Stark Raving Love
by Brian Taylor
All characters are created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis, and copyrighted 2000 by Viacom, MTV, and 1001 other companies. With apologies to Glenn, Susie, and Jim Steinman.
Friday, May 5, 2001 - 3:30 P.M.
"But Daria, I -" Tom was nervous, desperate, and about ready to get torn in half. If only he knew it. And some people thought Trent was oblivious.
"Get the hell away from me, you controlling bastard! I've given you more chances than you deserve!" Again, Tom had neglected to mention another event to Daria, acting under the assumption that she would have rather not gone. Not like he asked her opinion about it, though. She shoved him towards the door, royally pissed and by now comfortable enough with emotions to be showing some of the rage.
"But -" He sounded apologetic, and there was a big surprise.
"Out! Now!" She reared back with the steel-toed Doc Marten on her left foot, and he ran like the wind, not wishing to risk the damage that could be inflicted. Crushed leg. Crushed testicle. He mentally winced, and approached the "car." I'd better call tomorrow, and try to apologize he thought as he fled to the relative safety of the battered brown hunk of rusted metal that had been called a Rolls-Royce in its previous life. But at least it was his battered brown hunk of rusted metal. He looked back at the house, and saw the look on her face. Almost by instinct, his foot pushed down the accelerator, and the piece of tin peeled out faster than a chipmunk on speed. He even forgot to buckle his seatbelt. The whole way home, the only thought in his head was a simple four word phrase:
"Hell hath no fury," he muttered as he drove on like a man possessed, not wanting to look over his shoulder for fear of seeing the look in her eyes. "And they said that Rosemary's Baby was the Antichrist..."
* * *
"Well, that was fun," said Daria vindictively once Tom had roared out of the neighborhood, standing in the fine summer afternoon. "Too bad Jane wasn't here to see it; she'd have been laughing hysterically. I'd like to thank the Academy." An act, and nothing more; but Man, what an act! She had, in fact, grown tired of Tom's tendencies to conveniently forget to mention special events a long time previously, and had eventually grown tired of him. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that. He was too much like her, and sometimes that can be at least as bad as having nothing in common at all. She had been pissed over this latest action, but not that pissed.
Angry enough to break it off again? Absolutely. But angry enough to threaten him with bodily harm? "That, my friends, I am not," she said. "And this time it is over for good. Wait a minute, who am I talking to? Oh, damn it! This just won't do at all. Here it is, a Friday night, and I'm talking to myself. Again." She turned to an invisible audience. "Well, except for you, maybe," she said, before turning away from them.
"Now what?" she said aloud. "Do I call Jane, or do I sit around and wait for my family to come home from their jobs and friends' houses?" She turned back to the audience. "The answer, of course, is that I will call Jane." She walked over to the phone, and dialed.
"Yo," said Jane when she picked up the phone after two rings.
"Yo," said Daria.
"Hey, Daria. What's up?"
"I've got a hell of a story for you. Can I come over?"
"Well... let's see here. The parental units are off on some sort of vision quest, and Trent and the guys are out somewhere. So I guess the answer would be yes. What about Tom?"
"See, the thing about the story is..."
* * *
"...and he goes running out of th' house like I'm gonna clean his clocks, or something," said Daria in a slurred voice. Jane, having born Tom some ill will (slight, but still...), cracked open the liquor cabinet downstairs and "borrowed" a bottle of Jack Daniels. And then the two girls had proceeded to have themselves a little party, getting blind stinking drunk in the process. Hey, Daria still felt some grief at having finally killed the relationship, and Jane was in the mood to celebrate.
"Was this before or after you threatened to kick him in the balls?" Jane hiccoughed then, a totally stupid grin on her face. She took another swig from the bottle, and, capping it, set it in the corner.
