"Goodbye, Summer": The Party 

"This is the party of your lifetime!" Arcturus yelled to a crowded room while wearing giant prop sunglasses and a party hat. Then he woke up. "This is gonna be a nightmare", he sighed. It was the official last day of summer, a weekday in the middle of September and, I guess this is a good time to tell your friends to waste their night at your house?

At lunch, Arcturus was very quiet. "What's wrong?" Betty asked. "I gotta go get stuff for this party tonight." "What party?" "Our party" "We're having a party?" Arcturus stood up, looked at her and gave a shrug. "I guess." He put his jacket on and walked out the door.

"What does one do for a 'End of Summer' party?" he thought.

At the grocery store, Arcturus saw the solution to his troubles: Fireworks. Riverview wasn't too stiff about safety, so they had a lot of the good stuff. And some of the dumb stuff. Arcturus even bought some of the dumb stuff. He wanted this party to be good but not too good. "Riverview good," he muttered to himself.

Arcturus was arguing with someone on the phone when the first guests started to arrive. (Of course the first guest was Rainer. He's always first.) The woman on the phone was telling Arcturus that the bouncy castle he ordered wasn't going to make the party at all. The bouncy castle guy retired earlier that day. "You're a joke," Arcturus said and hung up.

Later on, the people who showed up, invited or otherwise, were really enjoying themselves. Arcturus went out back to start making food. It was dark out already. I guess that's the problem with having an outdoor party so late in the season. It's a little cold and the sun goes down hours before some people get home from work. It was so cold that most chose to go back inside when they got their food.

Some new faces, some old. Some uninvited. Some missing.

Arcturus broke out the fireworks almost immediately because it was getting late for a school night. Nobody really came outside to look at the show either. I expected them all to gather around like it was an event. Then I would have been able to take some sweet group shots. Who doesn't like a fireworks show?

Oh, someone's excited.

Look at Arcturus's face here. Like this is just "ok" for him.

Arcturus ran around trying to impress the small crowd of his friends that had actually come outside. A true firework artist, some would later say.

Giant fireworks in the sky,...

snakes crawling across the lawn,...

and spinners on the walkway.

It all ended with an interpretive dance on the invention of fireworks. Arcturus incorporated some pretty fantastic usage of the sparkler during the dance.

Nobody was there to see that dance finale though. They all had gone home. Weeknight.

Terrible News, Folks! 

Arcturus was sad, I guess. He had received some terrible news. But his actions throughout the day made it seem like these messages were just sarcasm.

I didn't get the same messages about Betty being in mourning either. She must have not liked her parents very much. Or maybe nobody had told her yet. Vadim was Arcturus's "party man" so I understand that he would be sad over that, but Fatima? I think he met her twice.

The following is a text message conversation between Arcturus and Betty:

Arcturus: (10:52am) "I have good news and bad news."
Betty: (10:53am) "What's the bad news?"
Betty: (10:59am) "?"
Arcturus: (11:02am) "Oh yeah. Your parents died."
...
Arcturus: (11:16am) "Good news was I had meatloaf for lunch. ;)"

Betty rushed home from work and Arcturus and she both went over to the Simovitch household. Betty needed to be with her sisters. Arcturus took a book with him. He suspected he would be over there for a while.

Walking around the house, Arcturus saw Shelley crying through one of the side windows. He couldn't get a good look, but something seemed wrong with her. No big woop. He was just glad he didn't need to go inside and deal with all the crying. Everyone grieves in their own way. At least that's what he told Betty as an excuse for that meatloaf text.

Shelley came out to greet Betty on the front porch and it was very obvious what her problem was. She was a werewolf, for god's sake. I called Arcturus inside because I was sure he had a solution for this in his pocket. His pockets are deep. Not with money but with garbage, rocks, scrap metal, sandwiches and potions.

"Mom died. GRRRR!"

"Ay-yi-yi. What's going on in here?"

Arcturus got right to it and threw a potion at Shelley's feet. Roxy had come downstairs in the meanwhile and was talking to Betty.

Normalized.

"What did you do with their bodies, Roxy?"
"Buried already... hey, look at these two idiots over here."

Betty was confused about the funeral she missed. People move quick in this town, huh? Shelley's mood was turning around though. She was thrilled over not having to deal with her daily(?) transformations into a monster anymore. She tried to hug Arcturus and he pulled away from her. There was no joy in this for him. There was no joy in anything anymore.

"Eww, no way."

"MY MOM DIED!" Shelley shouted.
"Mmmm-hmmm," Arcturus replied.

Betty sneaked out the door as Shelley and Roxy surrounded Arcturus. They were really drawn to him at the moment. Roxy gave him a bouquet of flowers. He put it in his pocket. I suppose she too was thankful that her sister was no longer a beast.

"Heyyyyyyyyy,... thanks. You ladies see where Betty went?"

Betty was at the graveyard. She was there for a while.

She loved her parents. You can tell from the pixel tears.

Prankster in the House 

Betty was bored so she decided to put a spell on the toilet. I didn't know what this spell did. She didn't know what the spell did. But it was ultimately a trap for the next person who used it. There were two things that needed to happen for this trick to go as intended. First, Betty couldn't use the toilet until someone else did. Second, that person had to be blind so they didn't notice the fact that the toilet was glowing pink. Oh, she also put a spell on the shower because she was there, so why not?

