Styrofoam Throne (11 page)

After a few hours of doing my own thing in the Castle, I got bored and took my first break outside. I sat down at an empty table, spotted Renaldo, and called him over.

“Hey, bro, need anything?” he said.

“Nah, man. I just wanted to hang.”

“I thought you’d ditch me once you became royalty, man, you’re a good dude.”

“Dude, I’m the custodian. I don’t see the Castle rooms unless someone pukes or pisses in one. They give me a druid robe, some bleach, and paper towels. Not very royal.”

He kept begging to hear stories about me banging chicks. I had to repeatedly tell him that it wasn’t happening until he finally switched topics.

“I was thinking, we should start a band,” he said.

“I don’t know how to play anything.”

“Dude, you can be the singer since you’re tall.”

“What do you play?”

“Nothing yet, but dude, I can just fuckin’ sell my soul to Satan and turn into a shredder overnight! We will be so rad and famous, bro. You don’t even know.”

“Does that really work?”

“Oh, fuuuuck yeah, it does.”

“How do you know?”

“Charlie, you know, from the Castle? Dude is satanic.”

Made sense. Charlie actually played Satan in the Castle. He was a big guy and loved carrying his role with him wherever he went.

“Can he shred?”

“Nah, he asked for a bigger dick.”

“He told you that? Did it work?”

“Dude, I’m not gay! How would I know? But yeah, he said it did and I didn’t see it, but . . . I did see proof.”

“Yeah?”

“At the time, he was bangin’ the death rocker chick that plays Lizzie Borden and when he was telling me I was like, ‘No way, bro,’ but then she came out of the Castle and was walking all fucked up and he goes, ‘See?’ The only problem he says is that it’s too big now and that’s why she dumped him. And now he only bangs fat chicks ’cause their pussies are huge.”

“Hm,” I said while looking around. I needed to make sure no one witnessed me hanging out with a dude who’d just said that.

“Yeah, dude. My dick’s big enough and I hate fat chicks so I’m like, fuck, dude, shred!”

“Hmmm.” My eyes darted around again.

“Are you in?”

“I don’t know what I’d sell my soul for. I don’t want to be a singer.”

“Dude, you gotta know something.”

“I gotta think . . . the Castle.”

“Bro, if you sell it to sing like King, you can basically make any other dream come true with your metal power. You can buy this place with your metal money. Best of both worlds. The band, man!”

“I don’t know. How do you even do it?”

“I have this album and there’s this one song where they just lay it right out, dude. It’s so fucked up that you can only buy it as an import!”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, it’s like the government knows this shit is real and they’re just, like, no way.”

I nodded. This made sense.

“We should test it out first,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

“What if we tried it with, like, a cat?”

“Wait, that would be like a sacrifice. Totally different,” Renaldo said.

“No no, we won’t kill him, we’ll like just, like, broker his deal with the Devil.”

“What should we sell the cat’s soul for?”

“Maybe we should give it away for free. Like an appetizer,” I suggested.

“That’s a good idea. A cat’s soul is probably worth, like, a penny in hell anyways.”

“Dude, wait, what the fuck are we even talking about? This is ridiculous.”

Renaldo ignored me.
 

“So now we need a bass player and a drummer. But they don’t have to sell their souls.”

“How come?” I said.

“Dude, ’cause it’s just bass and drums. Who gives a shit about that? We’re The Ones, dude!”

“Dude, I don’t know if I want to sing. I want to work in the Castle. I want to be a monster.”

“Shit, have you ever been to a metal show?”

“No.”

“Fuck! That makes sense. Dude, there are monsters, castles, dragons, zombie robots, tits, booze—just like the Castle, but the music is waaaaay louder.”

Dracula came outside and walked past our tables.

“What’s up, Piss Bucket and Nacho Bitch,” he said, sitting down at another table. Renaldo rolled his eyes and I kept silent.

Two permed-out high school girls ran up the employee ramp and ogled Dracula.

“It’s you!” one of them squealed.

“The one and only,” Dracula said, changing from mean asshole mode to aloof asshole mode.

“Can we get a picture?” the other girl said.

“Hey, Piss Bucket,” Dracula said at me. “Take our picture.”

