?"

Marshall took off his mask too. "Either he came back to get some stuff or he already ditched the party."

"Has he gone up yet?"

He grinned mischievously at her rhetorical question, his sharp incisors on display. "Only one way to find out."

She followed him as they moved stealthily to hide behind the bushes in the front yard. They were fidgeting and staring at the lit bedroom with an avid glint in their eyes, waiting for the mark to go into the bathroom. Come on, come on, come on...

"AAAHHH!!!"

They tried to stifle their laughter on hearing the blood-curling scream which pierced the silence of the night but proved quite unsuccessful at doing so, and it didn't stop there.

"What are you kids doing?" someone shouted from next door.

"Oh, crap!" Marshall grabbed Marceline's hand, pulling her up. "Run!"

And so they sprinted as fast as their legs could bring them, bursting into fits of laughter. She looked at their interlocked hands as she ran alongside him, her thoughts and feelings crackling inside her like so many joyful fireworks. They fell to the ground next to her car in a heap, the sound of their panting breaths reigned but for a minute before hilarious guffaw broke out.

"Did he see our faces?" Marceline asked.

"Nah," Marshall replied. "We gotta be more careful next time."

"Yeah," she heaved a sigh of relief. "That was fun. I feel kinda bad, though. We messed his house up pretty bad, he won't even wanna live there anymore."

He chuckled. "Don't be. Like you said, it's just a different way of makin' someone learn their lesson. And if you think that's bad, then we're bad together, Marcy." he winked.

Marceline beamed. She thought that she and Marshall made a pretty good team. She could imagine themselves working undercover for some top secret agency as spies, or something like that, as ridiculous as the idea sounded. It seemed like it wasn't going to be the last time they would pull off something like that, which led to an idea. An idea that grew between the both of them.

They were partners in crime.