Chapter One - Prologue

I'm booooooooored, Ari mentally groaned for the millionth time. He stared up at the eternally clear cornflower blue sky from where he lay on his back in the soft, downy meadow dotted with bright little cheery-colored flowers. Yes, the afterlife was a pretty place, but there wasn't anything to do here. Boooooored.

Ari growled in irritation as he pulled himself up to a sitting position. While Max and the rest of the flock got to fly around the world and do really exciting stuff every day – life-threatening, yeah, but still pretty cool and fun to him – he was stuck here, lazing around all day being dead. Letting out a frustrated half-roar, Ari leapt to his feet and stalked to the opposite end of the clearing, where the pack of his closer Eraser friends sat in a circle, talking.

"Hey, guys," Ari said gruffly. "Are any of you as bored as I am?"

His pack, all in their lupine forms, nodded, slowly and simultaneously.

"All right, so we're in agreement," Ari said. "I'll cut to the chase then. I'm tired of just sitting around here all the time! I can't think of anything to do, so I'm asking you guys. What do you suggest?"

"Ooh! Ooh!" A butterscotch-furred Eraser on the outskirts of the group bounced up and down, waving his paw around in the air. "I have an idea!"

Ari, remembering the last time this Eraser had had an "idea" for him, narrowed his eyes and barked, "No, Alessandro, I will not link arms and skip merrily through the fields of flowers with you while singing the Barbie Girl song!"

"Oh," said the crestfallen wolf-man. "Oh. O-Okay, then…" He sank back down on the grass and laid his furry head in his paws dejectedly. The rest of the Erasers cringed at the memories from that day.

"Come on, guys!" Ari shouted, gesticulating vigorously. "One of you has got to have some good idea for boredom relief!"

The pack remained silent, deep in thought for the next seven hours. And then finally, the Eraser closest to Ari, a stocky slate-gray one named Damon, voiced the conclusion of the entire pack.

"Sorry, Ari, nothing good comes to mind."

Ari stared at them in shocked silence for a moment. Then, he began to twitch with mounting anger. And then he looked like he was about to blow a fuse in his brain. He turned a carroty-scarlet-mauve color, and the rest of the pack could have sworn they heard him emit a coffeepot-whistle/train whistle and blast steam from his ears and nostrils.

"FOR THE LOVE OF FLUMMADIDDLE!" Ari screamed. "JUST SPOUT WHATEVER RANDOM THOUGHTS POP INTO YOUR GIANT WOLFY HEADS!"

And with that, as the Eraser pack began to think, Ari was assaulted with a barrage of completely random ideas from his comrades.

"Spray-paint a taco on a kangaroo!"

"Have a tea party with famous horror movie killers!"

"Follow the Red Brick Road to hell!"

"Become Lady Gaga!"

"Scintillant à crêpes étron avec Elvis et les furets confetti souffle les plumes hors du gorille et de faire cacatoès brillant!"

"Blow up a gumball machine!"

"Burn everything, Ari! Burn it all to the ground!"

Ari was struck with flabbergastation. To halt the storm of random, he morphed into wolf form and yowled loudly, "All right! All right! You can stop now! You're all giving me a migraine!" The pack fell silent, and looked at him expectantly for his response.

"Right," Ari said, composing himself and returning to human form. "These are all very nice ideas. Except yours, Raphael. I don't even know what you said."

The French-speaking Eraser's spirit floated away.

"And though that was a good idea, Joey, I've already done that one."

Joey regretted having misplaced his camcorder the day Ari had found the Lady Gaga costumes after having a little too much tequila.

"Now, which one to choose?" Ari stroked his chin and turned his eyes to the sky thoughtfully as he mulled over this. But before he could make his decision, he was distracted by a sparkly object.

"Ooh! Shiny!" he said excitedly, turning to the bushes where the shiny thing glinted from.

The pack let out a collective groan.

They followed Ari's gaze to the rustling shrubbery to their side, and one of the younger Erasers emerged - a hyper wolf-boy with fur the color of brick dust named Nicky. He had his eyes closed as he listened to the iPod clipped onto his belt and danced out of the bushes, oblivious to the stares of the rest of the pack as he sang.

