Standing in the corner of the opulent powder room at Chez Couteaux, while a score of ladies fixed their hair at the mirror and lost themselves in gossip, Ann placed her phone back into her purse and frowned an anxious frown. That was the third time this evening that she had dialed Kim, and she was beginning to get a bit worried at her daughter's repeated failure to answer any of her calls.
"Wow, I really hope that everything's all right on the home front!" she pondered to herself as she walked back to the table, her stunning figure clad in a sleek, dark blue cocktail dress that was turning heads from both the other diners and the waitstaff.
"So!' said James, happily, as Ann returned to her seat at his left, "how's our Kimmie-cub holding out with 'thing one' and 'thing two'?"
"She's still not picking up!' replied Ann nervously, as she gulped down more of her martini. "That's a LITTLE concerning."
"Oh, maybe she just turned her phone off and took the boys out for ice cream!" answered James with a smile. "I'm sure that nothing's wrong and that she's got EVERYTHING under control!"
"...Ice cream?" answered Ann, sternly, her eyebrows arched dangerously high. "Under...control?"
"Yeah...s-so?" replied James, suddenly fearing the severe look on his wife's face as he loosened his silk tie and gulped. Their friends at the table ceased their conversation and turned their attention to the Possible couple, feeling a sudden drop in the social temperature.
"Nothing's...wrong?..." asked Ann.
"Well...h-hopefully not!" sputtered James.
"Remember the LAST time that Kim took the twins out for sweets on one of our date nights, and the boys got a hold of that cappuccino ice cream? Remember how THAT ended, James?" inquired Ann.
James' face paled at the memory. "Jeepers...I'd forgotten all about that..." he said quietly, with slowly growing horror, as he swiftly gulped down another mouthful of scotch. "We had to pry those little caffeine-addled monkeys off the ceiling with that great big shovel-sized spatula that your mother gave us..."
"That's right" said Ann, gravely. "And remember how poor, frazzled Kim was in such a state, that we nearly had her committed?"
"I wanna be committed..." said Kim as she buried her face in her hands, having had just about enough of the night's insanity.
"NO WAY!" cried Ron. "You are NOT leaving us here to fend for ourselves against these ghosts and ghouls and...and...dinosaurs!"
"...dinosaurs?" asked Tim and Jim.
"Yeah...well...who KNOWS what's out in that mist!" cried Ron hysterically.
"All I can say right now, guys, is that I have more questions than answers" said Kim. "Many, MANY more..."
Kim slowly climbed to her feet and crossed her arms in frustration as Ron and the boys continued to sit on the grass in stupefied silence, the thick, enveloping wall of fog showing no signs of clearing up.
"Number one..." she began, "what in God's name is in our house? And why?" she glanced at her front door, still hung ajar and opening ominously into a threatening black interior.
"Number two...what's up with all the fog?"
"Are ya shootin' down your Bermuda Triangle theory, KP?" asked Ron as he scratched his head and yawned.
"Actually", began Kim, "I honestly thought that maybe Drakken and Shego had gotten a hold of some kind of weather device or something...but it couldn't be them..."
"Why not?" asked Tim and Jim.
"Because it's actually WORKING!" said Kim. "Drakken could NEVER pull off a plan THIS good!"
"Hey, yeah, you're right!" laughed Ron. "He probably would have dropped and broken the machine or spilled his cocoa moo on it by now, and all the while with Shego screaming at him!"
"And number three" continued Kim, "...is there some kind of barf-inducing force field on that limo or what?" she asked, as she motioned with her hand across the street. "And what's that limo even DOING there? I mean...ugggghhhh...basically, to sum up this whole pleasant evening of ours...JUST WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND HERE TONIGHT?!"
"WE DON'T KNOW!" shouted the twins, simultaneously. "Stop yelling! You sound like Nana when she loses her hearing aid!"
"Hey, Kim?" asked Ron.
"Y-yeah?"
"Remember two weeks ago, when we had that mission in Africa to stop those poachers from capturing that albino lion?
"Yeah?" she answered.
"And then I got chased and nearly ripped apart by that very same albino lion?...heh, THERE'S gratitude for ya'...and THEN I got stung ten times by killer bees? And then I got peed on by an elephant?"
"Yeah, Ron, I remember!"
"And then those French tourists got me blasted on Amarula and then I went over Victoria Falls in that barrel on a dare?"
"...wait, WHAT?!" she cried.
"WHOA!" exclaimed Tim and Jim in shock.
"Oh, I guess you weren't there when that happened, KP, ha ha haaa!" laughed Ron good-naturedly. "But anyway, like I was saying...all of THAT crazy stuff...that was all still WAY more fun than tonight!"
