Styrofoam Throne (13 page)

“You wanna go smoke in the dunes?” she asked. I stared at her shirt and was finally convinced that pot was for me.

“Totally.”

We walked past the Castle and hit the sand dunes just on the other side. It was kind of funny that the town was named after them. I don’t think our founding fathers knew they’d just be used for drugs and sex. Tonight, the dunes were already teeming with people making out and doing illegal shit. We waded through a few clusters of people to find our own valley.

Melody flopped down on the sand and pulled out a joint. I still had Renaldo’s lighter so I thought it’d be cool if I tried to light it for her. I was so drunk I couldn’t get it to work in the easy breeze and flicked it over and over.

“Here,” she said, taking it from me and lighting it in one stroke. She took a long draw off the joint and passed it to me.

“It’s almost a full moon,” she said.

I looked up at the night sky and took a big toke off the joint.

“Yeah.”

That’s the last thing I remembered before blacking out.

7

I woke up the next morning in the daze of another planet. Hot and sandy, this environment was incapable of sustaining life. My own existence seemed like an illusion. My pants were around my ankles and I was alone. Was this death? I had no idea if something very good or very bad had happened. The alone part made it seem bad though. At least my boxers were still on.

Wait, now I remembered Melody. Where was she?

I pulled my pants up and brushed the sand off. I walked up the dune nearest to the ocean to get a better view of my crash site.

When I got to the top I saw Melody, swimming in the ocean in her bra and panties.

“Come in!” she yelled with her arms up as a small wave hit her back.

I tore my pants back off, ran past the blackened shells of spent fireworks, and plunged into the ocean.

“Are you as hungover as I am?” she said.

“I think I’m still drunk.”

Melody laughed and swam up to me. I went to kiss her, but she hesitated.

“I didn’t brush my teeth,” she said.

“I’ve never brushed my teeth ever,” I joked.

Melody laughed and put her arms around me. We kissed for the first time. Or again, I guess. Due to the blackout, I had no clue what my current experience level was.

She grabbed a piece of skin that was peeling from my old sunburn and pulled it off.

“You’re shedding,” she said. I thought it was gross but she seemed to like it.

“What happened last night?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Like what did we do?”

“We went to Brogi’s.”

“I remember that.”

“Then we went to the dunes.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“We smoked a joint and played Who Can Make the Scariest Face? You won. Then we made out for a while. You’re a good kisser, you know. And then you passed out while trying to take your pants off.”

“Fuck. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s it?”

It still sounded like a pretty awesome night even if my brain wasn’t around to remember it. I tried constructing the memory in my head for something to savor.

“Oh, and you said you love me,” Melody said.

“Whoa.” I couldn’t tell if I said “whoa” out loud or in my head. I was embarrassed. But she didn’t say it like it was a bad thing. She also didn’t say she felt the same. But she didn’t run away, so it could’ve been worse.

“Are you working today?” she asked.

“Yeah, you?”

“I’m gonna ditch. Still celebrating independence,” she said while leaning back and floating in the water.

“Is Jack gonna be pissed?”

“Nah. What’s one less witch in the Castle?”

I showed up for roll call and the first thing Jack said was “Look at my face because I’m fucking pissed!” Only fifteen people showed up. It took at least thirty and at best fifty people to properly operate Castle Dunes. Almost everyone from yesterday went to sleep at dawn but had failed to rise. Or they were off eating breakfast burritos somewhere with their head in their hands, feeling more inhuman than the roles they couldn’t face. Who could blame them? Being locked inside a sweltering castle all day, listening to horror soundtracks and provoking screams, would be Code Green central.

“Well, this day is going to be shit,” Jack continued, “and unfortunately for you guys that showed up, you’re gonna get the short end. We can’t do breaks today, I can’t lose anyone.”

Everyone got bummed. The heat was already brutal in the morning and it was only going to get worse. Jack assigned the roles, and everyone shuffled into the Castle.

I was still trying to stop my brain from sloshing around when Jack locked eyes with me.

“Hey, Dono, since I’m running a circus of unreliable drug addicts and alcoholics, I need you to fill in as a cast member.”

I stood in silent shock.