"I am Cow, hear me moo! I weigh twice as much as you! And I look good on the barbecue -"

"Nicky!" Damon shouted frantically. The rest of the pack prayed that Nicky had been doing this for a while running, and was close to the point where he would get tired and quiet down. If he had just begun to sing, well…He had a lot of energy.

And the songs that odd little wolf-kid had on his iPod! All of them were really very annoying when sung in what the pack had dubbed Nicky's Infinite Cycle: Once he got started with one he liked, he'd sing it over and over. And over. And over. And over. And over.

Telling him to sing something else hardly worked – the whole cycle would just begin over again. His repetitive songs drilled into the collective brains of the pack and lasted for hours on end, even after Nicky had stopped singing. Hence, the reason Damon was trying to head him off right away, before it was too late.

But Nicky didn't hear Damon at first, and went on singing and dancing around in circles. "Yogurt, curd, cream cheese and butter's made from liquid from my udders! I am Cow, I am Cow, hear me moo – "

"Nicky! I'm talking to you, pal! Stop singing!" Damon yelled, hoping to get through to Nicky.

Thankfully, Nicky heard Damon's call this time, and stopped singing. He looked a little confused and disoriented, but he was quiet, for now. "Uh, okay," he said. "What's up?"

"We're discussing ways for Ari to not be bored," Damon explained. "Care to join us?"

"All right!" Nicky agreed brightly. "I've got an idea!"

Ari grinned. "Nice. At least he didn't take seven hours to come up with something!" he snarled, glaring at his pack.

The pack hung their heads in shame.

"So, Nicky, show me what you've got!" Ari said excitedly, taking one step back and spreading his arms like a game show host or something.

"That's what she said."

"SHUT UP, JOEY!" Ari roared. "Let me rephrase that. Nicky," he said, slowly and deliberately. "What is your idea?"

A trademark goofy grin spread across Nicky's chops. "We could SI-I-I-I-I-I-I-NG!" he belted out to the heavens as the pack yelped in pain and covered their furry ears.

"I feel pretty!" Nicky began to sing, and to the rest of the pack's horror, Alessandro joined him and a high-pitched wolf-man duet. "Oh so pretty! I feel pretty, and witty, and gay!"

"No kidding, Allie," Joey murmured.

"Ooh! I know a good one!" Alessandro said, unperturbed or more likely unaware of Joey's remark. He took a long, lunging step forward, half-knelt in Ari's direction, and, wagging his thick furry eyebrows a bit, crooned, "You make me feel like a na-tu-ral woma-a-a-a-AAAAAH!" Ari had grabbed Alessandro and pile driven him fifteen feet into the dirt.

As Ari seethed with mounting anger, Nicky fell silent for a moment. The pack looked at him, ignoring their leader, wondering. Would Nicky finally be quiet?

But it was not to be. Nicky shrugged his shoulders and said, "Hm. Guess he didn't like that one. So how about this!"

The pack cringed and waited apprehensively. They were fully unprepared for Nicky's next song choice.

"It's Friiiiiiday, Friiiiiiday! Gotta get down on Friiiiiiday!"

The pack let out agonized howls and went into a frenzy of pained yells and twitchy, uncontrolled spasms of the kind only brought on by popular terrible songs that stick in your head and haunt you forever.

"AAAGH! INTERNAL BLEEDING!" Ari screamed as he clutched his head and fell to his knees, shaking.

"Oh," Nicky said suddenly, and his singing ceased. "I forgot. That song is horrible!"

"Horrible?" said Eraser with fur the color of an orange slice named Mitch. "No, it's not just horrible. It's god-awful! No, it doesn't even deserve to be called god-awful; it's Satan-awful!"

Raphael suddenly leapt at Mitch, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and lifted him in the air.

"Imbécile! C'est une Angry Video Game Nerd devis! Mon Dieu, l'homme, le droit d'auteur ne mot ait un sens pour vous? C'est peut-être nouvelles pour vous, mais blague vol est une chose sérieuse!"

