A/N- I'm still not really getting all that much feedback on this. I'm starting to think I kinda suck.
Chapter Six- She's Got No Soul
"Come on, Dale, this is gonna be fun!" Callie insisted, kicking her older brother lightly in the shin. "Don't tell me this isn't what you've wanted for the last twenty-two years since I came along."
"I don't need a brother!" Dale sulked, folding his arms defiantly. "I don't even want you that much."
"I think you're just jealous because Dad's attention won't be totally focussed on you," Callie retorted, also folding her arms. She and her brother were very alike; both stubborn, both head-strong. But Callie wasn't quite as moronic.
"I am a man. I do not need the attention of a father figure," he said, straightening up to his full height. "This guy's gonna be a total dick. I know it."
"Well, why don't we go see?" Callie suggested, pointing out the window. "The moving truck's just pulled up. They're here."
"Oh, fuck me," Dale sighed as their dad went hurrying out the front door. Callie and Dale followed him, lurking in the doorway. A woman not much younger than their dad was walking up the path. She was very pretty, in an over-fifty kind of way. Callie waved good-naturedly at her, and Dale scowled.
"Oh Jesus, Dale. What?"
"She's not our mom," Dale said.
"I know, but she can be as good as," Callie replied, and she went skipping down the pathway, joining her dad and step-mom's conversation just as her dad asked where Brennan was.
"He's still in the car," Nancy said uncomfortably, gesturing at the blue sedan. Callie and her father turned to look, and sure enough, she could see Brennan's curly head in the back seat. "It was kind of a rough drive. Hello, Callie," she added warmly to her new stepdaughter.
Callie smiled back. "Hiya, Nancy." She gave her a hug as Robert struck up a conversation with Don From Across The Road. "Welcome to the neighbourhood."
"Thank you, sweetheart," she said, also smiling.
"So, this is my brother," Callie introduced as she, Nancy and her dad walked up the path towards the house. "Dale, though you already know that."
"Hi Dale," Nancy said.
"Hey Nancy," Dale replied. "Could you make me a grilled-cheese sandwich?"
"Dale!" Callie scolded, glaring at him. "Don't be such a dickface! You're thirty-nine, make your own fucking sandwich!"
"Sure," Nancy replied regardless.
"No!" Robert retorted. "Dale just ate. He's testing you to see how much he can get away with."
"I'm hungry," Dale persisted, but Robert ignored him and led Nancy into the house, leaving Dale and Callie outside to meet Brennan, who finally pulled his head out of his ass and got out of the car.
He and Dale stared at each other for a few moments whilst Callie awkwardly stood there, rocking back and forth on her heels. Then Brennan advanced on the two of them, coming to a stop about ten feet away.
"Hey," he said monotonously.
"Hey," answered Dale tonelessly.
"What's up," Callie said, trying for a peppier tone of voice.
"I'm Brennan," her stepbrother presented himself.
"I'm Dale," Dale said. "But you have to call me Dragon."
Callie facepalmed. "What in the fuck, bro?"
"You have to call me Nighthawk," Brennan said quickly.
"Well, I'm Callie," she said in an attempt to inject a little normalcy into the situation. "And you can call me Callie. Or Cal. I'm not fussed either way."
"Sorry, little lady, the men are talking," Brennan said, holding his hand up to her face as he and Dale continued to glower at each other.
"Hey, fucker! Don't talk to my little sister like that!" Dale exclaimed angrily.
"Dale, chill out," Callie warned, holding her brother's arm.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Brennan shouted. "I have been misinformed! At no point was I told there was a girl in the house!"
"Well, now you know," Callie said, frowning. This guy was really beginning to piss her off. "The vagina between my legs signifies that I am, indeed, female, you total asshole. And by the way, you have to call me Huntress."
-Step Brothers, 2008
"You wanna do a what now?" I frowned at James as we stood outside his in-house library a couple of hours after we'd seen the devastation outside. Being trapped in his own house was just fine for James; he'd been able to change clothes whilst I was stuck in my dirty shorts and now-laddered tights from the party, though I had stolen one of his red tank tops and I'd torn the feet clean off my tights because they were so tattered from running they were barely there anyway.
