Chapter 2 – YAR YAR YAR YAR
Drip
Drip
Drip
I had that dream again.
Woken up again at twilight, surprised that I'm capable of sleeping for twenty four hours every day. Wait, isn't a day twenty four hours long? Fuck that, I'm gonna go play video games. I took out my PSP and turned it on, not bothering to get out of bed or check what game was in the system. The title screen popped up, revealing itself to be Warmonger 5. I chose my save file and ran around in game for a while, killing off civilians so I wouldn't have to advance the plot. I ran out of bullets after a while so I started pushing people off of cliffs. I did this for about twenty minutes until I heard a knock on my door.
"Who is it?" I yelled, but I couldn't hear what was being said on the other side of the door so I got up and opened it. You were standing there, holding two ticket stubs.
"I got tickets to another park," you said, grinning.
"I'm not going, I'm playing video games."
In response you pulled a bottle of soda out of your pocket and poured the contents onto my PSP, which was still in my hands. "No you're not."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I screamed, furious. I threw the PSP onto the floor and wiped my sticky hands off on my shirt. "You don't break my stuff because I don't wanna go with you to a water park!"
"It's not a water park," you said, still grinning.
"Oh yeah?" I asked, suspicious. "What's it called?"
"Hurricane Harbor…I swear to god it's not a water park."
"Then why's it called 'Hurricane?'"
"'Cause the rides go really really fast. Come on, the days almost over, we gotta leave now."
With no PSP to entertain me, I had two options: sit and stare at the wall, or go to the theme park with you.
"Wait—before we go. Prove you don't got your swimming trunks on," I said.
"Look man, just boxers! Just boxers….with little stars on them!" He laughed. I threw the nearest shit at him, which happened to be a box of Cheez-its. Dammit, that was my dinner. Now it was all over the floor, and I'd have to clean it up later.
"Hahaha you threw your own Cheez-its. Come on let's get in the car."
Not wanting to clean my room just yet, I decided I would be willing to go. So we got in his car and started another long hour trip. You asked me what game I was playing before you showed up, and I told you it was that new version of Warmonger that just came out.
"Oh yeah, this is the one where you can like enslave the villagers right?"
"Yeah, I got a whole village building me a monument right now. I use them for target practice sometimes."
"Yo, you gotta lend me that shit later."
"Dude, I gotta' tell you this awesome glitch. So like when you go to shoot at people, they start running from you. So what you do is you have the slaves build like a fence and buildings and shit all around the side of a cliff so when you start shooting at them they can only run off the cliff. It's hilarious. Especially when you swing the camera angle over and you can watch them fall—hey yo why you pulling over to that Wal-Mart?"
"I gotta get somethin', I gotta get somethin'," you said, and abruptly ran out of the car and into the store. I would have followed you because I wanted to get some more Cheez-its, but I didn't wanna get lost because that store was freaking huge. Anyway I found some in the glove compartment along with some mints and an M&M's wrapper with an image from some movie that came out four years ago. I took the Cheez-its and started screwing around with your radio and left it on a Linkin Park song, knowing that if you knew Linkin Park was playing in your car, you'd have to get a new one. My fingers were covered in orange Cheez-it dust and I think it got wiped off in your CD player.
Unfortunately you didn't return until the song was over and by the time you got back you had no idea I had ruined your car for eternity. Blissfully unaware of my betrayal, you turned the radio off and tried to play the CD that was already in the player, but it wouldn't start.
"Did you touch my CD's with your dirty Cheez-it fingers?"
"No," I lied. "Wait, why don't you have any bags with you?"
"I didn't buy anything."
"Then why'd we stop here?"
"I had to go to the bathroom."
"There was a 7-11 like two miles back, it'd be way easier to stop there."
"7-11 doesn't have a bathroom."
"Yeah it does."
"What the fuck do you know? What, you got some kinda phD in 7-11's? You write your dissertation on 7 fucking 11? Shutup."
That was all we said for 12 hours. You pulled into the parking lot of Hurricane Harbor and picked a spot close to the entrance.
"How did you know I had been eating Cheez-its?" I asked.
"What?"
"Twelve hours ago."
"You slow man, you really slow."
"I finished those before you got back."
"Man I saw you wiping that nasty orange shit off on your pants like some kinda slob." You looked into the park and grinned widely. "I know something that'll wash that right off."
I was about to respond to that highly suspicious statement but was distracted by the entrance sign of the theme park we were about to enter. Despite having been told it was not a water park, the sign was decorated in an aquatic theme that indicated quite strongly that the park was not entirely hydrophobic. There was a picture of a huge tidal wave destroying the word "Hurricane", which led me to believe that your claim that the word was not related to water was a lie.
"Damnit, Axel, this is exactly like that time when you called me up and was all like 'wanna go to the zoo' and I was like 'yeah man let's look at the water buffalo' and when we drove there we went to the aquarium instead and I said 'man there ain't no buffalo here' and you're all 'you said you wanted to see water buffalo' and I'm like 'dumbass water buffalo live on land', and you knew water buffalo didn't live underwater, you just wanted to go to the aquarium because you like coral, ya boring asshole. So I sat in the damn food court until twilight waiting for you to finish looking at something that doesn't even move. I mean shit, you got coral on yo shower curtains and it doesn't do any more than real coral. Then you come all a runnin' at me saying, 'get back to the car, get back to the car,' and I'm like 'damn, this is a dream come true, you gotta' have done some weird shit,' and when we got back inna' the car you start pulling shit out of your pockets like starfish from the live touch exhibit."
