The return of the last three twenty year olds on Earth paying for movies. Our heroes are:
Alan: Sour grape.
Byron: Pop rocks and cola.
Cammy: Special brownies.
Byron lies still, in the porous border between life and death. His two best, and apparently only, friends stand by his bedside. Cammy pokes at his side with a small branch, while Alan fiddles with a dating app.
ALAN
Is he alive?
CAMMY
Sort of. His eyes follow anything you move in front of his face, and he spits out a pick-up line if you mention Irene.
ALAN
This blows. I never imagined him becoming a vegetable. Well, aside from last year’s New Year’s Eve party.
CAMMY
You’d think someone his size could hold his Everclear.
ALAN
(Somber)
I’m losing my oldest friend.
CAMMY
(Irked)
You met me in elementary school. There are photos.
ALAN
I’m losing my oldest friend that hasn’t used mental illness as a legal defense.
CAMMY
Like I had a choice. Have you seen how long people go down for possession in this country? That’s the real crime.
ALAN
Let’s skip the half-hour rant about the war on drugs.
BYRON
Burble flurp.
ALAN
Byron agrees with me.
CAMMY
He makes that sound whenever someone says “war.”
BYRON
Burble flurp.
ALAN
Good one, big guy.
CAMMY
We almost had a moment, and you rebound back to being an asshat.
ALAN
I’m honoring the way he lived! Byron loved offensive jokes. His most played Netflix movie was a musical called “The Ethnic Laundromat.”
CAMMY
What?!
ALAN
It’s a sequel to The Producers.
CAMMY
You’re making shit up.
ALAN
It’s my way of coping. Where are his parents?
CAMMY
Poisoning the system and the planet.
ALAN
Not biting. Waiting for an answer.
CAMMY
His mother is too busy wiretapping protestors to come down. She did manage to send a text asking if he “caught Ebola from that urban child.” The father was nicer. He took a four minute skype call between meetings, and told his comatose son to pick himself up by his bootstraps.
ALAN
How’s this even happen? Was he playing “Detective Byron” again?
CAMMY
I found this in his laptop’s disk drive.
Cammy puts on a set of rubber gloves, and uses steel tongs to pick up a DVD copy of food fight. The disk makes a low-pitched humming sound, as fel spirits coalesce around it.
ALAN
(Raw disgust)
Jesus. They could just have killed him.
CAMMY
They wanted him to suffer. Whoever did this knows Byron will watch, wear, or eat anything you put in front of him. The poor dumb bastard probably thought this was a Christmas gift.
ALAN
This has to be Jeanette, or Dominic. They’re still out to get me.
CAMMY
Let’s entertain the idea that this isn’t about you.
Alan adopts the expression of a freshman in an advanced astrophysics lecture. For a moment, he skirts the cusp of joining Byron in a coma.
ALAN
Whatever this is about-
CAMMY
Not you.
ALAN
Whatever this is about, it means war.
BYRON
Burble flurp.
CAMMY
That’s the problem, they’ve made a perfect first strike. Byron might not be the most traditionally intelligent, but-
ALAN
He thinks Samuel L. Jackson is President.
CAMMY
Right, but-
ALAN
I asked who he voted for during midterm elections. He said he used to support the Playstation, bu thought the Xbox One had a stronger stance on national security.
CAMMY
Okay, but he’s far more focused than us. He actually follows through with things, no matter how ill-advised. You and I get sidetracked after ten minutes.
ALAN
We do tend to get bored quickly.
A beat passes between the pair. Alan scribbles something on a post-it note, while Cammy returns to poking Byron with a stick.
CAMMY
God it’s dull in here. You’d think he’d put in drapes or something.
ALAN
Think this’ll sort itself out?
CAMMY
I think that they’re having a two for one special at Taco Hole. I need to start building a hangover buffer.
ALAN
I guess I’m driving.
PREVIOUS || ARCHIVE || NEXT (JAN. 7)
Cammy ditches the branch while Alan pockets his note. The pair abandon Byron’s side, leaving the house pets and bedbugs to take care of their fallen comrade. Byron’s cat taps the side of the Foodfight! disk, and promptly expires.
Season 2 Updates Every other Wednesday.