"A video confessional," he repeated like it was obvious. "Like in 127 Hours."
"Not everything has to link back to one of your movies, y'know," I teased, and he playfully shoved my head.
"No, there was actual scientific fact behind it," he insisted. "Talking to his camera stopped the real guy from going fucking nuts." He held up the hand-held camera from said movie. "C'mon Kenzie. Please? For me?" He batted his eyelashes at me and pouted like a little kid.
I sighed loudly, but jokingly, grabbing the camera from him. "Alright then. For you. Let's make a fucking confessional."
I set everything up in the middle of the library on the (now de-blooded) tripod Seth had used to move the severed head. James positioned two chairs in front of the lens and I settled myself one whilst he pressed the REC button.
"Hi," he said to the camera. "This is James Franco, um, in my house, in my library."
"And I'm Mack Bolton, broadcasting to you live from the hellhole that is more commonly known as Hollywood," I said.
"We've been stuck here for about twenty-four hours," James continued. "Danny McBride is here." He had now adopted the tone of a sulky seventeen-year-old girl, and I'm pretty sure it was totally unintentional. "I didn't even invite him to my party, but he came and passed out in the bathtub, and I gotta say, it's like typical fucking McBride."
"Wait," I said quietly, turning to look at James. "Dude. You didn't invite Danny to your party? That's more than a little fucked up, man. He has done nothing to you! Yeah, he can be a jackass sometimes, but he really is not that bad!"
"Says the girl who nearly had a restraining order slapped on him for sexual harassment!" James retorted, glaring at me.
"James!" I gasped. "Don't say that on camera! I only told you and Dave, and I only told you because you're Dave's brother! Look," I said, looking back to the camera. "It wasn't as bad as he's making it out to be. Danny just got a little touchy with me on the set of Pineapple Express is all. And I didn't nearly get a restraining order put on him!" I added to James. "I warned him with one. I wasn't gonna actually do it!"
"Okay fine, what about when we did Your Highness?" James challenged. "When he made you wear that costume? Fucking hell, you looked like Princess Leia after the fat slug thing kidnaps her! And he kept touching your tits! It looked like Game of Thrones! Look, Mack, you're my brother's girl," he said, more gently now. "And I love you like a sister. I just wanna protect you, y'know? You're my little bitch." He turned back to the camera. "I've been feeling really weird about Danny lately," he said. "Like, I don't really know if I wanna be friends with him, and then he fucking showed up at my party and now, we're stuck here with him in disaster lockdown, so…"
A sharp knock on the wall behind us caused us both to turn around. Danny was standing in the doorway, grinning at the two of us.
"What up?" he said merrily.
"Danny. Hi bro," I said, trying not to physically gulp. Fuck, had he heard?!
"Hey, Danny. What's up, man?" James said quickly.
"Not much. What are you doing?" he asked curiously. "What is this?"
"It's just a video confessional," James replied.
"Yeah, we're going all Blair Witch Project on this shit," I said.
Danny nodded slowly a couple of times before he turned and moseyed his way back down the corridor, out of earshot.
"Fuck that dude," James hissed, whipping back round to face the camera.
"Okay," I groaned, standing up. "It's time to kill the bitchfest, I think." And with that, I reached out and hit the camera's power button, sending the screen to black.
"Yo, fuckfaces!" I bellowed, cupping my hands around my mouth. "Dinner's served! Get your asses into the dining room, I haven't spent the last hour slaving over this for you lot to ignore it!" Well, at the mention of dinner the boys practically came a-runnin'. We all sat down around James' massive dining table to glasses of red wine and plates of pizza and potatoes that I'd managed to cook with what little electricity there was. The conversation was mainly consisting of theories of what in the fuck was going on.
"Earthquakes cause tsunamis," suggested James, who naturally was sitting at the head of the table.
