--
Quote of the day:
Lisa: Oh, I'll just rush over and make out with this random person, then go make a naughty pose with this other person.
NoV: Well, whatever you do, don't let Mark fall off the table.
-me and Lisa while watching "La vie boheme"
--
Six little creatures were curled up in bed, dreaming the dreams of tranquillity. These comfy little guys were sound asleep, not planning to wake up for several hours yet. This was a holiday, no reason to wake up bright and early. However, one little creature was already up. This busy-bodied little thing was already showered, dressed and aflame with excitement.
A sudden shout awakened the other six. "Can you believe it's finally here?? Again!" Angel cried.
"Wha? …..early…." Maureen moaned, snuggling into Joanne.
"Mmm…." Collins groaned. "Baby, come back to bed."
"No, no," Angel said in a mothering tone. "You need to get up."
Mark rolled over on the couch, grabbing his camera off the floor and turning it on Angel. "Saturday. Seven am. Angel is a very annoying alarm clock trying to wake us up too early on our vacation."
Angel gave a feigned pout and put her hands on hips. "You're all just jealous because you could never be so perky and gorgeous at seven am! Seriously, time to get up! Margo Fletcher will be presenting in…..thirteen hours, forty-five minutes!" She looked like she was ready to start a parade.
"Good, let's sleep for thirteen hours….get ready in forty-five minutes…." Roger mumbled.
"Need I remind you that we're leaving first thing tomorrow? Don't you want to spend some time having fun??" Angel cried.
"Angel, shut up! God!" Mimi griped. She was definitely not a morning person. She placed her pillow over her head and rolling over, kicking Roger in the process. "I didn't go to bed until two am, I just want to sleep!" she yelled through the pillow.
Angel's lip warbled at the insensitive thing Mimi had just said to her. She snapped back to giddiness quickly, however, remembering the lecture she had been promised at the bottom of the evening. "Come on!" Angel insisted. "Let's go get breakfast and eat it on the beach!"
Mark groaned. "I'm up, I'm up. I can't get back down…." he mumbled, rolling off the couch and onto the floor into a sitting position.
Angel, feeling that Mark's getting up supported her, grabbed Collins' hands and pulled him up. "Get up, Bunny!" she commanded, using a new pet name on him.
"Why call me Bunny?" Collins wondered, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Cause we make love like rabbits?"
Angel giggled. "No, but that works too," she said. "Hey, you know what I want to do today? Other than see the great and amazing show that Margo Fletcher will put on! I would sell my SOUL to see that! But, besides that, I really want to rent one of those seadoo things and ride around!"
"Oh, cool!" Mimi cried. "I want to do something like that too….like parasailing!" She jabbed Roger with her elbow. "Want to get a two-seater parasail?"
Roger sat up, resentfully and shook his head. "No, I don't like heights."
Mimi facefaulted. "Are you suddenly afraid of everything?"
--
An hour or so later Mimi and Angel, arms linked, led Collins and Roger, arms unlinked, down the pier where the seadoos and parasailing rides and such were rented. It was a rickety old bridge jutting out over the ocean where many old men in yellow raincoats (who looked a lot like that fish sticks guy) stood all day fishing. The first part of the pier, on the other hand, had many souvenir shops, bathrooms, a first aid stand, fast food joints and of course the rental shops. It was kind of like a small boardwalk.
Mimi wore a white two-piece suit with a pink butterfly on the left bust and on the backside. Angel had on a blue bikini top under an under-arm length pink jacket along with very short, tight swimsuit shorts. Collins wore black trunks, a new hat, and sandals. Roger wore blue trunks, sandals and sunglasses.
"Hello!" Angel trilled to the rental guy hippie. "I want to rent a seadoo!""Thirty-five dollars by the hour, one hundred dollars by the day," he droned.
"Good God!" Collins exclaimed. "I've had cheaper prostitutes!" When Angel gave him a glare, he amended, "I mean I've heard of cheaper prostitutes…."
"Oh, just pay the man, Pookie," Angel said with a sniff.
"Don't turn into Maureen on me now, baby," Collins said shaking his head as he rifled through his wallet. "If you start giving protests, or mooing at random people, I'm taking you to a psychiatrist."
"Moooooo," Angel joked, and Mimi laughed.
"How much to go parasailing?" Mimi wondered.
"They charge you by the mile," the guy replied. "The people that run the parasailing operation are independent contractors, not affiliated with the hotel. They pay for their boats, the gas, the sails, everything by themselves. I have a coupon you can use for $10 off your first ride, but if you use the coupon, you have to tip the boat captain. Otherwise, he might get pissed and let you land in deep water where the sharks and jellyfish are. You have to be respectful too, and say 'Yes sir,' to the captain, because he pays a lot of money, and really doesn't get enough back to keep his business going. He does it for you guys, for the tourists. His family probably doesn't have enough food to go around because people like you are too cheap to—"
"HOW MUCH?" Mimi repeated.
"Sixty bucks," he said simply.