“Does that stupid look on your face mean okay?”

“Yes.”

“Follow me.”

Jack led me into the costume room and pulled a Wolfman mask out of a box. It stunk like hell. He handed me wolf hands too, and I put the hairy claws on first. Just then, Dracula came into the room.

“What the fuck?!” Dracula said, raising his arms. “Some piss-bucket, nacho bitch comin’ in on my stage? My stage? This is unacceptable, Jack.”

“Easy, Colin,” Jack said. “We’re too short staffed for this today.”

Dracula kept at it.

“This fucking piece-of-shit kid almost killed me last night.”

Jack was unresponsive. Dracula pressed a finger into my chest.

“Drac. Attack. Motherfucker.”

“We don’t have time for that shit,” Jack said. Dracula ignored him.

“Just watch it,” he told me and clipped my shoulder while storming off.

“So what’d you do to him last night?” Jack said.

“Threw firecrackers in his car while he was making it.”

“Ha!” Jack slapped my back.

I pulled the Wolfman mask over my head.

“Okay, you’re gonna be doing a thug role,” he said. “Means you don’t have to speak. Just jump scares. You won’t have to worry about riffing dialogue. Can you act like a werewolf?”

I looked into the mirror at my furry face, assumed the lurching attack pose of a werewolf, and let out a howl.

“Great, now it gets hot with that shit on. So make sure you drink lots of water and pop one of these every now and then.”

Jacked handed me some white pills.

“Uh, what are these?”

“Ha, you wish. They’re salt pills. It’s so you don’t get heatstroke. Take them.”

I pocketed the pills and adjusted my mask.

“This thing smells like shit.”

“Yeah, I think the last guy died in it, sorry, pal!”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. I was all suited up and admired myself in the mirror. Jack put his arm around me and looked in the mirror too.

“Like father, like son!” Jack said with a belly laugh. “I still think I’m hairier though.”

Jack took me to the Haunted Forest room. It was densely packed with fake trees and had a mossy rock to hide behind.

“Alright, real simple. Hide behind the rock and when you hear someone come in, pop out, act like you’re going to kill ’em and chase ’em into the next room.”

I gave a thumbs up. Jack flipped a switch behind a curtain and left. “Forest at Night” sounds thickened the atmosphere.

It was a quick room. Some were meant to be longer. This one was just a classic shock scare, or a “boo room.” Non-speaking roles were featured less often in the Castle but were the most important in keeping the place scary. The set-piece rooms were spooky looking but mostly funny. They weren’t able to actually make you jump in fright like a properly timed shock from the dark.

I positioned myself behind the rock and waited for people to come through. Before any did, I was already drenched in sweat from being trapped under wolf skin. The mouth allowed little room for the passage of air, so I had to make my breathing deliberate. It was a slow start to the day since the rest of the town seemed to have ditched everything too. The longer I waited, the more nervous and scared I felt about a customer coming through.

Finally, I heard screams come from the room before me and psyched myself up. Three teenagers ran into my room and stopped in the middle of it.

“This room sucks,” one said.

“Yeah, why’s there a forest in a castle anyways?” the second said.

“There ain’t shit in here, keep—”

I burst out from behind the rock, swinging my arms wildly, and let out a scream that was way too high pitched to be scary.
 

“Hahahaha, Wolfman sucks!”

Embarrassed, I waited for the next group while continuously coughing to make sure my throat was clear.

Next, I got a good scare in. It freaked the shit out of the plebes and they ran through the room, clutching each other’s shoulders in front of them. With a simple and strong “Arrrrggghh” I had turned a room that sucks into one to run from. And transformed myself into a minimum-wage walking terror.

I repositioned myself and waited. It was a good thing I had a mask on to hide my less-than-terrifying, beaming smile.

The job didn’t take much, just good timing. I repeated the scare over and over. It worked better on some than others. Customers’ comments ranged from “Fuck!” to “Fuck you!” Either one was a reaction, which was all I was looking for.

The day’s heat dragged on, slow and thick, but I had a blast in the Wolfman loop. It took a while just for my shoulders to drop and accept that this was all actually happening. Everything was so good, how could it actually be real?

