A/N: This story was inspired by a comment I made to another SP fan writer, Hollycomb, a couple days ago. I don't own South Park or any of its characters.
Saturday morning in an otherwise empty house. Stan and Kyle, still in pajamas after last night's sleepover, sat on the couch in Kyle's living room watching Terrance and Phillip reruns, their twelve grade homework still sitting on the table untouched. They both told themselves they would get to it this weekend; for now it was mindless television while enjoying the afterglow from their latest sleepover. They still slept in the same bed even though they were both getting too big to fit in it comfortably. They both still sat on the couch with their thighs pressed together, their shoulders touching, and they still silently denied, both to themselves and to each other, that there was anything more to it than just something best friends did.
Their morning would have passed peacefully, the beloved old cartoon playing in the background as each simply enjoyed being in each other's presence. Unfortunately a commotion arose outside that put an end to that. Cartman's voice reached their ears like fingernails on a chalkboard, distant at first then getting higher and louder like some weird Doppler effect as he got closer: "You guys! Hey you guys!"
"Oh Christ, now what?" Stan moaned. They instinctively moved a couple inches away from each other, not even realizing they had done so. The door burst open and Cartman ran inside, sweating and panting. "You guys. Are not going to. Believe this," he panted. "I mean…just…"
"What is it now, fatass?" Kyle asked, clearly annoyed. He was hoping to have Stan to himself for the rest of the day, and this sounded like Cartman thought he was on to something really important that would probably turn out to be completely stupid instead.
"Give me a second to catch my breath," Cartman wheezed. "You guys…are NOT going to believe this. I ran all the way from my house."
"Oh what is that, like six houses?" Stan mocked him. "You sound like that fat kid in Stand By Me. He looked at Kyle and they both smiled and began singing: "I ran all the way home…"
"Screw you guys," Cartman said, eerily reminiscent of that movie scene. "You're so not going to believe this—"
"Okay, then what is it?" Stan asked, hoping maybe they could get rid of him if they indulged him for awhile. He knew Kyle's parents would be gone with Ike until about 6:00, giving them several more hours of alone time together. He wanted Cartman gone as badly as Kyle did.
"Kyle!" Cartman said, trying to take charge now. "We need to use your computer. Now Kyle!" He started toward the stairs and went up, not even looking to see if they were following.
Stan and Kyle looked at each other. "We'd better go see what he wants, dude," Kyle said, and they stood up and went up the stairs behind Cartman.
Cartman already had Kyle's computer turned on and booting up. "Make yourself right at home Cartman," Kyle said sarcastically.
"Shut up Jew," Cartman said absently, not looking up from the monitor. "Come on. Come onnn!"
Cartman finally got a browser up, and as he punched in a URL in the address bar, he reiterated: "You guys are not going to believe this."
"This better be good, Cartman!" Stan said, looking with sudden interest at the site Cartman had brought up. A fan fiction site, what?
"Cartman, what the hell is this?" Kyle asked angrily.
"Right there!" Cartman said, pointing to a link on the page that read: South Park (7,341). He moused over it and clicked it, then clicked one more link and stood back as the page loaded. "Read that! I told you that you wouldn't believe it."
They both began reading what was on the page. After only a few seconds, they were staring with amazement.
"Dude," Stan whispered, reading random words from the page aloud. "Kyle…Stan Marsh…South Park. What the hell …this is a story about us!"
"That's nothing Marsh. There's seven thousand, three hundred and forty one stories about us…on just that one site alone. And there're other sites…"
"This has got to be some kind of a joke," Kyle said. "Why would anyone write about us?"
"And I'm afraid that's not all either," Cartman said, shouldering past them to seize the mouse and scroll down. When he found what he was looking for, he stood back again and said accusingly: "What do you guys have to say about this?"
Stan and Kyle read, and after a few seconds, Stan's jaw slowly began dropping open. He wasn't even aware of it happening. All the color drained from Kyle's face, making his red hair seem even brighter.
"Wait…what?!" Kyle cried. Reading aloud now, he said: "Kyle's tongue made slow lazy circles on the underside of Stan's cock, pausing as it reached the tip to lick a clear drop of—"
Stan bolted from the chair and barely made it to the waste basket beside Kyle's desk before he vomited. Kyle ignored this, reading quietly to himself now, a wild mixture of emotions—disgust, longing—warring with each other inside him.
"Dude… this is pretty fucked up, right here!" Stan finally mumbled, leaning miserably over the waste basket. He turned back, wiping his mouth, looking like he could be sick again at any moment. He had trouble looking either of them in the eyes.
"Cartman," Kyle said as Stan returned to the chair and sat next to Kyle again. "How in the hell did you find this?"
"I was looking for something for my 'local events' Social Studies homework, googled 'South Park' and found that." Cartman was starting to sound defensive. "It's not like I wrote all this shit or anything."
"There has to be some sort of explanation," Kyle muttered, shaking his head slowly. I mean…dude, who are these people? Why would anyone want to read stories about…us?"
