I would like to apologize for the long wait. I keep getting distracted by other things and I barely managed to squeeze it in for this year (Which ends in about 7 and half hours from writing.) I hope the wait was worth it. Enjoy Chapter 5: Ginger snapped!
Monday
Lynn Sr. rolled off his side and onto his back. The light of the rising sun was muted behind the burgundy drapes and the only sound was Rita's soft snoring. He swung his legs over the side of the bed to stand in his slippers. He changed into his usual clothes and headed down to the ground floor to make breakfast.
He walked across the lobby and into the diner. He went to the tables they pushed together where he had left the TV remote. He picked it up and pressed the power button. The screen came to life showing a slow moving slide show of the resort. He pressed the channel button and a notification popped up that the TV could not connect. He turned it off and shoved the remote in his pocket.
He entered the kitchen and tossed the remote onto one of the metal work stations. He began gathering up the ingredients from the fridge to cook breakfast. As he grabbed a carton of eggs he saw some boxes of gingerbread houses. That should give the kids something to do today.
He began cooking breakfast as the kids began to walk into the diner. He began sliding the waffles onto the plate before carrying them out to his family.
"Good morning everyone. How was your sleep?"
"My sleep was adequate," Lisa said.
"Same here po- Achoo!"
"You good Luna?"
"Yeah, just a little cold, nothing I can't handle."
He came to the last chair, an empty seat. He wondered who was missing until he remembered he had kept Junior restrained last night.
"I'm going to go get LJ untied," he started to say.
"I already untied her," Lucy said.
"Thank you Lucy. I'm going to be checking around the hotel for any damage."
"Okay Dad."
"Oh, there's some gingerbread kits in the kitchen if you're interested."
"Alright. Bye Dad." He left the diner to go check the water works to see if any of the pipes had burst when Lynn Jr. froze over the hotel. It would only take a short while then he would be back with the kids.
Lynn slowly woke up. She didn't seem to be under the influence of whatever Lisa had poked her with earlier. She stretched and noticed she wasn't tied down anymore. The jump ropes were laying on the ground next to the chair along with her red and white jersey and shorts, neatly folded up.
She stood up from the chair and changed into her usual attire. She wadded up her snow clothes and took them back down to her room. She opened up one of the drawers with her foot and dropped it in. She wouldn't be needing it anytime soon. She left the room and headed downstairs.
When she got to the diner she saw that her siblings were in the middle of eating breakfast. She slowly walked in trying not to draw attention to herself. She sat down next to Lucy, who kept on eating her meal without looking at her. The sound of conversations grew dimmer as they realized that Lynn had rejoined them.
She began picking at her waffles. She took a few bites before flickering her eyes up. They all seemed to be glaring at her. She took another bite before bringing and keeping her eyes up. Lisa, Lana, Lucy and Lincoln didn't take much notice of her. Lola, Luan, Luna and Leni, the ones she did get yesterday had small but noticeable frowns.
"Uh… good morning," she said.
"Morning," Lola snapped. "So nice of you to join us."
"There's no hard feelings, right?"
"No Lynn, you're on thin ice with us," Luan said. "It has snot been a good time having a head cold." She sneezed into the crook of her arm. Lynn looked back down at her plate. That hadn't gone over well. Her breakfast now left a bitter taste in her mouth. She started to wolf down her food in an attempt to leave as soon as possible.
"Hey, can we do the gingerbread house's now?" Lincoln asked.
"Yeah, let's make them now and eat them later," Lana said.
"We'll do it by roomates. Lisa and Leni, Lana and Lola, Lucy and Lynn, Luan and Luna. Me and Lily will pair up for this one. And to make it even more fun we'll do a competition." He began scooping up the plates. Lynn took her and Lucy's plate and hurried off to the kitchen as Lincoln continued to collect his other sister's plates.
She stepped through the kitchen doors and moved over to the row of sinks. She began to quickly scrub off the plates and have them sorted out before Lincoln got here. She started on the second plate when Lincoln walked up next to her and began to rinse his stack of plates.
She felt that it was too soon to apologize, that he may still be angry over what she had tried to do but she might as well bite the bullet and try to make amends right now.
"Hey Lincoln?"
"Yeah?"
"I just wanted to say sorry for chasing you with that icicle yesterday. I don't know what came over me, I never go that far. You know I wouldn't hurt you, right?"
He kept washing the plates in silence. She began to rake her teeth over her lip in anticipation. He put the plate down into the sink and looked at her.
"Promise that you won't do that again?"
"I promise." The tension in the air suddenly died out much to Lynn's appreciation.