Mimi shoved the money onto the counter. "There, geez!"
Roger shook his head. "Let's go," he said. Just as the group started making its way back down the pier toward the beach, Roger again heard the very distinct creaking noise and knew that something bad would happen. And it did. Roger happened to step on a rotten part of the wood and fell right through. Mimi screamed in surprise when Roger's head was suddenly only up to her waist. The terrified guitarist clung to the pier for dear life, as his lower half dangled over the many hooks and corks of the fishermen. He did not want to get tangled up in all that. "Help me," he squeaked, sounding like a fly, as he was grasping and struggling with all his might.
The other three tugged him up and set him gently down on the pier. He lay there for a minute or two, breathing heavily. "Yikes," he said, inspecting a splintery cut up the side of his leg.
"Oh, you're hurt!" Mimi wailed, fawning over him.
"Oh, it's not that serious," he waved her off. "I just need something to hold pressure against it and maybe get a band-aid."
"To the first aid," Collins once again announced.
--
Meanwhile, Maureen, Joanne and Mark were watching a sand-sculpting contest that was going on. Lots of people had shown up to build lots of creative things out of sand. The first prize was a free trip to the shell islands, where one could theoretically scavenge for shells.
As soon as Maureen heard of the contest and the fantastic prize, she began sculpting something of her own. Mark and Joanne watched for awhile and soon they could tell what she was making: a cow, Elsie.
Mark excused himself to go look at some of the other sculptures. He saw a giant telephone, a dolphin, a cat, a flip flop, a teddy bear, and the most impressive of all, a merman who resembled the great and famed King Neptune, complete with triton. Mark looked upon all these things, in awe at the great detail all of them had. He was just about to walk past them to see some of the other sculptures when he tripped over something, a sand pail, half-hidden in the sand! He, of course, fell flat upon King Neptune, face to face. Mark remained frozen, dreading the embarrassment of the situation. At least the guys weren't around….
"Mark! Why do you always make out with inanimate men everywhere we go?" Collins asked, as he and the others strode up to him.
Mark winced. He pushed himself off of the once-great merman sculpture, now crumbling and nearly unrecognizable. Mark now had a sand beard, which helped conceal the red blush spreading across his face underneath it.
He was about to offer up an explanation, to spare himself his friends' ridicule when a voice cried, "Hey, you jerk! I worked on that for six hours!!"
Mark meekly turned around to face the owner of the voice. It was, of course, a huge, burly man whose face was turning red with rage. This man looked about ready to beat Mark into a little pulp, while Mark cowered away, looking distressed.
"Hey, man," Collins said, coming to Mark's rescue. He walked in between Mark and the offended muscular guy. "He doesn't know any better, okay? He's a little….touched." Collins made a facial gesture to bring across Mark's apparent lunacy.
"Oh," the guy said. "You better watch him better, then." He stalked off to bully some other group of people.
Mark watched as the man trolloped away, then scowled at Collins. "Great, now that guy thinks I'm crazy!"
Collins was surprised that Mark could be upset with him. "I just saved you, man!" he insisted. "That guy was out for your blood. And let's not forget when you told a whole group of people at the museum that I was your 'crazy Uncle Jed' who missed his medication!"
Mark sighed. "Fine," he grumbled. "Thanks…."
Angel and Mimi were both barely able to contain their excitement, so with kisses to their respective boyfriends, they ran down the beach to get their respective joy rides.
--
Half an hour later, Maureen was outraged that she hadn't won the sand-sculpting contest. "I can't believe the girl that sculpted the stupid cat won!" she yelled, kicking her cow back to dust. "It's not fair….."
"Maureen, she's just a kid," Joanne said, reasonably. "Come on, you wanna feed the seagulls? I brought some bread." She showed the aforementioned wheat to Maureen.
"Okay," Maureen said, pouting a little less. She took a piece of bread and crumbled it, throwing it up into the air. "Here seagulls!" A few birds flew over cautiously to grab some of the bread. "Aw, they're so hungry!" Maureen exclaimed.
Mark, now less miffed about the merman encounter, was filming the display, as Maureen threw bread up in the air to the hungry birds.
"Come and get it!" she shouted, throwing up a handful of the crumbs. Unfortunately, she threw them a little further than she should have and half of them rained down on Joanne, into her hair and down the front of her peach, one-piece bathing suit.
"Maureen!" Joanne cried in disbelief. She didn't have time to berate her girlfriend further, as a sect of the seagulls flew all around her. It was a little known secret that Joanne had once seen the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Birds, and ran out of the theater, screaming and crying. Now, it appeared that she was living out that experience.
Mark got the whole thing on film. Joanne ran around screaming like she was on fire, while a couple of seagulls casually followed her, trying to peck at the bread in her hair. Maureen ran behind her, not being able to catch up to her since she was laughing so hard. Finally Joanne collapsed onto the sand, using the STOP DROP AND ROLL technique to confuse the birds. Only it didn't work. The seagulls instead dove on either side of her, scrambling for the bread the she had shaken off. Finally, they dispersed. Mark and Maureen closed in on Joanne, who was covered in feathers and sand and was twitching every so often.
