Who Wants to Marry a Sniper Target? - Trinn
Chapter 8: Star Treatment
The personal trailer that had been given to Stu as a gift from StuTV (someone had decided it would be a good idea, for whatever reason, to change the name of their television channel to reflect their newest attraction) was quite a bit smaller than he had expected a star trailer to be. And quite a bit less furnished. It didn't take him long to realize that it was actually a horse trailer, but by then he was being shoved inside by the brutish camera man and the metal door was being padlocked behind him.
Stu pounded on the side for a while in a vain attempt to knock a hole through the unforgiving surface, but then the trailer (which had been hooked up to the back of the TV van) began to move and he fell backwards against the unpadded downhill wall with a thump. He briefly tried to gasp in the air that had been forced out of him as he slid down to sit on the thankfully-sanitary floor, feeling almost worse than he had in the phone booth. At least this horse trailer was BIGGER than the phone booth, and if it didn't smell quite as nice, at least no one was threatening to shoot him. At the moment.
The van pulled into the station parking lot about a half an hour later, and in the search for a parking space big enough for both the trailer and van Stu was knocked around dizzily until he could no longer tell you for certain how many fingers HE had, let alone how many fingers YOU were holding up. Later he suspected the van had circled around so many times on purpose, perhaps to confuse him as to the secret location of the TV station's parking lot, for when they did finally park Stu could see out the holes in the top of his trailer how empty every other parking space was, which was extremely.
The TV crew slapped high-fives for no particular reason as they all piled out of the van, then scuttled inside their station building before they burned in the sunlight as Stu, who had been left behind in his trailer, suddenly felt certain they would.
After waiting for some time for the crew to come back, Stu decided he might be out here for some time and would survey his surroundings to see if anything at all could be used to his advantage.
Empty parking lot. No help there. Across the street he could see a tall wire fence surrounding a dreary prison-like building and masses of muddy grass, as well as some metallic structures that Stu couldn't quite recognize. Some of them looked rather nasty and forbidding.
It wasn't until around noon the next day when Stu discovered the true identity of the building across the street. He had slept badly that night in his freezing horse trailer, as, apparently, no one had thought to come get him, and he had finally really fallen asleep in the early morning when it started to warm up a little. He was awoken at 12:15 by three small, yet undeniably trollish, creatures who were brandishing knobbly sticks and red Twizzlers. They wore what looked like either prison garb or school uniforms, and were proved to be the latter when Stu saw the small badges on the left of each of their jackets reading "Saint Fiacre's School for Trollish Boys."
"Hey horsie!" called the tallest troll of the group, banging the side of Stu's trailer with his stick. Stu, who had only shown his eyes and the top of his head when he looked outside for whatever had woken him, sunk down farther until he couldn't see anything of them, but also couldn't be seen himself. Ignore them and they'll leave, became his hopeful mantra as the three boys circled the trailer and all began beating on it at once, yelling "Horsie! Horsie! Horsie!" as if performing a sacrificial ritual.
This went on for quite some time, to the point where Stu's hair was even more ruffled-looking than before and he was wondering incredulously how much longer the little buggers could possibly go on beating his cage. It turned out that the only reason they DID stop was that they were interrupted by a StuTV executive out on a well-timed smoking break.
"Hey kids! Get away from there!" The executive jogged slowly across the parking lot toward them, stopping halfway across the small asphalt expanse to catch his breath and then limping wheezily the rest of the way. "Leave... horsie... alone..." he gasped, hallucinating slightly from the tiring workout. The executive then had to sit down, cough a few times, and eventually pass out in exhaustion.
Stu tentatively peeked through one of the holes near the top of the trailer, and saw with relief that the trolls were now becoming too preoccupied with the StuTV executive to remember the horsie. They hauled the executive up and carried him over their heads, chanting an ominous phrase that Stu thought must have been in another language as they scuttled back towards Saint Fiacre's across the street.
Stu sank back down to the floor in relief, letting out a deep breath. His relief didn't last too long, however, as he was interrupted again five minutes later by a swarm of more television executives from StuTV. One of them opened the back of the trailer and Stu was yanked outside into the squint-inducing sunlight.
"C'mon Stu-- it's time for your first television spot!" called one optimistic voice as bewildered Stu was pulled into the StuTV building by both arms. Once inside, he was whisked away to a small, brightly-lit room that was apparently used for slathering actors with various creams to make their skin look normal under the greenish studio lighting. Stu was slathered, then his hair was ruffled a bit more than was necessary ("because the female audience likes that look"), and finally he was led out into the studio itself.
"Oh... my," Stu said worriedly, recognizing the set before him as well as the three people seated behind a table draped with a blue sheet.
"Hello Stu," said Paula Abdul, smiling warmly at him.
"'Sup, dawg?" said Randy Jackson.
And Simon Cowell sighed boredly.