"I think... before, but maybe it was after." Daria looked plastered, plain and simple. An excellent case in point why two eighteen year olds who'd never touched a bottle before probably shouldn't have started with Jack. Even absolute (and underaged) abstainers such as certain fan fiction writers know that it's not a good idea to get absolutely blitzed on Jack right off the bat.
"Well... what are you going to do now?" Hiccough.
"Beats me. Still gon' feel bad about it tomorrow." Hiccough.
"Oh yeah, that guilty conscience you don't have." Hiccough.
"Yah, that's th' one." Daria grinned crookedly, stood up, and began to dance on the bed in Jane's room. "Music, woman!" she screamed at the top of her lungs as she began to do the Macarena. Or something resembling the Macarena, at any rate. Jane got up, staggered over to the stereo, and began to pound on it with a fist weakly.
"Nope. No music. Damned stereo won't start," said Jane as the phone began to ring. She stumbled over to the phone, and after five or six false attempts, she managed to actually pick it up. And then the real fun began: trying to answer it. She hit the pound sign three times, and and managed to dial the number to Pizza King before she finally hit the 'talk' button by sheer accident.
"'ello?" She giggled slightly as Daria began to scream along to the Macarena song that her polluted mind thought was playing.
"Janey?" It was Trent, and he sounded worried by the noise in the background. He spoke with a light slur himself. "What's going on?"
"Oh, nothing Trent," said Jane earnestly (if still slurred). "Daria 'n' me 're having a little partay, that's all." At the mention of Trent's name, Daria collapsed onto the bed and lay there as if stunned. Or dead, but that wasn't the case luckily.
"Oh, really?" He sounded angry. "That's it, I'm coming home. Don't touch any more of whatever the hell it is you're drinking until I get there." As he said this, Jane looked over to where Daria had managed to struggle into a sitting position, and winked.
"OK, bi' brother. Whatever - " hiccough - "you say." At this moment, he hung up, and Daria's hand accidentally connected with the button that turned the CD player on. Soon, the strains of Meat Loaf's "Dead Ringer For Love" started blaring out in the house, on infinite repeat.
"Oh, Trent," said Daria in a gross exaggeration of all of those heartsick young teens on TV.
"Still got th' hots for big bro'?"
"Yeah," said Daria, although it sounded more like yuh. "He's so... cool, and I'm so.."
"Drunk?" They both laughed at that, the plastered peals of laughter harmonizing over the loud rock. "But what about Tom?"
"Who's Tom? I'm talking about Trent," said Daria quasi-lucidly. "Don't know why I ever got mad at him in the first place."
"'Cause he was an oblivious fool? And who is Tom?"
"I dunno." Daria sat and mused intently for a long moment, before her eyes lit up with a great idea as the song went into the third repeat. "Wanna dance?"
"Thou' you' ne'er ask," said Jane as the two got up and began to literally waltz around the room as Cher and Meat Loaf began to go through the motions yet again. Amazingly, they managed to avoid smashing the Jack Daniels bottle in the corner.
* * *
When Trent came home twenty minutes later, he was only slightly buzzed from the band practice, and still fairly lucid. So it is not hard to imagine his shock when, upon entering the house, he heard two girls screaming at the top of their lungs along with a song that had been playing for the past thirty minutes at close to top volume. He walked up the stairs, and peeked into Jane's room.
Jane and Daria were dancing around on Jane's bed, singing along (or attempting to sing along) with the song. Daria was wearing a lampshade on her head, and belting out the lyrics, "Ever since I can remember I've been hanging 'round this joint." Trent just stood there in the doorway for another two times through the song before anyone noticed he was standing there. By this point, drunk or no, Daria and Jane had it all worked out. The lyrics, the melodies, even which parts they sang.
"Hey, Trent," said Jane brightly when she finally noticed him standing there, breaking off during the duet in the middle. "Care to join the fun?" Daria threw the lampshade off of her head, and he noticed that she looked pretty plastered. Yet, and maybe it was the Budweiser talking, he thought she looked really hot.