"Haha, starfish," you said, mocking my one true desire.
"I am not going in there," I said, turning around to go wait in the car.
"Yeah you are," you said, and led me by the arm through the front gate.
"I hate water parks, I'm seriously not going."
"What you wanna wait in the fucking car until dark, 'cuse I ain't leavin' til the park closes."
At that I felt it would be best to follow him, thinking maybe it'd be more fun than just sitting alone in a car for hours. Plus it was like 97 degrees. I once left a toad in a Poland Spring bottle in a car at 97 degrees. It fuckin' melted. That was my first pet.
So we started towards the park, with me once again unprepared for water rides. You, on the other hand, took your clothes off and underneath was a pair of swim trunks.
"So that's what you was doin' at Wal-Mart," I said.
"No," you said.
"Then how'd you get those when before you were wearing underwear?"
"Iunno."
"I still see the tag on it," I said.
You covered the tag with your hand to try and hide it and pulled it off. "Now you don't."
"I am not going on any of those rides."
"Fuck you."
"No, fuck you."
Without responding to me you dumped your coat into my arms again and ran off to the Pirate Leg Flume. Not yet inside the park, I walked back to the car and noticed that you neglected to finish closing the window. I tried to stuff your coat in through the crack but it was too thick and it ended up just hanging out shoved halfway through. While I was pulling it back out the alarm went off, and I ran away from it as fast as possible and took refuge in the water park so as to avoid looking like a car thief.
Despite the 97 degree weather you were wearing a huge leather coat and carrying it around was annoying, so I went to the lost and found office and left it in the box so it wouldn't get stolen. Unlike Six Flags, this lost and found was just a concrete wall with a wooden box with the words "LOST ND FOUND" painted on the side. I trusted the coat to stay put because the box had a lid. Then I went to go hang out in the food court.
There was a different set of characters here—not so much a Disney-ish setting, but as a sea-themed, pirate one with anchors on the wall and jolly hooked fish. I don't understand why people always like to draw happy faces on pictures of tuna on cans or cows on meat packages, like they havin' fun? Damn, the only damn thing on the menu was fish. I hate pretty much anything that isn't ice cream, and I tried to order a slushy to be safe, only to find out it was made of all the unused fishsticks blended up with some sugar and ice. I was sitting at one of the plastic tables meant to look like wood and the sound of seagulls was playing on an audio, except an actual bird, hearing the sound, mistook it for another bird and charged into it to his death, causing the audio to play that screech over and over and over. Suddenly I noticed an interesting character that seemed out of place. It was Jiminy Cricket. I walked over to him and said, "hey, aren't you supposed to be in Disney Land?"
"I got fired," he said morosely.
"Then why are you still wearing your costume?"
"What costume?" he screamed. I stared at him for a little in silence, or whatever was close to "silence" in that food court, and he repeated, "WHAT COSTUME?" and then ran away crying violently. I watched him run away, confused and nauseous. Once he was gone I threw away my fishstick slushy and left without paying because I forgot to take your money before I dropped your coat off at the lost and found.
Suddenly I saw you running toward me and I thought two things. One, holy shit, I didn't get wet. Two, you did something again. You started shouting, "we gotta' get outta' here, we gotta' get outta here!"
You grabbed my arm and started dragging me back to the car. You shouted "If the cops ask you about Red Bird Fire you say 'yes'!"
We couldn't get into the car because all of the doors were locked so I ran up to the nearest pirate mascot. "Yar, I'm Pirate Peeleg #42, you wanna' be taking a picture?" he said.
"No, but I'll take this," I said as I leaned in to grab his peg leg.
"Yar, whatta' you be doing, YAR YAR YAR YAR!" he said in distress. After great difficulty I managed to pull his leg off while he flapped his stuffed costume arms helplessly about him like a horrible sea monster. I tried prying the window open with the leg but without turning the car on it wouldn't budge, so I smashed the window open. Plastic shards flew everywhere and got all over the driver's seat.
"Get in, get in! How do you hotwire a car?" you yelled.
"Get something that fits in the ignition!"
We looked around the car for something to shove in the ignition, and eventually we found a window shard that fit perfectly. We started the car and drove away as fast as the car would go, barely missing an old lady as we left the parking lot.
Finally we drove at a steady cruise and I began to relax, thinking how great it was to be sitting in a dry seat. I thought about video game murder and explosions and when I got bored I started feeling sentimental about the sunset and watched it for the rest of the ride. After the eleventh hour the sky started to get a little cloudy, and for a second I thought I had finally stayed up long enough to see the sun go down. But it wasn't quite night yet; you let me out of the car ten blocks away from my house because you needed to dispose of something at the dump, and before I had walked two feet it started to rain. By the time I got home I was soaked, and at that exact moment the clouds cleared and it stopped raining. You're an asshole. Well at least I could view the beautiful twilight as I fell asleep.