Question the Sky

[So everyone knows, this is the first part of a story I threw together while on cough medicine at about 4 AM. I can’t remember most of what I wrote, and after I get some rest, and hopefully come down off the various medicines that are attempting to fix my shitty body, I’m terrified to see what I wrote. This will never be published because I would be sued by about fifty different companies, but I hope you enjoy it. Part 2 when I get around to it. Enjoy.]

…

 It was 3 AM when Jeff got a call from Fuck.
 Nothing was inherently strange about this, at least until Jeff answered the phone.
 He reached out to the phone on his nightstand and picked it up, then grumbled “‘Lo?” into the phone.
 ”JEFF!” screamed a voice from the other side of the phone, presumably Fuck, in fact definitely Fuck, or an impressionist who sounded quite a bit like Fuck. Which would in turn raise the question of why someone would spend months, perhaps years of their life trying to perfect the vocal imitation of some guy from Massachusetts with a strange name.
 What?
 Oh right, Fuck was screaming Jeff’s name (which was Jeff) into the phone, hopefully in the hopes of advancing the plot and stopping narrative rambling.
 Jeff flinched from the phone and shook his head, praying to some celestial deity or another that this was just another part of his dream.
 Ninurta, the Ancient Sumerian god of war, heard this prayer and promptly said “Fuck you, mate,” and thus caused the following catastrophic and outright confusing events, as Ancient Sumerian deities are wont to do.
 Jeff returned the phone to his ear, and calmly asked “Yes, Fuck?”
 ”JeffJeffJeffJeff, JEFF, you have no idea the kind of epicness that is underway at this moment,” gasped Fuck, out of breath.
 Jeff, closed his eyes, sighed internally, and said “Probably not, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
 Just then Fuck burst into Jeff’s room, talking breathlessly into a cell phone. “Your psychic powers are bullshit then, because I’m keeping this one a surprise,” said Fuck. Fuck scratched his crotch, biting his lip in satisfaction. “So where do you wanna meet?” Fuck raised a quizzical eyebrow and sniffed his crotch-scratching hand.
 Jeff, a blank yet somehow confused look upon his face, looked at Fuck and gave a sophisticated “Uhhhhhhhhh…”
 Fuck slapped his hand against his thigh, and shouted “Oh wait, we’ll meet at your house ay-sap. BREAK!” and then hung up. Fuck sniffed, then gave a start, apparently just then spotting Jeff, the phone on his nightstand still held up to his face.
 ”Oh,” said Fuck, finally catching his breath. “You’re here. Damn you’re quick. But I’m sure you’ve been told that.”
 Jeff sighed, in what was to be the harbinger of a great many sighs in the near future.
 ”Alright,” said Fuck, holding his hands out in the universal gesture for “Wait ‘til you hear this shit.”
 Jeff held his hand up in the universal gesture for “I’d rather not hear about this shit to which you are referring, kind sir/asshole” (the ending is context-dependent, in this case it is the latter).
 Jeff said “Let me stop you right there, Fuck, because—” Jeff noticed that he was still holding the receiver of his phone up to his head, and quickly hung up. “Because the last time you came to my house at three in the morning, I ended up chained to a tree in the middle of Nevada, which I swear to God isn’t even supposed to HAVE trees, while you hung out with an Asian hooker named, fucking honestly, ‘Lickilicky.’”
 Fuck glared at Jeff, his mouth agape in offense. “Bullshit, Jeff, okay? There was no Asian hooker named ‘Lickilicky,’ that’s the name of a POKEMON. I abandoned you with that tree friend of yours to go play Pokemon and I CAUGHT a Lickilicky.”
 Jeff formed an angry response in his mind, and commanded his lips to form said angry response, but then aborted the whole mission, paused, then said “Lickilicky? What type of Pokemon is that?”
 ”Evolved form of Lickitung. Looks like an obese form of Lickitung, with cotton-candy shit on his head.”
 ”That’s just ridiculous.”
 ”God, I know. The hooker’s name was Ping.”
 Jeff gave his trademark sigh. “Anyway—”
 ”We played Pokemon together.”
 ”…ANYway—”
 ”After we had sex.”
 ”ANY—”
 ”Bitch picked Snivy, can you believe—”
 Jeff threw his phone from the nightstand, the cord coming free from the wall. It landed in a heap in the corner of the room with a loud crash. Fuck flinched.
 ”Damn it, Fuck!” yelled Jeff. “I don’t want another one of your stupid pseudo-adventures that ends with me dealing with the hot lubed fist of the law, and you off with some hooker, presumably ALSO with a hot lubed fist. So no, I don’t want to deal with your latest scheme to get money, or free bologna, or, or… or yet another plot to get on TV.”
