Another Date Night Gone Horribly Wrong

Frost was setting in. Arcturus got his favorite woman's coat on and went outside. Maybe the cold would make him feel alive. He stood there for a while. A tear ran down his face, froze and blew away in the wind, Schwarzenegger style.

I feel... nothing.

Oh well. Good try though. He went back inside and called Betty for a date, asking her to meet him at the Fall Festival that had swept into town the night before. She agreed to meet him there and he considered leaving her there in the freezing cold like she did to him in the storm. That plan wouldn't really help the relationship though, so he put his lady coat back on and started biking to the Festival Grounds.

It didn't take long to find Betty because there was only about four people milling around. They made out for a little bit while the food stand girl just stood there watching. Arcturus noticed the woman staring and asked, "Jealous much?" and the girl shouted back, "That coat made me think you were a lesbian couple!" Arcturus sheepishly walked away with Betty.

There were a few activities at the festival but Betty and Arcturus chose to enter a pie eating contest first. Two older ladies also felt like shoving their face in a blueberry pie in the freezing cold. They all lined up and bent over, ready to eat. I don't know who was running this contest. How would they know when to start? Why were they even doing this? Nobody was really taking it seriously and there was no prize for winning. The old lady on the end was thinking about sandwiches, Arcturus was thinking of his lifetime goals, Betty had cleared her mind in preparation and the other old woman was really hungry. Maybe that old woman entered this contest because she wanted some free food. Free food. Ha. Obama's America, right?

aaaaaand... Go?

The contest started and they all went for it. Sometimes they would pause and cough up pie but they weren't giving up. (Also, for some reason, Arcturus and Betty's winter clothes morphed into their regular clothes in the middle of the contest. That's probably something EA needs to patch, because it made no sense and shouldn't have happened.) The one old lady who was hungry wasn't just a little hungry, she was frikkin' starving, dude. That's when things got cray:

I couldn't believe I caught this on video. The woman just flat out died of starvation during the pie eating contest. As soon as she fell over, Arcturus, Betty and the other woman just walked away from the table. I was surprised they all had the decency to stop after a fellow contestant died. Arcturus was the first to stop which was even more surprising. All of their faces were covered in pie as they stood around dumbfounded.

Arcturus: "I'm kinda hungry too."
Woman: "Sir, now is not the time."

Betty ran into the dark and vomited. It must have been triggered by the terrific combination of hearing the dying screams of a starving woman and eating too much pie. Her throw up was neon green, leading me to suspect that she had eaten some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ooze earlier. Arcturus came up to her when she was done and started making out with her. Did he not just see her throwing up radioactive waste? Her face was covered in pie and vomit. Certainly not the time, but I guess that's love.

Oh wait. Two, please, actually.

So, in typical fashion, Death showed up to take the starved woman's soul. He kinda waved his hands around like a magician and the woman turned into a green vapor. Then her tombstone popped up showing that she died of hunger and her ghost materialized. I bet she had no idea she was going to die when she left the house that night to attend the Fall Festival. Hmm... that's actually a little sad. Didn't seem to phase Arcturus though. Hey, where is he, by the way?

"Lovin' this burger."

Ah. Yes, he's having a picnic by himself. Of course he is. It's a good thing that he didn't turn around and see the woman's ghost because with that hairdo and pink color she looked almost exactly like Eileen Remington. It would have been terrifying memories for him. Betty noticed Arcturus eating by himself and, instead of joining him, she booked it to her car and drove away. Arcturus waved as she ran away but she didn't pay attention to that. He didn't care. Most of their dates end in Betty fleeing. Clearly, Arcturus needed to put a ring on it.

Arcturus headed home. It was a pretty interesting night. Fall festival date, a woman dying, Death himself showing up and a killer picnic to cap it all off. Sometimes these blog posts just write themselves.

"Shhh... Alright, alright, I'll tell him... Uhhh, ya got jam on your face, buddy."

Fall Actually Arrived!

Well, the leaves had to start changing at some point, right? Arcturus looked out the window and saw a leaf on his front lawn, so he went out to rake. About 99% of the leaves were still attached to the tree though. Hey, I know what that's like!

The pile was unrealistically large by the time he finished. Where did he find all those leaves? He went inside to get dressed for work and came up with a brilliant idea: set fire to the leaves instead of bagging them. A fine idea for an open field, maybe, but certainly not right next to a tree. Whatevs though. If his house burned down while he was at work, no big whoop.

