Camp McClane

by Grant Fieldgrove

  Carl grunted, obviously annoyed. Columbo’s gotchas were one of Carl’s greatest joys. Ugh. He stood, causing Punkinpuss to quickly jump down or fall, he wasn’t sure which, then hurriedly folded the blanket he was using and returned the cabin the way he found it. He then rushed out the door, picking up his pet cat, the proximity alarm, and his homemade antenna on his way.

  On the television, Columbo got his man and Carl missed it.

  “Madeline didn't really call it a wet noodle, did she?” Jimmy had been thinking about this ever since Mort told him, even through the surprise arrival of the new guests.

  Mort nodded yep. “A wet macaroni noodle, at that,” he reminded him, although perhaps a little unnecessarily. This made Mort smile. He liked Jimmy alright; in fact, when it came to actual friends, Jimmy was really all Mort had, so he had no choice but to put up with the uninspired nicknames (Jugs, Tits, whatever) but the fact that Madeline had said this brightened up his day.

  Mort had a crush on Madeline from the moment he first met her. Mort’s parents had taken a trip to Australia last summer and for the first time in, well, forever, Mort had had the house all to himself. So, what was the logical thing for a boy of sixteen to do when given just an ounce of freedom and responsibility?

  Fuck up everything and throw a two-week long party!

  Mort would end up paying dearly for this when his parents returned, but it was totally worth it.

  Things didn’t get too rowdy because, well, no one at school really regarded Mort much so he didn’t have to worry about a bunch of cool kids showing up because, A) No one knew where Mort lived, and B) Perhaps even more importantly, no one really knew who the hell Mort was.

  But his core group of acquaintances came over and used his house like a toilet, which was to be expected.

  It was on one of those nights when Jessica, from the seat in front of him, invited a few of her freshmen friends (because Jessica was an idiot and was in classes designed for kids fresh from Jr. High, not incoming seniors, but whatever) and Mort was in love. Madeline was perfect… well, probably not perfect, but upon first glance, she appeared perfect to Mort, who had never really had the nerve to actually talk to a girl, let alone spit some game. But he had two weeks! Anything could be accomplished in two weeks.

  And come on, what girl wouldn’t be impressed by an older dude who had a house all to himself right in the dead center of prime summer months, and a dude who had free reign of his mom’s Mercedes convertible.

  So what if he wasn’t supposed to drive it, it’s not like his mom checked the mileage before she left.

  Well, maybe she did, he really had no way of knowing but it’s easy to not think of consequences when they’ll be so far in the future.

  It’s the same thing as agreeing to do anything with anyone, just so long as it’s not today. The future is far away, man.

  Two weeks.

  He had two weeks to plan his strategy, work up enough nerve to talk to her, and if all went as planned, make his move.

  Chicks liked fat guys, right? Like, he was nice and funny and could write stories and what girl wouldn’t - scratch that. Better not share the fact that he writes stories. Scrap the whole writing angle all together actually. Unless his name was Stephen King or maybe Chuck Palahniuk for the alt-chicks, he couldn’t think of a single time a girl of fifteen was impressed with some doofus-dipshit writer.

  “Jesus,” Jimmy mumbled, interrupting Mort’s flashback like a commercial break during Lost.

  “Yeah, sorry pal,” Mort said, patting his buddy on the back. “Macaroni, the smallest and most pathetic of all pastas. Not spaghetti, not even penne, but macaroni. Ouch.” Mort loved this. He’d been sitting on that information for weeks, just waiting for the perfect time to drop it.

  A massive atom bomb to Jimmy’s already pathetic ego.

  Jimmy buried his head into his palms. “Why? Why would she say that?”

  “Because she's a woman. And least she didn't say orzo...right?”

  Jimmy raised his head slightly, allowing just the tops of his eyes to pop out. “Is orzo worse?” Mort nodded. “And why would she say it to my friend?”

  Mort patted his buddy on the back and said dryly, “Because women are evil, soulless creatures.”

  He thought back to last summer again. The night he was finally going to make his move. He’d been playing it slow, taking his time, he didn’t want to rush into anything and actually he wanted to make sure Madeline wasn’t a slut.

