Young Writers Society

As Jerica was swept off to the chair lineup, Simon and Mel were zooped to center stage.

"Give a round of applause for Jerica and Lordy! What a show!" K.K. said with a big smile. The crowd erupted in cheering and applause. K.K. let it go on for a few seconds before he stuck out his paws and the audience quieted down.

"Now, I'm sure you're all excited for the next round after such a dramatic round one! Our contestants look excited too! Look at Simon's smile!"

The crowd seemed to laugh at that, and then K.K. clapped his pause.

“And remember folks,” K.K. said with a little wink. “The tolerance level for the drinks is different for every group. So if you feel like you can push your luck… you can’t!”

K.K. laughed maniacally.

"NOW! LET US BEGIN!"


Q & SHOT!

The lights went out, and there were a few seconds of dead silence. Then, the lights came on all at once, revealing that Simon and Mel were sitting front row in their own audience, but on stage. The audience, however, was completely populated by animate stuffed animals.



Music started playing.

Stuffed animals in gaudy clothing started strutting down the catwalk one-by-one, and the stuffed animal audience all had wine glasses they started sipping on. Simon and Mel had wine glasses of their own in their hands, but for the moment, they were empty. Their glasses had their names written on them in big, bold letters.

K.K. appeared on a little stage at the corner of the little fashion show, standing there with a live band playing the music. K.K. cut away from singing as the band kept playing to speak into the mic.

"Let's keep this party going, folks. Clock, start!"

Mel thought she knew what chaos was.

She did not.

Because whatever the hell she witnessed on stage? That was the definition of chaos.

And she was here for it.

She barely had time to react to anything, because suddenly her chair was brought front-and-center as the second round started to tick down. When the lights turned back on, Mel found herself sitting as part of a stuffed animal crowd, watching even more stuffed animals walk down the catwalk like this was some kind of tacky fashion show.

Weird, yes. But at this point, she was not surprised, just simply amused.

She swirled the wine glass in front of her, taking a sniff. It smelled like old socks, but who knows, maybe it would taste like apples.

Before she could challenge the thought, her eyes flitted to Simon next to her.

"Hey, is this even fair?" she asked, sitting at the edge of her seat and looking around to stare at K.K. at the edge of the stage, ignoring Simon and the stuffed animals walking the stage. "Is Simon even human? Like, can he even drink at all?"

Well. Things were certainly taking an interesting turn. Carter found himself watching in bewilderment, trying to keep up with each passing development. At this point, he'd accepted that talking, animate freakish animals were a part of whatever world he was in, but the animate toy animals were new. It wasn't too hard to accept considering everything else that had transpired, but still, it was unsettling.

He leaned over to see how Jerica and Lordy were faring.

"Still alive?" he asked.

"Alive," Lordy mimicked the word, only now beginning to come to his senses, "I'm... what exactly just happened?"

Lordy rubbed his head, waiting for the headache that usually came along after a wild night of drinking. Surprisingly, no such headache came.

"Has anyone seen my flask?"

"All I saw was you dancing," Carter said. "And I don't know that I'll be able to scrub that out of my eyes any time soon."

Jerica sat with her palms pressed against her closed eyes, trying to figure out what had just happened. She still felt so unsettled from the hallucination, but it was slowly starting to seem like a vague, distant nightmare.

Carter asked if they were still alive.

That was a good question. An even better question would have been -- did she still want to be alive?

"What the BLEEP?" she muttered to herself, starting to sober up as Carter and Lordy bantered back and forth. As much as she hated to admit it, Carter was actually right this time -- she was glad she'd been drunk for most of Lordy's... performance.

"Are we allowed to stop with the BLEEP-ing questions now?" She raised her head and looked over at them. "Actually, better question -- do I have to be alive?"

Her eyes landed on Carter's sword, then traveled back up to his face.

"Your sword, my neck?" She tapped her throat, just above the collarbone. "Right here? Please?"

Carter looked over at Jerica, unimpressed.
"Please. I'm not interested in charity."

"Would it really be charity, though?" Jerica asked, too nervous to transition back to speaking normally. If questions were the price she had to pay to keep from hallucinating again, she'd never make another statement again for the rest of her life. "Couldn't you consider it a training exercise? What if I pulled out my blade and pretended like I was trying to stop you?"

She was reaching at this point. But she didn't see another way to be put out of her misery, and the stupid mutt had made it clear that she couldn't do what she wanted to. Maybe he'd support murder instead?

Simon found that the previous round gave him very little data on what he would expect for his own. This was not unlike the precedent the set in the first challenge, so maybe the lesson was simply to expect the unexpected.

He did not have very good algorithms for that yet.

Once he was moved on stage in a brisk yet comfortable manner, he found himself situated next to Mel, the one who threw the first pie at the end of the last round. She seemed to be a trend setter of sorts, at least as his previous (brief) interaction with her showed. Did this mean she was not as adequate at following directions compared to others? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

As the stuffed animals continued to shuffle down the walk way in front of them (and his drink seemed to flicker and spark every few seconds), Simon changed his expression. His arm grinded and squeaked as it moved up to his face to touch his "chin" and he donned the Pondering expression. Humans tended to ponder when they asked questions.

"Why isn't this a show?" His voice put extra emphasis on the word show to insure it was interpreted as a question, as was typically done in this language. He even added a question word at the front.

His neck twisted slowly, along with his entire upper torso. "Are you enjoying yourself, Mel?"

The only response Mel got from her questions were more stuffed animals walking down the runway with gaudy clothes. She sighed and squinted at them, wondering if they were puppets, cartoon animals, or actual magical walking stuffed animals. She wasn't sure which answer scared her the most.

Simon then spoke up, and like usual, creeped the living hell out of her. She watched as his neck and upper body slowly twisted to face her as he spoke.

Was she enjoying herself...?

Mel grimaced, then looked down at the sparkling wine in front of her, wordlessly deciding to take a big swig of it instead of answering.

Carter raised his eyebrows when he watched Mel willingly take a gulp of the disgusting drink without even breaking the rules. She must really be that desperate, huh?

He looked over at Jerica and Lordy.

"How exactly did the... drinks taste?"

Jerica looked at him for a long moment, trying to think of how she could answer his question with a question. She still wasn't risking being assaulted by the K.K. again. "Have you ever tried to imagine what disappointment tastes like? Or, sheer horror? Or, the worst thing you've ever experienced? If you multiply that by 100, then you might be getting close to what it tastes like, you know?"

Carter mulled this over. So, it was better not to drink, then.

"Good to know."

Hildegarde leaned over to Jerica — she had been eavesdropping on their conversation from a few chairs down. "Pardon me, but now that you seem sober... do you remember much of what happened?" She wanted to know if the victims would at least get the sweet relief of not remembering how embarrassingly they acted when drunk.

Jerica looked at her for a long moment, considering the question. She was pretty sure she remembered everything... but it all felt so vague. Like she'd almost blacked out but then didn't... but, if that was the case, why was she sober now? Why did she have to be sober now?

She remembered the demons -- she didn't even want to think about what she might have done in response, but her eyes still burned so she assumed there'd been tears. But maybe people had been so distracted by all the devils trying to murder her that they didn't notice the tears. Maybe.

And then there was dancing. And... Lordy. Of all of the things she wished she didn't remember...

"Are you asking me if I remember being sacrificed to the devil-gods?" Maybe she should have smashed a pie in her face when she had the opportunity. "Or if I have the misfortune of remembering Lordy... 'dancing'?"

No point in admitting that that was all that she remembered. Those vague memories were more than enough to last a lifetime.