Cheryl did something to the disclaimer that I don't own any Archer characters. Now it's all sticky. Eww…Anyway this is some madness that came to my tiny mind. Takes place very shortly after Conversation With Idiots 101
The Tunts Of Winston Creek
Mallory grumbled as she walked into the bullpen. "Why is it that every time I want to raise the discourse of this agency, I end up with raised repair bills and medical bills?"
"Don't look at me," Ray looked at her from the couch. "I'm not the one who bit you!"
"I didn't even break the skin," Cheryl was at a table, cheerfully covering up her bruises to her face with make-up. "Next time I'll have to bite harder."
"Next time I'll break your teeth," Mallory glared at her.
"Tease!" Cheryl sniffed.
"So is the riot over?" Lana asked as she brought AJ into the room with a stroller.
"Pretty much," Cheryl shrugged. "Technically it was more of a mini brawl than a riot."
"So where is everyone?" Lana asked.
"Sterling and Pam put aside their differences to run off to a bar again," Mallory grumbled as she poured herself a drink. "Cyril is tending his wounds and crying in his office again. And Krieger once again is hiding in his lab."
"I don't know what he's doing in there," Ray said. "But it can't be good."
"It never is," Lana sighed as she picked up AJ. She put her on the floor and brought out some toys from her baby bag. "Here you go AJ."
"Ugh when is she going to boarding school?" Cheryl groaned.
"Hopefully never," Lana said.
"You might want to keep that as an option Lana," Mallory gave her a look. "In case you want to keep her away from unsavory characters. Like the people in this room."
"AKA, you," Cheryl taunted.
"More so you!" Mallory snapped. "Stroke and Choke!"
"If you're so worried about Tunts then send her to Winston Creek," Cheryl waved. "Like I'd go near that dump!"
"You mentioned something about that," Ray realized. "About the Tunts being banned from a town. What's that all about?"
"I have to admit that pikes my interest as well," Mallory admitted as she took a drink.
"It does?" Lana asked.
"Any story that involves any Tunt getting banned from somewhere has to have some merit," Mallory shrugged. "Besides this day is shot anyway so…Take it away Carol."
"Take what away where?" Cheryl blinked.
"Just tell the story of Winston Creek," Lana sighed as she sat on the couch to let AJ play with her toys in the floor.
"Oh right," Cheryl nodded. "A long time ago there was this little town called Winston Creek, Ohio. At the turn of the century…Whenever that was…Several of my ancestors flourished in that little town. The head of the Tunts there was my Great Aunt Tilly T. C. Tunt. Not to be confused with my other Aunt Tilly C.C. Tunt of New York. Or my other-other Aunt Tilly T. T. Tunt of Alaska. Or my Aunt Tilly C.T. Tunt of Long Island. Or my Aunt Tilly 'Tippy' Tunt of the Hamptons. "Or my Aunt Tilly A.C. Tunt of…"
"We get it!" Lana interrupted. "You have a lot of Aunt Tillys in your family tree."
"As well as a lot of root rot," Ray quipped.
"HA!" Mallory grinned. "Good one!"
"We want to hear about the one in Winston Creek," Lana said. "Continue."
"Well Aunt Tilly was basically the head of Winston Creek society as well as the town's richest woman," Cheryl added. "She owned the local salt mine, a hotel on Main Street as well as basically backing the Winston Creek bank. And several other properties. She was basically the mayor of the town without those annoying elections."
"They can be annoying, can they?" Mallory sighed as she took a drink.
"Winston Creek was a lovely prosperous little town," Cheryl went on. "One day the local church got a new reverend when the old one dropped dead in the middle of the sermon. So in came Reverend March. He and Aunt Tilly did not get along."
"Really?" Mallory rolled her eyes. "What a shock."
"For starters, even though the wealthiest people in town attended church there, the place was falling to pieces," Cheryl said. "So when Reverend March asked for funds to rebuild it as well as a new parsonage, Aunt Tilly refused. And told her friends to do so as well. Aunt Tilly was a real skinflint, even by Tunt standards."
"And it didn't stop there," Cheryl went on. "Aunt Tilly and Reverend March would fight over everything. She got mad when he ministered to her butler and maids and wouldn't stop. She got mad when he would say sermons about love and responsibility to your fellow man instead of how everybody should just listen to rich people and let them rule their lives and stuff. She got mad when he replaced the tone-deaf choir run by her sister Tabitha Tunt Hartwell with a children's choir people actually wanted to listen to and came into the church to hear it. And she was mad that because of that attendance went up and the church got more crowded."