"Raphael, put him down and shut up."

Raphael dropped Mitch in a heap in the grass, and sat down dejectedly to mutter about the foolishness of his comrades.

"Well, look on the bright side," Joey said consolingly, putting his paw on Mitch's shoulder. "At least he's not singing Justin Bieb-"

The rest of the pack let out a panicked yell and most of them hurried to clap their paws over Joey's mouth, fiercely whispering things along the lines of, "Shut up, you idiot, if he starts that we all really will die of internal bleeding!"

Ari stared at Nicky incredulously. "If you know the song's so bad, then why in the name of cool ranch Doritos do you sing it at all?"

"It's catchy."

The pack groaned.

"Okay, okay, I won't sing that one," Nicky said, waving his paws in a conciliatory gesture. But just before the pack was about to sigh in relief, Nicky added, "But I know one that will make everybody happy!"

The pack whimpered in apprehension as a large goofy grin spread across Nicky's chops and he began to dance like a crazy caffeinated kid as he sang in the same way.

"I am really special 'cause there's only one of me! Look at my smile, I'm so damn happy, other people are jealous of me! When I'm sad and lonely, I like to sing this song, it cheers me up and shows me that I won't be sad for long! Oh oh oh! I'm so happy, I can barely breathe- "

"Oh, he won't be breathing anymore if he doesn't shut up," Joey whispered to Mitch. "Look at Ari," he added, pointing to the fuming Eraser, who was growing redder and angrier with each passing second.

"Yeah," Mitch agreed. "Mount Ari-suvius is about ready to blow."

Joey giggled.

"I meant blow its top! As in a volcanic eruption, you idiot!" Mitch snapped, cuffing Joey upside the head.

Joey just collapsed in a fit of laughter; and Mitch sighed and gave up.

"Puppy dogs and sugar frogs and kittens' baby teeth!" Nicky continued to dance and sing. "Watch out all you mothers, I'm happy as hardcore! Happy as a coupon for a twenty dollar whore! Oh oh oh-"

"Can't say no to that one," Joey cackled. Damon facepalmed. Nicky's grin grew wider.

"See, Joey, you're happy! Told you, right!" And he sang with renewed vigor – "I'm really happy, I'm sugarcoated me! Happy good, anger bad – that's my philosophy!"

Ari punched Joey in the head. "You moron, don't encourage him!" He turned to Nicky and bellowed, "I can't do this, man, I'm not happy!"

Incredibly, Nicky seemed oblivious to the danger signs. "Yay, Ari, you're singing along!" he chirped.

Ari was momentarily thrown off. "What?" he barked. "No, I'm not!"

"Sorry, Ari, but yeah, you are. Those were the next lines of the song, you see," Damon explained, stifling back laughter.

Ari growled in the back of his throat. "Nicky-" he snarled warningly.

But the wolf-boy was too elated that Ari had appeared to be joining him in his gleeful songs to notice. "I am really special 'cause there's only one of me! Look at my smile, I'm so damn happy, other people are jealous of me! These are my love handles and this is my spout; but if you tip me over then, mama said knock you out!"

"I'd be happy to oblige, you little –" Ari ground out a few choice adjectives at Nicky and prepared to beat him down if he had to, but Nicky just kept on singing.

"I'm special, I'm happy, I'm gonna heave! Welcome to my happy world, now get your shit and leave!"

"NICKY!" Ari boomed, holding his huge paws to his head to block out the noise, unable to stand it anymore. "SHUT UP! I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE OF THIS!"

Nicky finally stopped his singing, and the pack let out a collective sigh of alleviation.

Damon sighed as though he were sinking into a nice, warm bath after a long track practice. "Ahhhh…Sweet, sweet relief…" he breathed, taking in the beautiful silence. Unfortunately, Damon's warm moment was screwed up by Joey, who giggled again at the choice of words, finding another meaning in them. Damon growled angrily, and tried to whap Joey, but he nimbly ducked away out of the older Eraser's reach.