"Could you take those gingerbread houses out to them? One for each pair."
"Yeah, I could do that." She grabbed the boxes from the table and carried them out into the diner. Her siblings had already broken off into pairs, each at a different table scattered around the room. She placed a box at each table, ending with Lucy.
Lisa and Leni began to take the gingerbread out of the box and onto a plate in between them. Lisa looked inside for the box's contents. Frosting, star gummies and small candies in the shape of various Christmas items.
"Let's each decorate half of the house," Lisa said. She grabbed one of the icing pouches and began to draw elaborate geometric patterns on the walls. She placed the toppings around in consistent intervals to create the perfect Christmas mosaic.
"Leni, how is your progress on your side of the gingerbread house?"
"Here, let me show you," Leni said as she turned the plate around for her to see. Leni had made wavy lines with her frosting, not unlike the folds of the garments she made. Its random streaks across the gingerbread with the arbitrary choice of topping patterns was the antithesis of Lisa's rigid and controlled decorating.
"How creative," Lisa lisped.
"I still have to finish up some small things, then I'll be done."
"As do I." She turned the plate around again. Leni was too engrossed in her work to see that Lisa wasn't decorating her side.
"Leni's decorating is going to conflict with my work," she thought. Oh well. They were having "fun," and all that.
But are you going to let such an easy accomplishment slip away? Your design destroys the competition. Yes, that was true. It was far superior to whatever her siblings could come up with. But she would have to get Leni to let her renovate her side. She looked happy enough doing her own thing. But are you going to let that stop you? You know what is best. You are a Junior Nobel Prize recipient, you pay for your house's bills with your outstanding intellect and are fluent in five languages. Are you going to let this foolish blonde get in your way?
"Leni, may I make a suggestion?"
"Yeah?"
"We should have your side remodeled to fit in more with my style."
"Huh?"
"Just let me decorate your half Leni." She began turning the plate around but Leni stopped her.
"But why?"
"It just doesn't look right. It needs to have some semblance of consistency if our gingerbread house is going to win."
"But I like the way it looks," Leni said as she began to turn the plate around her way.
"No Leni, we need to change it," Lisa snapped as they got into a sort of tug of war.
"Come on Lisa, it's just a gingerbread house, we're just having some fun-"
"Yield Leni," Lisa snapped as she tugged at the plate with renewed effort. The plate escaped Leni's grasp and Lisa, unprepared for the lack of resistance, dropped the plate onto the floor. The gingerbread house shattered into pieces. They both looked down at it before erupting into an argument.
Luan and Luna calmly decorated their gingerbread house. Luan was placing a Christmas wreath candy onto where the door of the house was engraved. She looked over to Luna, whose head was propped up on one arm while she idly placed on candy.
She looked around the room. Everyone else seemed borderline bored working on their gingerbread house, with the exception of Lily. She hoped that someone would lighten the mood.
Why don't you tell Luna some jokes? Yeah, that would work. Luckily for her she had spent month's coming up with Christmas jokes. She didn't have the book on hand but she could remember some of her material.
"Hey Luna, what do gingerbread men sleep on?"
"Mmh?"
"Cookie sheets."
Luna looked back down at the gingerbread house. Try another joke.
"I left something in Vanzilla, do you know where Dad keeps his coo-keys?"
"Isn't it sweet how we get to do things like this together?"
"We should gingerly handle this house."
"Did you hear about the-,"
"Luan! Could you not? I'm in the middle of this, I don't want to mess it up."
Luan stayed silent and started working on her side again. She knew better than to push her jokes further. No, no. No. You just haven't said, or done, anything really funny yet. Look how dreary this place is. Don't you just want to put a smile on that face? One little prank and everybody will be happy.
Luan began to look around the table to see what she had at her disposal. She took her frosting pouch and unscrewed the cap. She placed one of the spherical candies onto the opening, effectively jamming it. She screwed the cap back on and kneaded it in such a way that all the frosting was in the back with a pocket of air at the front.
"Hey brah, I ran out of frosting. Can I have some of yours?"
"Yeah," Luan said, her grin of anticipation hidden behind the gingerbread house. She handed it off to Luna. "There's frosting bunched up in the front."
"Thanks for the ti-," Pop!
The frosting splattered over Luna's face as her hands jerked out in shock. The gingerbread house was knocked off the plate and onto the floor. Luan chuckled nervously as a glare began to form on Luna's face.
"Heh, heh… that's how the cookie crumbles?"
Luna lunged over the table and tackled Luan off the chair and began to fight.