They handed me the camera. The girls went to high school with me but I guess they couldn’t tell who I was with the ghoul makeup on. Or they just didn’t care. Dracula stood in between them and put his arms over their shoulders. Then without a second of hesitation, he put a hand on one of each girl’s tits and said, “Smile.” The girls didn’t really know how to react. They were happy to be among celebrity but clearly didn’t expect it to be so lecherous. One girl didn’t seem to care as much as the other and said, “Thanks?” I wish I could have seen the developed photo.

One of the younger kids doing food runs saw his own opportunity. He came up to Dracula and asked for an autograph. He held out a Castle Dunes pennant with a marker.

Dracula didn’t say anything and signed the kid’s forehead instead of the pennant. The kid didn’t know what to do and just stood there in confused disappointment.

“Why are you such a dick?” Renaldo said.

“Listen up, fuck face, I’m a dick and you’re a pussy—so if you wanna keep it up, you’re gonna get fucked.”

“I always knew vampires were gay,” Renaldo said.

Dracula got up and spit in Renaldo’s face.

“I get more pussy than everyone in this whole town put together,” Dracula said. “I’d unleash the fucking Drac attack on you right fucking now but I don’t want beaner blood all over my makeup. This is your final warning.”

Renaldo backed down and stared at the wood grain on the table. I hoped he was too high to give a shit, but it didn’t seem like it.

The next few days brought more of the same for my custodial duties. To keep it interesting, I started to “work the environment” while attending to codes. Like, while kneeling by a dead rat to clean it up, a group of plebes came through and I pretended like I was eating it. It grossed them out and made me feel more involved. That helped pass the time, but I would have been so much more fulfilled if it was fake. Dracula kept calling Code Golds all day and night. I swear it was just to verbally abuse me. And I tried to plan breaks at the same time as Melody but always seemed to miss her.

While taking my makeup off one night, Jack came up and gave me a noogie on my head.

“You’re off tomorrow, Dono.”

“Oh, it’s cool. I’ll still come in.”

“Nope.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m not paying you seven days a week.”

“I’ll work seven days for five.”

“Don’t be a weirdo. Get out of here. Get some sun,” Jack said, stuffing some cash in my hand. I never had that much money in my life. So my first thought was just to come right back to the Castle the next day and spend it.

I found Renaldo getting high under the pier and fanned my smile with the spread of bills.

“Nice, bro! Want to buy some weed?”

“Nah,” I said. I was still high on the Castle’s stage fog.

“Come on, don’t fear the reefer!”

“Dude, I’ve got a day off and I owe you. Let’s get some tickets and go in the Castle, on me.”

“Man, it’s the afternoon.”

“So?”

“So, I’m still working,” Renaldo said, motioning at the ocean. “And it’s pointless. There’s hardly anyone else there yet.”

“That’s good though. It’s like you own it.”

“No way, when it’s packed I can cop a feel for forty-five minutes and get away with it. I try that shit out now and I’ll get slapped or worse. Trust me, I know.”

“Dude, come on.”

“Dude, what’s cooler? Fucking staring at some Castle bullshit or rubbing up on hot chicks?”

“Man, I don’t know. It sounds kind of fucked up.”

“Pfft! Ever felt some tits?”

“No.”

“Well that could all change tonight.”

I relented and waited until nightfall to go in the Castle with Renaldo. We hung out in front of it for what seemed like hours. I stared up at the facade, trying to dissect which exact rooms were where.

“Man, can we go in already? I’m actually starting to get sick of hearing the fucking ‘Toccata,’” I said. Renaldo’s eyes darted around the growing crowd of plebes.

“No. We gotta just wait outside until we see some hot chicks go in, then we jump in there behind them and . . .” Renaldo made a sex pumping motion.

“I don’t want to wait forever, man,” I said, getting impatient, thinking that I could have gone through a dozen times already.

Renaldo locked eyes on something over my shoulder.

“Timing . . . is . . . everything,” he said.

I turned around and a group of three girls about our age approached the Castle. They seemed a little drunk and were all pretending to not want to be scared by the druids that flanked the entrance.

“Boom! Let’s go,” Renaldo said.

We lined up behind them and Renaldo was already trying the “I got pushed into you” trick on the girls. They weren’t having it. In the darkest parts of the Castle, you could tell by their reactions how active Renaldo was with his hands. Hearing “Stop it!” mixed with “Ooo!” made me think he was only half a creep. A couple cast members recognized me and worked jokes in like “Clean up this lady’s guts!” and “Welcome to the home of all the rat souls you’ve killed!”

