Blog Love Omega Glee: Wednesday Before It Turns To Ashes (22 February 2012)

Stumbling home from the bar as a light snow falls, Jake and North execute wrestling maneuvers on one another. Jake tries a sunset flip on North but North belly bumps him down before he can get airborne. North grabs a volume (III C-CH) from a encyclopedia set someone's thrown out on the tree lawn and chucks it at Jake. While Jake ducks, North grabs another one (IV CI-CZ) and whacks Jake behind the legs, tripping him just like Clyde The Librarian ("Hailing from Winesburg, Ohio, and here to collect your overdue fines . . .) would. With Jake on the ground, North prepares to bodysplash him, but Jake rolls away as North plops in the snow. Jake scrambles on top of North and puts him in a half-Boston crab. Just then, a porch light comes on from the house whose yard they wrestle in. Jake drops North's leg. He gets up, and they run down the block, giggling. "I hope they don't follow our footprints in the snow," Jake says, huffing hard, "It's hard to getaway clean in the winter."

"I'm sure they're just happy the drunks are out of their front yard," North says, slowing down, stopping, bending down, and putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath, "Besides, if they come after us, we can tag team them."

"Shit!" Jake says, searching his coat pockets.

"What?"

"I think I dropped my hat back there," Jake says, "Was I wearing it?"

"Dude, I honestly don't remember. After that last beer, things have been a bit spinny. It's a good thing I didn't get ahold of you. I was going to put you in an airplane spin, but that probably would have just made me yak."

"I bet I dropped it back there when I tried to do that sunset flip," Jake says, "I'm going to go back and look for it."

"Dude, it's just a hat. I'd forget about it. What if the people in that house have a gun or something? Besides, I think I only have enough gas in the tank to make it home from here, or else I'll be sleeping in someone's lawn on top of the snow."

"That's OK. We're close to your house. Just go home. I'll sneak back and get it, then go home myself" Jake says, pulling the hood on his sweatshirt out from under his coat and putting it up to warm up his ears.

"Be careful," North says, "But if it's a pair of hot chicks in the house, come back and get me, and I'll pass out in their front yard. Then they can nurse me back to health from my bout with hypothermia and frostbite. I'll be like a bird with a broken wing, and they'll fall in love with me. It'll end tragically when I have to choose one over the other, but maybe you can take her off my hands and we'll all fall in love and live happily ever after."

"Sure, and they can manage us when we actually get paid to wrestle instead of rolling around in people's yards after midnight when we're drunk. Later, man."

North flashes a wrestling gang sign where he presses his palms up outwards, then inwards, and then points at Jake with both index fingers. It's the symbol the wrestling posse The Gonzo Greengrocers use. As he finishes, he says, like they do, "Keep it fresh."

Jake crosses the street and walks down the other side of the block. He wonders which house it was they were wrestling by. There are no porch lights lit on that side of the street anymore, so he crosses back over and finds their footprints in the snow on the sidewalk. He follows them to the yard where he and North wrestled. Looking all around to see if anyone's watching him, he scans the yard for his hat. The streetlights help some, but it's hard to search in the dark. He almost trips on one of the encyclopedia volumes (III C-CH) North used. He picks it up and brings it back to the other snow-covered volumes on the tree lawn. There, near the sidewalk, he finds the other volume (IV CI-CZ) and his brown knit hat. He nudges the remaining volume near the others with his boot, and scoops up the hat. He hits it against his leg to knock the snow off and scurries away into the night. In the trash, almost everything ends up, and all eventually turns to dust, but Jake's hat will keep his head warm for another day.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.