 In a flash Fuck was kneeling on the bed next to Jeff, his index finger held close to Jeff’s face.
 ”Never, ever, are you to mock my life’s purpose, Jeff. Never. I didn’t legally change my name to ‘Fuck McDaniel’ so that I could snicker when they call my name at the DMV. Yeah, I do it anyways, but that’s not my REASON, man.
 ”I drag you on these SWAY-DO, as it’s properly pronounced, adventures because I need to get on television, specifically the news, that way, when they introduce me, they’ll be FORCED to say ‘Fuck,’ and they will say it with relish, their nipples becoming erect as they roll their lips around the first letter, erotically. ‘FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.’ And when they finally say that word, the FORBIDDEN WORD THAT IS MY NAME, I will have finally beaten those fuckers, the FCC. Know what that stands for? Fucking Cunt Cockroaches.”
 ”You change that acronym every week…” mumbled Jeff.
 Fuck flailed his arms about, as if swatting at invisible flies. “Not the point!” he exclaimed. “What I’m getting at is, this is the goal I’ve been working toward for my entire life. Or at least the last three months.” Fuck drew back from Jeff, his eyes downcast. “And you’re my best friend. I wanted to share my dream with you. All those get-rich-quick schemes, they were just attempts to get the news to do a story on my sudden wealth. That time with the Asian hooker, or, rather, the several times, prostitution busts ALWAYS make the news. And as for the time with the bologna, well, I was just hungry. I had a free bread and mustard follow-up scheme planned, but as you know, that didn’t work out.”
 Fuck plopped down onto the floor, his head in his hands. “I just wanted to include you in my life, Jeff. Because you’re the biggest part of my life. My best friend. But I guess it doesn’t mean as much to you.” Fuck’s shoulders began to shake with quiet sobs.
 Jeff sighed yet again, and stepped out of bed, then walked over to lay a hand on Fuck’s convulsing shoulders.
 ”Fuck,” he began, speaking quietly, “you’re my best friend too. And you’re right, maybe I don’t fully appreciate the depth and complexity, and greater meaning to your dream, or by extension, your schemes. But what I do know is that I want to help you, because that’s what friends do. And I don’t care—”
 Fuck quickly jumped up, throwing off Jeff’s hands in the process. Not a tear was on his face.
 ”Good,” he said, dusting his ass off. “Get dressed, bitch, we’re going to go on an epic adventure of magic, babes, and beer.”

 
 ”You know,” said Jeff, hugging himself to keep warm while he shivered, “when you pitched this ‘epic adventure,’ I assumed there’d be, you know, more epic…icity.”
 Jeff and Fuck stood outside of a shop in the shitty part of town, waiting for the doors to open. The sign above the door read ‘Madame Huang’s Curiosities of the Far East.’ It was for the grand opening of this shop that Fuck had dragged Jeff out of bed at roughly three in the morning, and then promptly rushed him down to the storefront to await its opening of the doors.
 ”Firstly,” huffed Fuck, evidently unaware of the cold in his excitement, “it’s pronounced ‘EPICNESS,’ okay? Secondly, what was all that crap about wanting to be involved with me because you’re my best friend and that it meant everything to you, huh? Very very gay, by the way, I half expected you to get down on your knees and—”
 Jeff weakly shoved Fuck, cutting him off. “Okay, seriously, what the fuck… uh, Fuck?” he asked. “I mean, let’s put aside for a moment the fact that you bullshitted your way into my sympathy, and focus instead on how you dragged me out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, the border between night and morning, really, and made me stand in front of a store that sells chopsticks and Pocky, and and… baboon testicles stewed in sheep shit or something. I mean, what in the fuck was your reasoning behind this all?”
 Fuck looked at Jeff like he was an idiot. “Well obviously, Jeff,” he said, speaking slowly so that his friend didn’t get lost, “we had to beat the rush for the grand opening.”
 Jeff threw his hands up in the air in anger. “What fucking rush, dude?!” he exclaimed. “There’s one person here, and it’s the homeless guy who throws his shit at passing traffic!”
 Jeff and Fuck both glanced at the man closest to the door, a pile of rags, dirt, and poor hygiene. He slowly rocked back and forth, muttering. When he caught the two looking, he shouted “BLEEEEEEEEEEEGH!” as spittle flew from his mouth.
 ”Oh please,” said Fuck, shrugging it off, “that’s just Crazy Carl, he’s always like that. Plus he knows a good deal when he sees one, and if I hadn’t had to spend so much time trying to convince you to come here, we COULD have been first, JEFF. So thanks for that.”
