The Homecoming Queen Chapter 1

Chapter 1
“If there was ever one thing that I hated in high school, it was waking up early and listening to my alarm drone on and on like my history teacher. It was always this monotone blaring noise that drove me crazy! I know I’m not the only one, so, don’t claim that you don’t feel the same way when your alarm goes off in the early morn.”
~The Untitled Memoirs of Robert T. Locke




Robert rolled over to his side of the bed where his irritating alarm clock lay blaring the announcement that it was time for him to arise and face the day. The only thing he had the mind to do was roll back over to face the backside of his wife and go back to sleep, but the alarm would hear nothing of it. It was a cruel mistress, Time. She would demand and demand only the harshest of requests, and what was given in return? A mere extension of five minutes of sleep. In the back of his mind, he was unconsciously weighing the options as he struck the large, black snooze button on the top of the alarm clock. He could lay in bed and cuddle up to his warm wife and sleep the day away with her, or he could get up to his alarm and go into work early, as he had planned. The prior option was a much better fit than the latter, but he knew that he would ultimately wind up getting out of bed the very moment that the snooze timed up and began to…
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The alarm cried it’s beckoning for Robert to emerge from his bed, and he did, begrudgingly as it may have been. He swung his feet off to the side of the bed, and with a massive creaking sound resonating in the room, he began to rise.
“Where are you going so early?” Robert’s wife asked; sleep still heavy in her voice.
“Well, Sharon, as you know, I had two options last night: I could either stay late at work and try to finish those reports that I had to do and take care of what I needed to do to submit my final exam, or I could skip out on that hellhole, come home, and wow you in our bed with my great and grandeur sexual prowess that we both know just leaves you begging for more. And, as you can see, I went with the latter of the two.” Sharon propped herself up on her arm and stared at her husband, her sleep-clouded vision blurry and inaccurate.
“Robbles, I wasn’t begging for more last night, I was begging you to turn the volume on the television up so I didn’t have to hear you crying after you, supposedly, ‘wowed’ me,” Sharon said, her voice beginning to drift back off to sleep. “Oh,” she continued, “stop your whining and get around for work. I really don’t want to hear you griping about the final exams, and before you conveniently forget, I need you to pick me up something for my stomach. I’m feeling really nauseous lately.” As the words pass through Robert’s ears, a chill went down his spine. That was the next-to-last thing he wanted to hear this morning. The last thing he wanted to hear about was her feminine problems.
Robert walked through the bedroom he shared with Sharon and into his bathroom that was directly adjacent to door that lead to the outer hallway that would eventually twist and turn into their living room. It was a fairly classic set-up, at least that’s what he thought. To hear his in-laws speak about it, it was the worst possible style of a house that anyone could’ve imagined.
He opened the bathroom door and walked in to face the mirror. The ten years that Robert had been out of high school had not been kind to him. He could see that he needed a clean shave, and that a haircut may be in some type of order. He also could see that potentially taking Joe up on his offer to join him in the school’s gym after school may not actually be as bad an idea as he kept making it out to be. He turned from his mirror and looked to his shower, pulling back the curtain; he turned the dial to the hottest the water could go, and then removed his undergarments, depositing them in the wicker basket hamper in the corner of the room. He could feel the steam radiating from the shower stall and he could smell the sweet scent of his soap, calling to him to be used ever-so vigorously.
Without thinking, and almost of habit, he stepped into the shower, the water at a still-scalding temperature. Robert, and the better portion of the surrounding houses in his neighborhood, soon saw the error in his ways. Shouting and screaming various profanities to the many deities that he didn’t believe even existed, he cursed each one of their names for his forgetfulness and burns. With a quick hand, he jerked the dial in the opposite direction, turning it to a much more comfortable heat, and continued with his shower. Taking his bar of soap from the shelf that he had designated for it, he scrubbed his body. That was one of the peculiarities that he had always admitted that he had: that he always liked his morning shower and took it very seriously. He couldn’t say why. All he knew was that it was just a force of habit.
