MM Snowed Under
The Millennium Group, in gleeful anticipation,
journeys up to a mountain cabin for their annual Halloween 'poker,
beer, and schnapps' blow-out. With excellent foresight based on
years of experience, they bring along plenty of wooden stakes,
strings of garlic, and gallons of holy water, so that nothing
will interfere with hearty expectations. In their eagerness to
escape the exigencies of demon-deleting, however, they lamentably
forget to pack any cards. Or food. And, just as they recogize
this ominous oversight and prepare to rectify it, a massive blizzard
strikes, trapping them in frigid isolation for the foreseeable
future.
However, years of facing down the prince of darkness has stiffened
the collective spines enough to constrain panic and instill them
with staunch determination to make the best of an adverse, if
perilous, situation. Firstly is the effort to eliminate the mind-numbing
effects of extended boredom, which is cheerfully effected by eating
up all the garlic and competing in a gas-passing contest. Also,
the group engages in lively games of charades (favorite words
- perdition, disembowel), hide-and-seek (best places - the chimney
and crawlspace), snowball fights, leapfrog, yodeling funeral dirges,
and riverdancing.
Sadly, the energy level eventually flags, spirits plummet, and
a pall permeates former hilarity. Even more afflictive, the words
'Donner party' flashes into everyone's minds, leaving them anxious,
fretful, and intensely sober. Frank, per his proclivities, has
visions of group members on a spit, and everyone begins to furtively
eyeball each other's fleshy shanks.
In order to deflect these unsettling possibilities, the group
inaugurates various distracting hi-jinks which have unfortunately
degenerated to the level of practical jokes. This consists of
sending Gieblehouse out for kindling, locking the door behind
him, and listening to his piercing shrieks as he is mauled by
a passing grizzly. Later, when Peter dozes off, they place a bag
over his head, cover him with snow, and yell 'avalanche' until
he defecates his entire body cavity. Frank, with his unique perspective,
begins uttering 'doom, doom' over and over until the group is
forced to cram him under the disposal.
Peter, sunk into ponderous despair, suddenly brightens with a
serendipitious thought and yells, 'Hey, this is a cliffhanger!
We're gonna be ok!' Before this wondrous fact can sink in to the
assembled and woeful group, a knock comes at the door. There,
on the threshold, in morbid array, are hordes of monsters, demons,
ghouls, and corpses. The group breaks out in a collective coronary
until realizing that they are merely viewing a throng of lively
trick-or-treaters trolling for loot. With a large infusion of
cash and promises of future largesse, the kids are prevailed upon
to lead our chastened and silent group back to civilization. The
last scene of our tale is especially gratifying. The group spends
the rest of their holiday at Disneyworld, and plays innumerable
rounds of golf, where Frank trys to pry fish heads out of his
throat with a nine iron.