The Really Hot Adventures of Guy by Norm Cowie
What they say about Norm's full length books
"I loved this book, fangs and all." ~~ Best selling author James Rollins on Fang Face
"... an amusing teen vampire tale..." ~~ Five starred review - Harriet Klausner, Amazon's #1 book reviewer on Fang Face
“… humorous fantasy at its best…” ~~ Armchair Interviews (Amazon Top reviewer), on The Adventures of Guy
“No topic is safe from Cowie’s incredible wit and entertaining turn-of-phrase.” On The Adventures of Guy - ~~ Pop Syndicate (rated one of Pop Syndicate's Top Ten Books of 2007)
The Next Adventures of Guy voted Winner of Preditors and Editors Readers Choice award for best Sci-Fi Fantasy
The ‘Really Hot’ Adventures of Guy
By Norm Cowie
(a 4500 word short)
(previously published in the anthology THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT, by Echelon Press Publishing)
… except with an alternate ending, (hee hee).
Thank you for downloading this free ebook story. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This story may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided it remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this story, please look for other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
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...
(More necessary legal small print)
All rights Reserved.
Copyright 2011 by Norm Cowie
cover image by Norm Cowie
[email protected]
The ‘Really Hot’ Adventures of Guy
“Dude.”
“Yeah?”
“You know.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
This is what two college dudes typically sound like when one is seeing the other off at the airport. No overt display of emotions, no tears. Yeah, there might be a gruff hug, a manly nod, a punch on the arm, a noogie, but you don’t see any of the emotional sappy makes-you-want-to-puke junk that women emote and soak up like loofah sponges.
So like any guy our feelings were securely nestled behind guy buffers, “So, dude, take care, okay?”
Thurman is my former roommate. And he isn’t a sorcerer. You were just about to ask, right?
Okay, sure, I don’t know why you would think to ask, because he hasn’t done any magic yet … but let’s say that some weird reason you were to ask if he is a sorcerer…
… I’d tell you he isn’t.
Actually he is, but I’m not going to admit it. That’s because I’m the Unbeliever. I don’t believe things, which makes whatever I don’t believe come true… er, not come true… um…or something like that. It’s sorta complicated.
And me? My name’s Guy … and I’m a guy. I drink, scratch myself in nasty places, watch sports, eat too much pizza and not enough veggies, and I spend a lot of time doing what I call ‘coed surveillance.’ So I’m pretty normal for a guy.
Thurman is heading to a Harry Potter convention to do whatever it is that Harry Potter fans do at Harry Potter conventions. Wear silly hats, costumes and stuff, play with castles, eat Bernie Botts Every Flavor Beans …even the throw-up flavored ones. Things I don’t really want to picture.
“So, uh, okay,” I mumbled, shuffling my feet uncomfortably.
His eyes got big, “It’s going to be a blast! On the first day, we get divided into Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and …”
“Yeah, sounds like fun,” I interrupted. Like I said, I don’t really want to know.
A voice interrupted from the airline counter.
“BOARDING FLIGHT UNITED 261 TO PROVIDENCE AND BOSTON.”
Their little witches and warlocks convention was being held, where else, in Salem.
“That’s me,” Thurman said. He picked up his bag.
I gave him one of those guy thumps on the shoulder.
“Hey, take care of Wendy for me, okay?” he said as he headed for the plane. He had been my roommate until he moved into an apartment with his redheaded girlfriend and part-time warrior. She couldn’t get off work at her job at Wendy’s Restaurant, so I offered to give him a lift to the airport as long as he wouldn’t expect a goodbye-smooch.
“You got it, dude. Get me a souvenir, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Um… but not anything weird though, okay?”
He grinned. “No promises. You guys take care here, you got it?”
“Hah. Don’t worry about us. Nothing exciting ever happens here.”
He gave me a look, and drawled “Right.”
Then he disappeared into the belly of the plane.
***
Benny’s eyes were droopy and he took one last huge hit on the doobie. He was sprawled out on the bed under a mound of munchies, dirty underwear and discarded pizza boxes. He’d been on a perpetual high since classes let out for the semester two days earlier. Well, truth be told he started his high way before that. About half of the student body had gone home for the semester break, and the rest of the students were relaxing, coming down from their own high, or ramping up their own party plans.
As his eyes slid closed, the reefer fell from his weak fingers onto his scraggly beard. A tiny ember sparked happily when it met some fuel in the form of a greasy hair follicle. To the ember’s great delight, there was more propellant in the next follicle and the one next to that. The ember danced with excitement.
It happened upon a tortilla chip and its glee mounted. It undulated in ecstatic orgasm and poofed into a little flame. It liked its new form and it danced along the tortilla chip, growing like a Ponzi scheme until the entire chip flickered with yellow.
Then it came across a new source of fuel. A Cheeto. The Cheeto’s orangey goodness added to the flame which was absorbing power like a Republican oil lobbyist.