The top of the pile touches the tree's leaves. Cool... Light it up!

At the sight of the flames, Arcturus paused and thought. Then, he pulled a full-sized rake out of his pocket and started to collect more leaves together. At the risk of being extremely late to work and losing his job, Arcturus decided it was worth it just to add some more leaves to the fire. I had to actually stop him and send him to work. The fire raged on while he was gone, but, amazingly, it only burned the leaves on the ground. The tree was untouched. I was actually a bit disappointed.

When Arcturus got home, Betty called and asked him on a date. He agreed and, despite there being a killer thunderstorm going on, got on his bike to go meet her. I followed behind him because I had no idea where they were meeting. He stopped at the gazebo in the center of Riverview and started to run to it. Was he late or something? Why run? He was already soaked from the ride over.

When he reached the gazebo, he just stood there. Looking around for Betty. There was music playing on the gazebo's stereo but she was nowhere to be found. Did Arcturus get the meeting place wrong? If he did, he made no effort to correct the mistake. He just sat in the dark and played chess by himself. I wish he wasn't so weird.

Is that the rain running down your face or tears?

Happy Birthday!

Sims only celebrate about five birthdays in their lifetime and the day had come for Arcturus's second to last. He just had to call all his... friends(?)... to invite them. The list included Shellie, Diana, Ursula, Constance, Hunter, Betty, a couple other work friends and some people he met on the street once. Oh, also "Slide Man". He was still pretty friendly with Slide Man.

At 5pm, Arcturus invited his friends to come over for a party. Usually people give a week or two;s worth of notice. Arcturus gave these people three hours. Luckily, all his invitees didn't have plans that night. He had set up his enlosed porch area for the party. There was a buffet table and a cake to blow out candles on. At 8pm, the guests actually came running across his lawn from several directions like they were extremely late. As they crashed through the front door, out of breath, Arcturus realized what a mistake this party was. He would actually rather have spent his birthday not cleaning the mess they were sure to leave. He didn't really even like these people, to be perfectly honest.

 

Everyone started talking amongst themselves. It looked like they were having fun, but there was no music, food or fun in sight. Arcturus's TV was, for some reason, missing and his computer was broken. Talking to each other was the only thing they could do. At the time when everyone had pretty much arrived, Shellie was telling Arcturus about how cool the sun is when it wears glasses, Hunter and Ursula were considering talking to each other and Arcturus's work friend, Hannah Jones, was wondering if she would ever be able to try Arcturus's famous plate of spaghetti. Shana Natcher, the dark haired woman in the black shirt and Ami Leavitt, the woman in the pink shirt, were talking about how desperate they were to have some fun. Arcturus overheard and said, "Sorry, ladies! Fun dies here!"

Betty and Shellie. Uh-oh. Do I sense jealousy?

Food was finally served and everyone went out to the porch to eat. They ate continuously. As soon as one plate was finished, they went to get their next. Each time they stood up, they looked to Arcturus with pleading eyes as if to ask, "Anything else going on tonight?"

Hannah, Tatiana Ivanov and Hunter Cottoneye wondering why they came.

Some of the people began to just mill around looking at the walls. Others started to read or play on their laptop computers that they brought. (Arcturus, if people bring laptops to your party, youre doing something wrong.) Constance took Ursula and Slide Man outside to tell scary stories. The others looked at them from inside wondering if they had lost their minds in this fun trap.

It was time to blow out candles! Arcturus had agreed it was cake time only because he had heard about five or six complaints about how late it was. Everyone gathered around him. Some people were freakishly excited about the situation. Arcturus was pretty excited about his birthday, but these people were taking it too far. He made a mental note to talk to them later about seeking help for birthday-related insanity.

Angel Leavitt (red shirt) doesn't care,... but Hannah sure does!

Sad, dude.

Well, maybe she's just probably excited cause she just saw cake.

"Cha! Cha! Cha!"

"Cha! Cha! Cha!? What the hell was that?"

Arcturus cut the cake and then shot everyone quite the look. It seems that he hated how everyone was still making noise a minute after the candles were blown out. He also probably hated that people said, "Cha, Cha, Cha!" at the end of the birthday song. He hates when people have fun. You'd wonder why he even had a party. But, hey, he's an old man now. He's seconds away from telling these people to "get off his lawn".

Then, out of nowhere, Betty and Hannah ran out the door. They just couldn't handle another possible moment of eating or boredom. They threw some gifts in Arcturus's general direction as they ran away. "Don't have another birthday anytime soon, please!" Hannah screamed as she jumped in a taxi.

