Hello folks! So this was originally only going to be two, possibly three chapters and it was only going to be about the group's road trip. But then I thought about where they could go on said road trip and was like, "Oh my God. Disney World!" And then I thought about all of the wonderful possibilities of things that could happen to them at Disney World and suddenly, a full-length story was born. :)
I have it planned out and only a few chapters are written, so bear with me. It'll be ten chapters and, no, I obviously don't own anything. Enjoy!
Early Modern Fantasy
Chapter One: Over the River
"Mickey's Montage- it's five a.m., June fifteenth is the date, and the sun is just about to rise on the seven brave souls preparing to take a three-day trek by car. The bags are piled high in the van built for eight as each near and dear friend waits anxiously for their trip to begin. Cameras are queued and ready for action. Snacks are packed beside each seat for easy access. Sunscreen and bathing suits are a must. Everyone is eager to pile into the vehicle and hit the road. Their only destination- adventure."
"Abed," Jeff cuts off him off, rolling his eyes. "What did we say about the voiceover? I'm not listening to that the entire trip down."
Abed frowns, puts down his voice recorder and shakes his head. "Sorry. I forgot how much that annoys you."
"Well I think it's great," Annie grins cheerfully, lugging a pink-and-white polka dot suitcase behind her and pointing at it when she catches Jeff's eye. "That's the last one, I swear."
"Jeez Annie," Jeff grunts, heaving her suitcase into the back of the eight-passenger van. "You packed as if we were going for two months instead of two weeks."
"I have to be prepared for everything," She defends. "Plus, I brought the rest of the screened t-shirts that couldn't fit into Troy's bag."
"Screened t-shirts?" Britta asks skeptically, tossing a duffel bag and a backpack into the back of the van as well. "Oh no, we're not going to be like those cheesy family reunion groups, are we? Please tell me we don't have matching neon shirts."
But Troy and Abed share a grin and produce one of many brightly colored t-shirts, shouting, "Surprise!"
Jeff turns to Britta and asks, "Is it too late to back out of this?"
Their shirts all read the same message, only in different fonts for the different days and parks they would be attending: "Greendale Seven" is written in the loopy, bubbly Disney font and each member of the study group has their name screened on the back of their respective shirt. Rolling their eyes at the tackiness, Jeff and Britta load the remaining luggage into the rented van and take their seats inside, grumbling, but Shirley coos excitedly about how cute the shirts are and now they won't get separated in the parks because they'll be able to spot the shirts from a mile away. Pierce is last to arrive in Greendale's parking lot, where they're meeting to begin their trip, but when he does, he's packed surprisingly light. They'd all expected him to bring his entire mansion on their vacation.
Because the Greendale seven had had such a trying year, they decided, upon the completion of their junior year at Greendale , that they would take a trip together for a little summer vacation and, after much deliberation, they decided on Disney World. Disney Land was much closer, but Shirley and Abed had both been insistent that they experience Disney in its true form, and the real, original, and larger park was in Orlando, Florida. So, because Pierce had a fear of flying and didn't trust airline pilots ("Those bumbling idiots. You never know what they're doing up there in the cockpit. Why do you think they call it a cockpit, anyway?"), they rented the largest vehicle Hertz Rental Cars had and decided to make the drive all the way down to Orlando. Yeah. They were in for a real treat.
A little after five in the morning, with Pierce fumbling with his atlas and Jeff and Britta arguing over which highway would get them to the turnpike faster, Troy punches their destination into the GPS and they're off. Jeff mentions he needs his beauty rest and falls asleep against the window and Britta pokes fun at this for a good half an hour before she too falls asleep, much to everyone's relief. With Troy at the wheel and Annie as his copilot, that leaves Abed and Shirley in the middle and Jeff, Britta, and Pierce in the backseat. They've just left Greendale County when Shirley produces a small tin from her comically large bag.
"I brought muffins!" She says gleefully. "I know it's early still, but I'm sure everyone will be hungry for breakfast before you know it! There's blueberry, cinnamon, chocolate chip, and corn!"
"Ooh, I'll take a blueberry. Thank you, Shirley!" Annie squeals excitedly and when Troy shoots her a look, she turns back to Shirley and says, "So will Troy."
