Sweat. The substance poured down the face of the red headed saleswoman. The fan in her hand didn’t seem to make much of a difference as Artemis dripped moisture onto the table in front of her. Unlike her air conditioned stores, she was currently set up at an outdoor booth beside the shopping district. The grassy field was a perfect place to host events after all. Similar booths were around the hot girl as their respective owners set up for an upcoming one! It was a chance for students and clubs to fundraise on campus. The event didn’t start until 2 PM, but Artemis was told to be here early to prepare with the others. The only issue was that nobody else had shown up yet. To make matters worse, she didn’t even belong to this club. Yet here she was, her name signed up to help by someone else. Someone who belonged on a kid’s live action show.
“Ghh. I feel like I laid in a glue trap…” Artemis groans. Her hands and arms felt sticky from the sweat. It was so bad that she couldn’t even properly rest her elbows on the table without her skin sticking to it.
“There’s no use complaining. It’s not going to make things better. Might as well save your energy.” A pale girl with a sun hat was sitting beside Artemis. She had a small paper fan in her hand, and was gently waving it to create a cool breeze for her face. Ulah was the one in charge of the booth. She had requested volunteers to help her run it and unfortunately for Artemis and the other volunteers the event happened to be on one of the hottest days of the year. Montana was seeing record heat.
Artemis ignored Ulah’s advice and kept groaning as she checked her phone. 101 degrees Fahrenheit and rising. Regrets about saying yes to Ashley’s offer began to flood her mind. Where the hell was that girl anyways? Ulah seemed to share the same idea as she pulled out her phone and checked the time. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. The event was still an hour and a half away from officially starting but there were still things to set up. The art department needed all the traction it could get, and if this day did not end perfectly in Ulah’s eyes then she would consider this event a failure.
At last, as Ulah looked up from her phone a new face arrived. Blonde hair shined with moisture in the sunlight as the resident hobo joined the girls.
“You’re late Lucas.” Ulah sighed.
“I know.” Lucas took a big, loud, annoying sip of his juice box and it began to cave in on itself. He showed no mercy and kept sucking.
Ulah didn’t honor him with another comment and went back to her phone. The blonde looked over to Artemis and nodded as he destroyed the juice box until it was a crumpled piece of cardboard. His mouth left the straw and gave a resounding sigh for the others to cherish. “So…we’re getting paid for this right? I didn’t get a chance to read what I was signing up for.” Lucas gave Artemis a blank expression as he waited for an answer.
“I don’t think so. It’s volunteer work. Ugh..We should be with how hot it is though…” Her face planted onto the table and stuck to it with a wet splat. Lucas shrugged. He was hot as well, but there was nothing he could change. It was the perfect excuse to change out of his usual green hoodie.
“Bummer. Still, I don’t have anything better to do. Who else are we missing, big nose?”
Ulah scoffed at the comment. “Here they come now.” She pointed to two approaching figures. Ashley could be seen running over to the booth, and right behind her, in a sprint, was The Great P.T. in the flesh. Unlike Lucas they seemed to care about being late..
“Hang on! Hang on! Sorry!!! We got lost!” Ashley huffed as sweat ran down her face. She stopped in front of the table and tried to catch her breath. Penny stopped right behind her and leaned on the table. The heat had its grasp on everyone.
“We? Nah. You dragged me the wrong way. I told you our booth was on the fuckin’ other side of the god damn field.” Penny angrily corrected Ashley’s excuse and closed her eyes to wipe the sweat her forehead had collected. The blonde brushed off Penny’s comment and waved to Artemis excitedly.
“Artemis! Hey! So glad you came! Sorry for signing you up before you had a chance to say yes, but I figured since you like to work so much we could work together for once!” Ashley’s freckles threatened to explode with light but she calmed herself down and they returned to a nice shade of brown. Artemis didn’t seem to share the excitement Ashley did with how bad the heat was, but she gave a fake smile and waved back.
“Yeah uh…wouldn’t miss it heh…ugh..” Her fake happiness faded quickly as the heat got worse. Everyone seemed to be feeling it. Penny used the bottom of her shirt to wipe some sweat off her forehead. Lucas took a seat in the grass on the shaded side of the booth, and Ashley tried to play it off like it wasn’t bothering her. Ulah looked up from her phone at the ragtag group of volunteers and counted heads silently. That was everyone.