Renaldo started getting more crude as the rooms went on though, and made me kind of embarrassed that I was with him. In the Headless Woman room, a mad doctor did a speech about how he had invented the perfect woman: a headless female that was a real woman propped up to hide her head. The doctor would try to pat her thigh and would get his hand smacked by the woman. Renaldo yelled out, “Finger her!” and that’s when I took off into the next room, solo.

While in the Maze of Torment, one of the longest stretches of pure darkness in the Castle, I got my butt pinched and turned around, expecting Renaldo to be laughing his ass off. But a flashlight clicked on and illuminated Melody’s face.

“Hey,” she said, smiling.

I must have looked terrified because she laughed and clicked off her flashlight before quickly disappearing into the dark.

I was left standing in complete blackness with a thumping heart and half a boner. I kind of understood Renaldo’s grab-ass run now. Fucking around in the Castle was exhilarating. The rest of the way through, I paid little attention to the scenery and focused on interpreting the butt pinch. The idea that I might have a real shot with her went from excitement to intimidation. I thought, “How am I going to fuck this up?”

When Renaldo and I met at the exit, we were both smiling.

“Dude, I think I felt up the whole fucking alphabet in there!” he said.

“Huh?”

“A cup, B cup, C cup, D cup!”

“Dude, even I got felt up.”

“No way, did you punch him? Haha!”

“Dude! By a chick. Melody!”

“Oh nice, bro. Do you need to, like, throw out your underwear?”

“What? Dude, she just pinched my butt. But it was awesome.”

“Your butt? Oh fucking please, man. You are way too hung up on that chick if you think that’s exciting. Did you slap her titties around?”

“Jesus, man. Can you just let me have this one thing?”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. But we should go through it again now, so you can slap her titties around.”

“If I go through again, I’ll look desperate.”

“Dude, you are desperate. Fucking butt pinch, God.”

“Dude, you know what? Fuck you.”

“Bro, listen. I’m sorry but there’s a whole fucking Castle full of witch bitches and horny plebes. Look over your shoulder, that’s life passing you by.”

I was torn. What he said seemed like it could be partially true but at the same time, I was happily hung up on this one chick and just wanted him to think it was rad. I could ditch Renaldo’s friendship more easily than I could my feelings for Melody, but didn’t want to do either.

“Can we skip the sermon and get something to eat?” I said, more pissed off than he’d seen me before.

“Bro, now you’re talking,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “Let’s see if there’s any hair pies on the pier.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his unwavering perversion. We grabbed some churros and sat down. Renaldo made a clear attempt at making me feel better about the Melody thing.

“She is pretty hot, dude,” he said.

“Yeah, man.”

“I wonder if her pussy hair is green too?” he asked.

“Dude! Jeez!” I said before pausing. “Hmmm actually, that’s a good question.”

I thought that being an off-the-clock plebe would reveal a new layer of the Castle’s horror. Now that I had done it, I’d just become infatuated with butt pinches and pubic hair mysteries.

6

When Fourth of July rolled around, it was the most unhinged I had seen the Castle so far. Half of the cast members on duty were getting blown in the interior walls. Everyone was either drunk, stoned, or something’ed. In some areas, you couldn’t tell what was stage fog and what was pot smoke. It wasn’t just the cast members that were wasted. The plebes were even more out of control. Rowdy crowds poured through the Castle and tore the place up. Code Yellows and Greens everywhere.

I got a call to go to a pitch-black corner of a stairwell and clean up puke. When I got there, I used my flashlight to find the puke—but instead, I lit up Satan boning some hefty plebe chick. They didn’t care that the puke was right next to them or that I had a flashlight, so I threw down the mop real quick.

“What’s up, Dono,” Satan said, pumping away.

“Hey, dude,” I said and kept my eyes on the floor.

The girl tried to keep quiet. I turned my flashlight off and finished the job fast.

“Thanks, man, let’s party later,” Satan said in the dark.

It was officially the creepiest thing I’d ever seen in the Castle. But it quickly became the norm of the night. Anytime I’d go through the interior walls, there’d be monsters fucking each other or with some plebe or just some plebes. With the Fourth of July fireworks going off outside, it felt like a sex war inside. I was pinballing away from one and right into another. I realized how lame it was to stress over a butt pinch. I hadn’t seen Melody yet, which made me glad at that point. I’d die if the Devil slayed her.