Sam
“Everyone, pay attention! I’m bringing this meeting to order, so shut the hell up!”
“Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.” Noel is chanting the creepy theme music from Friday the 13th under her breath when her best friend, Scheva Oliver, yells at everyone.
Scheva and Noel were best friends in high school, but lost touch when Noel moved away from Ohio to live in Seattle. As soon as Noel moved back home, the Christmas she and I met, her friendship with Scheva picked up right where it left off, and the two became inseparable again. We introduced Scheva to my best friend, Alex Rose, last Valentine’s Day, and what started off as a fling quickly turned into something more. After Scheva announced at Easter that she would be marrying Alex, Noel started humming “here comes the bride” whenever Scheva entered the room. Now, as my wife has become increasingly more miserable and cranky during the last trimester of her pregnancy, and Scheva has turned into a bridezilla on crack, it’s safer for everyone involved if Noel lets out her frustrations by channeling Michael Myers.
You know, singing his theme song instead of going on a murderous rampage.
I love my wife more than anything else in this world, but she’s been scaring the shit out of me lately with her mood swings. No one will be happier than me when she finally gives birth. Don’t tell her I said that, though, or she’ll probably stab me in the throat while I sleep.
“I’ve called everyone here tonight so we can discuss, and make any final changes to, the outfits you’ll be wearing next weekend. At my wedding. The moment I officially become a bride. The one day where everyone will be paying attention to me. And the last perfect, amazing day I’ll ever have for the rest of my life,” Scheva announces, tossing her long blond hair over one shoulder.
“Um, hello? Married to this guy for the rest of your life,” Alex reminds her, pointing both his thumbs to his chest.
Noel likes to call Alex and me the yin and yang of hot guys. We’re pretty much the same height and have the same muscular build thanks to the military, but where I have short dark hair, Alex’s is short and blond. I still think I’m better looking than he is, and make sure to tell him that on a regular basis. Alex and I had similar childhoods. We both lost our parents at a young age and were tossed around the system until we turned eighteen, when we joined the Marines. Our similar lives forged a bond that I can’t break, no matter how much he irritates me sometimes. When I introduced Alex to Noel’s family, they immediately welcomed him into the fold and made him one of their own, much like they’d done with Scheva.
Even though Scheva’s parents are alive, they’ve never really given a shit about her. As soon as she turned eighteen and moved out, they started traveling the world and forgot they had a daughter. Noel’s family may be crazy, but they’ve taken in all of us orphans and made us a part of their family without a second thought.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Scheva sighs with a wave of her hand. “Happily ever after and all that shit. But I’ve been dreaming about being a bride all my life, and it’s almost over. I’ll never have anything to look forward to ever again.”
“Boy, marriage is going to be fun!” Alex replies sarcastically, which earns him a glare from his bride-to-be.
“Marriage is hard work,” Bev, Noel’s mother, announces from the other side of the room, where she is busily rearranging the orange pumpkin lights hanging across the fireplace mantle. “I hope your ups and downs are only in the bedroom.”
“Ew, gross,” Noel whispers, her lips curling in disgust.
“Get it? Ups and downs in the bedroom? Because when you’re having sex your bodies move—”
“Oh my God, Mom, we get it. Stop. Don’t make me throw up my dinner,” Noel complains.
“There’s nothing wrong with a healthy sex life, Noel. How many times do we need to have this discussion? If your father weren’t such a tiger in bed, I would have divorced him a long time ago. And he found this new website called Tumbles where he’s gotten a lot of new moves. Have you heard of this Tumbles thing?” Bev lights a votive candle and walks over to the coffee table in front of us, sticking it inside a small, carved pumpkin in the middle of the table. “You should try it.”
“Bev, my love, it’s called Tumblr, not Tumbles. And now you just ruined my favorite website, picturing you and Reggie looking at porn before you get your nasty on.” Noel’s Aunt Bobbie tosses back her third martini, the short blond wig she’s wearing going all askew when she whips her head back to finish the drink. “Sam, come over here and comfort me,” she continues. “Let me fondle your pumpkins.”
Noel’s Aunt Bobbie was her Uncle Robert until his wife left him when she caught him trying on her clothes, and he realized he was much happier being a woman. When I first met Aunt Bobbie, she reached out and grabbed my dick instead of shaking my hand. She toned down her flirting and sexual innuendos with me when Noel and I got married, but obviously this wedding is stressing everyone out lately.
“I’m not wearing what you picked out for me,” Noel suddenly says to Scheva with a huff, crossing her arms and pouting.
“What are you doing? Do you want to get us all killed?!” Alex whispers, staring at her with wide eyes.
“It’s a Halloween wedding, and you’re wearing a costume,” Scheva growls.
“You said this was a meeting to discuss any final changes to the outfits. Well, I’m making a final change. I’m NOT wearing the costume you picked out for me,” Noel argues.
“You will wear it and you will like it!”
“You made me a cardboard box you expect me to wear, painted like an oven, with a picture of a baby inside that rests right over my stomach. YOU’RE COOKING A BABY!” Noel screams.
“IT’S A BUN IN THE OVEN, AND IT’S CUTE!”
“IT’S NOT A BUN IN THE OVEN. IT’S AN ACTUAL BABY IN THE OVEN. BABIES DO NOT GO IN OVENS!”
“DON’T PISS ME OFF OR I’LL MAKE YOU WEAR THAT FLUORESCENT-GREEN TAFFETA MATERNITY PROM DRESS WITH THE GIANT PUFFY SLEEVES I FOUND AT GOODWILL!”