“Good. If we’re done socializing we can get to what we should have started 15 minutes ago…” Ulah stood up and put her phone away and her fan down on the table. Unlike the others she seemed to be fine with the heat for the time being, which helped keep her focused on the tasks that needed to be done before the event. “The Art Department has designed various pins and shirts for us to hand out, courtesy of the graphic design students. You all will be assisting me in grabbing the boxes from the supply building and bringing them back here. It’s not far, but the boxes are heavy. Do I make myself clear or are you all not paying attention?” Ulah looked back behind her at the sweaty students. Ashley and Artemis gave a wet nod but Penny was in the middle of a conversation with Lucas.
“Hey, where’d you get that juice box? Got anymore?” Penny eyes the empty box like a hawk. Lucas stared up at her from his grass seat. He shook his head no.
“Some guy was selling them for like 5 bucks a piece down by the dormitory. Had a big black van and everything.” Lucas sipped the empty cardboard box and it shriveled more. Penny looked at him with a baffled expression.
“ A juice box? FOR 5 DOLLARS? Nah. Nah. That ain’t real. Fictional concept.”
“Oh no. No no no. I never said I paid.”
Ulah cleared her throat and their conversation came to a halt as the two looked over at her. Lucas gave a sigh and got up to join the others with Penny. Now that all her workers were in order, Ulah ushered them along and began to speed walk away. Like ducklings, the girls and Lucas followed her towards the main shopping district. Besides the constant heat of the sun blasting the students, the walk really wasn’t that bad. Grass crunched against their feet as they crossed the field. Artemis could make out a small storage shed beside one of the shops she worked at. She’d always wondered what it was used for.
Penny walked ahead of Lucas and joined Ashley and Artemis. She nudged the workaholic’s right arm and sparked up a conversation. “Can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen you before, lady. You a wrestling fan?” She smirked and nudged her arm again.
Artemis shrugged her shoulders. “Not really? I know a few big names but I don’t really watch that stuff. I work a lot though! You might have seen me in a store or behind a register before. It’s how a lot of people recognize me.”
“Then why did you volunteer for work when you could be makin’ dough? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Because uh…” Artemis looked over to Ashley who was too deep in thought to notice the stare. She turned back to Penny. “I have a bad habit of not saying no…”
Lucas came up behind the two. “You should work on that.”
Artemis looked behind her. She gave Lucas an annoyed glare. “You should work on being less nosey.”
“Oh you have no idea. Trust me I’ve tried. It’d be easier to push a boulder up a hill.” Lucas smirked. Ulah’s cough signified to the group that she wanted their attention, and the students regained their focus on the de facto leader of their ensemble. She seemed pleased they all listened for once and pointed to the door beside her. The tall woman fetched a key from her pocket.
“This is where we’ve stored the pins and apparel. You’re free to take what you wish for your assistance here today but don’t go overboard. And don’t touch anything that does not belong to the department. I’ll never hear the end of it…” Ulah messed with her key ring and found the correct one, opening the door without any issues. The students were immediately hit with a blast of heat as the room opened up and revealed a concrete interior inside. Boxes of t-shirts, collectible mugs, ERA branded pencils, calculators, boxes of printer paper, and even old computer towers lined the walls of the room and the wooden pallets on the floor. It looked like a mini warehouse with how varied the contents inside the building were. The group shuffled in and Ulah was about to close the door when Ashley stopped her.
“Uhhh Ulah?” The girl began to sway from side to side in place. Ulah looked towards Ashley with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes?”
“I’m gonna head to the restroom real quick!”
An eyebrow was raised. “And you decided to wait until now to do so? Can it wait?”
“Nope!”
A sigh was released. Ulah nodded and ushered her away with a wave of her hand. Ashley opened the door back up and ran out of the building. She went in a straight line towards the nearest store and disappeared out of sight. Ulah shook her head and closed the door behind her. The others were all staring at Ulah as they stood around the boxes. She gave them the same raised eyebrow look. They immediately turned away and started to peer at the boxes, everyone besides Artemis who shook her head. “She better hurry back…”
“Shit, you should have told her to pick us up some drinks!” Penny piped up as she picked up a box labeled FFA.