Nicky looked completely taken by surprise. "You mean you don't want me to sing?"

He sounded so shocked and hurt, like a little kid yelled at when he thought he was doing something nice, that one of the more sentimental Erasers - the charcoal-furred Garrett - spontaneously squeezed him in a big, comforting hug, and tried to console him in an overly dramatic fashion.

"No, Nicky! We all want you to live happily! Don't change into something you're not! We will support you! We love you! AND I'M PREGNANT AND YOU'RE THE FATHER!"

Ari looked at the pack, who all wore the same blank looks that he did, Nicky included. "Damon?" he said tentatively. The most level-headed member of the pack nodded to show he was listening.

"Keep him away from the soap operas from now on, and for that matter, keep him off those self-esteem boosting videos too."

Nicky looked more than a little uneasy in Garrett's uncomfortably warm, anaconda-tight death hug, and tried to wriggle his way out without success. "Uh…Ari? Little help here?"

Ari smirked and snickered at Nicky's predicament, and made no move to free the ensnared wolf-boy. "Just…answer a little question for me first."

"Uh, okay."

"Are you aware of the effects your continuous singing has on the rest of us?" Ari demanded.

The rest of the pack's faces lit up. Maybe, they thought, maybe if Nicky knows what his singing does to all of us, he'll stop annoying us with it!

But to everyone's surprise – well, everyone except Garrett, who was still joyfully squeezing the crap out of Nicky – Nicky's prompt answer was, "Yeah. It imprints into your minds and replays over and over and over and many more overs that we'd be listening to for a while if I named them all, likening it to a musical drill boring into your head or a piece of hot metal burning into your brain."

The rest of the pack was stunned speechless at the revelation of just how aware Nicky was of how his singing affected them all. Ari managed to get out, "So why the hell would you do it then?"

"It's something to do," Nicky said simply, trying to shrug his shoulders but failing due to Garrett's burly arms still tightly squeezing him around the upper arms. "It helps to pass the long hours of, you know, being dead. Plus it amuses me greatly."

"So…" Ari was barely able to get the words out through his utter shock and quickly rising fury. "You…think…getting…really…annoying…songs…stuck…in our heads…is…FUNNY?"

"Um, yes, that's what I just said. Now, I answered your question; so can you get me out of this, please?" Nicky said, desperation growing in his voice.

"Yes." But despite Ari's word, he remained standing still, and didn't make any move to help Nicky.

After a minute of confused silence on Nicky's part, he said tentatively, "You said you were gonna keep Garrett from strangling me now?"

"Said I could. Never said I would," was Ari's flippant reply. Then his face turned hard and serious, and his eyes were lit with anger. "Actually, I'm thinking about strangling you myself, with all the-" He stopped suddenly, picking up a key point in Nicky's previous words.

"Wait. You said part of the reason you sang that much was to pass the time, right?"

"Yeah," said Nicky, wondering where this was going and if he would ever be freed from Garrett's enthusiastic embrace.

"That constitutes as boredom relief, doesn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it."

A sly, anticipatory grin spread across Ari's face, giving new meaning to the phrase, 'grinning ear to ear.' He only paused in his action for a moment before declaring, "I'm going to visit my sister!"

"You mean Max?" Joey asked.

"No, my other sister Yvonne-Claresha Margarita la Øgtopif, who lives in a hut made of Jell-O and provolone cheese in the frosty jungles of Bamallamawityogammarammamamma where she breeds hybrid hyena-penguin-alligator-rhinoceros fruitcakes. OF COURSE I MEAN MAX, YOU IDIOT!"

Joey shut up, but couldn't resist muttering a risqué comment about breeding, earning himself a glare from Damon.

Suddenly, Garrett released his death-hug grip on Nicky, who fell to his knees and noisily gasped in big gulps of air upon release. "You're going to see Max?"

"Yes, that's what I just got finished saying, Garrett," Ari said with extremely strained patience.

"The sister?"

"Yes."

"The pretty sister?"