  Pathetic as it was, Mort’s hope was that she was A) A virgin, obviously and B) Had never seen a penis. If she had nothing to compare Mort’s penis to, maybe it wouldn’t look so small and if she had never had sex, perhaps she wouldn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to last mere seconds, which would surely be the case for ol’ Mortimer.

  Mort had been practicing his endurance twice, sometimes three times a day, sometimes so much so that it gave him a headache, but when the time came he wanted to make sure he wasn’t a disappointment. He was pretty sure he would still be a disappointment, but it was still fun to practice in the meantime.

  He knew the odds of a girl not seeing a dick were pretty slim these days, especially with readily available internet porn and creepy fucking molesters on chat apps, but still, he had held on to that little shred of hope.

  Did women know porno cock wasn’t the same as real cock?

  Girls were smart enough to figure out the difference, right?

  Lying to yourself is hard, but he gave it a shot.

  The plan had been set. He was going to offer to drive through Taco Bell and get everyone food. Delicious, delicious Taco Bell.

  Even better, he was going to take the Mercedes and he was going to ask Madeline to go with him. Who could say no to that? And besides, she had been hanging out at the house nearly every night for a week and she was familiar and had become friends with Mort…she would have no reason to say no.

  It was in the car that he would make his move. He wasn’t exactly sure what the move was, but he figured the opportunity would present itself and then he would know.

  He was sure of it.

  He snuck out into the garage when none of his guests were paying any attention to him and backed the Mercedes out into the driveway. When he came back in he called Madeline’s name from the kitchen and told her to come here. She did, with a smile.

  “Hey,” he told her. “You hungry at all?”

  Mort was sure she would be. He deliberately had stopped going grocery shopping with the money his parents had left him. He figured with no food in the house, people, Madeline especially, were likely to get hungry.

  Mort was a master planner.

  A masturbator too, and hopefully both things would pay off!

  “Starving,” she said, grabbing her flat tummy and leaning forward slightly, as if she was about to die from lack of food.

  Adorable.

  Mort imagined sweeping her off her feet and heading straight to the bedroom for some serious makin’ out. He didn’t dream about fucking Madeline, the way most guys fantasize about fuckin’ dem bitches. Mort was much more pathetic, he fantasied about a loving and lasting relationship. To jerk off while thinking about Madeline somehow cheapened her, so he would often choose Jessica, or Andie, or any of the other, already cheap, sluts that he knew.

  “I was thinking about rolling to Taco Bell. I’ve got the Mercedes. You want to come with me?”

  Her smile brightened the kitchen. Or maybe it was just the lights. Whatever. She was beautiful regardless. “Sure.”

  “Okay, great. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sounds good!”

  Mort was spinning the Mercedes key fob on his finger like a gunslinger. He was so stoked.

  Until.

  “Any of you guys want to come to Taco Bell with us?”

  Mort’s heart crashed and burned.

  Jimmy was the first to hop up. “Hell yes!”

  Dave was pretty excited, too. “Shotgun!” he yelled.

  Son o
f a bitch!

  Sitting there in the Taco Bell drive-thru, this fucking moron Dave sitting next to Mort in the passenger seat, Jimmy and Madeline in the back seat, and Jimmy said, he still can’t fucking believe it, Jimmy actually said, right to Madeline, he said, “You sure look pretty tonight.”

  You sure look pretty tonight! What the hell, dude! Mort wanted to reach his arm back there, rip out Jimmy’s throat and throw it at the menu sign, watch it stick momentarily then slowly slide down, eventually landing with a soft thud on the curb below.

  Goddamn it, Jimmy.

  What a stupid thing to say! That was about as smooth as a bag of fingernails, but Jimmy seemed quite pleased with himself.

  Ugh!

  To be fair, Jimmy had no idea about Mort’s feelings towards Madeline, nor did he know of Mort’s plan. But still.

  To make matters even worse, Madeline smiled and giggled over her stupid compliment.

  Tee-yuck, golly, you sure look purdy tonight.

  Jimmy put his arm around Madeline and she didn’t retreat in horror. Mort’s shoulders slumped worse than that over-paid hack Derek Jeter.

