March 12, 2008

We ran hard.

Karl slowed us down because he kept tripping over his wedding train, but I pulled him along. We could hear the robot dog behind us, but there was a large group of people in a field ahead of us. If we could get lost in the crowd, we’d be safe. At least, that’s what we told ourselves.

After the ritual near-execution, they locked us in one of their sheds and threw some more Denny’s at us. The door was unlocked, but they posted Crazy Person 3 outside as a guard. I told Karl to get some sleep because we were going to get out of there. He looked scared and wanted to stay in case Kate wanted to deprogram him again, this time without a condom. I ignored him and when it was still dark I shook him awake. I cracked the door open a bit and saw the guard.

“Hey, do you hear something?” I said to him.

He turned around. “Shut that door and be quiet.”

“No, I’m serious, I hear something. It sounds like someone’s watching a Julie Roberts movie…one that involves a wedding.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I think it’s coming from over there,” I waved my hand in a general direction. “I’d hurry. It might be Runaway Bride and we all know how that ends.”

The guard took off and we started in the opposite direction. At that point I realized being still dressed as bride and groom might slow us down. At least they didn’t put heels on Karl.

So after hours of fleeing we heard Abito behind us. There weren’t any signs of civilization around the farm, so it was fortunate to find a group of people standing in the middle of a field. As we got closer, we saw they were dressed strangely, in capes and cardboard armor, holding large wooden swords and axes. We tried to blend in, but it didn’t work.

“Uh, I don’t think there’s a wedding anytime during the Battle of Gledora,” a dude wearing a helmet told us. He had a long pony tail and was pretty ripped. He looked around and everyone else laughed. He was clearly the leader.

“Who’s going to get married? Prince Gyxag? Baronness Haunt? C’mon!” he laughed.

Everyone laughed again with him.

“Listen, we’re sorry to crash your costume party, but…” I got that far before he became upset. His face turned red and, curiously, he began rubbing his chest.

“Costume party? Costume party? We’re LARPing. What are you, an idiot?”

One of his friends touched his shoulder. “You’re out of character, Jason.”

The one called Jason turned around and punched his friend in the face, silencing anymore protests.

Karl was confused. “What’s LARPing?”

The leader became even angrier and the rubbing became even faster and more furious. “Live action role playing, jerkface.”

Karl nodded his head, “Oh, more acronyms.”

“Listen, we’re LARPing, too, but it’s kind of intense,” I said, an idea taking shape in my head. “I don’t know if you guys could handle it.”

A silence settled over the group. Apparently I had thrown down the LARPing gauntlet.

“We can handle anything. What’s the module?” Jason asked, and then huffed when we looked confused. “The story?”

“Uh, it’s an oldie where we come from. See, it involves the ancient land of…”

I nudged Karl.

“Chlamydia?” he offered.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I agreed. “Specifically the Great Battle of Syphilis between the Brave and Virtuous Virgin Warriors and the evil armies of the Redheaded She-Devil Vampire Whore Queen.”

Jason scoffed. “That doesn’t seem too tough.”

“Yeah, but you have a sub-module,” I said authoritatively. I was getting into it. “You have to protect the man and man-bride from any foes, particularly the robot dog.”

Jason conferred with his compatriots. They accepted, and not a moment too soon. Jason looked over to the edge of the woods and said he saw Abito.

“You can see that far?” I asked him, squinting.

“I have really good eyesight,” Jason said.

The LARPers swarmed around me and Karl and I lost sight of the dog. I didn’t even see when Abito hit the first defenders but I heard the screams. I won’t go into too much detail, but the battle between the LARPers and the DLF lasted for several hours and, suffice to say, I have never seen so much death in my life.

Yet, ultimately, we were recaptured.

Rats.