“We have a cooler back at the booth full of water. We do not need drinks.” Ulah corrected the wrestler and joined them alongside Artemis in their search. Penny shrugged and moved yet another box labeled FFA. Right as she went to move the next box, she smiled as she noticed it had TAD written on it. There were a ton of similarly labeled boxes beside it.
“Found em!” Penny called out to the others. Lucas, Artemis and Ulah approached the girl and started helping her move the other FFA boxes out of the way. The heat from the room was slowly getting worse the longer they stayed in here. Artemis grunted with exhaustion as a bead of sweat dropped from her forehead onto the box she moved across the room. Lucas seemed worse for wear as he carried a leaking bag of dirt towards an empty pallet. By the time he got there, the dirt had gotten all over his sweat stained shirt. He tried wiping it off but gave up and instead kicked the bag of dirt and wiped his forehead. Dirt was now smeared on it as well as he looked towards Ulah.
“You…huff…didn’t happen to bring any water with you? I wasn’t told I’d be moving bags of dirt when I volunteered.” Lucas didn’t seem to mind the dirt too much but it was clear he was hot. He felt his pockets and debated grabbing one of the many square shaped objects in them but decided against it. Penny and Artemis perked up at the mention of water.
“Yeah, either that, or we crank up the AC in this bitch.” Penny used her shirt once more to wipe her forehead.
“It’s an isolated storage building. The best chance you’ll get for air conditioning is a window unit. Unfortunately, if you’ll take a look around you’ll see this place also lacks those. If you can wait a bit longer we can all grab a box and head back to the booth to get water from the cooler.” Ulah ushered Lucas to step aside as she went over to the newly revealed boxes. She removed the tape with ease and opened the top box up for the others to see. Inside of it was a plethora of T-shirts of all colors and sizes. Some had designs featuring the ERA logo artistically arranged over some colored splashes. There were also some custom designed shirts that had caricatures of faculty on them. One in particular had a cartoonish Professor Big Arm flexing like Rosie the riveter. Ulah smiled at the designs and closed the box back up.
“Yes these will do. Everyone, grab a box. If you can grab two, do so.” Ulah lifted the box up and carried it towards the door. With panting breaths the other joined in and carried the shirts right behind her.
Everything seemed to be going well as the four formed a train behind their leader. That changed instantly as Ulah pushed open the door and it failed to budge an inch. A loud crash filled the room as her box slammed into the barely open door and Lucas’s box slammed right into her back. The blonde let out a similar pained scream as Artemis’s box hit his back and she joined his cries when Penny smashed into her. All four of them fell to the floor as T shirts flew from the dropped boxes and covered the sweaty young adults. Pain filled their bodies as they groaned and tried to recover from the box induced trauma.
“Urgh…Ulah what gives. Did you lock the door and forget??” Artemis held her chest in pain. The box had smushed her chest a bit too hard.
“What? I’m not capable of making a mistake as foolish as that. No, something else is wrong.” Ulah got up slowly and nearly tripped over Lucas’s shirt-covered foot as she made her way back to the door and reached for the handle. As she messed with the door, Penny laid down on her back and let out an annoyed groan.
“What the fuck!! Now we gotta pick all the merch up on top of carrying it out..” She slowly got to her feet and threw the shirts around her back into the box with little care on how wrinkled they got.
“Are you gonna open that door or let us cook longer?” Lucas piped up as he joined Penny in picking up the shirts. Artemis noticed she was the only one not helping and quickly followed suit as sweat got all over the shirts. Ulah paid little mind to their complaints as she furiously started to pull and push on the door handle. It opened slightly each time and hit something with a loud bang. The sound of wood hitting metal constantly rang out with each attempt. It wasn’t gonna budge
“I am trying! Something is blocking the door!”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN SOMETHING IS BLOCKING THE DOOR???” Penny shouted and ran up to Ulah. She threw the shirt she was holding down and pushed the girl out of the way. Like the girl before her, metal clanging filled the room as her attempts got more and more desperate. “Fuck!! Come on!! I ain’t going down like this! Outta the way!”