Maureen helped her to her feet. "Let's go sit down over here, Pookie," she said, comfortingly to the very distraught lawyer.
"Okay, that sounds yeah," Joanne said, not making any sense at all.
--
The seadoo instructor had told Angel all the basic rules and know-how's of the seadoo. He offered to go out with her on a test run to see how she would handle it, but Angel was confident about the machine. He helped her push the seadoo out into the surf, steadied it for her to get on and she was off, bouncing over the crashing waves. Angel screamed in delight, handling the thing masterfully. She gave a wave to Mimi, then to Collins, Roger, and Mark, who was filming her take-off.
The instructor then went back to lecture Mimi about parasailing etiquette. Once he had given her the basic run-down, he helped her get strapped into the parasail's harnesses. "You ready?" he asked, once she was secure.
"Yep," Mimi said, holding onto the ropes that held her safely in.
The guy gave a thumbs-up to the boat captain, who was a couple of hundred yards out into the water. He took off slowly, pulling Mimi along with him. Mimi gave a cry of joy when the wind caught her sails and lifted her effortlessly off the ground and into the air. "Whoo-hoo!" she cried, her legs dangling high above the water. Just as she was started to have the time of her life, however, something went really, really wrong. One of the ropes, she realized, was hung up on something and snapped with the speed the boat was taking her along. Mimi screamed as she was detached from the boat and floating hundreds of feet in the air in the parasail.
Mark, behind his camera, commented, "Mimi's going down!"
Roger jumped to his feet as he realized what was happening and ran toward the spot Mimi was hovering above. Mark and Collins watched in disbelief as Roger tried to calm Mimi down five hundred feet below her. Maureen and a less disturbed Joanne soon joined them and gawked at the scene. Suddenly, the wind blew Mimi further out to sea, and she screamed all the more, terrified of where she would land.
Meanwhile, Angel, oblivious to Mimi's crisis, was having a great time riding around on the seadoo. She felt very confident, driving like an expert. She was so full of herself and her abilities that she began singing, although she wouldn't have if she had known anyone would hear her. "I am so cool," she sang, "on my seadoo. Nobody knows, how cool I am. I look so cool, you all so jealous! No one can drive like Angel can!" Then she screamed. She screamed because at that moment, Mimi in a very James Bond type moment landed on the back of the seadoo, making the undertaking look effortless, although she was screaming too.
The two friends turned to look at each other and began to laugh in disbelief and in relief.
Mark commented from shore, "And looks like Mimi is saved!"
Then, the sail came down, covering both of their heads, the seadoo still going at full speed. It rammed a buoy, doing a subsequent nose-dive into the water. Angel and Mimi were flung in opposite directions.
"And now they're both dead," Mark said. He didn't say this out of morbidity, just to make the commentary and his film sound cooler, so no one would know how terrified he was. Collins and Roger both took off into the water, trying to save their girlfriends from whatever danger had befallen them. "We will end our vacation with two funerals," Mark said, adding a dark laugh before shutting off the camera and going to see if they were all right.
--
Roger had faced his fear of the deep water to get to Mimi and bring her back to shore. She wasn't moving. Collins pulled Angel along, who wasn't moving either. The two men laid their girls next to each other on the sand, wondering if they should do CPR. Maureen and Joanne could hardly contain their emotions as they looked on at their two lifeless friends. Mark stood there, wishing there was something he could do. He made a mental note to erase his gruesome commentary from the film.
Angel's eyes fluttered open. She looked around to a relieved Collins, then shouted, "Oh, my god, I can't move at all!"
Mimi's eyes opened as well. "Oh, no! Me neither!" she cried. "Except I can move my eyes!"
Angel rolled hers. "Well, I can move my eyes, Mimi. My mouth too. I was just talking about the important stuff. That's what I can't move."
"Eyes and mouths are important too," Mimi insisted.
"We've gotta get to a hospital," Roger said, not knowing if they should move the two paralyzed people.
"NO!" Angel immediately shouted. "No hospitals!! We'll miss the hats!"
"Okay, I can sort of understand your logic when you broke your butt that time," Collins said. "But now you're being ridiculous. You are paralyzed. You had a horrific seadoo accident. We're going to the hospital."
"NOOOOOOO!" Angel wailed, even as she was lifted off the shore. "If you make me go to the hospital, I'll—I'll—I'll never touch you again!"
"If we don't go to the hospital and you end up paralyzed for life, then you'll definitely never touch me again," Collins reasoned with her. "Come on, I promise you'll make it back in time for the hats."
"Noooooooooooo!!" came the blood-curdling scream.--
NoV: Yahai! Another chapter! Guess how many of the things in this chapter have happened in my real life! Go on, guess!
Next time (!): Mimi's gets stuck to a chair, Mark finds himself on a nude beach, Maureen wins a different contest, Collins gets buried in the sand, Angel has one too many daiquiris!