"Well, deal with it for now!" Rowenna snapped from behind the wheel. She was beginning to get extremely stressed out, as children weren't her expertise, and she hated family reunions.
"Hey Rowenna...is it just me or has every single ice cream parlor been closed so far?" Harpie mentioned from her station between Rylie and Bade and Anna. Her lucky job was to keep Rylie from tearing Bade and Anna apart, so instead she was the one being bitten, poked, stabbed with random things on the floor, as well as spat on, and anything else that the little devil could possibly think of.
"That money should be mine! They're little! They don't know what to do with it!" Rylie shouted as he continued to claw at Harpie's arm. Harpie gave him a look that made him shut up, for about as long as a fish's memory-span. He instantaneously began to badger her again
"Ro...Find a place...Quick..." Harpie pleaded.
"I'm trying! I'm trying!" Rowenna shouted. Kaylie was up front with her, reading road signs.
"You'd figure they'd have one open. It's the summer-time!" Kaylie whined. Even though the windows in the front seat were open as wide as they could be, the stench of the two dumpster-ridden children was still filling the whole car.
"Hey! Look!" Serenity screamed from her seat, waving her arm around wildly. "That parlor is open!"
"Where? I don't see it!" Rowenna shouted.
"There! Turn now!" Mairi shouted.
Rowenna immediately slammed on the brakes, as they were about to pass it. She pulled in and parked the car. They all piled out of the car in front of the building.
"Fresh air!" Joey said inhaling and exhaling deeply. However, he promptly fell out of the van onto his face. This act of idiocy was ignored by the rest of the group as they were all rushing for the door.
They all walked into the practically empty store and filed up to the counter, the two reeking children, Rachel and Joy right in front. The store owner came out just after Rowenna rang the little bell on the counter. He was a fairly big man who kind of looked like Santa, without the beard or hair.
"Hello and welco-..." He was stopped short, sniffing the air like a connoisseur. "What is that awful smell?" He asked. He smelled the air around the two children, and started gagging. "Get out! I can't have you smelling up my store!" He shouted, covering his face with a handkerchief and ushering them all outside. Once they were safely on the other side of the glass, he locked the door.
Harpie, Joey and Rowenna looked at the door in disbelief. "He did not just do that to us..." Rowenna said.
"Yea he did." Joey said gawking at the man inside.
"Did you notice that that guy looked like Santa…?" Serenity chirped. The other three just looked at her in amazement.
"It doesn't matter! Aaaaaaah!" Harpie shouted, screaming at the top of her lungs and glaring at the children.
Rowenna turned to the kids now infuriated. "Munchkins! Incestuous twins!" Kaylie and Mairi looked at her, horrified. The children looked completely terrified.
"Back in the van!" Joey exclaimed, motioning for them to get back in the car. He was noticing that his sister was about to pop a blood vessel in her fore-head.
"We need to figure something out." Rowenna growled, looking at the retreating forms of her younger cousins. She turned to Harpie, Joey and Serenity.
After the rest piled back into the van, the four of them formed a huddle.
"Alright, there is no ice cream parlor in town that is open today." Rowenna stated.
"And if there is, they'll make the owner and all their other customers gag." Harpie muttered cynically, motioning to the van.
"So then what are we gonna do?" Joey asked.
"I dunno..." Harpie said putting her hand on her chin, rubbing it, as though in deep thought.
"I know!" Serenity almost yelped after they all had a few minutes of contemplating. "Why don't we just go to the grocery store and buy them what ever kind of ice cream they want?" The other three gaped at her.
"Rowenna..." Harpie said.
"Yes Harpie?" Irritation oozed out of her voice.
"I think...that this...is the only useful thing she has said through this whole thing."
"Well let's not sit here waiting for the grass to grow! Let's get a move on!" Joey ordered, "Oh and Harpie...You sit with Joy and Rachel in the very back.."
"Wait! That's not-!"
He smirked quite sadistically, and shoved her into the car. Choosing not to sit with Rylie, Bade and Anna, he turned the job over to Serenity, so that she would get mauled, instead. He took shot gun this time, booting Kaylie out of his seat, and Kaylie and Mairi retreated to the back, yet again.
Rowenna went faster than she even knew that her van could even take her. She was lucky there weren't any cops around or she would have so been pulled over, and that ticket would not have been pretty. They found the nearest Piggly Wiggly and ushered all the kids in. The stampede of children rushed for the ice cream aisle, Rowenna, Joey, Harpie and Serenity rushed after them, Mairi clinging to Joey's side. Kaylie fell behind walking at a normal pace. Soon the whole freezer aisle was flooded with children and flying ice cream.
"We want chocolate!" Bade and Anna said
"I want Butterscotch Almond Chip!" Rylie ordered Joey to get it for him.
"That's nice." Joey muttered.
"Joey, be nice to the little devil, and you won't get hurt." Mairi said, smirking and getting the ice-cream for him.
Kaylie stared at the Ben and Jerry's intently, mentally debating over Chubby Hubby, or Phish Food.
"We want Splendiferously Chocolaty Chocolate Surprise with Marshmallows!"(name provided by Kitsune777) The quints all wailed in unison. Soon...mass chaos (as if there wasn't before) erupted in the aisle. The small children all divided and were throwing all kinds of ice cream into the cart until it was overflowing with gallons upon gallons of ice cream.
"Ok kids...how about you pick out only...a few types of ice cream ok?" Serenity asked them in a cute little voice that you would normally use to talk to a baby.
"No!" they all yelled back together and began to pout.
"Hey guys..." Joey poked Rowenna and Harpie in the shoulders, "How are we gonna pay for all of this?"