Everything was ready. Betty waited hours for Arcturus to wake up. I almost had to make her go to the consignment shop to use the bathroom so that the she wouldn't spring the trap. Arcturus finally woke up though and Betty really urged him to take a shower: "You smell terrible, bro."

Arcturus went to the bathroom and when he flushed the toilet, literal magic happened. All his urine shot right back into his face. A normal person would jump back from the toilet at this point but Arcturus, like, tried to get more of it on him.

Get away from that toilet, guy!

No, no, why are you trying to put your foot in there?

Now soaking wet because of the toilet prank, Arcturus figured he had to take a shower.

Oh boy. Now what? He had to ghostbust in a few hours and now he looked like a damn fool. Arcturus quickly put on a wig to cover up the yellow hair. He covered his neon eyebrows with two friendly black caterpillars.

I'm actually gonna lose my mind.

He figured Betty was the one that was screwing around with all the bathroom fixtures, so he had to go complain. "I knew there was something up when the toilet had a magical haze around it," he muttered as he looked for her.

"What happened to his hair?" she thinks.
"Betty. You gotta get real, alright?" he says.

"She's cool, you guys."

All the ghosts Arcturus zapped that night, went into his ghost vacuum thinking, "Were those caterpillars?"

A Different Environment 

Their honeymoon was being spent on a spaceship with a bunch of aliens. I bet they didn't see that coming. As they sat in their alien hospital gowns in a metal lab room, Betty wondered out loud if the music they were hearing was the alien's equivalent of dentist waiting room music. Arcturus heard the question but was more concerned with why his gown wouldn't sit flat. Did they really need to hoop skirt these things? Any alien walking in the door would see all Arcturus's stuff on display.

And as the alien strolled in, he couldn't help but give it a long stare. Betty was still talking, now on the subject of Arcturus taking out the trash when they got home. "You managed to get abducted on trash day, by the way. Pretty convenient, huh? ...And speaking of trash, look who just walked in!"

The alien walked over to Betty and said, "Earthling. Please stop making noise. My brother and I are trying to enjoy these soft tunes."

As Betty continued to get a grasp of their alien language, the other alien scientist (the one who was falling in love with Arcturus) came back into the room. He was no longer wearing his lab outfit. He was interested in taking the next step in his relationship with the human man they captured. The clothed alien just shook his head when he noticed. "Dude, Get. Dressed."

Suddenly, a little lady broke into the room and started popping off at the first alien.

"I thought you were in bed!?" "Your fat ass brother woke me up crashing around trying to get undressed, it seems." She looked at Arcturus and Betty. "What are these two doing here? I've told you to stop abducting humans. They're not helping anything!" She pushed the half naked alien aside and pulled Arcturus to his feet. Then she looked back at her husband. "Get this piece of shit outta my sight, dude."

"Is everyone in this room kidding me?"

Back at home, Arcturus and Betty hugged. Arcturus whispered, "We have to go back!" Betty was like, "This is all so dumb. Just take out the trash."

Houston, We Have Some More Problems. 

Two alien dudes are doing experiments on Arcturus.

Alien #1: This guy is spent. He's constantly thinking of ghosts and some woman, but goddamn at all the ghost thoughts.
Alien #2: He's just stressed out. He's actually really smart.
...
Alien #1: Are you,... like,... in love with this dude or something?
Alien #2: I dunno... I dunno... I think I have to be taken off this project.

It was decided that Arcturus needed to be a bit more calm for the experiments to continue. The aliens had an idea on how to achieve that:

I wish I had a camera on Arcturus when they escorted Betty into the room. He would probably give that camera "Jim face".

Oh Where, Oh Where Can He Be? 

Arcturus had been gone for a week now. People asked where he was and Betty would tell them, "I think he ran away, to be honest." Alien abduction wasn't really an option in her mind despite his disappearing shortly after investigating a weird noise in the middle of the night.

She was living day to day, but not doing much: eating, sleeping, reading and playing on the computer. I made her read books on how to cook because she was so bad at it that she would burn the kitchen down almost every time she put something near the oven. Making a waffle was a real hurdle for her. Right before she died of starvation, she managed to make a meal though.

She lives to see another day.

She would check the mail each morning hoping for a letter from Arcturus explaining where he was. But all the letters in the mail were from women in town who were interested in dating Arcturus. They would send gifts of paintings and sculptures with notes that said things like, "We should get to know each other better." Every piece of mail was a date request. Betty got a few letters too because some men in town heard she changed her address to that of her husband's. Maybe they had also heard that her husband was missing so they felt it was time to make a move.

I can only imagine Bree sitting down with a pen and paper to write this.

At night, Betty would watch TV and then go to bed.

One night, half-awake, she heard something crash through the back door. It thudded across the house until it was right outside her bedroom. Then, it pushed it's way through the door. It was Arcturus! He had finally come home. But... something was way wrong with him. He was a walking corpse!

Then she woke up. It was just a nightmare.

