Good Griff!

by Von Snootingham

Chatper Tewlve: Everyone dies

“On the road agaaain!”

“Shut up.”

“Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway!

“Oh my god shut up.”

“We're the best of friends!

“Shutupshutupshutup.”

“Insisting that the world-”

“SUNNY! IDIOT! DAZE!”

The classic “use the full name” trick used by mothers everywhere works. Sunny stops singing and looks at me questioningly me. “What?”

“Shut up.”

“Both of you, shut up!” Flam grumbles sleepily. “Some of us are trying to get our beauty sleep, so would you kindly mind shutting your yaps.”

Really it’s just him and Lazy Bones snoozing in the back of the RV, and Bones wouldn’t wake up for an atomic bomb, but point taken.

Sunny and I apologize a the same time. “Oops, sorry.” “Sorry.”

I’m in the passenger seat up front with Flim, who’s driving. Sunny is chilling out just behind me, being his usual annoying self. We set out from the airport about two hours ago, heading for Sunny’s cousin’s farm in southern Illinois. Bones plotted us a trip there that’s going to take us about three days, driving seven hours for each leg in the middle of night. Flim and Flam think the route’s kind of weird, but Bones insisted.

Our first leg takes us from where we were in South Burlington, Vermont west,  on lesser freeways to outside some small town in western New York. Then tomorrow night, we’re going from there to outside Dayton, OH. And the last leg will bring us to the Sunny’s family’s farm in southern Illinois. I’m told it’s not the way people would usually go, and the stops are in weird places, but what the hell do I know? Other than those three years in high school, I’ve lived in the city my whole life.

We continue driving in silence except for the sound of the engine and Bones’ occasional mumbling. We just got out from around Albany, and now out in the country in the middle of the night, there’s no one else on the road. Perfect. The quiet, the dark, and solitude. We’re going to stay nice and secret this time.

We get a whole fifteen minutes of quiet this time before he starts up again.

“There's a voice that keeps on calling me,
Down the road, that's where I'll always be.
Every stop I make, I make a new friend,
Can't stay for long, just turn around and I'm gone again!”

I pinch the bridge of my… beak and sigh. Goddamnit, Sunny.

“Confound it, will out cut out that racket!” Flam shouts.

Suddenly, the whole RV jerked. I looked up and all I saw was rushing water coming to greet us. What the hell? How did we wind up at Niagra Falls and how did we drive off? There's nothing anyone can do as we smash into the rocks at the bottom of the falls. Everyone dies.

All I see is endless white. Slowly it resolves into shapes and colors. Bones is here. So are Flim, Flam, and Sunny. We're in a room. And... we're at a party? What the hell? Why am I wearing a sombrero? Guess I may as well make the best of it and see if there's any candy in that piñata.

I wake up with a start. Oh wow. What a weird dream. I turn on the light next to my bed and turn to my wife, Suzanne Pleshette.

"Honey, wake up. You won't believe the craziest dream I just had. I was in Vermont. I think there was something about an airport. But I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town. Then I turned into a griffon and then we all died."

Patrick Duffy steps out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and holding a snowglobe with a house and an RV inside.

"Wow, that sounds weird," he says. "But you know what's weirder?" And then he unzips his face and he's Discord underneath. Huh, that IS weird.

"No, not that," says Discord. "What's REALLY weird is that it's been a full year since this story started and the lazy person in charge isn't even close to done yet. Anyway...