After cake, Arcturus opened gifts. Someone had bought him a new outfit that he decided to change into in front of everyone. Pretty inappropriate. As he opened other gifts, people used those small distractions to run home. The way they broke out running made it seem like they were being held against their will and needed to take any possible chance to get out. Arcturus noticed the numbers of guests dwindling. He was kinda happy people were leaving.

When the last few partiers were heading home, Tatiana excused herself to the bathroom. She closed the door and turned around to see Arcturus hiding behind the shower. What the hell, dude. Get outta there! She wasn't happy with his games and gave him a big thumbs down.

"Hey, it's my birthday though."

"Boo, old man!"

Arcturus just walked out. Hunter, who was standing in the living room, just stared at him as he came out of the bathroom. "I'm going to bed," Arcturus said. Hunter continued to stare in silence. "Whatever," he mumbled as he went into his room. But, wow. What a night it had been!

Arcturus as a "young adult".

Arcturus as an "adult"?

Anyone... see a difference? I sure don't. He looks like the same exact dork with a new monkey suit.

Some Relationship Progress

A day or so after Arcturus's ghost experience, Shellie showed up crying on his front lawn. Her boyfriend died or something. That's what I gathered from the thought bubbles over her head. I'm not even so sure Arcturus knew she had a boyfriend. Maybe it was her brother? He looked out the window at her for a while, thought "she cries ugly," and went out to talk to her.

Not a word was spoken.

Actually, he didn't say anything to her. He just gave her a peace sign that she returned in confusion and then went back inside. Shellie was carrying too much baggage and Arcturus didn't have time to help her through her loss because he was "getting too old for this" and he's also a bit of an asshole. At least, he flashed that peace sign though. That alone said all that needed to be said. Specifically, "I liked you until you cried on my lawn for no reason." Arcturus dropped to the floor and peeked out the corner of the window until Shellie walked off his lawn. Then, when the coast was clear, he went outside to clean up the Halloween decorations. He couldn't believe he still had them up. Everyone else in town couldn't believe that they were ever up.

After cleaning, Arcturus called Betty over hoping that someone she knew hadn't recently died. He really wasted no time in getting down to business this time too. People usually come over relatively happy and proceed to get sadder and angrier while Arcturus makes a meal for them. So, he skipped the whole making food part and just went in for the kiss while she was in her best possible mood.

I liked how he kinda pulled her arm backwards at the elbow at the same time he went in for that kiss. Can anyone tell me what the hell that was about?

Anyway, Arcturus was satisfied with the progress he had made in the relationship so he went to lay down on his bed. He was really tired out from all the decoration cleaning. Betty came in, took some clothes off and sat next to him.

Arcturus said, "Oh. Hey, I thought you were just gonna leave once you noticed I wasn't coming back out," and thought, "Gotta lock that bedroom door next time." Betty was really excited about Arcturus. That kiss had roused something up in her. It was the first time she had seen his bedroom so either she didn't care that there was a Katy Perry poster in there or she didn't see it. Either way, no questions were asked. This was going much better than it had with Constance. They jumped under the sheets and, like, got it on or something.

What's going on here seems pretty insane. Her clothed leg pops out from under the covers about halfway through. Well, whatever. This was my reaction as I filmed them from the foot of the bed:

"Yes.... yessss.... ohhhhh yeah!" - Me.

They got out from under the covers and fell asleep. Look at these two lovers taking a midday nap. Arcturus likes a girl that isn't afraid to go to bed at 2pm:

Is that my teddy hugging me from behind?

Last time Arcturus had Betty over she wouldn't kiss him and then ran away telling him about how he was such a black hole of fun that he should kill himself. What changed? We will never know. She may've been in a really bad mood that day. Not anymore! They'll be having babies in no time.

Arcturus was awake. He sat in bed for a few seconds trying to remember where he was though. The bed under him felt soaked but he couldn’t figure out why the bed was wet and his pants were dry. I mean, he had wet the bed before, but this felt different. He reached for the light and noticed that he couldn't read the digital clock on the nightstand. It wasn’t actually displaying a time. All the lines were jumbled. He switched the light on and pulled the covers back. The bed was drenched with blood. Shellie was missing...