Penny backed up from the door and looked at it with a stern gaze. With a yell, she charged at the door. The wrestler’s muscles flexed as she focused on her target with every fiber of her being. She slammed into it with all her body weight. It flung her back and she landed right on top of Lucas. He groaned along with Penny as the girl stared up at the ceiling like she was Buzz Lightyear learning that he couldn’t actually fly. Artemis put her hands on her head and threatened to pull her hair out..
“You’re telling me we’re stuck in a hot as fuck storage room without water or air conditioning! What the hell is blocking the door???” The redhead questioned with clear panic in her voice. Even in the quiet moments between the action, none of the students could hear any commotion outside.
A few minutes earlier…
Poseidon happily hummed as he finished parking his large black van in front of the building. He might have gotten a little too close to the wall but that wasn’t a big deal. Right before he turned the engine off he put two high quality Bluetooth earbuds in his ears and started searching through the songs on his phone.
“Let’s see here. Ah! A classic! Yes, a perfect song to get rich to! The water might be back but nobody can resist a cool refreshment on a hot day! Hahaha! Hopefully here that homeless man won’t steal my products behind my back!” The white boy pressed play on the app and the soothing sounds of Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond filled his ears. He began to hum along to the song as he turned the van off and got out of his seat. The van only had two seats as the rest of it was designed to haul product. He grabbed one of the many coolers full of ice cold juice boxes, sodas, and water bottles and opened the van’s double back doors. Without a care in the world he rolled the huge cooler towards the field Ulah’s booth was in, leaving his van and the occupants of the building trapped behind it.
“Sweeeeeeeeet Carooolliiiiinne!! BUM BUM BUM!!”
Inside the building, Artemis was now trying to do what Penny and Ulah had failed to do in desperation. Lucas and Penny were now scouring the other boxes. Lucas was looking for something cold to drink. While Penny was doing the same, she was also looking for some tools that could potentially bust the door down. She wasn’t going down without a fight. As the two rummaged around, Ulah sat on a large box with her eyes closed. Compared to the others she seemed level headed. And surprisingly dry.
“Fuck! I can’t drink glue dammit! Where the hell is the culinary club’s shit!” Penny pushed aside a box of glue and kept checking the various boxes for anything labeled as a beverage or a crowbar. Hell, she’d take a hammer at this point. “Why would they keep their stuff here and not in a temperature controlled building?” Ulah answered. She thought the answer was obvious and sighed as she opened her eyes and watched the others desperately attempt to escape.
“Have you tried calling someone?” Artemis looked towards Penny and Lucas as she finally gave up on the door and joined them.
“I don’t have a phone!” Penny piped up.
“My phone’s been stuck on the snake game for the past three days.” Lucas pulled out an old beaten up flip phone. True to his word it was indeed stuck on snake. As Penny stifled a laugh, Artemis rolled her eyes and pulled her own phone, only to hear Ulah’s laughter from across the room
“No serviiiiice.” Ulah responded in a slightly sing-songy voice and leaned back against the wall as she remained seated. The others all looked at her with an annoyed glare. Artemis was at her limit.
“Ulah why the hell are you so calm? We’re sweating bullets over here, desperate for water, all while you’re just sitting down! And why are you so dry? Aren’t you hot?!!” Artemis yelled at the theater girl. Ulah glared back at her and smirked.
“Sweating is a sign of the body’s temperature being irregular. So I don’t sweat. That and unlike you all, I’ve endured the harsh gaze of many spotlights. It takes more than a simple heat wave to get to me…besides. All is not lost. Do you not recall the 5th member of our entourage? Ashley will be back soon and she can assist us in moving whatever is blocking the door.” Ulah shook her head at their foolishness. With how hot it was Artemis didn’t retaliate back with one of the nasty remarks going through her head and just looked relieved.
“Oh good. For a second there I thought we were in trouble. Where did she go anyways? The bathroom? She should be back any minute now.” Lucas felt a lot more at ease now that he wouldn’t have to suffer through this much more. He wasn’t a fan of the heat. Nobody in the room seemed to be a fan besides the snob on the boxes.