But the dumbstruck Kim was still stuck on the Victoria Falls thing.
"Ron, I can't...I can't BELIEVE that you even did that! What...what were you even thinking?"
"Well, I guess I wasn't. I WAS pretty drunk, after all!"
"Where was I when that happened?"
"Uh, I think you were, uh, in the ladies' room"
"You did all that in the span of five minutes?"
"She's usually in the bathroom longer than five minutes..." thought Tim.
"Yeah, well, it didn't take long to get down to the bottom" said Ron. "That water WAS moving pretty fast, KP!"
"But I mean, how did you manage to get crazy-drunk in just FIVE MINUTES, Ron?" Kim asked.
"Well, I AM kind of a lightweight...at least that's what Monique called me at Josh's kegger party last week-"
"Dude, that is SO rad!" shouted Tim with a gigantic smile.
"Yeah, like that hack Adrena Lynn could ever pull that off!" blurted out Jim. "Hey, did those tourist people give you any money for it?"
"I made ten bucks!" said Ron, proudly. "Well, ten francs, anyway...they were French after all..."
Kim knelt down and gently placed her hands on the surprised Ron's shoulders. "I am never...EVER...letting you out of my sight again!"
"Awwww, I'm sorry I scared ya, KP!" he said with a warm smile. "In fact, this sounds kinda' weird, but I don't even think that the shock ever even set in over what I had done! Just...like... it's doing...right...now. Oh wow, I feel dizzy...and kinda' sick...aaaaand here I go-"
And with that, Ron passed out stone-cold, as the delayed shock of his down-a-waterfall-in-a-barrel caper finally caught up with him two weeks after the fact.
Kim and her brothers stood in a circle around the unconscious Ron, his face set in a strange, goofy smile as his deep, soft breaths rolled in and out like gentle ocean waves. Kim was now smiling herself, though it looked far more crazy (and potentially dangerous) than Ron's gentle, amiable one.
"Dude, Kim's lookin' like that crazy guy from 'The Shining'!" whispered Tim.
"I know!" answered Jim, quietly. "Let's hope that dad keeps the axe locked up!"
"Hmmmmm..." Kim thought out loud, as her crazy grin was growing scarier by the second. "I just can't help but wonder just how everyone else is doing tonight...because this just isn't fair...it's...just...not...fair..."
"Can't be doing as bad as us!" snorted Tim as he climbed to his feet and then helped his brother up, all while keeping a careful eye on his sister who looked just inches from cracking. Jim grunted and stretched his arms over his head, glancing casually upwards at Kim's bedroom window before doing a sudden, wide-eyed double-take.
"It's not fair..." Kim endlessly repeated in a gentle, soothing tone, her face dangerously pleasant with an unhinged smile. "It's just not faaaaaaaiiiiiiirrrrr..."
"What's with you?" Tim asked Jim, who was staring up at Kim's window with a look of fright.
"Uh...uh...uhhhhhhh" Jim garbled out as he tightly clutched his brother's shoulder and then pointed upwards with a shaking hand.
Tim followed his twin's gaze up to the long row of windows over the garage that looked in on his big sister's bedroom, until his own face looked just as frightened as Jim's.
"Ummm...Kim?" implored Tim.
"Not fair...not fair-"
"KIM, WAKE UP OVER THERE!" screamed Jim, his voice cracking with fear and panic.
"...this had better be good, you two. You interrupted my sad soliloquy..." Kim whispered as she stared into space.
"Screw your solil...sola...so-silly-key, or whatever!" shouted Tim. "There's something in your room!"
"My...my room? MY ROOM?!" she exploded, the threat of someone invading her own personal space finally snapping her back to reality. "WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN? WHY? HOW?"
Her brothers pointed up towards her room, and Kim's eyes followed.
And then, she too, was afraid.
A pale, slender hand was resting its fingertips against the window of her bedroom, showing starkly white against the lightless, jet-black interior within. And just above the arm...two small glowing pinpoints of red where the eyes would be.
On that particular evening, the annual Middleton Summer art festival was being held at the local fairgrounds, the spacious field practically overflowing with tents, stands and stalls of varying sizes and colors. Just over an hour earlier, Josh Mankey, a young artist and musician within Kim's social circle, had been having a great night. He had sold ten paintings and had made over a thousand dollars and was contemplating buying a new guitar or amplifier when, without warning, the shadowy waves of fog had suddenly rolled in, a chorus of yells and screams cutting through the air as both artisans and patrons desperately ran for cover.
"Gnarly..." he had said, in stunned disbelief, as the moon and the stars were blotted out of the sky, and the warm June evening soon felt like a cold November midnight.
Tara was leisurely painting her nails whilst listening to the O Boys in her bedroom when Bonnie had decided to call.