Arcturus woke up. He lay there for a few minutes trying to calm down from that nightmare. The bed under him felt wet but this time his pants felt wet too. Phew. Thinking about his troubling incontinence over the past few hours, he looked at the clock. 3AM. “The soul’s midnight”, as they say. He switched the lamp on and saw that Shellie was laying next to him. He pulled the covers back and got up. Since he hadn't actually eaten dinner that night, he was getting pretty hungry. Time to find something to eat!

Arcturus opened the refrigerator. There was a bowl of food with a note: “For Eileen”. Who's Eileen? Whatever. Was that note going to stop him? Hell no. He threw the note on top of the oven and put the bowl in to heat it up. He opened the oven to warm his hands a bit as he stared blankly out the window overlooking the town. It seemed to be getting colder and colder. He checked the dials on the oven to make sure it was on and looked back up just in time to see a ghost woman walking up the steps of the back porch! Arcturus dove into the dining room before she saw him but cursed at himself when he realized he had forgot the food. Goddamnit, he wanted that food.

Peeking around the corner into the kitchen, he saw the woman standing by the oven. She picked up the note Arcturus had thrown there and ate it. "Ok... ok... that was odd," Arcturus thought. Then she took the food out of the oven and sat down at the kitchen table. Was this the Eileen the note was talking about?

All Arcturus knew about ghosts came from his conversations with his old buddy, Flat Broke. They had talked for a bit about his brother, Buck, the burial specialist. Of course, Arcturus figured Flat was a nutjob when he told him about Buck’s ghostly encounters, but apparently it was no joke. Ghosts were real. Flat had said that people who die from unnatural causes take on a certain color in the afterlife. Pink, which was the color of the ghost Arcturus was staring at in the Cheek’s kitchen, meant the person had died of starvation and would forever be hungry.

Arcturus was pretty sure that when ghosts ate food, it fell out of them. That was Slimer’s problem in Ghostbusters, right? Well, this wasn’t the case with Eileen. The stuff she was eating was disappearing… somewhere. Had Ursula left the plate of food for Eileen? Was there a deal where she would feed Eileen as a trade for the safety of her family? If that was the case, Arcturus didn’t feel like he fit into that picture. And Ursula wasn’t too fond of him after he pissed on her kitchen floor earlier, so it was no wonder that she hadn’t warned him about this ghost situation.

Arcturus started to back away from the doorway and bumped into one of the dining room chairs. He froze. Eileen slowly turned her head towards him. They made eye contact and Eileen started to stand up. 'Won't you join me?" she moaned as Arcturus ran for the front door.

The front door was locked though. He turned around to see Eileen floating down the hallway towards him and ran up the main staircase and into the bathroom at the end of the hall. It was a pretty bad hiding spot. Eileen very likely knew the house better than Arcturus did so temporarily hiding was the only option. He couldn’t run forever though. Arcturus left the bathroom door open and hid behind it.

He knew Eileen was getting closer to the bathroom as her pinkish glow lit up the hallway. Even though she had just eaten, Eileen was still hungry and she would eat just about anything at this point.

At least turn the light off in there, Arcturus!

Eileen floated into the bathroom. Arcturus held his breath. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and was distracted for a moment. Arcturus tried to slip out of the bathroom unnoticed but she saw him in the reflection. Her eyes widened, she turned around and screamed as Arcturus took off, stumbling down the same stairs he had run up minutes ago.

He crashed through the house in the dark with no idea where he was going. Finally reaching the study at the very back of the house, he stopped. He hadn’t heard or seen Eileen following behind him. Maybe the living nightmare was over. It was probably too much to hope for. He stood in silence, waiting with his back against the wall. Suddenly, she appeared in the doorway.

“Game over,” he thought, “She’s going to eat me.” The ghost smiled. Arcturus was cornered and she knew it. He braced himself as she floated towards him.

“Come closer. I’m not going to eat you,” she said, as if to respond to his thought. Arcturus questioned this whole experience. “Did she really just want to have a chat this whole time? Was this whole thing in my head?” He took a step forward. They were face to face now.

There was a pause and then her mouth began to open. It opened wider and wider until she could have eaten his whole body in one bite. So, Arcturus hadn’t been imagining it. Eileen was actually gonna eat him. Freakin’ unreal, dude. Arcturus was now glad he had wet the bed. It would be his parting gift to Ursula who had really screwed him over with this ghost situation.