  A painful capper to Mort’s ruined plan was when they pulled up to the window. Mort paid for everyone’s food, (why, he didn’t know) and when the lady in the window handed out the drinks, Mort took them and handed them over to Dave.

  Fucking Dave.

  Before they had even gotten their food, (which was paid for!!!), Dave began throwing the cups of soda into the drive-thru window at the poor soul unlucky enough to be working at Taco Bell that night.

  “Fire in the hole!” Dave yelled, before telling Mort to punch it!

  Punch it, he did, out of sheer panic and disbelief. The Mercedes tore out of the drive-thru with the fierceness only finely tuned German engineering can manage, leaving a thin layer of rubber in their wake.

  The backfire of all epic backfires.

  Somehow, however impossible it may have sounded just a few hours previous, Jimmy ended up banging Madeline that night.

  In Mort’s bed.

  The two shirtless slabs of top-choice hunk that were sandwiching Mort and Jimmy together hadn’t paid one bit of attention to the conversation going on. Instead, they had been focused on everyone else in the car.

  This was not new to Jimmy and Mort. What was new however, was being covered in this much disgusting man sweat, especially from strangers.

  Jimmy winced as he tried to scoot closer to Mort.

  “So where are you guys from?” the shirtless dude next to Mort finally asked. Maybe he had been talking the whole time, Mort didn’t know, and he really didn’t give a shit. He heard this though, but still chose not to answer. Something told him the question wasn’t directed at him anyway.

  “Romero County,” Andie said, “about three hundred miles away. Maybe two-fifty.”

  “Two-fifty-six,” Dave said, already kinda sorta annoyed with the competition but not nearly enough to dare show a slight crack in his ego.

  “There ya go,” Andie said. “Two-fifty-six.”

  “Well, we really would like to thank you for picking us up. My name is James, and this here is my buddy Stuart.”

  Stuart. Fucking Stuart. Jimmy, wallowing in his own self-pity, thought this was the dumbest name he’d ever heard.

  Stuart.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Jessica said, and Jimmy could already tell she’d need a change of underwear when she got to the cabin. If she was even wearing any.

  God damn it.

  Up yours, James.

  Up yours, Stuart.

  Stuart!

  “I’m Jessica, this is Jacquelyn, Sarah, Andie, driving up there is Dave, and the two male models back there with you are Mort and Jimmy. Say hi, boys.”

  Nothin’.

  From behind the tree line, along the dirt road, Carl Langer watched as the Camp McClane van pulled into the campgrounds. His hands clenched into fists and he knew he was about to be inconvenienced and annoyed yet again. It had been a long time since he’d had to go to work, his slightly bulging tummy was proof of that, but, sigh, perhaps vacations aren’t meant to last forever and if he sucked in his gut strong enough the bulging muscles could still appear.

  Oh well, he really had no choice.

  “Come on, Professor. It’s time to get busy.” The cat purred, weaving his way between Carl’s legs, before trotting off, tail up, butthole out, towards their hideout.

  “We’re here,” Dave said, taking the turn way too sharp and forcing James into Jimmy, Jimmy into Mort and Mort into Stuart. None were pleased, but everyone else seemed to think the looks on Jimmy and Mort’s faces were the most hilarious things ever.

  Stuart!

  Jimmy’s rage was about to boil over.

  Dave pulled the van into the lot, threw the gear in park, set the break and got out. The van door slid open spilling out all its inhabitants onto the dirt parking lot; Mort and Jimmy were, not surprisingly, last. They began grabbing their bags then headed off towards the main cabin. Jimmy and Mort were bringing up the rear.

  The main cabin, where they would all be staying, wasn’t a cabin at all. Not really, at least. It looked more like a house. And what a house! From the parking lot it appeared to be a huge, two story affair with at least one fireplace and god knows what else.

  Dave, seemingly in a slightly less sour mood having seen the actual cabin, said, “Man, this is going to be the shit!”

  “Whatever that means,” Jacquelynn said, her eyes narrowed.

  “It means it's going to be fucking badass, nerd.” Dave smacked Jacquelynn on the shoulder. A sort of get with it nudge that Jacquelynn was none-too-pleased with.