After fifteen minutes, Robert emerged from the shower and wrapped his lower abdomen in his towel and began to dry off his torso. As he dried, the steam in the room began to disappear and flow towards the open door that lead into his bedroom. In the space where the door should have been closed, stood Sharon in nothing but her flimsy and wispy nightgown that only came to her upper thighs. Somehow, she had managed to maintain that girlish figure she had all through high school, and that just made her all the more attractive.
Robert loved Sharon since the day he met her, and even in that first moment of contact, he knew that they would be together forever. He knew it would be a rocky journey, but it would be worth every wrong turn that they would make. He stared at his wife in amazement of her stunning radiance and beauty while still absent mindedly drying himself off. During the time that he was staring at his wife, she had moved her soft and tiny hands from her waist to her breasts, holding them as though they weighed an unimaginable amount.
“Do my boobs look bigger to you?” she asked rather crudely. Robert’s staring was cut short by his wife’s rather random question. “I mean, lately they’ve felt bigger to me, but do they look bigger?”
“I, uh…I um…I…” he stammered.
Sharon sighed and stormed off, muttering to herself while still holding and examining her breasts. Robert walked to the door, closed it, and then looked in the mirror.
“Women. You know as well as I do,” he said aloud to his misty reflection. Robert wiped the condensation from his mirror with his towel, and continued about with his daily routine.
At ten minutes to seven in the morning, Robert was dressed and ready to go to work. His wife had fallen back to sleep, and the neighbors were all either on their own way or just starting their day. He walked over to his wife, pulled back her beautiful brown hair and kissed her softly on the forehead. Sharon started to toss over onto her opposite side, but stopped and rolled back to her original position, muttering something to herself or to a figure in her dream, aloud. He smiled and went on his way. He closed the door softly and proceeded to his living room. Grabbing his jacket and his satchel, he walked outside and waited for Joe to arrive. The cold morning air felt good as it gently crossed his skin.
Joe pulled into Robert’s driveway and put the car in park. Opening his door, he emerged to face Robert. Joe was approximately six feet and two inches tall, weighing two-hundred-eighty-five pounds and his long black hair was still wet from, what Robert assumed to be his morning shower. His beard shone brightly in the morning light that mixed with the light from the headlights.
“Good morrow, Master Gobbles!” Joe called to Robert in his best imitation of archaic English. Robert walked forward to Joe’s car and pulled himself into the passenger’s side seat. Joe followed suit, all the while laughing. “I thought it was funny, myself.” he said. Robert stared at Joe with an intense look and then faced forward to gaze at his house as it slowly became smaller and smaller. Joe backed out of the driveway with flawless grace and began the trek to work.
“You know, I understand that the whole ‘Robbles’ story is an interesting one, but can we please drop it?” Robert asked.
Joe began to chuckle.
“What?”
“Well, would you prefer I use one of your other nicknames? Maybe ‘Frenchie’, or how about ‘Frosty’? Would either of those suit your fancy?”
“Alright, I get it. We’ll stick with ‘Robbles’.”
“I thought you may see it my way,” Joe sneered.
“Sometimes, Joe, I really do hate you.” Robert said, a grin lining his face.
“No, you don’t hate me, Robbles. Who you really hate are the bastard coated bastards that fill this world and their once creamy, but now hardened bastard coated filling.” Robert looked at Joe with a look of complete and total disbelief. Joe could recognize the look without even allowing his eyes and attention to leave the road on which he drove. “I know, but in my defense, I was up late last night and my thinking is a direct reflection of that today.” Robert sighed and rolled his eyes towards the roof of the car. He’d never really noticed how truly dirty his friend’s car actually was.
Taking his finger and stroking the felt-like roof, Robert’s finger tip, once a pale and almost pasty white, was now a dingy and darkened shade of gray. He quickly wiped his finger with a handkerchief that he almost religiously kept in his pocket and turned his disgusted gaze towards Joe. “Hey, buddy,” he said, his tone lined with the sheer repulsiveness he was feeling, “when was the last time you cleaned this rolling dust trap?” Joe smiled, keeping his eyes intently on the road.
“Let’s see here…when did we graduate? What, 1999, or was 2000?” Robert kept his gaze on Joe, refusing to look away.
“2000, I believe, seeing as how we’ve got that ten year class reunion thing coming up here in the tail-end of August.” Joe pondered his friend’s response.