Lucy and Lynn added onto their gingerbread house piece by piece in silence. Lynn was going for a red and white color scheme on her side, nothing too special. She couldn't see what Lucy was making but knowing her she was probably doing something creepy and morbid, even though she only had red, white and green to work with.
She left Lucy to her own devices. She didn't want to go overboard and become too competitive. Her siblings were still sore over yesterday after all and she didn't want to attract more of their ire. She was going to have to swallow her pride and do this "just for fun".
You can still have fun and win at the same time. No, she would just decorate and have fun. Come on. It's an easy win. Easier than a home run, slam dunk or a touchdown. No, I'm good. Are you chickening out? No, I'm not. Leave me alone. I think you're chickening out. I think you don't have the guts to win a simple decorating contest. Shut up!
"Lynn?" Lynn snapped back to reality.
"Yeah?"
"Are you feeling alright?"
"I am, what's wrong?"
"You've had your hand pressed against that candy for about a minute."
"Oh." She took her hand off the side of the gingerbread. "I just had to make sure that it stuck." Lucy looked back to her side of the house and continued decorating. Lynn started to apply red candy onto the lines of frosting she made.
"Hey Lucy?"
"Yes?"
"Do you ever hear, like, voices in your head?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, nothing really. But not voices, per say, more like as if someone else's thoughts were floating around in your head."
"Are you-," Lucy started to say but was cut off by an ensuing commotion.
Lola and Lana tore open the box and quickly removed the contents. They divided the contents, each getting a half of the materials to work with. Lana grabbed a handful of candy and started to move it towards her mouth but Lola stopped her.
"Lana, control yourself. You can eat the leftovers when we're done decorating!"
"Oh, fine," Lana said, putting the candy back on the table. "How should we decorate it?"
"Let's decorate it like a castle, with lots of sparkling glitter!"
"Ugh, no. I want to eat this later and that's too girly. We should put frogs and other critters all over it!"
"How does that make it any more edible? How can you eat something when there's animals all over it?"
They went back and forth for some time before Lana said, "Why don't we each do half of it?"
"Alright, fine," Lola conceded. Lana began to decorate her side. Lola started filling in the window outlines but felt uneasy about the compromise. It just didn't sit right with her that the two different sides being juxtaposed. It just wouldn't look right.
"Lana, are you sure we can't do my thing?"
"Yeah and that's final."
"But it just won't look right."
"Who cares?"
"I do," Lola said as she pulled the plate closer to herself.
"Give it back Blondie!" Lana grabbed the plate and pulled but Lola wouldn't budge. She threw a fistfull of sprinkles into her eyes and gained the upper hand. Lola retaliated with sprinkles of her own and they began chucking the decorations at each other. They then began to pick off pieces of the gingerbread house to chuck at each other. The food fight finally stopped after both girls realized that there was nothing left to throw.
"Why you little," Lola growled before tackling Lana, and the fight resumed.
Lincoln placed the finishing touches of frosting on the scaled down gingerbread man, a miniature replica of Lily. He placed in the center of the group of other twelve gingerbread men, cradled in the arms of the one he painted to look like Leni. The whole family in thirteen different cookies in front of the house he modeled after their own. Content with his work he looked over to Lily, who was sucking frosting off of her hand.
"Hey Lily. Can I see what you made?"
She babbled permission and he turned the plate around. The side of the house was dotted in frosting hand prints with candies speckled about.
"Well aren't you a little artist," Lincoln congratulated her. Lily giggled in appreciation.
"I'm going to check on how the other's are do-" Crash, pop!
Lincoln turned away from Lily to see what had happened. Lisa and Leni, Lola and Lana, and Luan and Luna had all spontaneously and simultaneously started to argue. Luan and Luna got into a cat fight as the twins started a food fight. The twins ran out of food and got physical and they spilled into the Lu's fight creating a larger brawl that Leni and Lisa soon got sucked up in.
"I think it's time to go," Lincoln mumbled as he pulled Lily out of her high chair. He snuck around the perimeter of the diner before heading out the exit followed closely by Lucy and Lynn.
"What happened back there?" Lincoln asked.
"I don't know, they all just started fighting."
"So much for family bonding," Lucy said.
"I'm going to take Lily up to the arcade, maybe there's a board game or something to pass the time."
"I'm going to go read some books."
"I'm going to blow off some steam in the gym. Later guys." They all broke off to try to salvage the rest of the day.
Lynn Sr. walked up the flight of stairs. He had just finished checking the water pressure of the hotel. Thankfully there were no breaks in any of the pipes. There was snow to be shoveled outside but that could wait for later. Now he could be with his children.