"Yes!" agreed Seth, pointing at him.
"Tsunamis cause other tsunamis," James continued. "Disaster."
"I mean, for all we know, the fucking Lakers could have just won," put in Danny. "And that's the reason why all this is happening."
"The hole in Franco's front yard?" said Seth. "Sinkhole. Every single time I turn on the news, sinkhole in South America, bunch of South Americans getting sucked into the ground."
"Sinkhole de Mayo!" piped up Jonah.
"Sinkhole de Mayo," repeated Seth. "That's why it's named that, because sinkholes happen in the summertime."
"It's Cinco de Mayo, you uncultured turds," I said with a sigh.
"It's not wildfires, it's not earthquakes, it's not sinkholes," Jay said quietly. "I think I know what it is."
"Let's hear it," said Craig, whilst I put my head in my hands. If he said Judgement Day again, I swore to God…
"I think it's the apocalypse," he replied, more dramatically than what was probably intended. All the other guys made various jeering comments as I tried and failed to look supportive of what Jay was saying, when in truth…I just thought it was total bullshit.
"I'm serious, guys," Jay insisted. "It's all here." He held up a Bible. "In the Book of Revelations."
"You took my Bible?" James asked with a sneer.
"Well just hear me out and you tell me what I'm describing isn't what's going on right now," Jay said, opening the book and beginning to read, "'And the skies shall open up, and the light of the Lord shall shine down, and those of good heart shall be brought into my kingdom of Heaven.' That's the Rapture, those are the gigantic beams of blue light," he explained.
"The lights none of us saw," I muttered.
"'And there will be a great mountain burning in fire'," he kept reading. "I mean, the Hollywood Hills are literally engulfed in flames as we sit here right now."
I felt a little crack in my heart then. My house…my poor home had been up in those Hills. My whole life, gone in a crackle of flames. I had to blink hard to stop any tears escaping.
"The Hollywood Hills ain't no mountain," Craig retorted. "It's a hill. Takes about ten minutes to get across that motherfucker with no traffic."
"Coldwater," James and I both said.
"I take Laurel Canyon," said Seth.
"Cahuenga," Jonah said.
"I usually zip down Barham," said Danny.
"Guys, can I just fucking finish?" Jay interrupted irritatedly. "'And out of the pit rose a great red dragon having seven heads'," he read. "'That old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, was released unto the Earth.'" He turned the book around to show us an illustration of what looked like the crossbreed of a goat, a rhino and a basketball player.
"I love that dude!" said Craig, pointing at the picture. "He's from Where The Wild Things Are!"
"Jay," I said uncomfortably. "Don't you think all this is just a little far-fetched? I mean, Judgement Day, the apocalypse, Satan? That's a load of very heavy stuff."
"It's a load of bullshit," James said dismissively.
"It's not bullshit!" Jay averred.
"Want to know something else, Jay?" James said spitefully. "If this is the end of the world and all the good people died, what you're saying is Seth, me, Kenzie, Jonah, Danny and Craig are a bunch of assholes."
"I'm straight-up lovable, son," stated Craig.
"And if this really is the apocalypse," James carried on his little tirade. "You're here too. So, that means you're just a shitty as the rest of us. Doesn't feel too good, does it?"
"James!" I hissed, punching him on the arm. Jay, meanwhile, just didn't say anything. I threw my slice of pizza down on my plate and stood up, shoving my chair back with a scrape. "God, you guys are driving me crazy! It's like living with a bunch of seven-year-olds! Jesus fucking Christ!" I turned on my heel and stormed away, my long hair whipping out behind me in brown curtain.
I don't know why, but I ended up locking myself away in James' en suite bathroom. I sat down cross-legged in his bathtub with my head in my hands and tears pouring down my cheeks.
I was cracking. I'd been trapped in this house for one day, and I was cracking. My mind was scrambled like eggs. I couldn't focus on anything except for the demolition of LA that was outside the front door. I didn't know if just LA was a burning wreck, or if it had spread all over America, or even if the whole world was like this.