 ”GRAAAAAAAAAAAAGH BEEBLEDY TRAAAAAAAM!”
 ”No, Carl, the Patriots haven’t been very good since they stopped cheating, I know. That’s why they keep getting buttfucked by the Giants,” said Fuck, conversationally.
 Jeff kneaded his brow, bringing forth a most righteous sigh. “That aside,” he said, exasperated, “you still haven’t explained exactly why we’re here, despite the fact that we’ve been standing here for nearly two-and-a-half hours.” Jeff frowned. “You know, you’d think I would have asked about that by now. That is a little bit of a plot hole.”
 Fuck shrugged. “Dude, my name’s Fuck. There’s narrative rambling everywhere. I mean look at the fucking title, do you expect this to be a tale full of logic?” Fuck shook his head. “Besides, it was probably just laziness.”
 ”Or an effort to move things on a bit more quickly, as packing the better part of three hours of dialogue into a story is difficult,” hissed an ancient voice from the shadows of the doorway.
 Jeff and Fuck, startled, gazed into the doorway. A pair of luminous green eyes peered out of the darkness. Crazy Carl looked up, leaning back, and hissed at the eyes, spitting like a cat. The eyes moved down to gaze at Carl, their jade-green a sharp contrast to his murky brown.
 Then the ancient voice spoke again, echoing in the small doorway, despite the comparatively shitty acoustics.
 “Rest, now, Carl of the Troubled Mind,” said the voice. “Rest, and when you return to our world, be you free of your curse. Rest, young Carl.”
 A shiver passed through Fuck and Jeff, and even Carl. Carl’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell over onto his side, snoring loudly and convulsing slightly.
 Jeff and Fuck flinched when the eyes flicked over to their own faces.
 A tense moment passed, neither the ancient voice (which had a very clear Mid-Western American accent for a voice so ancient and presumably Chinese) or the two friends speaking.
 Finally, Fuck broke the silence by saying “Hi!” brightly to the eyes.
 Jeff choked a little.
 The eyes gazed appraisingly at Fuck’s face, taking him in. “Come,” rasped the voice, and the eyes disappeared.
 Fuck snickered. “Heh, she said ‘come,’” he whispered, stepping into the doorway.
 “Wait!” whispered Jeff, grabbing Fuck’s shirt. “Did you see what she did to Crazy Carl? She like… exorcised him or something. We shouldn’t go in there with her.”
 Fuck scoffed. “That is exactly WHY we should go in there, Jeff. The whole point of coming down here was to find a mystic Oriental shopkeeper to sell us some crazy shit that we can use to mess stuff up around town. News crews come in to get our story about where we acquired the Dragonballs or something, and why I used their power to give everyone the body of Sofia Vergara, THEY CAN FULFILL MY DREAM BY SAYING MY NAME, ON-AIR.”
 Jeff gaped at Fuck. “Where in the HELL did you get this idea, Fuck?” he asked, angrily.
 “Gremlins,” said Fuck, like this was the most obvious thing ever. “Now quit being a bitch, let’s go get us a Mogwai. I am SO feeding that thing after midnight.”

 The store was much as one would expect, entering a far-east curio store. Strange items floating in jars of liquid lined the shelves. Various skins, dried entrails, and deranged-looking marionettes hung from the ceiling. It smelled of smoke, age, and mystery. No mistaking the smell of mystery.
 As Fuck eagerly perused the shelves, mumbling to himself excitedly and occasionally yelling out questions that the woman with the voice answered, quietly, Jeff couldn’t help but stare at the woman, the so-called ‘Madame Huang.’
 She wore a silken shawl, which covered all of her features but her eyes. Even her hands and feet were hidden behind this great swathe of cloth, decorated in wondrous colors, blues and reds foremost among them, the entire thing criss-crossed by gold.
 But the one thing that the shawl couldn’t hide was her eyes. The piercing green orbs seemed to see through Jeff, and he didn’t like it one bit. Not that he said anything, ‘cause this chick was terrifying to behold, for some strange, almost primal, reason.
 Out of nowhere, Fuck halted his perusal  of the shop and shouted angrily. He stormed up to the counter, planted his hands upon the hard wood (which, had he realized what he was doing and put it into words, would have made Fuck giggle), exhaling in a huff.
 “Look, Huang,” he said, his voice loud and unexpectedly threatening. “Where are you keeping the mystical stuff? Swords of legend, mystical toenail clippers, whatever. Where’s the good shit? Something with adventure, something dark and mysterious.” Fuck stood up from the counter and crossed his arms, tapping his foot impatiently.
