4
From the deep bowels of an urban subway system under the foundations of Coeursville, four young adults and their big dog finally found light and merged from a would-be underworld into the world and wonderful exterior daylight. Fred shielded his eyes against the sun after getting used to the light while Daphne strolled forth pulling on her purloined sunglasses. Scooby dashed ahead to make friends with a tree while Velma mentally did some seducing where they were. This alternate reality was almost like their world, but not quite. The Coeursville of their world did not have a subway and judging by the straight line they had taken, they should have come up through the Saugus River. Instead, she discovered her and her friends upon an exterior railroad tunnel in the middle of suburbia America. The train tracks continued ahead of them into infinity into an horizon resembling a perfect Norman Rockwell painting or a table top train blown to full size. To their right was constant wilderness of thick woods, impassable brush and forestry as far as she could see. On the other side were the backyards of private homes built against the train tracks. The earth down to these yards were steep and awkward and possessed the presence of absent children who spent their childhood by crushing pennies on the tracks and climbing on the trestle. Shaggy stretched his arms over to crack his back into place and survey these environs with her.
"Aw, sunlight... finally!" He grinned eager to get out of that haunted subway tunnel. "Where to now, Velma."
"I'm not sure." Velma was still mentally computing distance and space. "According to my estimations, we should be arriving at the river. Instead, we seem to have emerged on the edge of suburbia."
"Velma, your computations may be off just a bit." Fred reasoned. "After all, we were lost underground for a good while."
"Another observation, Fred," Velma checked her watch. "My digital watch is set perfect to Greenwich Time and tells me that it is going on seven o'clock. So why is the sun still straight up in the sky?"
"What's that mean?" Daphne asked aloud.
"It means it's already dinner time, and Scooby and I are starving!" Shaggy rubbed his stomach while Scooby struggled to stay on his feet and then passed out with his legs sticking straight up in the air.
"Shaggy's right..." Velma pointed out. "Not only does this reality seem to be desolate, deserted and terrorized by giant doppelgangers and ghosts, but it also seems distorted by altered rules of space, time and physics."
"I hear voices." Shaggy cocked his head as Scooby came to life and started making noises of devotion to him almost identical to a human voice.
"Could be ghosts!" Scooby was making sounds of an almost human voice again.
"I hear voices too." Fred looked around. Maybe the city was deserted, but the suburbs were still inhabited. He looked to one backyard and then raced up the tracks a few feet trying to tell where the voices were coming from. Daphne turned just a bit and looked down a worn path, over a creek and up a small hill to a large backyard behind a large colonial-style house with a swimming pool. She couldn't see people, but she heard the sound of a body off a diving board and then a splash of water.
"Guys, this way!" She lead the way to the private party she was hearing. The awkward childhood path took them away from the train tunnel and over the creek flowing into the subterranean sewer system. A small hop over the running creek and then a short trek up the opposite bank into a private property. At the top of the short hill, they stood and looked upon a vast meticulously kept yard with trees of oak, spruce and fir and then ahead to a swimming pool surrounded by tanning ladies, bathing suit clad beauties and cosmetically enhanced perfect bodies too perfect to be real. The house itself was vast and intimidating: a regal and opulent mansion three stories tall with turrets, bay windows and balconies designed for the lives of the financially secure.
"Finally," Daphne stood ready to be accepted by them. "My kind of people." She pressed forward ready to be indoctrinated into their hedonistic lifestyle. There was not a single male to be seen among them. Fred glanced to Velma and Shaggy curiously as they advanced, but upon closer examination, he discovered these were not just mere ordinary women. They were actresses and female celebrities he had seen in television and the movies. All of them were beautiful, sexy and attractive beyond belief. Janet Jackson was sipping lemonade in her seat while in the presence of Phoebe Cates recreating her famous pool stance from the teen stoner movie that made her famous. Christina Ricci wringed pool water from her long dark tresses as she lifted herself from the pool. Hillary Duff helped apply tanning lotion to the back of Lindsay Lohan. Britney Spears sat between Melissa Joan Hart and Christina Aguilera. Crystal Bernard was ascending the steps to the dining board with Courtney Thorne Smith and Kimberly Williams-Paisley behind her in matching black bathing suits. Kaley Cuoco, Lynsey Bartilson and Tiffani Thiessen rushed from a patio and jumped straight into the pool. The large splash of water suddenly annoyed Courtney Cox and Shannen Doherty trying to get their tans. Jessica Simpson strolled by with her healthy figure contained by a black bathing suit past Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. The American Idol beauties wore towels as skirts as they joined their voices in song near the picnic table, but Paula Abdul and Cyndi Lauper gently brushed them off from it. Alicia Silverstone and Kristy Swanson ran taunting Alyssa Milano with the top of her bikini with good-natured teasing. Jennifer Love Hewitt lowered her book at poolside at the arrival of the four strangers from the train tracks. Gillian Anderson, Emma Samms and Markie Post also directed their attentions to the arrival of the four lost detectives, but instead of trying to shoo them off, they rushed to greet them with open arms.