I didn't know if my boyfriend was alive, or my dad, or anyone in my family. I didn't know if there was anything left of my home, of my pets. I was so confused about everything, and I didn't know what to do.
I knew I'd overreacted at dinner, but I hadn't been able to help it. I hated how much James and Jay detested each other. Jay was my very best friend, and James was pretty much my brother-in-law; he protected me, he kept me safe. I just wanted everyone to get along! Why was that too fucking much to ask for?!
I kicked the side of the bath, which only earned me some stabbing pains shooting up my ankle. God, I was so furious with just…everything. And everyone. There was a knock on the door.
"Kenz? Kenzie?"
"Fuck off, Franco. I'm not in the mood."
"For fuck sake, Mackenzie, open the fucking door."
"Oh, Mackenzie, is it now? You're getting all stern, Franco? Oh, well I guess I have to open the door now, don't I?"
"You're acting like a fucking kid."
"I'm acting like a kid? Says the fucking primadonna who threw a bitch-fit because someone came to his party who, shock horror, wasn't invited. I don't give a shit! Piss off!"
"You're in my bathroom. I'm not going anywhere."
"You're such a pain in my ass, Franco."
"Back at you, Bolton. Now open the door."
"I. Don't. Want. To."
"Mackenzie, open the door before I fucking knock it down."
James had adopted his 'angry big brother' tone, and I knew that arguing more was futile. With a sigh, I stood up and clambered out of the bath, undoing the bathroom door and opening it. James was literally standing eight inches away from me, arms folded and face set in a hard expression. I copied him.
"What is up with you, man?" he asked me, no longer angry. Just concerned.
"I don't even know anymore," I said quietly. "I'm breaking, James. I'm shattering. It feels like I've got no soul, no conscience, no mind! I feel totally empty, and I don't know what to do."
"Well, fucking calm down for one," he said simply. "All that stuff Jay said is a pile of shit, okay? There is no way that this is the apocalypse. All this Bible shit makes no sense. We're good people. We're great people! We make people happy! If this really was the apocalypse, we'd have been taken up to Heaven just like everyone else God thinks is awesome enough."
"You know what? I really don't want to have this conversation now," I said curtly. "I'm tired, and I'm going to sleep." I pushed past him, heading out the bedroom and down the stairs to collect the t-shirt I'd slept in last night. I walked down the stairs to find Seth arranging his and Jay's sleeping spot in the nook of the sofas, and I didn't miss Danny's shout from the other bathroom.
"Hey guys, I'm going to sleep now! Nobody come in here and bother me!"
Charmanté. Like we didn't know what that was code for.
The next few days passed slowly…so slowly. There was literally nothing for us to do in this godforsaken house. The lack of WiFi put paid to the normal things like Facebooking, Tweeting and Netflix. So basically we sat around playing card games like Go Fish and Snap. Yes, really. We were all slowly going stir crazy, but none of us dared say anything about it.
One thing that was certain, though, was that James had been most definitely right about one member of our little survival clan.
Danny was behaving like a total moron. When he wasn't hiding himself away and jacking off to James' porn magazine, he was sleeping, eating or just plain getting up in everyone's grills. He. Never. Shut. Up.
At lunchtime on the fifth day of us being shut up like a pack of rats, he really began pushing my buttons in ways I didn't even think were possible.
"First bit," Seth said, as Craig carefully positioned a knife over the hunk of cheese we were cutting up for lunch. Craig was being very precise with it all. "You're not cutting it all?" Seth asked. "That's smart. You're divvying it up first."
"I'm pretty chill on that idea," I said, absent-mindedly scratching at the tattoo of two birds and a cherry blossom tree on my right wrist. "Make the cheese last, I cannot live without some cheesy calcium."
"This is like, Fruyère or some shit," said Craig, just as Danny licked his finger and wiped it along the entire chunk that Craig was about to slice off. "Come on, Danny!" Jonah, Jay, Seth and I all went, "Eurgh!"