She simultaneously eats her muffin and feeds another to Troy, who, thankfully, doesn't take his hands off the wheel. Pierce, too, accepts a muffin, and eats quickly before complaining for a good half hour about how bored he is. Like a child, he asks Troy every ten minutes if they're there yet, and, like over-annoyed parents, Troy and Annie continuously shoot him down. He grumbles, "I don't have anything to do and my ass is going numb."
"Pierce," Shirley frowns. "We've only been in the car for an hour."
"Well people my age aren't meant for long car trips," He responds. "I'm too old for this shit."
"Cool, like Murtaugh," Abed grins. "Though, if you're like him, just because you say you're too old for it, doesn't mean you're going to stop doing it."
"Mur-who?" Pierce asks and then shakes his head. "See, I don't even get your references. I probably won't understand a single thing this entire trip."
Troy nearly stops the car in shock. "You've never seen Lethal Weapon?"
Annie pats his shoulder soothingly and turns around in her seat to face Pierce. "I'm sure you've seen a bunch of the movies they're going to reference, Pierce. A lot of them came out… a while ago."
"Didn't you go to school with Walt Disney?" Jeff yawns, half-awake now, and Pierce glares at him.
"For your information, Walt Disney is dead," Pierce informs Jeff and the rest of the group shares a 'what-does-that-have-to-do-with-anything?' look.
"Yeah, but I heard his body's sitting on ice somewhere," Troy says. "That's got to be a rumor."
"No, I've heard he was cryogenically frozen and his body is stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride," Annie supplements. "But I doubt that's true. I mean he's been dead almost fifty years. They're not going to keep a frozen body under a children's ride."
At this, Britta stirs, rubbing an eye blearily. "Why are we talking about dead, frozen bodies?"
Jeff, who's slipping out of consciousness again, responds, "We missed the conversation. Just go back to sleep, Britta."
"Mm, don't tell me what to do," She says, but does so anyway.
Annie looks slightly uneasy and tells Shirley, "I can't believe we signed ourselves up for two weeks of that."
"I know," Shirley nods curtly, agreeing. "I mean sometimes they can be cute, but most times they make me want to hit myself upside the head with a brick."
And so on they drive, with Pierce giving into his situation and falling asleep, much to everyone else's relief. Jeff and Britta are also still asleep, which helps everyone feel a tad bit better, considering they're not stuck in a confined space listening to the two of them banter. Annie takes a short cat nap herself and wakes up a little later to find Shirley passed out and Abed and Troy beat boxing back and forth and making up ridiculous raps about the signs on the side of the road they pass ("Slow! Construction workers up ahead! You better slow down, before they end up dead!", "Gas station in five miles, rest stop in two. Don't know why they're not together, that's why I'm asking you!", "Doing seventy in a sixty-five, yeah, I'm doing seventy in a sixty-five…"). She has to laugh, but she's really not shocked. This is Troy and Abed, after all.
A little after nine a.m., they pass the "Welcome to Kansas!" sign, and, of course, break into song per Abed's request. He begins, "Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. There's a land that I've heard of, once in a lullaby."
Troy picks up as the occupants of the backseat begin to awaken. "Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."
"Someday I'll wish upon a star," Annie continues as Shirley stirs behind her. "And wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt, like lemon drops, away upon the chimney tops. That's where you'll find me."
Shirley's barely awake, but awake enough for this. She sings, "Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow. Why oh why can't I?"
"If happy little bluebirds fly," Abed, Troy, Annie, and Shirley finish the song, to Jeff, Britta, and Pierce's chagrin. "Beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I?"
They clap for themselves, not waiting for the backseat to do so, and Jeff asks, "Just so I'm prepared, how many Wizard of Oz references can I expect while we're driving through Kansas?"
"Verdict?" Abed states. "Quite a few."
They pass a thruway that contains a candy shop and Annie, in the weirdest voice possible, begins to sing, We represent the Lollipop Guild! The Lollipop Guild! The Lollipop Guild! And in the name of the Lollipop Guild, we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland! They see a billboard advertisement for an off-Broadway production of Wicked, and Abed and Shirley launch into, "Ding dong, the Witch is dead! Which old witch? The Wicked Witch! Ding dong, the Wicked Witch is dead!" And, once they get more inland, a little before eleven a.m., the weather starts to turn and the clouds ahead are getting thicker and greyer, which, of course, makes Troy shout, "It's a twister! It's a twister!"