They both looked at Harpie. "You have a credit card don't you..." They said with evil smiles on their faces.
"Yea..."
"Good...your using it..." Rowenna ordered her.
"Bu-"
"No buts! Just do it!"
"What crawled up her ass and died?" Joey muttered under his breath.
"The kids? Or that awful smell of them?" Kaylie said, chuckling.
"Fine! But you owe me sooooooooooo bad for this.." She said and dragged the cart to the register.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Five-hundred dollars!" You made me spend five-hundred dollars on ice-cream!" Harpie screamed at Rowenna as the bag boys loaded the ice cream into the van.
"Well you let us use your card..." Joey said looking around innocently.
"Oh well...they have their ice cream..." Harpie said with a sigh, "Now those two need to be bathed." She said pointing to Joy and Anna.
"Once these kids are finished eating? They're all gonna need to be bathed." Rowenna added, looking at one of the quints, who had managed to somehow get ice-cream on their forehead.
---Much, much later---
Harpie, Rowenna, Serenity, and Joey sat on the floor of their bathroom, gasping, covered in soap suds and water.
How right Rowenna had been. Indeed, all of the children had needed to be bathed. Every. Last. One. The process with the quints had been merely automatic, as all the children loved water, and thought this was a game. They loved being passed from one teenager to the next, having various cleaning jobs done to them.
The real difficult task, oddly enough, was getting Bade near the water. Apparently, he was the only child any of them had ever met, who was aqua phobic. He screamed every time water touched him as though he was being sliced with a knife.
"How does he get bathed at home?" Joey had screamed over Bade's shrieks of terror. "He's never quite as dirty as the rest of them!"
Rylie had been able to clean himself, for the most part, as he was five. He'd only needed a little help from Serenity; he wouldn't let any of the others near him.
Once all of the children had been bathed, they were passed to Mairi and Kaylie, who had dried them off, and then clothed them.
"Uh, pardon the intrusion." Kaylie quipped, walking into the bathroom, knocking slightly on the open door. "But we should probably get back to the party hall, don't you think? It's almost 9:50, and the party ends at 10:00..."
"We've spent."
"Since noon."
"With these brats."
"That's.."
"Eleven."
"Hours."
They sobbed from their places on the floor.
Rowenna got up, groaning and sighing. "Let's go. Let's get these munchkins home."
"I'm with ya on that one." Joey grumbled, standing up, almost falling on the slippery floor. He helped Serenity to her feet, and Rowenna gave Harpie a hand up.
"Shall we?"
"Let's shall."
------
It was much easier getting them in the van than before. Bade was completely passed out from the ordeal of being bathed, so Harpie was carrying him over her shoulder as he snored quietly, sucking his thumb. Rylie had finally calmed down. It appeared that he did have a point in time when he had run-down; 10:00. Serenity was half-carrying, half-dragging him towards the van. The quints, sported by Rowenna, Mairi, and Kaylie, were all dozing on and off, muttering things in their sleep.
"They're angels when they want to be." Rowenna mentioned.
"This is why I want kids." Serenity said, sighing. The group, yet again, stared at her in awe.
"I'm never babysitting for you." Joey snapped. "I love you. But no. Not that much."
They strapped all the children into the car, and Joey took shot gun, Serenity, Harpie, Mairi and Kaylie all picking various seats in the back, supporting different sleeping children on the ride home.
----
As they pulled into the parking lot of the reunion hall, Rowenna groaned. "Oh no. Oh gods no."
"What? What is it?" Joey asked. Too late. He saw what was making his sister growl inside.
Every single aunt and uncle he had was walking out of the hall, waving Budweiser's in their shaking, angry fists. Because the windows were rolled down, their angry shouts filled the van.
"Where the hell have you been!"
"Thought they were dead!"
"I should kill you!"
"You're trying to corrupt my children"
"Enough of your crap!"
"What did you think you were doing!"
Rowenna parked the van, sighing and getting out of the van slowly. Joey quickly went to follow suit, but she shook her head at him and turned towards the adults. "Hey guys…sorry we're back so late. We were playing hide and go seek with the kids, and for a prize we gave them ice-cream. And they got kinda sticky, so we gave them all baths."
Unable to argue that this was a valid excuse for not being there, and somewhere, in the back of their drunken minds, noting that they had thrown their children off on her in the first place, none of the adults yelled at her. They all muttered, "fines" and "whatevers" and collected their children, barely sober enough to drive them home.
Kaylie and Mairi got out of the van, sighing and turning back to them.
"I'll see you guys around. It was fun hanging out with you. Haven't done it in a while. I miss you." Kaylie said, giving all three girls a hug, and just kind of nodding at Joey. She handed Rowenna a piece of paper. "That's my cell-phone number. Call me sometime."
"Can do." Rowenna said, smiling and nodding.
"I'll see ya around, Joey." Mairi said huskily, winking at him. He shuddered and glared at her.
"Yeah. Right."
As the four watched their aunts and uncles drive away, Harpie suddenly growled angrily. Rowenna, Joey, and Serenity turned to look at her.
"What?" Joey asked.
"We didn't get anything"
"What do you mean? Ice-cream? Harp, if you wanna pay for it-" Rowenna mentioned. "I'll drive."
"No. We didn't get any money. Nothing. For this."
They stared in amazement, realizing that she was right.
Out in the parking lot, no one could hear them scream.
FIN
)(Well, that's the end. I know. Terrible, eh?
I just felt that this fic needed to be finished. And isn't that a wonderful ending?
If you want sequels, or anything like that, just ask. Reviews would be nice.
Thankee!
Your faithful fan fiction slave-monkeys,
HikariKon and Pengwinn. XD )(