Ashley exited the Lodge with a sigh and a drink made by a man who wished he was anywhere else but there. She sipped it down eagerly as she began her walk back towards the others. Today was such a good day! She stared up at the cloudless sky and smiled as fellow students walked past her. They all seemed busy with their own adventures. All except for one.. A boy with purplish facepaint on and too much jewelry to be practical approached Ashley slowly. He appeared to have been watching her from a distance for some time. Ashley raised an eyebrow as the man approached her, his huge sun hat really didn’t match the rest of his black outfit.
The man smirked and leaned back. “Sup?”
“Hiii?”
“So uh…what’s your name beautiful.”
“Ashley…”
“Cool, name’s Twerp. I’m…” The newly introduced Twerp froze. His eyes widened and his smile turned into a frown. It was as if he had seen a ghost. Ashley tilted her head.
“Uh dude? You ok?” Ashley could see the man shaking in his hat. He was blowing it.
“H-huh? Yeah I’m uh..I’m fine. L-like your outfit! You dress yourself this morning?” The man felt hotter than before, and not because of the heat. He was nervous as hell for some reason.
“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I?” Ashley looked to her side to try and find an excuse to get away.
“Oh! Heh! Yeah! I guess it’d be weird if you didn’t! Heh…heh…” He had to think of something, anything to save this. He was good at showing off but for some reason he was fumbling his words. “I’m…I’m…” Twerp froze. His brain turned off and he went into full panic mode.
“I’M GOING INTO LABOR” The vampire wannabe yelled at the top of his lungs. Everyone around him stopped and stared. Ashley’s side eye turned into a deadpan expression of disbelief. In an alleyway a good distance away, two others watched Twerp fumble the bag. A rat bastard of an irishman with a pair of binoculars watched him from down the binocular lenses as a black girl with dreads did the same without a pair right next to him.
“He’s pulling the pregnancy card already huh? He’s hopeless.” Ravien shook her head.
“If he u-turns the topic back to shaved ice he might clutch this…it’s fucking hot today anyways. I’m sure she’ll say yes.” Preston kept watching the fiasco through his binoculars. This was going to take a while…
Penny sprawled out on the bags of dirt Lucas had moved earlier. Compared to the hot cardboard at least they didn’t retain as much heat. Artemis was on the floor beside her, groaning like she had just crawled out of bed.
“It’s been like 10 minutes where the hell is Ashley….” Artemis wailed. She could feel her body sticking to the floor. This was it…this was how she died.
Penny looked over towards the girl, her hair wet and clinging to the bag of dirt. “Man, she got lost coming here. You think she got lost finding the restroom?” The girl wiped some sweat off of her forehead. Some dirt from the bags was smeared on her head. With all the other issues at the moment, it wasn’t a concern to Penny if it meant she was kept slightly cooler.
“She’s just new around here. She’s not bad at directions.” Artemis defended her family member.
Penny went to look back up at the ceiling. “”…Hehe. fair ‘nough.”
As the duo finished their short conversation, Ulah began to get up from her throne of boxes and started to feel her arm. She noticed it was wet and began to look up towards the ceiling for a potential water source. She found nothing. It was as dry as her humor. “What? That is not possible…my arm is wet..” The woman began to breathe heavier as she wiped her arm off and felt her face. It was just as moist. She shook her head and backed into a stack of boxes. The noise alerted the others.
“Ulah? What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen another ghost.” Artemis might have been dying but she couldn’t resist the joke. She pried herself off the floor and went over to Ulah as Lucas and Penny continued to melt.
“I…I cannot believe this…I’m sweating! My body temperature is imperfect! This is unacceptable!!!” Her hands rushed to her face as she wiped them on it. When she pulled them off. She stared down at her palms. They were shining and dripping with moisture. Artemis covered her ears as the scream Ulah gave blasted her ears. “We must get out of here!!!” Ulah moved Artemis out of the way and rushed towards the door in a panic, showing more emotion than the trio had seen all day from the girl. As she pushed the door open it slammed into Poseidon’s van over and over again. It wasn’t budging. “No!!! Nononono!!! Open you insolent object!! I’ll destroy whoever you belong to the moment I get out of here you hear me! YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU MADE ULAH SOKOLOVA SWEAAAAT!!” Ulah began to scream as imperfections mounted up in her mind. The event was going horribly wrong and there was nothing she could do about it.