Finally, Jeff groans and says, "Can we talk about something else? Anything else?"
"Ooh!" Annie squeals, Wizard of Oz forgotten momentarily as she rummages in her bag. "I brought Mad Libs!"
"Oh my God," Britta says outwardly. "I haven't done one of those since sixth grade. Everyone used to put swear words and vulgar parts of the body for all the answers."
"Really?" Troy asks, intrigued. "Because when I did them, we all just used to put 'poop' and 'fart'."
"Very mature," Shirley shakes her head.
Abed shrugs. "Might not be mature, but the comedic value is higher, that way."
"Okay, who wants to go first?" Annie asks, but no one volunteers.
"How do you play?" Jeff asks apprehensively and everyone else glances at him skeptically.
"Jeff, really?" Troy wonders. "I mean, I know you're older than the rest of us, but you're not ancient."
He throws a sidelong glance at Pierce through the rearview mirror and Jeff scoffs. "I've heard of it, I've just never done them. Sue me."
"Okay," Abed nods. "But I have to know, as a former practitioner of the law, will you represent yourself in court?"
"Jeff, it's really easy," Britta explains. "It's like you're writing a story, only Annie has the storyline and you're supplying her the words. You'll give her a bunch of nouns and verbs and things and then when she's done copying them down, she'll read the story back to you and usually, it doesn't make any sense. That's why it's hilarious."
"Sounds ridiculously boring," He frowns but Annie's already got her purple pen poised.
"Okay your story's theme is 'A Gangsta Story'," She reads and they all laugh.
"Good, because Jeff could not be any more gangsta," Troy states sarcastically and nearly cries with laughter.
But Annie ignores this and says, "Give me an animal."
"Any animal?" He asks and the brunette nods. "Um… a bear?"
She scribbles this down and says, "A noun."
"Seatbelt," Jeff says, drawing upon the things around him.
"A place."
"Kansas."
"A plural noun."
Eyeing Shirley's baking tin, he responds, "Muffins."
After a couple of minutes, Annie clears her throat and dons a gangsta voice to read Jeff's story. "Tommy the gangsta bear was walking up the street to his seatbelt in the Kansas. But just as he came inside he saw that all his gangsta muffins had been replaced with tough stuff. He was so mad that he kicked his elbow and fell into the broomstick. Then, when he got out he started searching all of the seatbelt. But after 5 hours of looking around he saw a speaker walking around with all his bling. So, Tommy stopped the fool, and tickled all the items that the speaker had stolen from him. "What`s your problem you middle watch! If you wanna be a gangsta buy your own bling, and clothes, don`t steal mine" Tommy recoiled. And then he went home and lived baldly ever after."
Shirley giggles but Jeff doesn't even have a slight smirk on his face. "That was stupid."
"Yeah, that one was kind of lame," Troy agrees, but still says joyfully, "My turn! My turn!"
Playing Mad Libs keeps the group occupied for about an hour and when they reach Salina, Kansas, they decide to stop for lunch. It's twelve thirty and when they all exit the vehicle, they're glad to stretch their cramped bodies after being crammed in a car for the past seven and a half hours. The restaurant they've stopped at is a twenty-four/seven diner that's fifties-themed, but aren't they all? They fill up on grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes, diner specialties, before hitting the bathrooms, walking around the diner a few times to get feeling back into their legs and feet, and then hitting the road again.
A few feet down the road from the diner is a gas station, which they stop at immediately to fill up for the next leg of their journey. Troy retires his driving skills for the day, but not before buying this tank of gas, panicking momentarily that perhaps people in Kansas didn't quite pump gas in the same way as they did in Colorado. Everyone tries to ignore this stupidity. Instead, Pierce uses the restroom again, Shirley pauses to call her family, and Annie sits behind the steering wheel, for it's her turn to drive the group onward. Jeff and Britta have entered the gas station to find sustenance to tide the group over until dinner and come out arguing over what they should have bought. But they've got pretzels, trail mix, and a few boxes of candy and bottles of water, so they're good to go.