After lunchtime, a wave of people holding black and white fliers passed through. I knew the Castle didn’t distribute anything and wondered where they were coming from.

No one passed through for a half hour, then my Haunted Forest started to fill up with the smell of weed. I left my post behind the rock and poked my werewolf head into the Phantom of the Opera room before me. Raw and aggressive heavy metal blasted out of the room’s speakers. I didn’t remember any metal in the Castle before. A disfigured, caped man pretended to play an organ while puffing a joint. Fake blood came from his ears and ran down his neck. This setup was supposed to explain where the “Toccata” outside was coming from, had it been playing in the room.

“Hey, dude,” I said. The Phantom couldn’t hear me. I placed my paw on him.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” The Phantom turned around, choking on his smoke.

“Hey, sorry,” I said.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m a werewolf,” I said.

“No, who. The. Fuck. Are. You.”

“Oh, I’m Dono.”

“You’re new?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“I’m Rex.”

“What’s the music?” I said, nodding up to the speakers.

“My band,” he said and motioned to a stack of fliers on the organ. “Here, check us out,” he said, handing me one. I looked down and it was a collage of skeletons having sex in every imaginable position. It read: TION—AT THE DITCH! and had some info details.

“Tee-I-On?” I pronounced.

“No, dude, it’s Tion,” he said, pronouncing it like “shun.”

“Tion. What’s that?” I said.

“It’s the most metal name in the world.”

“How come?”

“Dude, it’s the most commonly rhymed syllable in all of metal.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Like,” Rex said, grasping for an invisible mic and making a metal face, “I’ll kill you by decapita-
tion
! You’re death is hallucina-
tion
! No need for the prosecu-
tion
! Our metal is a revela-
tion
!”

“Oh, okay, cool.”

“Yeah. And that’s what our record is gonna be called too,” he said, nodding with confidence.
 

“Tion. Like self titled?”

“No, shun. Like shunned.”

“Like the name, but Tioned?”

“Fuck man, you’ll get it when you see the cover.”

“Sweet. Do—”

He cut me off. “Wait, shhh. Check out this tom roll.”

I listened as the drummer made a lengthy fill that sounded like someone falling down a flight of stairs.

“Yeah, bro,” he said, air drumming and nodding along.

A group of teenage plebes came through, and Rex sprang into action with fliers.

“Welcome to my crypt of musical death. Like music? Hear now my symphony of the catacombs. Check out my band,” he said, handing out the fliers.

The kids were confused why the Phantom was in a local metal band and hanging out with a casual werewolf.

“Why’s the Wolfman here?”

“Because metal soothes the savage beast,” Rex said. “See how complacent it’s made him? Hey, if you like true metal, check out my band. We’re playing The Ditch,” he said.

“Your band sucks,” one of them said and dropped the flier on the floor.

I jumped on the opportunity and flared into a violent Wolfman rage, chasing them out of the room and past mine.

I retreated behind my mossy rock with a flier in my hand and looked at it more closely. Tion at The Ditch. Alright, I’m in. Maybe I could get Melody to go.

Rex poked his head into the Haunted Forest.

“Thanks, bro,” he said and flashed the devil horns at me. “But seriously, check my band out.”

I went back to work with the werewolf act and finished the day with strobed-out eyes and the taste of stage fog in the back of my throat. I never wanted to go back to picking up turds again. I was a plebe a couple of weeks ago and now a famous monster. A professional exhibit. Holding this newly appointed power ruled. But I was also in disbelief of it. Finally running with the pack, I just hoped they didn’t eat me alive at the first sign of weakness.

8

I told Jack it was the best day of my life and he threw a T-shirt at my face. I unfolded it. It read “Castle Dunes Cast Member” in Old English letters and had a sketch of the Castle on the front.

“Welcome aboard, Wolfman. I heard good things about you today. You’re our new substitute for any roles that go abandoned for whatever reason.”

I went to hug Jack and as I did, he poured a beer on my head.

“That’s how Castle Dunes hugs,” he said, laughing more than usual. I loved it. I had been baptized. I wondered if “any roles that go abandoned” also meant Dracula’s post.