“Then it was 2001 that I last had this beautiful beast cleaned and groomed.” Robert was in disbelief. 2001? Joe had been driving in the dirt and dust and grime of nine years? His revulsion was increased ten-fold in that one sentence. He knew that his best friend since the sixth grade had been a little more laid-back than most, but nine years was just downright slovenly. For the rest of the fifteen minute drive that they had until they reached the school, he remained silent, still awe struck at what Joe had just told him.
“You know,” Joe said as they began to emerge from his car, “keeping things bottled up isn’t good for you.” Robert stared at Joe, a confused look running across his face.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You didn’t say a word for a whole eleven minutes after I told you how long it had been since it had been since I had cleaned my car. For you, that’s a record. So, what’s bugging you?” Robert sifted through his memory and all of the excuses he had used to try and avoid a conflict with Joe over the years. It looked as though the well had finally run dry. He rested his head on his folded arms atop the roof of Joe’s car.
“How far along is Maria?” he asked, trying to seem nonchalant. Joe thought about it for a moment and then reached into his car to grab his suitcase.
“ I think she’s right around seven or eight months. Why do you ask?” Robert furtively looked around, as if searching for wandering ears that may pass the word on to others who may have unfriendly intentions.
“Well, when Spring Break rolls around, I’m taking off for a couple of weeks, and I need someone to help me convince Sharon that I’m going to a conference.”
“And, I take it you’re not actually going to a conference?” Joe asked. Robert chuckled and threw his satchel up over his shoulder. He shut the passenger’s side door and began walking away, fidgeting with his house keys.
“No, actually, I’m taking the time to go and visit my family.” Joe stopped and stared at his friend, disbelief filling his eyes.
“But you hate your family. Why go visit them?” Robert stopped and turned to face Joe. Until now, he’d never really fully realized how truly large Joe was until he saw him in the morning sunlight that was slowly creeping over the school.
“I know. But, there’s something I have to do there, and I don’t want Sharon to know about it, and I think she might be…” he began, but paused, trying to formulate the sentence in his head.
“Pregnant?” Joe asked, trying to contain his laughter. Robert’s face became flushed as he turned and started walking towards the door that would bring him to the hallway that would, eventually, lead him to his classroom.
“You know Health Class wasn’t exactly my forte.”
“You slept through the class, the days you weren’t skipping, of course.” Robert’s face became redder than before as he swiped the grey fob in front of the box that read its electronic signal, allowing him admittance into, what he often called, “The Gateway To Hell.”
“Regardless, I do remember some of the signs of pregnancy and it seems like she’s hitting them up one after another.” After Joe had followed him in, Robert checked the door to assure that it was latched and secured.
“Let me guess, she’s nauseous, trying to hog the bed and the covers, and has already asked you about the increase in size of her cleavage?” Robert nodded, too embarrassed to say anything in response to the line questions that was being posed to him. “Well, means one of two things: either number one: yes, she is pregnant, or number two: she’s gone and asked mommy and daddy for some money to have some reconstructive surgery done and it didn’t go off without a hitch, exactly as planned. I’ll let you choose the lesser of the two evils,” Joe said as he began climbing the stairs to his classroom.
Robert looked up at his friend, shaking his head.
“Is there a third option?” he asked, desperately hoping for a back-way out.
“Yes,” Joe responded, “Robbles, there is indeed. This is all a dream, and when you go home tonight, you’ll see your wife sitting in your chair with the sexiest outfit she’s ever worn on, and in her lap, there he’ll be.”
“Who?” Robert asked shortly.
“Why, Robbles, I’m insulted that you wouldn’t remember who! But, I’ll give you three hints: he’s green, has bulging eyes, and he’s the one person, or amphibian in this case, that you’ve been afraid of since you were six years of age. That is your third option, Master Robbles.” Robert dropped his satchel and searched for Joe, but he was nowhere to be seen. His face was now the reddest it had ever been and his hands were clenched so tightly, it seemed like he could shatter solid cement with a single flick of his finger.
“Damn you, Joe!” he said aloud to himself as he picked up his satchel and made his way down to his classroom. All the way, all he could think of was how nice his Spring Break would be, and how much he hated that damned frog for moving in on his beautiful wife.