 Jeff put his face in his hands, now somewhat fearing for their lives.
 Madame Huang’s eyes regarded Fuck, and then briefly flicked over Jeff. She turned her back on the two, and walked into the back room of the store, through a door sealed off by a black curtain.
 “So what now, genius?” hissed Jeff.
 “Well,” whispered Fuck, “either she’s going back there to retrieve the aforementioned mystical and dark artifacts, or she’s gone back to get a sword and go all angry Chinese lady on us. Or maybe she just thinks we’re dicks and left. If it’s the latter, this was a really poor opening day, I must say.”
 Thankfully for the sake of story progression, it was not the latter, nor the… fancy name for the middle one, but rather the former.
 Madame Huang returned with a cloth-covered box in her hands, which Jeff noticed were covered in rough leather gloves. Still no part of her visible.
 Except for those strange eyes.
 Huang laid the box upon the table. “This,” she said, quietly, her ancient voice reverberating in Jeff’s soul, “is an ancient game played by my people. The most ‘immersive’ game one might find, even in today, the age of videogames. A portal to another world, one might say.”
 Whereas Jeff started to get the feeling that this was like the beginning to many horror movies, Fuck could barely keep himself contained.
 “No way,” he kept whispering to himself. “No way no way no way.”
 “Prepare yourselves, young ones,” intoned the voice. “For your lives will change drastically following this moment. Behold!” Madame Huang whipped the cloth from the box in a very dramatic fashion, throwing dust into the air, calling forth a coughing and sneezing fit from both Fuck and Jeff.
 When the dust cleared, the two friends could not help but gaze in shock and awe at what had lain beneath the cloth covering.
 The white box with colorful art that proclaimed this to be the board game, Candyland.
 “What the HELL,” exclaimed Jeff, a disappointed look on his face. “This is what all that drama was for? All that suspense? A fucking board game for kids?”
 “Well I think it’s radical,” said Fuck, a big grin across his face. “We should totally play it right now.”
 “Dude, Huang just claimed to have an ancient Chinese game or some shit that was cursed, and she brought out Candyland. What’s the deal, Huang?” asked Jeff.
 But when the two friends looked up, Huang was nowhere to be found.
 “Probably went into the back to get some fortune cookies or something,” said Fuck.  “Come on, let’s get the game started.” Fuck took the box and eagerly ran over to a small square table, two chairs on either end. He then opened the box and proceeded to set up the game.
 Despite all the mystical juju that supposedly surrounded the box, it looked just like the game the two had played as children, a young Jeff trying to convince a young Fuck (then simply ‘Terry’) to stop making the gingerbread men hump each other.
 Jeff shook his head free of the memories, and confronted Fuck. “Dude, come on, she was pulling our legs. There’s nothing special about the game.”
 “No man, “ said Fuck, not even looking up from his preparation, now shuffling a stack of cards. “There’s something special about this game, I can feel it. Even if there’s not, it’s fucking Candyland, I haven’t played this in years. I loved this game when I was a kid. Had my first wet dream about Queen Frostine.”
 Jeff grimaced and disregarded that last statement. “You’re really set on playing, aren’t you.”
 Fuck looked up from the now set-up board and smiled. “Damn right I am. Come on, live a little. What’s the point of being a grown-up if you can’t be childish sometimes?” 
 Jeff gave one of his best sighs to date, and plopped down on the chair. “Fine, but I get to be the blue gingerbread guy.” 
 “Fuck you, I’m always blue. Deal with it, bitch.”
 Jeff glared at Fuck and picked out the red piece, slamming it down next to Fuck’s blue gingerbread man playing piece. “So,” said Jeff, clapping his hands, “who goes first?”
 “Guy with the biggest dick, so probably me, my good sir.”
 “Of course it’s you. How did I even guess.”
 “Your sarcasm is duly noted, peasant. NOW MAKE WAY FOR THE CANDY KING, LITTLE BITCH!”
 With that, Fuck drew the first card from the pile and turned it over, revealing a blank side with only a yellow square. No sooner had the card been flipped, then Fuck simply vanished in a flash of white light.
 When the spots faded from his vision, Jeff frantically looked around the room, but with no sign of Fuck, or the elusive Madame Huang.
 “God damn it,” grumbled Jeff, drawing his own card. Purple.
 The same flash of light appeared again, and Jeff had the uncomfortable sensation of being both crushed to nothing, and expanded to everything, all in less than a second. Not a moment later, there was a solid impact as Jeff landed next to Fuck, both of them lying on the ground, staring up at the sky.
 “Fucking. Told you,” said Fuck, before the two of them lost consciousness.