It's nearing two o'clock when they're on the road again, but Topeka isn't far away and it's their last major Kansas landmark before they leave the state for Missouri. Pierce falls asleep again, as he always does when there's a good meal in his stomach, and the group is glad that they don't have to listen to anymore of his whining. Shirley then leads the car in a group sing along and they go through all of the classics before landing on Jeff and Britta's all-time favorite- "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." They had all pitched in and sang the song for a while, but, obviously, the song goes on and on and one by one, they all got sick of it.
Except Jeff and Britta, who had sung the song to its near completion and you can only imagine how long that takes.
"Five bottles of beer on the wall, five bottles of beer," Jeff says animatedly. Any song about liquor has his vote. "Take one down, pass it around, four bottles of beer on the wall."
"Four bottles of beer on the wall, four bottles of beer," Britta takes over, just as excitedly. "Take one down, pass it around, three bottles of beer on the wall."
"Three bottles of beer on the wall, three bottles of beer…"
"… take one down, pass it around…"
"… No more bottles of beer on the wall…"
Shirley and Annie sigh in relief, but Jeff and Britta are hardly done. "No more bottles of beer on the wall. No more bottles of beer. Go to the store and buy some more. Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall-"
"No, we are not- We are done with this song, thank you!" Annie shrieks and wakes Pierce, who begins shouting.
"What? We're still in this car?" He frowns. "I had a dream I was drinking a beer with Walt Disney. For some reason, the beers kept on coming…"
Jeff and Britta snicker and Shirley suggests, "Why don't we play the license plate game? Let's see who can find the license plate from the farthest state!"
At first, they all seem to be from Kansas, especially when they drive through Topeka and subsequently as they're headed towards Kansas City. But then, they see plates from New York, from Georgia, from Montana, and finally, it's Abed with the win- he spots a car with a license plate from Ontario, Canada. They stop for a barbecue dinner in Kansas City, just as they're toeing the border, but it's nearing six o'clock and they're all getting peckish. Pierce makes a mess of himself and they have to ask their waitress for extra wet napkins and Britta, of course, doesn't eat anything. When they're on the road again, Annie drives through the border and past the "Welcome to Missouri" sign.
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," Abed says in a high-pitched voice and then turns to face Jeff, apologizing. "That was the last one, I promise."
But Jeff only chuckles. "No, the moment needed that."
It's getting dark as Annie drives down the turnpike, but they can tell that Missouri, unlike flat, tornado-ridden Kansas, is greener, with more foliage even if they do have just as many tornadoes. The night sky is a crisp violet, with glittering, twinkling stars, and they're all just starting to realize just how tired they are. Troy glances around uneasily, though, and when Annie asks why, he says, "I don't trust Missouri. They still hang the Confederate flag here."
"What?" Jeff questions. "Missouri wasn't even part of the Civil War."
"Well they still lynch black people here, I know that," Troy states matter-of-factly. "Watch how they treat Shirley and me when we check into our hotel later. You'll see."
"Troy, that's the most racist thing I've ever heard," Britta scolds. "This isn't the sixties; I'm pretty sure people are over the race thing."
"Yeah, we'll see," Troy says, not at all convinced.
And, when Annie pulls into the parking lot of their St. Louis hotel, Troy is proven to be both right and wrong. The bellboys at the hotel take in their information, sneering, and hand out their room keys with looks of sheer and utter disgust. It's not Troy and Shirley they particularly don't like; it's all of them. For some reason, their exhausted-but-eager personalities scream out-of-state and they must give the appearance of haggard tourists, because the bellboys don't even try to bring in their bags for them. So, to be fair, they don't tip them. Instead, they break their group in threes- Troy and Abed in one room, the girls in another, and Jeff and Pierce, much to the former's chagrin, in the last.
The rooms are tiny and absolutely horrendous; the carpets are sticky and smell somewhat like cat urine ("Oh, Britta should feel right at home," Jeff comments to Pierce, who doesn't understand), the walls are painted a nauseating green, and the furniture looks as though it had been through the last bad tornado. The couch in Abed and Troy's room has a giant purple stain on it, the shower in Jeff and Pierce's room runs cold and smells of sulfur, and the sheets on the girls' beds are cold and a bit damp, as if the maids hadn't let them run their full cycle in the washing machine and dryer. But despite all of these setbacks, they've made it to St. Louis in one piece.
And you know what? Tomorrow's another day.