Power! Fuel! Flame!
The flame roared as it engulfed a potato chip, detoured around a three day old slice of pizza and leaped upon the greasy pizza delivery box. It greedily sucked in the pizza box, mixed it with oxygen and grew.
It discovered a cookie, spit it out, but found Benny’s dirty disgusting bed sheet much to its liking. It absorbed and fed, its body growing and growing like Brittney Spears … you know…during that bad period when she had no control and gained a bunch of weight. Well, she never had control, but you know what I mean.
Then it hit the Lays potato chip bag.
Fire departments across the nation have known for years about the combustible nature of Lays potato chip bags. They even have a special section on it in their training programs. The foil wrap soaks up the oils and if a flame hits, you’d better evacuate women, children and pet ferrets.
There was a whoosh of flame as the bag vaporized, igniting more of the mess that made up Benny’s bed.
Benny’s olfactory senses finally perked up when it smelled something not cannabis.
He shot up from bed.
Not really.
His eyes rolled open slowly and he peered groggily at his beard.
Then the realization hit that his beard was on fire.
“Whoa,” he mumbled.
Then he shot up from bed.
No, again.
Actually, without his conscious thought, the few brain cells in his alleged brain that had missed the pot party picked up on the fire threat, got together and thought fast. When a small explosion blew up the tortilla chip bag, the brain realized its host was in trouble and enacted emergency evacuation proceedings. Due to frequent chemical abuse, the part of his cerebellum concerned with his welfare only worked intermittently. Fortunately though,
“MY STASH!’ he yelped, bolting upright like an electrified meerkat.
Flaming munchies and pizza cartons flew all over the room.
He grabbed a half empty bottle of warm stale beer and splashed the fire on his beard to death. Then he looked with dismay at the flames dancing their way through the clutter of munchies, papers and clothes.
“Whoa,” he said again.
He tossed a pair of underwear on the flame. It burst into flames. An oily black wisp of smoke burped up the skid marks from the vaporized underwear.
“Ah, man.”
He started choking from the smoke, which was not nearly as pleasant as choking from a hit on a reefer. Then a foggy memory pierced the fog that is Benny’s brain. He grabbed a pair of underwear … well, not a pair… it was only one underwear, but for some weird reason it’s called a pair… anyway, he grabbed it and urinated over it. It was yellow before he peed on it, so it didn’t look any different and didn’t really smell worse. Covering his face with the nasty rag, he snatched his stash and guitar and detoured to the mini-fridge to snatch the last beer.
Then, clutching his meager possessions, he bolted for the door.
***
When I got back to the apartment, my roommate Knob was stuffing a collapsible chair into a bag.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Our cooler was on the table next to a camera and a bag of marshmallows.
He looked up. “Dude. You’re just in time.”
“In time for what?”
“The fire-party.”
“Fire party?”
“Yeah, there’s a fire at Burnside Hall.”
Burnside Hall is where the school administration sends the burn-outs, pot heads and other people whose weak dedication to education conflicts with their strong desire to keep living the college lifestyle. It was filled with fifth year sophomores, seventh year juniors … people who tend to think of college as more as a permanent home rather than just a place to hang long enough to get an education. No one from the administration had the courage to go enter the building, so anything went.
“I guess it was just a matter of time before that place was torched,” I grinned.
“Yeah, well, I hear the fire’s awesome. Are you coming?”
“I suppose. There’s not much else going on.”
I eyed the marshmallows.
“What are those for?”
“Oh, um, you know.”
“Knob, this isn’t a wiener roast, you dork.”
“You get ready your way, and I’ll get ready my way,”
“Fine,” I said sourly.
“All right. Hey, get the beer out of the fridge, okay?”
“Can I have some?”
It was Seth, my kid brother. He spends more time at my place than he does at home. Probably because of the coeds. He’s fourteen with an overactive sexual imagination that far exceeds his experience, which to this point is nil.
“Sure, there’s a Coke in the fridge with your name on it,” I told Seth.
“Aw, man.”
“You coming, little dude?” Knob asked him.
“Sure.” Seth replied. “Where?”
Knob and I live in what is called the Student Slums, an older part of town just outside campus limits. The Slums are made up of narrow one hundred year old houses jammed close together all within walking distance of the campus. Only two kinds of people live in the Slums. Students and old people who didn’t get the memo in time to move out before the neighborhood went to pot. Now they had to put up with wild parties made up of college kids getting their first tastes of freedom.
If you’re wondering about Knob’s name, it’s really Tim. One night we had a wild party, got drunk off our butts and somewhere along the evening a nickname was born. Nobody has a clue how we came up with it. Every once in awhile we sit down, have a couple beers, and try and figure it out. But then we end up getting drunk again and after awhile, nobody can remember what it was we were trying to remember.
Burnside Hall is located halfway up a big hill on the south side of the campus. We took our bikes and headed up the hill. The campus is pretty big and getting around by bike is much easier and more environmentally friendly than taking a car.
