"MISSY!"
"YO, WENCH!"
Someone starts pounding on the door . . . violently.
"DANGER! DANGER!"
"MIIIIIIIISY! AHHHHHH! AHHHH!"
"Wait a minute! What are we doing?"
". . . Oh, yeah."
A few moments later, there is the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door pops open, and Brad, Troll, Dan, and Lori pile in. They are all out of breath. Troll and Brad collapse immediately to the floor. Dan maintains a certain minimum degree of dignity and makes it over to the divan before he collapses. Lori crashes in the recliner.
After a few moments spent gasping on the floor, Troll lumbers across the living room and turns on the light. He stands, squinting, and surveys the room.
"Well, I don't see any bloodstains. I guess that's a good sign." he says.
Brad lurches to his feet, and heads for the bedrooms. Troll calls after him, "Dude, don't forget the shades."
Brad stops and says, "Oh, yeah." He reaches up to the top of the fridge and takes down a pair of wraparound sunglasses.
Lori, watching this, says, "Huh?"
"Very special lenses," Troll explains. "They're called 'Pink-Blockers'. They're so Brad doesn't get blinded by going in there."
Lori looks at him, levelly. "You're kidding."
The living room is flooded with indirect pink light as Brad opens the door and peers into the bedroom.
"You could say that," Troll says.
For no apparent reason, Dan says, "You know, I never really understood why Dad let me get nailed up like that, and I guess I've always resented that."
There is a brief pause, as the others digest this unusual comment.
Brad calls out, "They're not here. We musta missed 'em. They've already gone dancing."
"What's all this?" Lori asks. She is sifting thru a pile of flimsy boxes and tissue paper on the floor in front of the TV, which is showing Beauty and the Beast for the 'leventy-billionth time.
Lori says, "It looks like packaging from some kind of mail-order company. Oh, wait. There's a letter."
Dan, still staring at the ceiling, says, "I guess I never forgave him for not putting on one of those Lightning and Thunder things for me, wouldn't that have made a sufficient impact on the Romans?"
Troll says, "Dan, please move over to the other couch."
Shaken out of his reverie, Dan looks at Troll and asks, "Why?"
"Because there are things that we mere mortals simply were not meant to know."
Agreeably, Dan changes couches.
Somewhere, in some primordially dark cemetery, with lots and lots of phallic-looking tombstones, the bones of a certain S. Freud turn over in their grave.
The letter turns out to be one of those computer-printed frauds, painstakingly designed to LOOK like it was hand-printed. It goes on for a while about what an excellent customer Missy has been in the past, and how wonderful the company thinks she is, and wouldn't she please try on these brand new designer fashions when she goes out to C-street to dance this evening with Zuki and Trista?
The return address on the letter is from some place in Oregon, but the package was mailed from Champaign.
"She wouldn't! She KNOWS we're in a slasher-flick! She wouldn't!" Troll says.
Lori says, "I wonder what the clothes look like?"
Brad and Troll look at each other.
"She might," Brad sighs.
"Now what?" Dan asks nobody in particular.
"We gotta round people up. This is dumb. We have to get everybody together NOW, before we are all toast," says Troll.
"Oh, like we aren't toast already," Brad insinuates.
"We should go to IMPE, and collect the sportos," says Lori.
"Why? Why not go to C-Street and round up the wenches?" asks Brad.
"Because, the 'wenches' will be dancing for a while yet, but the guys will be just about done playing, and after they were gonna get done playing, they were gonna go . . . "
"OVER TO DAN'S PLACE!" everybody yells.
With a mighty roar, our four friends pile back out of Missy's house, not bothering to lock the door, in their mad dash for the street.
Brad's voice carries back in thru the open door, "If I get through this, I'm never going to run again, as long as I live!"