"In other words," Lana said. "She was mad because Reverend March was doing his job."
"Bingo," Cheryl nodded. "He even stopped the bingo games. Said it was too Catholic and too much like gambling. But years ago, Aunt Tilly convinced the previous reverend to let it happen so it would give her grandmother something to do every weekend and get her out of the house. And she was also getting a bit of a kickback from it…"
"So what did your Aunt Tilly do in retaliation?" Ray asked.
"Everything she could," Cheryl said. "Until finally she came up with the bright idea of smearing the good name of the reverend. See there was this family called the Giatonni's that moved out of town recently to San Diego. And they had a daughter that was in the same class as the reverend's eldest son. She made up the rumor that the family had to move to San Diego. Because the eldest son got the daughter pregnant."
"That wasn't true was it?" Lana asked.
"Of course not," Cheryl waved. "They moved because the father got a better paying job that was closer to his mother and family that lived there. The pregnancy thing was a complete lie. But the town didn't know that. Soon the boy was expelled from school for no good reason. And Reverend March's family was soon shunned throughout town."
"That's horrible," Lana was stunned.
"Isn't that the plot of One Foot In Heaven?" Ray asked.
"Where do you think they got the idea to make the movie from?" Cheryl asked. "Only they had to tone down the ending. Which was really gory!"
"I thought it was actually based on a real person's life?" Ray asked.
"It was but the same thing happened in Winston Creek," Cheryl shrugged. "But with a way different ending!"
"What happened?" Lana asked.
"Well the Reverend tracked town the girl's family and soon found out the truth that she wasn't pregnant and it was a smear campaign," Cheryl said. "Needless to say, the Giatonni's were not exactly thrilled to have their name dragged through the mud for no reason."
"I'm guessing they didn't use a lawyer did they?" Ray asked.
"Technically yes," Cheryl said. "During one sermon in church, the Giatonni family stormed right into the church to confront Aunt Tilly. Came back from San Francisco to sort it out. The girl, her mother, her father, her grandmother, and a host of aunts, uncles and cousins went right up to Aunt Tilly before everyone in church and accused her of slander right then and there. One of the uncles was a lawyer and threatened to sue Aunt Tilly if she didn't apologize right then and there."
"Let me guess," Lana sighed. "She didn't."
"Nope, she stood her ground and tried to deny it," Cheryl shook her head. "But the whole story came out. Some of her so-called society friends folded like a lawn chair and confessed that Tilly told them to spread the false rumor around town. But Aunt Tilly wouldn't budge. That was when Grandmother Giatonni placed a curse on the town. That as long as the town honored the name of Tunt, it would never know peace."
Cheryl then went on. "And then they sued Aunt Tilly who had to like pay them a fortune just to keep it from going to court. The family used the money to start and run a very successful string of pastry shops in the city of San Diego. And then they bought a few businesses and within a few generations had their own small bakery empire. So, they came out like gangbusters."
"But what happened with Aunt Tilly?" Ray asked.
"After that day at church, most of the ladies in Winston Creek cut her dead," Cheryl said. "Especially when Reverend March dropped dead a few days after the sermon. Heart attack."
Cheryl went on. "So, in retaliation Aunt Tilly closed the salt mine, the hotel she owned in town, and stopped giving money to the fire department. Hundreds of people were put out of work and many of them lost their homes. Because you know? There were some fires and since the fire department had their fire wagon repossessed there was no way to put them out."
"I can understand her reasoning on that," Mallory admitted.
"You would," Ray gave her a look.
"Except for the fire department part," Mallory added. "That's just short sighted."
"It was," Cheryl nodded. "In so many ways. Mainly because the day after she closed the hotel and the salt mines, the hotel burned down."
"There you are," Mallory said.
"She thought by cutting jobs that would force the town to come to heel and make them respect her," Cheryl said. "But all it did was make people mad. And throw rotten fruit at her carriage whenever she went down the street. So, she foreclosed the mortgage on the only grocery store in town."
"Oh, my God," Lana gasped.
"And on that very same day the new minister came into town," Cheryl said. "But the cross on top of the steeple of the church came loose with a big gust of wind and down in came on the minster! SPLAT!"
"Now why can't I write stories like this?" Ray remarked.
"By now more than half the town of Winston Creek was convinced that the Tunt family was the cause of all the trouble," Cheryl added. "Didn't help matters when Aunt Tilly's nephew, Charles C. Tunt ran over a crippled girl when he was driving drunk with his carriage. In front of the school house during recess."