As we got closer, we could see flashing fire truck lights through the trees. There was also a weird sort of sound.
“Knob, what are you doing?”
“Whistling, man.”
“Knob, you’re tone deaf. That isn’t whistling. It’s a weird sort of sound.”
“It’s kinda creepy,” Seth agreed.
“Fine. You guys just don’t appreciate music,” Knob huffed.
“Sure we do… when we hear it,” I chuckled.
He shut up and the weird sort of sound left to go be weird somewhere else.
We were coming up on the building from the back side. The entire hill was wooded, so our view was blocked. But the back side of the building looked unscathed and I felt a momentary sense of let down.
“Guess we missed it,” Knob said. He had the cooler under his arm, a knapsack on his back with the collapsible chair bag nestled up against the knapsack like an arrow quiver.
“Too bad,” I said.
Knob gave me a look. “Too bad?”
I shrugged my shoulders, “Hey, don’t blame me. It’s not like I was hoping that a calamity would happen. It’s just that if one did happen, I want to see it.”
“You’d better not wish something like that,” he said sternly.
“Yeah,” Seth put in. “You’d be like one of those shadendorf people.”
“Who people?” I asked.
“Shadenforf, or something like that,” Seth answered. “You know, someone who likes it when bad things happen to other people.”
“He means ‘schadenfreude,” Knob said. He’d gotten a book from somewhere.
“Where’d you get that boo…”
“Schadenfreude’ means that you take pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Seth cried.
“Check out the smoke,” Knob pointed upwards. A black spiral was billowing against the clear blue sky. “The fire is in the front of the building.”
We took a path through the woods surrounding the old building and now we could see firemen milling around the front of the building, dressed in masks, fire helmets, heavy bunker jackets, big boots, oxygen and everything else that every guy wanted to wear someday.
“Not much of a fire,” Knob commented as we worked our way through the woods surrounding the building.
“What, you disappointed?” Seth asked.
“Nah. I was just hoping things would last long enough for us to drink our six-pack.”
There was a crowd of college kids up on the small knoll overlooking Burnside Hall drinking beer, smoking pot, playing Frisbee and watching each other as much as they watched the action in front.
“Hey, Knob.”
“What’s up, Knob?”
“You seem to be popular,” Seth observed.
“I get around,” Knob responded, a smug look on his face.
“People notice freaks,” I chuckled.
We worked our way through the crowd and found a more secluded spot with a good view of the front of the building.
Three fire engines were arranged haphazardly in front, along with several idle ambulances, police cars and a white fire department sedan. News vans and reporters were milling about like ants after having their colony stepped on. Two hoses went into the front door and another was being used to soak the outside of the building.
“Whoa, check it out! It’s Babe!” Knob cried.
Babe Fox from WNUZ TV was interviewing the fire chief, who had on a white helmet that read, “Fire Chief.” That’s how we figured out that he was the fire chief. Hey, college k
“Babe Fox is a babe” Seth.
“Babe is a fox,” I responded, wiping a little drip of drool.
She was talking but we didn’t care. We watched her on the news every day without the sound and the stereo blasting.
“Hey, guys.”
We jumped like a boy sneaking a look at a Playboy.
“Oh, um, Wendy,” I said shakily. “What’s up?”
She gave the pretty and very, very, very endowed newswoman a look. Then she arched a brow. ”I’m probably better off not knowing.”
“Oh, um …”
“So did you get Thurman off okay?” she asked. Wendy’s pretty cool. She picks on us, but it’s all in good fun. We don’t pick on her, because she has a redheaded temper. Not only that, but she can kick our butts.
She gestured at the fire, “Looks like they have everything under control here.”
“Yeah, you wanna beer anyway?” Knob asked.
“Sure.” She popped it open and guzzled like a guy.
And that was when the meth lab blew.
***
If you’re going to have a meth lab, you need two things. Privacy, so that you don’t get busted by the police. And a steady stream of customers. Arnold Finkstein had both up on the fourth floor corner room in Burnside Hall. Because the Administration would not enter the building, he had security and seclusion; and because of all the burnouts in the building, he didn’t have to leave the premises to sell his product.
But meth labs are …well… unstable. It’s like the nitro-glycerin of labs. One false anything and BOOM.
And that’s what happened when the fire hit.
BOOM!!!
The entire roof on the north side simply blasted into the sky amid a huge explosion. We all ducked as the noise and shock waves roared at us.
I picked myself up and looked at the building, or what was left of it.
“Whoa!”
“What? Babe?”
“No, the building. Look at it.”
It looked as if a huge shark had taken a twenty yard bite out of the building. Black smoke billowed into the skies like a factory chimney with the recently relaxed anti-smog laws.
“Holy cow!” Wendy said, mouth wide open and a big wet mark down the front of her shirt.
We guys all took a moment to check it out.
She noticed and gave us one of Those Looks.