“OH we double teaming this bitch??” Penny jumped up from her dirt pallet and rushed towards the door with Ulah. The two slammed into it over and over again with so much force that the van on the outside began to dent. The dent didn’t allow much more room to escape and the door was still basically shut.
As Ulah had a breakdown and Penny got yet another genius escape attempt, Lucas took this opportunity to sneak away from his spot on the floor and hid behind a stack of boxes. He rummaged around in his cargo shorts pocket quietly.
“Hey! Keep it down already you two! And Jesus, Ulah, it’s just sweat!” Artemis sat up and stared at the tall woman. She seemed irritated all of a sudden. The lack of water was starting to get to her. Ulah turned toward Artemis with a glare and was about to say something when the sound of a nearly empty drink rang out around the room. Everyone stopped in their tracks.
“W-what was that…” Ulah looked at the two girls she could see. Lucas was missing. “Where is Lucas?”
Artemis looked around and spotted the man in a corner. “Lucas?”
“Hm?”
“What are you doing?”
“…nothing.”
Penny’s eyes widened as she immediately pushed Ulah out of the way and ran towards Lucas. With a roar she dived towards the man. “HES GOT ANOTHER FUCKING JUICE BOX!!”
Lucas let out a scream as his body was slammed into the boxes and a grape juice box flew out of his hands. Artemis and Ulah rushed towards it as Penny sprung off Lucas’s body to grab it first. The victor was Artemis though, and the other girls whiffed as she held it high above the others and kept the taller Ulah at bay with a hand. She let out a victorious laugh before she noticed something wrong. She shook the juice box. There was no sound. It was empty.
“It’s…he didn’t leave a single drop..” She dropped the juice box on the ground and Penny snatched it up. She sat on her knees and tried to drink anything she could from the straw. The only thing that happened was the juice box started to shrivel up.
“…Why.” Was the only thing Penny said as she looked at Lucas. Her face looked emotionless.
Lucas rubbed his neck. He moved his head to get the stiffness out and looked at the others with a sheepish smile. “So uh…funny story. I have like 3 more…”
As Lucas reached back into his pockets and pulled out 3 juice boxes, the girls around him went wide eyed. Artemis was on the verge of tears. Penny no longer wanted to strangle him, but Ulah’s smile was enough to do it for her. Lucas shuddered. It didn’t seem natural. As the three reached for juice boxes, Lucas looked towards the door.
“I was hoping we’d be out of here by now so I could put them on ice but I’m not the type to be a dick on purpose. Honest.” Lucas couldn’t do much as he watched the three girls devour the juice. “And that’s why I had to make sure I got one first, Shit….” Lucas stared at Penny. She wasn’t even using the straw. Her finger was used to put a hole in the box and she was chugging like there was no tomorrow. Artemis and Ulah watched in awe as they gulped down their own. Not even 5 seconds passed before the sound Lucas made earlier echoed around the room. 5 pure seconds of bliss was all they got as the trio looked to their juice boxes and saw nothing but empty shells devoid of joy. Ulah crushed her box in her hand.
“It’s not enough…” She reached for Lucas and grabbed him by his sweaty shirt. “Are you sure that is the last of them?”
Lucas raised his hands. “Unless you can get us out of this room and move that van then yep. Fresh out of juice.”
“How do you know it’s…hm. It must be some sort of vehicle if it’s metal. But who would do such a thing..” Ulah let go of Lucas’s shirt and got up. The temporary relief the juice had given was already long gone. She looked down at her phone and checked the temperature. 43 degrees Celsius and rising. This was only going to get worse…
Ashley clapped as she watched the display in front of her. Twerp and her had moved to the nearby alley so the sun wouldn’t kill the man as he spun around on his head like a professional breakdancer. How Twerp managed to make a comeback was a sight to behold. In fact, the two weren’t alone in the alley. Passing students were now surrounding Twerp as he turned his casual flirt into a showy street performance that attracted everyone towards him. He was on fire.
Preston held out his hand towards Ravien. The woman angrily pulled out a wad of cash and began stacking 20s in the Irishman’s hand. She couldn’t believe she had actually lost a bet on Twerp of all people.