She needed to cool off so she got dressed and walked outside. 

Betty's really worried she'll never see Arcturus again. Actually, I'm really worried we'll never see Arcturus again, at this point.

Houston, We Have A Problem. 

It was one of those cold summer nights. The ones where frost forms on your windows and lawn. You know that kind of summer night, right? Well, whatever. It was happening in Riverview.

Waking up, Arcturus heard some weird noises on the front lawn. He shook Betty awake to tell her that he was going to investigate and she mumbled, "I don't care."

The front lawn held a problem for Arcturus though. One that Betty would sure care about in the morning.

Welp. He's gone now.

The Married Life 

I think the day after the wedding, Arcturus and Betty had sex, like, 6 or 7 times. On their own too. Not in a row, but throughout the day. I didn't even tell them to do it either. I've been playing The Sims games for a long time and I never saw something like that.

I did tell them to get it on in the shower though because that was also something I never saw.

Pretty crazy that the fooling around in the shower made the stall levitate. They were too into it when it was happening but when they landed and saw that the pipes had ripped out of the wall, Arcturus was like, "We're never doing that again."

The wedding and its aftermath made me realize that I missed the turning of the seasons. It was summer now. Early summer. The nights were still cold, for some reason, but the days were pretty warm. I had Arcturus and Betty change into some new summer outfits. Arcturus got some linen pants and a really tight t-shirt because he forgot he wasn't a child when he bought it. Betty stirred up some women's clothes in Arcturus's dresser, of course. Some green stuff to match her wings.

Betty loved her new outfit so much that she did a few fairy spins in the air. Arcturus hated his outfit so much that he went to his bedroom, closed the door, put his back against it, slid to the floor and cried.

"I hear faint sobbing, but... oh damn, almost hit the floor on that one."

A few days later, Betty was still unpacking after her move in with Arcturus. Arcturus was sitting around in his tight whites when Betty came out of the bedroom wearing a new dress. "Do you like this dress I have for formal occassions?" she asked. "Oh. Yeah. That would've been great for, like, a wedding. Do you know of any recently where you could've worn that?" Arcturus responded sarcastically.

"She's kidding me, right?"

This was married life. They were loving it. They were both really loving it, you guys.

I Guess We Can Call This "A Reception" 

As soon as the ceremony ended, Betty changed into her street clothes. Arcturus wasn't letting go of his James Bond look though. He spent a lot of money on it. Might start wearing it all the time, actually.

Achievement: Pimp status.

As they all walked to the cake table, Arcturus caught Trigger's eye and asked, "You jelly!?" Everyone's still trying to figure out what he was talking about with that question.

When faced with the cake he bought at the grocery store, Arcturus started to cry a little. It was so perfect. So... Acme. Roxie was off to the side cheering at the idea of cake and, in the distance, Rainer was cheering for something else. Maybe a bird he saw.

"Sir, do you mind not clapping in my ear?"

With glowing pink cake served, Betty and her father chose to sit far away from the group. Separate from each other too. They were very private people. Arcturus was trying to ask Fatima about her toothbrush, but she was ignoring him. Classic Fatima. Rainer was still clapping at things. He was having a breakdown. Vadim kept giving him dirty looks, really regretting his choice in seating. All Vadim wanted was to be alone for this day of celebration but instead he had some man's penis gently resting on his elbow as he ate.

Things really broke down after everyone had a piece of cake. Vadim, Trigger and Fatima literally ran away. Other than Rainer and his bleeding hands, Roxie was the only one to stick around. She and the newlyweds hit the dance floor. 

Then, Gordon came back...

Red checkered shirt tucked into shorts with no belt. I want to be that cool.

...and it really ticked Roxie off. 

Beat him to death!

Gordon was really having a hard time getting through this event without conflict. He left again and Roxie left shortly after. The Clapper stuck around.

Finished with dancing, Arcturus and Betty took a wedding portrait in the nearby photo booth because that needed to happen. Then they sat by the lake as the sun set, relaxing after all this obvious fun.

Arcturus excused himself. He had to go to the bathroom. After an hour, he hadn't come back. I had to search the town because he was no longer on the fairgrounds.

Well, he had gone home, of course. It seems that the fairground's bathrooms were beneath him. His fanny touches only the cleanest toilets, you guys. When he thought about going back to find Betty, he accepted the fact that she would just come home at some point. Or sleep at her parents house. He didn't care. She can do what she wants.

Satisfied knowing where he was, I returned to the fairgrounds to see what Betty was up to. She was in the middle of wetting her pants, actually. Don't judge, y'know? I let her finish with that and then sent her to her new home. She is a bride and this is her most beautiful day.

Wet. Alone. Probably scared.

Before getting into bed, Betty put her wedding photo on the nightstand. It replaced the photo she and Arcturus had taken of themselves in the photo booth during the Fall Festival a few months ago. Arcturus had loved that photo. Oh boy was he gonna be pissed in the morning when he noticed it was gone. "What is this new crap photo? And who is this in my bed!?"

Dreaming of a new house? Don't get your hopes up, folks.

Some say that on a warm summer night, if you catch the wind just right
you can still hear Rainer clapping.