"Sweet Jesus," Ray gasped.
"Ran the wagon right into the schoolhouse and into the classroom," Cheryl said. "You know how nowadays you hear about a car or a bus going into somebody's house or business like every other day? Charles C. Tunt was the first to do that."
"Leave it to the Tunts to start a trend," Mallory said dryly.
"Charles C. Tunt always had a lousy sense of direction," Cheryl shrugged. "And even less sense when speaking to people. He said right after the accident, and I quote. Just give the crippled girl's parents a quarter. That's more than what she would have been worth alive anyway."
"Oh my God! That's horrible!" Lana gasped.
"Did I mention the crippled girl's father was a banker and her uncle was the chief of police in that town?" Cheryl asked.
"No, you did not," Mallory said. "But that does shed some light in what I expect to be some rather bloody revenge."
"That was when the town of Winston Creek decided to have a good old fashioned hanging," Cheryl said.
"Knew it," Mallory said.
"This didn't end well for Charles, did it?" Ray winced.
"Duh," Cheryl snorted. "Well somehow Charles escaped the mob and made it to Aunt Tilly's manor. Aunt Tilly had her servants shut the doors. Which they did. Right before they ran out the back door and let the mob in from there."
"This is where it gets messy," Ray winced.
"And how!" Cheryl nodded. "Charles C. Tunt and almost all the other family members of the Tunt family that lived in the town of Winston Creek were killed. Nine Tunts were shot, stabbed, bludgeoned and strangled that day. The tenth was Aunt Tilly's grandmother, but she died of a heart attack like ten minutes before the mob came in. So she doesn't really count in the murder tally."
"I suppose not," Mallory was so stunned she stopped drinking.
"The entire town looted Aunt Tilly's home and burned the mansion to the ground," Cheryl grinned. "They say you could see the fire from three towns over. Ahhh…Those were the days."
"The days of murdering Tunts?" Mallory asked. "Actually yes…. It would have been nice to have been around back then."
"Ironically the only survivor was Aunt Tilly," Cheryl said. "She escaped with the help of her most loyal maid. She had no choice but to flee with only the clothes on her back, a bag full of cash and jewels, a corset with diamonds sewn in, five of her favorite fur coats, a hat with a secret money stash in it and the family bible. Which was cut out in the middle to hide a flask of bourbon."
"Carrying only the essentials I see," Ray said dryly.
"Aunt Tilly fled into exile and lived the rest of her days in Paris, France," Cheryl said. "Which wasn't that long. About two weeks after she moved there she was walking by the Cathedral of Notre Dame and a gargoyle came loose and fell right on top of her. SPLAT!"
"This is like an episode of American Horror Story," Ray told Lana. "You know? When American Horror Story was good."
"Winston Creek then put into law a No Tunts Allowed policy," Cheryl added. "Which at first no one believed. Cousin Percy Tunt was the strongest disbeliever. He went to Winston Creek to claim what he believed was his rightful inheritance. But when what was left of him was mailed back to New York in several small boxes, the rest of the Tunts got the message."
"And how," Ray winced.
"It's said that today Winston Creek is a bustling prosperous little town," Cheryl nodded. "Which the Tunts have stayed away from like the plague."
"Some might consider the Tunts themselves a plague," Mallory winced as she took a drink.
"Yeah," Cheryl laughed. "I have some really sick relatives."
"They probably think the same about you," Mallory added.
"Ironically a lot of members of the Giatonni family moved back to Winston Creek and set it up there as one of their headquarters," Cheryl said. "They changed their name to Giant so it would sound more American and have been rivals of the Tunt family ever since."
"That is unbelievable," Lana was stunned. She looked at AJ who was still happily playing with her toys. "I am so glad AJ doesn't pay attention to our conversations."
"Sometimes I wish I didn't pay attention to our conversations," Ray groaned.
"Well I'd better get to work," Cheryl stood up. "Those papers won't shred themselves."
"What papers?" Lana asked.
"Whatever I can find," Cheryl shrugged and walked away.
"Every time I hear things about Cheryl's family…" Ray shuddered.
"I'm amazed any Tunts are still alive," Lana admitted. "Seriously, I would have thought with all the things they've done they would have been murdered into extinction by now."
"I think I'm going to go call Winston Creek and see if they have any decent hotels," Mallory walked away. "I may take my next vacation there."