"Oh, hi Bonnie!" Tara had spoken cheerfully into the phone as she continued brushing on nail polish. "What's up?"
"What's up?" Bonnie had growled viciously, "I'll TELL you what's 'up', Tara...my BLOOD PRESSURE! Because I am just FURIOUS with Brick Flagg right now!"
"Uh oh, what happened?" Tara had asked.
"I was at the gym earlier, and I asked that moose-faced lummox over the phone to bring me a bagel & cream cheese, and what does he do? He gets me an everything bagel, you know, the one with garlic, sunflower seeds, pepper and stuff, and THEN, he gets me flipping strawberry cream cheese. Can you BELIEVE that, Tara? A SAVORY bagel with a DESSERT cream cheese? It was, like, a TOTAL CATASTROPHE!"
Tara snorted.
"...what...what was that?" demanded Bonnie.
"Oh n-nothing, nothing Bonnie!" said Tara, as she tried her best not to laugh. "That's...th-that's just AWFUL, Bonnie! I just don't know how you manage!"
"RIGHT?" exclaimed Bonnie. "I tried calling him just five minutes ago so I could give him a piece of my mind, but he's not picking up! Probably down in his basement lifting weights and sweating all over everything! Uggggghhhhh!..."
Silence.
"Tara?"
More silence.
"...Tara, are you, like, still there?"
Tara was indeed, like, still there, but after looking up from her nail work, she had glanced out of her bedroom window only to find that the evening sky had completely vanished, and had been replaced with a cold, swirling, murky gray haze.
"What in the WORLD?" Tara had gasped, spilling red nail polish all over her pink bedspread.
"Okay, Tara..." continued Bonnie, as Tara was still in shock at the sight while trying to clean up her mess, "this is the part where you say 'Oh, Bonnie, everything is gonna be alright', and then I say-"
"Bonnie, have you, ummmm, looked out your window lately?" asked Tara.
'Uh, no" Bonnie answered. "Like, why would I do that?"
"Just do it."
"Uh, why?"
"Just DO it, okay!"
There was the sound of footsteps and then a long pause.
"WHOOOOOAAA, WHAT THE HELL?!" Bonnie shouted.
Mr. Steven Barkin, Kim and Ron's foul-tempered, authoritarian teacher from Middleton High, was busy doing his evening push-ups on his back porch (having already completed his morning, mid-morning, noon and afternoon push-ups), when the thick, impenetrable cloud of mist suddenly descended upon his neighborhood.
"CHEESE AND CRACKERS!" he blurted out, as practically everything in sight was swallowed up in ghostly tones of gray, and the pleasant, mild temperatures quickly turned painfully frigid.
He quickly jumped to his feet and readied himself for action, his former military training setting off alarm bells in his head that something was indeed amiss. He assumed a fighting stance and tensed himself with a steely gaze, but then relaxed a bit when nothing else happened, though his sharp sense of vigilance was still roused and ready.
"Hmmmmmmm...something smells rotten in the state of Middleton..." he seethed, tightly squinting his stern eyes beneath the shade of his prominent browbone.
"And I don't like it."
It suddenly reminded him of his time in the service, the dangerous, mist-shrouded rainforests of Jai Alai abruptly intruding back into his memory.
He tightly folded his bulky arms and then frowned even harder, so much so that his beady eyes nearly disappeared.
"No, sir, I don't like it at all..."
"...*snore*...n-no...I won't...do it again...for...*snore*...t-ten more...francs...*snore*...eh...wh-what...HUH?!"
Ron jolted awake from his short nap and then slowly sat up with a groan, rubbing his eyes as he fretfully took in his surroundings and remembered just what was happening.
"Ooof...what a crumby night...eh?
He looked up and saw Kim, Tim and Jim standing over him, staring up at Kim's bedroom window with pallid expressions of apprehension and disquiet etched on their faces.
"Uh, guys...?" he stammered as he stood up and joined them, stretching his arms and yawning widely, "did I, uh, miss something?"
They didn't answer.
He followed their stares to the upstairs window and then saw the red eyes and the pale hand.
"...aw, no..." he wailed. "M-more sp-spooky stuff?"
The hand was gently motioning for them to come up.
"I think that, uh...this weirdo, uh, heh heh heh...wants to TALK to you, Kim!" laughed Tim, nervously, as Jim's eyes frantically darted back and forth between Kim and the window.
"Y-yeah!" said Jim, hesitantly. "It's YOUR room after all, Kim!"
"Looks like an invitation..." whispered Ron, fearfully.
"I know" said Kim, as she angrily clenched her hands into tight fists, getting ready for, quite possibly, the fight of her life.
"Let's not be rude..."