  With his duffle bag in hand and still bringing up the rear, Jimmy said to Mort, “I heard she just got fake tits.”

  Mort had no idea what he was talking about because it’d been a solid five minutes since Jimmy actually said something in audible English. Ever since Mort broke the macaroni news, Jimmy had only been speaking in mumbles and grunts like Biggie Smalls during an interview.

  Jessica stopped in her tracks and looked back at Mort and Jimmy. “Who got fake tits?”

  It suddenly dawned on Mort who, in fact, got the fake tits. He should have known but perhaps was a little distracted by the awesomeness of the house.

  Yes, that will do.

  “Nobody,” Jimmy said, back to his grunts.

  With a big smile on her face, Jessica said, “Don’t lie. Someone got fake tits and I want to know who it is.”

  “Nobody. Nobody got fake tits.”

  “Don't lie. Mort?”

  “Madeline,” Mort said without even thinking about it.

  “Oh,” Jessica said with glee in her voice. “Macaroni Maddy! Yep, got some money from mommy and got the boobies. Lucky bitch.”

  “Why is she lucky?” Mort asked.

  “Because,” Jessica said, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “I want boobs. No fair.”

  “You've got boobs,” Jimmy said, now in more of a mumble than a grunt.”

  I’ve got some tits you can have, Mort thought sadly.

  “Yeah,” Jessica said, looking down at her bust, “but they're small.”

  Mort blew out a heavy sigh. “See, now that I don't get. Girls always talk about how small their boobs are and how they want fake ones but never once have you heard a guy say Damn, my cock is small. Can't wait to get Fake Cock!”

  This brightened Jimmy up and he began laughing. That fat fuckface Mort was always good for a laugh. He would never tell him, obviously, but Mort was the funniest guy Jimmy knew. In fact, he was probably the funniest guy anyone in the group knew. No one would tell him this. Don’t want to give the fat guy an ego or even a shred of self-esteem.

  Ah, high school…

  “Can't wait ‘til my mom pays for my Fake Cock!” Jimmy said in a high-pitched squeal.

  Mort and Jimmy laughed some more and Jessica suddenly remembered why she never hung out with these guys and turned on her heel t
o catch up with everyone else. “Stuart, James, wait up!”

  Jimmy’s laughter suddenly halted as something dawned on him. “Macaroni Maddy?”

  Mort laughed even harder. “Don't be too down about it. It makes no sense. It should be Macaroni Jimmy...Not Maddy. That dumbass must have heard us talking in the van and tried to be clever, but like most everyone who tries to be witty, failed fucking miserably. People need to spend less time on Facebook and more time not being morons.”

  This made Jimmy feel slightly better. Speaking of Facebook, though, he decided to check his phone to see if there was a signal yet. They had lost it once they turned into the mountains.

  No dice.

  Jimmy sighed. A week without a cell-phone? Was that even possible? He was going to lose all his pointless SnapChat streaks with girls he had never met.

  Damn it!

  The door to the cabin swung open with nary a squeak. This should have seemed odd to at least someone in the group but, alas, nobody thought twice about it. In fact, no one seemed to think twice about the lack of dust around there, or the television on the wall, or well, anything that shouldn’t be in a two-decade abandoned summer camp. But again, these spoiled little turds didn’t give it a second thought.

  Andie chucked her bag on the kitchen table and said, “This place is amazing. This is the main house of the camp. We can all stay here. It's got several rooms.”

  “We’ve all got eyes, babe,” Dave said as he wrapped his arms around Andie’s petite waist. “We can use the cabins too, if, ya know, extra privacy is needed. Like if a certain someone is crying out too loudly in orgasmic ecstasy.”

  Andie turned to face Dave, his arms still wrapped around her, and said, “You think?”

  “Only one way to find out,” then he gave her a peck on the lips that, for some reason, Andie didn’t find odd at all. Had she really been with so many dudes that she forgot that her and Dave hadn’t ever been together before?

  No, couldn’t be. Jessica was the slut, not her.

  Slut Jessica looked straight at the two chiseled hitchhikers and softly said, “Yeah...Privacy.”