He pushed the door to the lobby open and stepped out. He walked through the hallways towards the diner. He came to a turn in the hallway and stopped when he heard yelling. He peered over to see what was the matter. It was coming from the diner's entrance. Lincoln, carrying Lily, Lucy and Lynn rushed out, spoke for a moment before parting ways. Shortly after the rest of the girls came out all looking somewhat disheveled and stormed off.
He sighed to himself and stepped out from behind the corner to see what had happened. Walking into the diner he saw that three tables around the central cluster had been knocked over along with their chairs. Gingerbread fragments were scattered all throughout the room. The only saving grace in this mess was that the plates seemed to be intact.
He walked over to the gingerbread houses that were still intact. The first one had a spider web design on one side with red and white on the other, most likely Lucy and Juniors. At least she didn't cause another problem.
He walked over to the other surviving one. Lily and Lincoln's if he was not mistaken. He gave a quick glance at Lily's handprints before looking at Lincoln's side. Thirteen gingerbread men in front of the house. It took him a second to realize that the gingerbread men were him and his family. He admired the painstaking effort put into it, the happy depicted family.
He suddenly frowned and the urge to crush the house ran through him. Why couldn't they just get along and not fight? And here he was again to literally pick up the pieces. He carefully placed the gingerbread house back down on the table before he went to find a broom.
Lily felt the elevator come to a stop. Lincoln stepped out of the elevator and began walking down the hallway. She watched the doors go by her. He turned into a room with shelves, arcade games and a pool table. He set her down on the pool table and began to rummage through the shelfs. He came back with a Blarney the Dinosaur puzzle.
"Here you go Lily. This should give you something to do." He opened up the box and dumped out the puzzle pieces for her to work with. She began to put the picture together as Lincoln pulled up a chair close by and began to throw darts at a board hung up on the wall.
She slowly put the pieces together, feeling a sense of satisfaction every time the pieces fell into place. She added the last piece and removed her hand to see the irish dinosaur. She giggled in pleasure and looked up to tell Lincoln.
She saw the kids standing at the other side of the pool table. She froze.
"Hello Lily," they all said in unison. Lincoln kept throwing his darts as if nothing had happened. She began to slowly crawl backwards.
"Don't go," the boy in green said in an almost pleading voice.
"We only want to play," the girl said as they began to climb onto the table. Lily was almost to the edge of the table.
"Don't resist it," The boy in red said. "It'll be better that way. You'll be trapped here forever."
"Just."
"Like."
"Us."
Lily threw herself back as their flesh became discolored and their clothes and hair caked in frost. She free falled for a fraction of a second before Lincoln noticed her. He yelped in panic and threw himself on the floor and caught her. Lily babbled in fear and tried to curl up into Lincoln's shirt.
"Lily, what's wrong?" He stood up and Lily shut her eyes as tight as she could. After a few seconds she dared to open an eye a hair's width. There was no one here. Lincoln tried to set her down but she held onto his shirt with a death grip.
"Uh, I'm going to take you back upstairs. Is that okay?"
"Mh-hm."
"Alright," he said as he rubbed the back of Lily's head to comfort her. "You're safe, you're safe." As he walked past the pool table Lily saw a single faint footprint on the puzzle.
Lana played with her tonka trucks, moving the toys along the intricate lines of the carpet. Nothing calmed her down like playing with her trucks. She sat up to stretch and got yelled at by Lola.
"Lana! Get back down, we agreed to not see each other for the rest of the day!"
She sighed and laid back down on the ground. They had kept getting into arguments and agreed that the best way to stop it was absolutely no contact. They kept to the room as their other siblings were just as prone to being confrontational because of the gingerbread fiasco downstairs. So they divided the room into the floor and bed.
It didn't help that the TV wouldn't get any reception and that Lola was now watching Angels with filthy souls on the DVD player, with its sequel Angels with even filthier souls sure to follow afterwards.
"You sure Mom and Pop's gave you permission to watch this?"
"If they kept the cases in reach of me that's permission enough."
Lana rolled her eyes and continued to move her toys around the floor. Every now and then she would be startled by machine gun fire and demented laughter being emitted from the TV.
"Hey Lan's?"
She stopped moving her truck. "Yeah?"
"Was I really too overboard with the gingerbread house?"
"Yes Lola. Yes you were."
Silence. She went back to playing with her tonka trucks.
"I'm sorry."
Lana turned her head around. "What?"
"I'm sorry that I ruined it for us. That I tried to force something on you."