"Welcome! Welcome!" Kate Winslet handed Fred a daiquiri and graced Daphne with an iced tea. "Please join us."
"The pool house is over there if you'd like to change into something more comfortable." Reese Witherspoon pointed over beyond Gillian Anderson, Teri Hatcher and Heather Locklear. "We just love guests." She tilted her head lovingly with a bit of her sunny Legally Blonde persona.
"We're not staying long." Velma replied distantly interested but morbidly fascinated.
"Where's the food!" Shaggy cocked his eagerly to fill his stomach.
"Over there!" Raven-haired Jessica Alba pointed to the patio five feet over the pool and chairs. Directed into the right direction, Shaggy hurried with Scooby racing ahead of him. Dodging Mila Kunis and running between Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen, they quickly began loading plates with fried chicken, barbecued ribs, mashed potatoes, corn cobs and portions of everything else. Shakira had to get out of the way to keep from being added to their celebration of gluttony.
"Excuse me," Velma turned analytically suspicious. "But how long have you ladies been here?"
"We live here." Salma Hayek adjusted her bikini bottom and then drifted away with Penelope Cruz.
"Yes," Katie Holmes looked to Fred eager to be a good hostess. "The house has over two hundred rooms and we love it here. There's nothing to do but play and have fun."
"We sing." Kelly Clarkson confessed.
"And we have a wonderful library." Drew Barrymore pulled her waist-length blonde tresses into a ponytail. "It's not like we're a bunch of brainless idiots."
"We did have to kick out Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson for bringing down our collective I.Q.'s." Shannon Elizabeth added.
"Anna-Nicole Smith?" Velma asked.
"Who?" Reese turned to Kate and Shannon.
"Isn't she the one who wondered off?" Renee O'Connor scratched her head of long dark blonde hair.
"No, that was Tara Reid."
"Hey!" Tara picked up a bucket of children and threw it at Kate for that remark. Sitting at a patio table with Mila Kunis, Shaggy and Scooby had sat down ready to eat, but after a few bites, they were recalling the same awful taste of the food from the hotel. The chicken was fake, the taste vanished from their drinks and the barbecue was artificial. Mila bolted from their gagging responses and Ali Larter turned away to sit elsewhere.
"Guys, taste this." Shaggy cringed hungrily at the food. It looked good, but it was horrible. Velma took the egg roll he offered, sniffed it suspectingly and then broke it like a scientist. She then took a tiny taste to sample it, and then spit out the stuff on her tongue rather than swallow it.
"There's something seriously wrong here." She announced out loud. "This food is fake as if we were on a giant move set. It's just something based on an incredible manufactured illusion. Think about it, Fred. Nothing has made sense here. Ghosts, a deserted city, a giant clone of Daphne, food without taste or substance and these women..." Velma pointed across to Madonna and Gwen Stefani. "Both Madonna, Emma Samms and Markie Post have the youthful appearances from the beginnings of the carriers while both the Olsens and Mila Kunis have the appearances of older, more mature women at the pinnacles of their careers."
"I also don't recall Gwen Stefani, Hillary Duff or the Olsens being..." Daphne gestured a bit. "Quite so bosomy either. I think we should move on a bit."
"But we can't be disrespectful to our hosts." Fred grinned as Christina Applegate flirted with him a bit. "We can stay a little while."
"No, we can't!" Daphne stamped her foot to make a stand.
"Daphne," Fred chuckled a bit. "Are you jealous of these ladies?"
"Would you two good people like a piece of sushi?" Sara Michelle Gellar popped up while wearing a floral skirt and top. Briefly interrupting Fred, she held up her plate of small portions of sushi.
"Excuse me, Buffy, but I'm having a conversation with my girlfriend." Fred told her as Sara squealed a bit upset and left them pouting. Daphne just took a second look at the blonde vampire-killer and wondered why she looked familiar or why that usually petite actress was now sporting a thirty-four double-d bust size.
"I beginning to think we never really left the high school." Velma reacted afraid of these nonsensical surroundings.
"Gang, let's sit, rest a while..." Fred briefly admired Wynona Ryder with her hair long again. From over his head, a shingle off the house just barely missed him and a few others rained down off the roof. Lindsay Lohan began screaming her head off and Reese Witherspoon cocked her head up the sky. Fred lifted his head to the roof of the house and saw Daphne's giant clone over the top of the edifice. She pulled the cupola out of her line of view and tried reaching over the large mansion for the cornucopia of normal people at her feet.
"Jackpot!" Her eyes glistened hungrily at the normal people just out of her reach.