Then, Eileen vanished. Disappearing into a cloud of green gas that was sucked up by her gravestone in the backyard. The sun had risen! Ghosts can only exist by cover of darkness, apparently. Arcturus sighed with relief. That was definitely the closest he had ever come to dying. Second closest was when he feared that Buck Broke was going to murder him a few weeks ago. Riverview was really going to be the death of him, huh?

"Here lies Eileen Remington. So hungry she could eat a person"

Arcturus walked out the front door and got on his bike. He wasn’t coming back here and had lost his desire to one day live in this mansion. There was no way he was going to risk running into Eileen again. He did like Shellie though. Definitely gonna call Shellie.

The House on Haunted Hill

Remember the mansion on the hill of Riverview that Arcturus dreamed of moving into? Well, it was time to visit that place and see what was going on up there. On the sidewalk across the street from his house, Arcturus could see it through the trees. It even looked a little spooky.

Halloween and the trees are still VERY green. Come on, game!

As he climbed the hill on his bike, he worried about who he was going to find in this mansion. Thinking about the last time he tried to visit a house unannounced sent a chill up his spine. By the time he reached the top, his legs felt like spaghetti noodles both from nerves and the epic hill climb.

He rang the doorbell and looked back towards his bike. Never too late to bail, my friend. A woman came to the door before he could escape. Her name was Ursula Cheek. As he chatted with her, a car pulled up behind him and a younger woman got out. Arcturus caught a glimpse of the girl as she walked by him into the house. He said, "Excuse me, Ursula. I'd much rather talk to that hot mama."

"Might wanna lay off the sandwiches," he thought.

Arcturus followed the girl into the house and was shocked by how unnecessarily convoluted the floor plan was. There's some weird recessed basement section in the center of the first floor that doesn't add anything to the house except a lot of staircases. Spanning the dip in the floor is a bridge that was better in theory than execution. The second floor is easier to understand with some bathrooms, halls and bedrooms, but it's no less tragic in design. The third floor is pretty much just a ballroom.

Arcturus followed the girl to a 2nd floor bedroom in the tower portion of the house. She started watching TV so Arcturus just took a seat next to her. Maybe the girl was really into the TV show or maybe she was paralyzed with fear because a strange man just followed her to this isolated room and sat down next to her, but she didn't say a thing. Arcturus finally broke the silence.

"I think it's trash day."

She slowly turned to look at him and he got up to introduce himself. The girl's name is Shellie. She lives in this mansion with her mother, who Arcturus met at the door, and her sister, Diana. She and Arcturus talked for a long time until she complained about being really hungry.

"Hi. Yeah. I'm serious about that trash day thing though."

"Your eyes are cool."

"Best plate of spaghetti I ever had. Bar. None."

"Ah! I'm losing my mind!"

Shellie asked Arcturus if he wanted to join her in the kitchen for dinner and he jumped at the chance to stare at her some more. She made some waffles and they sat down to eat. Well, Shellie ate while Arcturus stared at her like a creepo.

Don't stare at her! Pick up the fork and eat, you weird man!

After she was done, they talked some more by the refrigerator. Diana, came down for a late night snack and was really mad that her sister and some man were blocking her path to food. Arcturus was getting nervous because Shellie wouldn't stop talking and he had to go to the bathroom. Instead of interrupting her and excusing himself, he chose to just urinate in his pants and then stand in it like a child. Ursula walked into the kitchen as the puddle grew under him. He smiled at her. She frowned.

"Is this guy joking?" Diana thought.
"Living on the edge. I'm liking it." Shellie thought.

For some reason, there was something Shellie found attractive about this whole situation. But there was something about it that her mom absolutely hated. Hmph! What a snob!

"That was really awesome," Shellie whispered in his ear.

Shellie told Arcturus that she would help him find a new pair of pants and invited him up to her bedroom. Arcturus was liking where this was going. He was going to try to piss his pants in front of more women! As he passed Ursula on the way out of the kitchen, he said, "Cleanup on aisle #1," and put his hand up for a high five. She left him hanging. Arcturus was not impressed with the snub.
In her bedroom, she whipped herself into some pajamas. Arcturus took off his wet pants and then it was make out time. Cooooool.

"Theef boffers a sill kamma phet."
Translation: "These boxers are still kinda wet."

After a few minutes, Shellie fell asleep. Arcturus laid next to her thinking about how great the day had been. Disregarding the personally embarrassing moment where he, an adult man, wet his pants and ignoring the fact that Diana and Ursula hated his guts at this point, this mansion visit was pretty neat. What Arcturus didn't realize was that the night was far from over...