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" I spat. I grabbed the knife from Craig's hand and pointed it at Danny. "I am this fucking close to cutting your goddamn finger off, McBride!" I was so angry that I barely noticed James quietly taking Seth to the side to talk to him about something.
"If they're all equal, what does it matter?" he demanded.
"It's not one fucking chunk per person, asshat!" I said angrily. "It's one chunk per fucking week! We actually need this food, you fat fuck!" I slammed the knife down, tip-first, into the table barely an inch from Danny's arm, burying it a centimetre deep in the wood.
"Woah, woah, Kenzie! Not the table!" James shouted, running over and wrenching the knife out. "Come on, sis! This shit's expensive!"
"I'm sorry!" I said, shoving my hands in my shorts pockets, the same shorts I'd been wearing for the last five or six days. God, I was filthy. "I'm just a little highly strung at the minute. I'm sorry Danny." I really wasn't. I kind of regretted missing.
"You know what, Kenz, it's cool," Danny replied, holding up his hand. "I hear PMS is a very hard thing to control." I just shot him the bird.
"Let's do all the drugs!" Seth suggested with a borderline-manic smile, holding the pile of every narcotic that was in the house.
"I don't really want to," Jay said unenthusiastically, sipping his can of beer.
"Shoulda thought of that before you drank a can full of ecstasy!" Seth gleefully informed him.
Jay rapidly spat out his mouthful of drink. "What?!" After that, it really did not take long for everyone to become totally and utterly fucked up. The cocktail of weed, shrooms, E, Sour Diesel and God only knows what else sent us all on the wildest trip any of us had ever experienced. I felt like I was physically on HFS from 21 Jump Street.
Seth pretended to breathe bubbles out of his mouth like a dragon.
James and Seth had a lightsaber fight with a couple of lamps while the rest of us threw money and 'made it rain' on them.
The six of us performed a can-can-style dance.
Seth was certain that if one of us poked him in the nipple he would turn into a pure ball of light, which Danny tested out.
I tried to climb the wall like Spider-Man and jumped on James' back yelling, "DIE, HARRY OSBORNE! DIE!" causing James to fall over backwards and wind me when he crashed into my chest.
Danny became convinced that his eyes had become mouths.
We stuck Jay in a chair and lifted him up above our heads like he was at a Bar Mitzvah.
Jay and Seth performed a dance while the rest of us stood around them clapping.
I removed my top and ran around the house in just my bra and shorts, hanging upside down from the upstairs railings by my knees until the guys formed a human safety net below me so I could fall down into their arms.
The opening bars of Paper Planes by M.I.A began to play.
FROM THE GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU SUPERBAD, read a chalkboard. AND PINEAPPLE EXPRESS…
I fly like paper, get high like planes.
If you catch me at the border, I got-
Dale (Seth) watched and cheered as Saul (James) dropped to the floor and did the Worm.
COMES THE MOST ANTICIPATED SEQUEL IN HUMAN HISTORY
Dale and Saul lit up a seven-part joint and inhaled and took a drag, when Dale started choking.
"Should we call Red?" Dale asked. "Get more weed?"
"I don't know, man," Saul replied hesitantly. "That guy's gone crazy!"
Cut to Red (Danny) sitting at the head of a table with Saul and Dale with Mandy (me) standing behind him, armed with a gun (baseball bat)
"Good thing I have a lot of fucking weed for you guys," Red announced, popping open a briefcase. "I hooked you guys up. Now I need you guys to assassinate-" [insert close-up] "-Woody Harrelson."
Cut to 'Woody Harrelson' (IE, Jonah in a cowboy hat and weed t-shirt)
"If pot's legalised, my business will suffer," Red said in a voiceover. "And if my business suffers, I suffer. So much suffering, all because of that inbred, hemp seed Woody Harrelson."
"I have to do what's right!" 'Woody' said. "Weed is for the people, it's the people's weed!"
Cut back to Red, Dale, Saul and Mandy around the table.