A wall of boxes divided the room. Shirts and dirt now covered the floor as Lucas leaned against the box fort. His shirt was long since abandoned and was currently being used as a rag to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He tossed it over to the girl beside him. Artemis didn’t think twice before she did the same thing.
“Thanks..think this will hold?” Artemis pointed back to the tall wall of boxes behind Lucas and her. Something large slammed into the wall and caused it to sway.
“No…” Was all he had to say about that as the two closed their eyes and listened to the screams from the other side of the wall. Ulah and Penny were in the middle of a brawl. A few minutes ago, the 4 had discovered something that tore their teamwork apart. A small battery powered fan had been tucked away in one of the art department’s merchandise boxes. Ulah had claimed it first as it was Art Department property, and that’s when all hell broke loose. Lucas and Artemis wanted no part in it as Ulah and Penny fought tooth and nail for the fan. Boxes full of pins now turned into projectiles that stuck into Lucas’s box fort, and t-shirts became lethal whips as the two savage women used their sweat to make the shirts have even more impact. Penny and her opponent circled around the middle of the dirt covered arena. The glares the two were giving each other could have killed people. With a windup of her twisted shirt, Ulah lashed out at Penny to protect the fan in her hands. The whip missed and Penny lunged for Ulah’s chest with a devastating kick that caused the dancer to lean forward.
“You are..the weakest sunova’ bitch I’ve ever seen” With a Stone Cold Steve Austin impression, she followed up the kick with a grab to Ulah’s head. She twisted her body around and STONE COLD STUNNER’D Ulah to the ground. The fan and her went flying backwards as she laid motionless in the dirt as she let off a loud gasp for breath. Penny dived on top of Ulah and lifted one of her legs.
“ONE, TWO, THREE!!!” Penny’s tired voice rang out through the destroyed stockroom as Ulah held the fan up in the air. She was surrendering.
“You win! Just take the fan already!!” Ulah groaned as her sweat covered body stuck to the floor below her. Penny triumphantly smirked as she grabbed the fan Ulah held up and started to stand back up. She didn’t get off Ulah and instead planted one foot on her stomach. She held the fan up in the air triumphantly.
“Shoulda thought twice before ya tangled with P.T. Bitch..hehehe.” Penny shook the fan as she got off Ulah and excitedly pressed the power button on the fan. Artemis and Lucas finally raised their heads over the box fort wall after the war finally ended and gave jealous stares towards Penny. They sure as hell didn’t want to be the next Ulah though. The fan’s motor began to turn and it blew cold air right into Penny’s face. For a moment, Penny closed her eyes and felt nothing but bliss. The cooling air that hit her face was better than any prize she had ever won. It was glorious. Until about 2 seconds later when the fan blades stopped spinning and the batteries died. Penny opened her eyes again and stared at the silent fan. She clicked the button once more. It gave a weak turn and then stopped again. Another click. Nothing. Click. Click. Click…the fan was dead…
All that work for 2 seconds of cold air.
Penny stared at the fan, unmoving. Lucas and Artemis stared over at each other, neither of them dared say a word. Ulah was silent as well. She began to crawl away and sat up against the box fort. She glared up at the frozen Penny.
Silence filled the room. Penny’s vision got blurry as her teeth clenched together. She tightened her grip around the fan. With a defiant cry, Penny raised her hand and threw the fan across the room right towards Lucas and Artemis. The two barely managed to duck out of the way as it rushed past their heads and slammed into the wall behind them. The impact against the wall shattered the brittle device into millions of tiny pieces. With little to no energy left, Penny fell to her knees. The heat was starting to make her woozy. She panted deeply as sweat dripped from her head onto the floor below. As silence fell upon the room, all of its occupants could hear each other’s heavy breathing. There was nothing more to say to one another.
The seconds turned to minutes. Lucas and Artemis had time to crawl out of their fort and join Penny and Ulah as the four melted away in silence. The two worn out fighters sat beside one another and faced towards the fort dwellers, once Ulah recovered at least. The fight killed her energy to even move properly.
The silence was broken at last as Ulah said something. “…You know. Part of being a leader is knowing when to take the blame. I apologize for giving you three a task such as this. I should have brought the supplies out earlier by myself…” The prideful woman was at an extremely low point at the moment. Her mind was racing with ideas and picking apart every imperfect action she had performed that led to this fiasco.