"I don't know, but we need to get to the bottom of it…and quickly." Cartman stood up, attempting to take charge; Kyle and Stan humored him. "This is what's going to happen next: I'm going to go find Kenny, bring him back here, and the four of us are going to stop at nothing to find out what's going on. You two need to get up to speed about what goes on in these stories about us. We have a lot to talk about here."
Stan and Kyle looked at each other, actually impressed. That seemed like a pretty solid plan. Obviously any hopes they'd had for super best friends' time had to be set aside while they worked on figuring out how this could possibly be happening.
As soon as Cartman had left, Kyle and Stan leaned over Kyle's computer, exploring this strange website. "I thought maybe Cartman came up with this as an elaborate joke, but I don't think so," Kyle said after a few minutes. "It looks like all 7,341 of those links really do lead to some sort of story about us, or at least about our town."
"Click that one there," Stan said, pointing, "the one before this page. It looked like an index page". When the page loaded, they read the first lines. "Look: That says 'relationships'…Stan/Kyle, Stan/Kyle…Kyle/Stan…"
"What the fuck!" Kyle said, pointing further down and now reading aloud himself: "Cartman/Butters. Kenny/Butters. Dude, no way! Kenny/Clyde!"
They spent the next 40 minutes clicking different links, reading a few sentences or paragraphs, then clicking to another. "Click that!" Stan suddenly said pointing, and a moment later they were on a message board for writers and fans. "This might at least give us some idea who these people are."
They read a few messages. "Okay, look at this here," Kyle pointed to one posting. It says that some of the stuff that happens in these stories are 'canon', like they're real. Like if one of these stories says your father is named Randy Marsh and he's a geologist, that's canon; if he's named John Marsh and he's a movie director, that's not canon. And it looks like us having all kinds of gay sex with each other isn't canon."
Stan didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He said: "You'd better book mark that page to show Cartman. You might want to print it, too, in case we need to hand it out to everyone at school. Or else we'll never hear the end of this."
"Look," Kyle said a minute later, indicating a part of the page by circling the cursor with the mouse. "This doesn't make sense either. This says that us having sex with each other isn't 'canon' so when people are writing about us having sex, they're writing stuff that isn't canon. But over here it said that Kenny dies like, almost every week or something and comes back, so when people put that into their stories, they're writing canon too." He shook his head. "Excuse me…but I think I would remember Kenny dying on a semi-weekly basis!"
"It says over here that none of us remember it; he just dies and comes back the next day and everything goes on like nothing happened." He shook his head. "This is stupid! Kyle…what is going on?"
Kyle's cell phone rang, and he grabbed it off the table. "Maybe the four of us can figure out some answers." He flipped the phone open. "Cartman?"
"We'll be there in like ten minutes," Cartman's too loud digitally distorted voice boomed from the phone and Kyle held it away from his head. "I'm walking back now, and Kenny's coming the other way. He just left work. I told him to meet you guys there, that it was important."
"Okay, Cartman. Hurry up, and don't have a stroke or a heart attack before you get here." He hung up without waiting to hear Cartman's return insults.
(Just as he was hanging up, 32,000 feet above them an emergency was being declared aboard a commercial airliner. One of the cargo doors in the bottom of the plane had suddenly burst open due to indifferent maintenance, causing a rapid decompression in the cargo hold. Several pieces of luggage were sucked out as a result, including a cello case which hit the edge of the door on its way out. The case cracked open and was whisked out into the void, the cello it contained taking a more deliberate course downward, the long metal post on its bottom that it rested on while being played leading the way like an arrow.)
Kyle and Stan turned back to the computer. They read for a few minutes, but Kyle was restless. "Let's take a break, get into our clothes and go outside and get some fresh air."
"Sounds good, dude." Stan went to his overnight bag, retrieved some clothes and departed for the bathroom. Kyle pulled clothes from the closet and as he shed his pajamas, he couldn't help thinking about the stories he had just been reading alongside Stan.
He joined Stan in the hallway outside his bedroom and together they made their way downstairs and out the front door into the bright sunlight. It was quite windy. Cartman was just coming up the walkway, and they could see Kenny about a block away coming from the other direction.
Cartman started laughing as Kenny drew closer. "Hey you guys, watch this!" He held a single dollar up over his head. "Kenny, look!" he shouted. "Look, Kenny! A dollar!" He released the bill, and the wind caught it and blew it in Kenny's direction.
"Cartman, you're a dick!" Stan said angrily. Nonetheless, all three watched as, predictably, Kenny ran after it, crossing the street and running up onto someone's front yard to catch up to the dollar bill. All three were watching, all three saw the exact same thing…and none of them could believe what they saw.
Just as Kenny leaned over to pick up the dollar, a cello fell from the sky, its bottom post piercing his back, coming out his chest and plunging into the ground, pinning him. He made a couple loud angry, anguished sounds and then fell silent and motionless.
"OH MY GOD!" Kyle cried out in horror.