“You wouldn’t!” Noel fires back, attempting to push herself up from the couch, her belly getting in the way and making her fall back to the cushions five times. I sit next to her and do nothing but watch.
I could be a gentleman and help her up from the couch, but then I’d just be convicted of aiding and abetting when Noel finally gets to her feet, charges Scheva, and chokes her to death.
Noel finally manages to push herself up from the couch and waddles over to Scheva, getting right in her face.
“I’m NOT dressing up as an oven.”
“Yes, you are. I already bought Sam’s chef costume so you two match, and it’s too late to change the entire theme of your matching costumes,” Scheva argues.
“I’m dressing up as a slutty witch, or a slutty kitten, or a slutty devil, just like I do every year, and you’re not going to stop me!”
“This is so hot,” Alex whispers as he watches our women scream at each other from his spot next to me, perched on the edge of the couch.
“That’s my pregnant wife you’re talking about.”
Alex shrugs. “Yeah, so? Pregnant porn is hot. Don’t tell me you’ve never watched it.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Thank you,” he replies with a smile.
“ALL RIGHT! THAT’S ENOUGH!” Reggie bellows, walking into the living room and handing a fresh martini to Aunt Bobbie before cracking open the can of beer in his other hand. “Noel has already ruined our family name by not decorating for the holidays over the last year, I don’t need the neighbors gossiping more about us because they can hear you two screaming about cooking babies and slutty kittens.”
He turns his angry look in my direction, and I cower back into the seat cushions. Reggie blames me for Noel’s refusal to decorate the outside of our house for any holidays since last Halloween. No one in this neighborhood would even know or care that we haven’t decorated, since we live thirty minutes away, but that doesn’t matter to Reggie. Noel became a little superstitious when every holiday we spent together after we first met turned disastrous.
We met in an airport bar a few days before Christmas, and she convinced me to come home with her and pretend to be the boyfriend she’d recently broken up with after he proposed to her. But I got shot with a BB gun when we toured the house from A Christmas Story, and Aunt Bobbie was so high on drugs, she was convinced she saw a squirrel wearing a sweater.
Then you have our first Valentine’s Day, when Bev brought home a stripper named Pinky to live with them, and everyone thought Pinky swallowed Noel’s engagement ring and they’d have to wait for her to shit it out to get it back. Not to mention Aunt Bobbie accidentally giving Noel Ecstasy instead of Xanax before a big job interview, which resulted in Noel attempting to strip and dance in the office of her interviewer.
And there was our first Fourth of July, our wedding day, where we were stalked by a half-dead, pissed-off zombie cat named Turd Ferguson, a few stray fireworks almost burnt my dick off, and Noel’s wedding dress went up in flames like a barn full of dry hay.
To say we’ve had some very eventful holidays is putting it mildly. Noel decided, starting last Halloween, that we would do whatever we could to ignore the holidays in the hopes that this would eventually bring us good luck. It seemed to work, too, until this past Easter, when Noel found out she was pregnant and tried to surprise me with notes hidden in Easter eggs. But her drunk Aunt Bobbie and even drunker best friend, Scheva, found the notes and switched them, and her sweet way of announcing the news turned into the most awkward conversation about anal sex that anyone has ever had.
“Dad, I told you why I haven’t decorated for the holidays, give it a rest,” Noel says with a sigh.
“And look what happened! You got knocked up and now you have to dress up like an oven,” Reggie grumbles.
“Pretty sure that’s not what caused my pregnancy.”
“IT WAS AN IMMACULATE CONCEPTION!” Reggie shouts.
“Can we please bring this back around to the wedding? MY wedding? The happiest day of my life, and the day all of you people will do exactly as you’re told and wear exactly what I’ve picked out for you?” Scheva interrupts. “Sam will be dressing as a chef, Noel will be dressing as a goddamn oven and will not bitch about it one more time, Aunt Bobbie will be dressing as Barbra Streisand—”
“I get to sing at the reception, right?” Aunt Bobbie interrupts. “I’ve been practicing ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,’ and the ladies from Drag Queen Bingo will be disappointed if I don’t sing it.”
Scheva continues without acknowledging Aunt Bobbie. “And Reggie and Bev will be dressed as a priest and a nun.”
“How many fucks given? NUN!” Alex cheers with his fist in the air.
“Now, we only have a week left until the wedding. We have treat bags to make, pumpkins to carve, orange lights to string, and all of those god-awful clowns to remove from the front yard,” Scheva tells us.
Just like Noel and I, Scheva and Alex have decided to have a small, intimate wedding in Bev and Reggie’s backyard. Here’s hoping their wedding doesn’t end with a trip to the emergency room in the back of an ambulance and third-degree burns on anyone’s junk.
“THOSE CLOWNS STAY!” Reggie yells. “I’ve already got a plan ready for the wedding day. As soon as you asked if you could have the wedding here, I started collecting used wedding dresses. All of the clowns will be dressed for the festivities, and my display will remain intact for the judging ceremony.”
Yes, because nothing says “happy wedding day” like clowns dressed up as brides.
Noel stomps back over to the couch and flops down next to me. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her against my side.
“You’re going to be the sexiest oven anyone has ever seen,” I whisper in her ear.
“Forget about cooking a baby. I’m going to chop off your balls and cook those instead.”
Did I mention how happy I’ll be when this Halloween wedding is over and our baby is finally out of my wife’s body?