Artemis stared at Ulah with a frown. While she’d love to gloat to the stuck up girl, now wasn’t the time for smart comments. She was being apologetic for once. She needed to savor this moment. “It’s…fine Ulah. You couldn’t have known some idiot would park a van in front of a door. Nobody is per-“ Artemis stopped herself. She didn’t want to piss the girl off. “Nobody is blaming you.”
The topless Lucas used his shirt as a rag once more and nodded. “I mean…yeah. If anything we should be blaming little miss sunshine for ditching us…it doesn’t take that long to piss.” He gave a look towards the door. He would much rather be her in this situation than stuck in this sauna.
“What the hell is she gonna do anyways? Can’t push a van outta the way without the keys…” Penny piped up and crossed her arms. Her anger had subsided long ago. She looked towards Ulah and smirked. “Still, ‘preciate the apology. No hard feelings over the fan, yeah?”
“Hmph. No hard feelings. It is not in one’s own self interest to harbor grudges over defeat. You must simply train harder to perfect your craft…perhaps you can show me that last move sometime” Despite the heat and exhaustion she felt, Ulah kept her eyes open a tad bit longer to hear Penny’s response.
“Heh..hell yeah..” The four had nothing more to say. The heat was unbearable.
Artemis kept her eyes closed as she remembered a song she had heard Brown singing in the lodge. She didn’t know the lyrics but the beat was catchy. She started to hum as she rested her head on the boxes behind her. The other’s opened their eyes to stare at Artemis. Despite the shitty conditions, everything still had a chance to turn out alright…
The door opened, and Ashley entered the room. “Hey guys I’m back!!! Sorry it took so long!” All four of the room’s occupants instantly opened their eyes and stared over at Ashley in disbelief. The humming stopped and turned to screaming as Artemis and the others ran towards the open door. Ashley was barely able to get out of the way before all four students dived out of the doorway onto the grass field in front of them. The sweet cooling outside air was too good to be true as all four of them wept tears of joy. Lucas started kissing the ground.
After a moment to revive her sanity, Artemis got up from the ground and looked over to Ashley. Happiness turned to rage and then right back to happiness as she ran to her cousin and embraced her tightly. Ashley flinched at the hug, but after the initial shock of the whole situation left her body, she hugged her right back.
“Oh my fucking god Ashley thank you…I thought we’d die in there..” Artemis wept onto her shoulder. Ashley looked even more confused than before.
“Why? The door wasn’t locked?”
Artemis wiped her eyes and stared back at Ashley. The hug ended. “What do you mean? There was a van parked in front of the door right?”
“No?”
Ulah got off the ground and dusted herself off. She had been listening in on the conversation. “Perhaps it moved while we were preoccupied with other things. Still, that’s besides the point. Where have you been?” Ulah’s face said all it needed to, she wasn’t very happy with Ashley.
“Well…I went to the bathroom like I said I would but then I got thirsty and stopped by the Lodge for a drink! I was gonna head back but this weird kid with purple facepaint on started talking to me. He was kinda cool turns out. We chatted for a bit and it was going great! Until he asked me what my ability was. I answered and he instantly ran away screaming. What was his name again…Dirk? No.. hm..” Ashley tried to remember but nobody seemed interested in continuing the conversation any longer. Penny and Lucas were up off the ground at this point and had joined the group once more.
“So. Someone mentioned a water cooler?” Lucas looked impatient, Then again, so did everyone else as they stared at Ulah. Everyone but Ashley.
“Yes well…” Ulah stared at her fellow heat survivors and then looked towards Ashley. A smirk formed on her face. “Ashley, there should be a broom and dustpan in the building. Be a dear and clean up the room for a bit will you? The rest of us are going on a well deserved…’restroom break’. Chop chop now…” Ulah clapped her hands together and ushered the others to follow her. Artemis, Lucas, and Penny looked over to Ashley. Smiles crept up on their faces slowly, and one by one they all followed Ulah back to the booth. Ashley’s mouth was open in disbelief as she watched the group leave. She eventually turned around and stared through the open door. She could see the dirt from where she stood.
“I’m never volunteering again..” Ashley sulked as she walked into the building alone.
THE END.