Lana turned over so that she was looking up at the ceiling. "Wow. An apology from you."
"Don't get used to it."
"I won't. I guess it was a bit underhanded to throw sprinkles into your eyes."
"No, I had that coming."
Silence again. Lana watched the blades of the fan go round and round.
"Do you forgive me?"
"Yeah, I do."
A pink glove extended from over the bed. "Do you want to come back up?"
"Love to," Lana said as she took her hand. Lola pulled her up onto the bed. Lola bunched up some pillows for Lana to lean on.
"Want to watch something else," Lola asked as she held up a DVD case of Blarney the Dinosaur.
"Don't you want to watch this?"
"Nah, it can wait. We have all the time in the world."
Luan and Luna sat on the edges of their beds as far away from each other as possible. Luan refused to look over at Luna and felt quite sure that Luna wouldn't look over at her. Both had sat in silence since they got upstairs.
And it was killing her. She felt dreadfully bored and the silence was deafening. She ached to crack a joke but she knew it would only start another fight. And her mind kept wandering into thoughts of guilt.
That prank she had pulled was completely uncalled for. She really should have dropped it after the puns. But she didn't. And it caused their gingerbread house to be ruined. The annoyed frown on her face slowly turned into a remorseful droop.
She worked up the will to look at Luna. She turned her head. Luna had her guitar propped up on her knee, slowly moving her hand back and forth along the neck. She was staring at the wall.
"I'm sorry."
"Mh?"
"I'm sorry that pranked you. Everybody just looked so… bored and in need of entertainment. I know I should have stopped with the jokes but I wanted to try and get a smile out of someone. And I know that I ruined it for us."
Luna didn't say anything. She just kept re-adjusting the strings on her guitar. Luan looked away and put her head on the headboard in disappointment that Luna hadn't accepted her apology.
"You know, 'that's how the cookie crumbles,' was pretty funny."
A small grin formed on Luan's face. "You think so?"
"Yeah. I forgive you."
"Thank you."
"No problem. Just no more stuff like that."
"I will. I promise."
The day slowly turned to dusk. Leni leaned over from her sewing machine to the lamp and flipped the switch. The room was illuminated in the soft glow of the lamp. She refocused on her work. After their fight Lisa had disappeared and Leni was left alone in the room. Her 16 and a ½ magazines didn't slow down her agitated mind so she turned to something that always did the trick; making a new dress.
She had only taken a break from her labors during dinner. Dad seemed frazzled and Lisa had sat as far away from her as she could manage. She would have to come back soon as bedtime was approaching.
The pint size genius herself soon did arrive. The lock to the door clicked and the door opened up. Leni didn't turn to look, she was almost done with the dress. She heard the drawer's opening and the ruffle of clothes.
"Leni."
"Yes Lisa?"
"What have you been doing?"
"I've been making a new dress," she answered. She pulled it off the machine and hung it out proudly for Leni to see.
"Leni. Do you know what that is made out of?"
She shook her head.
"Bed sheets Leni. My bed sheets."
Leni glanced at Lisa's bed. It had been stripped down to the mattress.
"My bad, I didn't see what I was using."
"A mistake only you could have made Leni."
"You can sleep with me!"
"No, that will not be necessary. I can suffice on my own."
"If you say so." She hung the dress up on the closet rack and headed to bed. Lisa was laying on the mattress looking up at the ceiling without her glasses, which were currently resting on the nightstand. Leni got into bed, flipped the lamp switch and pulled her magenta sleep mask over her eyes.
Leni woke up some time later that night. She could feel something worming its way into the bed.
"Cliff?" she asked confusedly. The feeling stopped. She groggily pulled the sleep mask away from her eyes and flipped on the lights. It was Lisa.
"Lisa? What are you doing?"
"I, uh," she began sheepishly. "I was incorrect. The bed was not sufficient and I felt cold. I hope I'm not inconveniencing you."
"Of course not," Leni said enthusiastically. She scooped Lisa up into a one armed hug.
"Leni, this sign of affection is not needed."
"I know but I don't want you getting cold. Can I turn off the light?"
"Yes, you can." Leni reached over and plunged the room into darkness again before trying to go back to sleep.
"Leni, I have something to say."
"Mm-hm?"
"I wish to apologize for my actions earlier today. I was too prideful to see that you were just having fun. I should have just left you alone and not have thought that I knew better than you."
"Ahh, I forgive you Lisa." She hoisted Lisa up onto her belly and hugged her the way a child would hug a teddy bear. She didn't hear any protest from Lisa and she slowly drifted back into sleep.