"Janey? What the hell's going on?"
"Didn't she tell you, Trent?" That was Daria, overemphasizing his name and managing to blush profusely at the same time. Was part of her mind embarrassed at being seen like this? All signs pointed to yes. "Me and wha's-hiz-fase broke up. What was hiz name again? Jamie or Jimmy or Timmy?" She tried a bad Quinn impersonation.
"But which is my best side? I know they're both good," said Jane. The two girls began cackling hysterically again, but stopped when the song started again. Four minutes and twenty one seconds later, the discussion began again.
"How about it, Trent? For me?" That was Daria, asking him earnestly. Ten minutes later, a very flushed and slightly embarrassed Trent was also dancing around, singing along to "Dead Ringer For Love." Jane had stopped, and had started painting the two of them jumping up and down on the bed.
Another twenty minutes later, very inebriated, Daria kicked the stereo and managed to hit the power button by the luck of the draw. "There, that's better," she slurred. Trent had, by now, managed to consume enough whiskey to be as drunk as the other two. "Now we can talk."
"Whaddaya wanna talk about, love?" he said.
"This," she said. Daria then proceeded to kiss him.
"Hold tha' pose," said Jane, picking up a paintbrush. In another few minutes, though, the two on the bed broke it off. "I said hold tha' pose," said Jane stiffly.
"Can it, Lane," said Trent.
"How can I do that without a can, Trent?"
"Use your imagination," said Daria. She turned to Trent, then. "Hey, baby, I've got a great idea," she said to him.
"What's that?"
"Marry me," she said, giggling slightly.
"OK," he said drunkenly. "Daria, will you - " hiccough - "marry me?" She drew close, kissed him again, and said:
"Yah."
"This is so cool," said Jane from behind the easel. "I'll call Jesse, and he can give you a ride to the courthouse," she said, reaching for the phone blindly.
"Cool," said Trent in a drunken impersonation. Daria just giggled and kissed him harder.
"Hey, wait until you're married, you two," said Jane sternly. They ignored her.
* * *
Two Hours Later
Bedsprings creaking, soft sighs, and the thunk-thunk-thunk of a headboard drifted in from a room down the hall. Jane was in her room, slowly finishing off the Jack Daniels and trying to come up with an abstract painting sufficient enough to convey her severely impaired intellect.
"Hey, keep it down in there, you two!" She hollered drunkenly. "I've given you more warnings than you deserve! Don't make me come in there with a firehose!" Jane shook her head. "Those two are in stark, raving love."
- END
* * *
Notes: And so the Steinman Cycle kicks off with a bang. Ostensibly, this should be called "Dead Ringer For Love," but I didn't want to do it that way. Besides, the title works, doesn't it? I mean, what else do you call that but stark raving love? Say stark raving drunk and I kick you with a steel-toed Doc Marten. Anyone who complains that my characters are acting a little out of character? It's intentional, believe me. The point here is just to be silly, and hopefully funny.
Part of my reason for wanting to do this cycle is that I hope to branch out of my usual territories of writing. And I think I have, somewhat, with this mostly silly (hopefully somewhat funny) story that takes place in the sort of real Daria universe, but mostly it's in that one that guys like Nemo Blank cook up in a regular basis - madcap ones, where normal little things like plot and logic are thrown out the window. The kind I always wanted to work in. Will you ever find out what happens after this story? Sure... maybe... I dunno. If I ever finish the proposed sequel, maybe..
For the record, I'm sixteen, and I've never touched anything like Jack Daniels before. For me, caffeine is all the buzz I need. But I figure that if you drink enough to get really blitzed, you begin to do some really bizarre things. Like dancing around with a lampshade on your head, singing along to whatever you hear on the radio. That's about it. Let me know what you think about this wonderful beginning to a weird cycle. The thing here is that there is no real continuity between most of the stories; the only link is that they are all influenced, in some way or other, by Jim Steinman songs. That's it.