"If you don't assassinate him," Red said aggressively. "Mandy here is gonna assassinate both of you. Mand!" he barked, and Mandy pointed her gun at Saul's head.
"Run!" Saul yelled, grabbing a handful of cocaine (pancake mix) and throwing it in Mandy's and Red's faces before he and Dale made a run for it.
"Argh!" Red screamed. "Mandy, go!"
"I can't!" she spluttered back, still wiping the coke out of her eyes.
Red seized her by throat. "You kill them, or I'm gonna kill you! Got it?"
Cut to the beginning of a fight between Saul, Dale and Matheson (Craig), followed by clips of various gunfights and someone falling from a balcony.
Cut to Dale and Saul hiding, about to run into combat.
"B.F.F.F.F.F.F.F.F.F.F forever!" Saul whispered.
"B.F.F.F.F.F.F.F.F.F.F!" Dale hastily replied.
Cut to Red and Dale about to punch each other in the face, followed by Saul on the floor about to shoot someone, to Saul being pushed along the floor screaming.
Cut to Mandy straddling a struggling Dale, her gun pressed against his forehead.
"Mandy, you don't have to do this!" he shouted.
"Yes I do!" she sob-shouted back. "If I don't kill you, Dale, then Red will kill me! I can't die! Not yet!"
Cut to a dramatic car chase (with Tonka cars) between Saul and Dale in one car, and Red, Mandy and Matheson in a flaming oil tanker. "You're letting them get away!" yelled Red.
"Fuck this!" Mandy snarled, jumping out of the window just as the picture cut to the (toy) tanker falling down a cliff-side (a step).
PINEAPPLE EXPRESS 2: BLOOD RED, the final chalkboard read.
The final clip was of 'Woody Harrelson.' "I smoked weed with Steve Jobs," he said. "And that's when he came up with the iPad! It's pretty great!"
The six of us were all huddled up together, all of us embarking on a pretty mellow comedown. We were watching the trailer we'd made for Seth and James' idea for the Pineapple Express sequel, laughing and smoking what remained of the weed in the house. It was actually pretty cosy.
"We should make sequels to more of our movies," Seth said. We agreed.
"How about we not do Your Highness 2?" James said to me and Danny.
"Aw, are you kidding?" I said with a laugh. "I'd love to reprise Princess Theodina! If Danny promises to keep his sticky little hands to himself this time!" I looked at Danny pointedly.
"I cannot promise that," he chuckled.
"Do 128 Hours," Seth suggested.
"The story of one man and his quest to find the arm he savagely cut off before it goes mouldy and can't be reattached," I snorted.
"The beginning of the rest of your comedies," said Jay.
"Looks good," said Seth, just as an almighty crash on the front door made all of us start. Whatever was out there was banging so violently that all the barricades we'd set up over the door were crashing down, and James quickly pointed his revolver at the door.
With every smash we screamed, huddling closer and closer together. The whacking and cracking continued, and so did our screaming. Whatever it was really, really wanted to get inside the house.
"What the fuck is it!?" I shrieked. "Franco, fucking shoot it!"
The final blockade over the door came tumbling down, and out of the fog and smoke appeared Emma Watson. She gasped when she saw us all lying there.
"Emma!" exclaimed Seth.
"It's Emma," confirmed James, like it actually needed confirming.
"Oh my God, you guys are alive!" she cried in sheer relief, clapping a hand to her forehead. In her other hand she was clutching an axe. "You're actually alive, thank God!"
I looked at the shredded remains of our door shield. "Y'know, Emma, a simple Alohomora would have sufficed nicely."
A/N- And Emma has arrived! Well, not for long, because we all know how this turns out, don't we? Anyway, hope you liked the chapter! I honestly have no idea what you're all thinking about what I'm writing because nobody is reviewing! Like, at all. Please, please, please, if you're reading this, just leave an itty bitty review! I beg of you! Xx Gee xX
PS- Blah, blah, blah, Polyvore etc.