"YES, YOU MORO– Wait, what?" Ari's jaw dropped, and it dropped further when he saw what Garrett did next.

"She's a very kinky giiiiiirl…" Garrett sang out as he did some sort of dance that involved wildly swiveling his hips and waving his arms and hands in the air.

While Ari stared in utter disbelief, not comprehending what he was seeing, Joey leaned out from the group and whispered, "Dude, I think he's got the hots for your older sister!"

"WHAT!" Ari boomed, his surprise replaced by fierce rage. Garrett froze mid-hip-swivel and looked very afraid. "You DARE BRING LIGHT TO MY LAIR? You must DIE!"

"Uh…what?"

"GAH!" Ari facepalmed angrily. "WRONG QUOTE! CURSE THAT SUCKISH ZELDA GAME!"

Nicky stopped inhaling in surprise. "S-S-Suckish? Zelda? Game? AAAAAAH!" He grabbed his head, threw it back and howled in agony. "D-D-Does not compute…" he whimpered, falling to his knees and holding his head as though in great pain. "DOES NOT COMPUTE!" he screamed at the sky.

The sky wondered for the eighty-nine trillion and forty-ninth time why everyone kept screaming things at it. What did it ever do? And did they expect it to answer?

Anyway, Nicky then spazzed out in a way that made him looked like he was a malfunctioning robot having a seizure, and then fell over dead on the ground. (Not really, he just passed out.)

"O-kay…Well, he's lost consciousness," Ari muttered. "Anyway, Garrett…SILENCE! I KEEL YOU!"

"Wait, what the-OW!" Garrett didn't have time to think of anything witty to say before Ari lifted the wriggling wolf-man over his head and tossed him bodily into the fifteen-foot Alessandro-shaped hole in front of them, evoking a series of pained yelps from the two of them.

As Ari stood before the hole, breathing heavily, Damon coolly walked up to the edge of the hole, leaned down, and said casually, "Garrett, you do know Max has a boyfriend, don't you?"

"Maybe she'll change her mind?" Garrett said hopefully from the bottom of the hole.

"Don't bet on it. I don't know her personally, but I highly doubt Max would go for an imbecilic soap opera addict when she has a kickass ninja boyfriend already."

"Well…I…SHUT UP!" And with that, the hole fell silent.

Joey was grinning maliciously. He stood up and turned to Ari. "Hey, Ari, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Ari said gruffly.

"Max has got a boooooyfrieeeeend," he drawled mockingly.

Ari twitched. "I'm almost scared to ask, but…What exactly do you mean by that? Saying it that way?"

"It means," Joey said, his evil grin spreading wider across his lupine face, "that sooner or later, you're gonna be a posthumous UNCLE ARI!"

"WHAT!" Ari bellowed, whirling around to face Joey; while from inside the hole there sounded shrieks somewhere along the lines of "AAAGH! IMAGES! THEY'RE BURNED INTO MY RETINAS!"

Joey's grin faded when he saw Ari's rage, and tried to slowly back away as though one would do if confronted by an enraged bull; but Ari charged at him and hoisted him over his head before he could get away, and hauled him over to the hole.

"Now GET IN THE HOLE OF DARKNESS AND DESPAIR!"

"Well, I would prefer to get into the Hole of Fun, but I guess this'll do toooooooooooooo!" His last word was dragged out into an elongated shout because Ari threw him hard straight down into the hole. Then, he jumped into the hole himself and smacked all three of the offending Erasers around for a little while until leaping back up out of the hole.

"Screw you all! I'm blowing this popsicle stand!" Ari declared, and with that, he disappeared in a rainbow-candy-colored poof of smoke.

Joey, even after getting the crap beat out of him by Ari, couldn't resist one more perverted joke.

"Heh heh…blow this popsicle stand…"

Ari somehow heard him and poofed back into the afterlife world. He pointed into the hole and growled, "SHUT UP, YOU!"

Then he poofed away into the next chapter, where Max waited. She had no idea what was in store for her that day!

~0~

Translations:

Scintillant à crêpes étron avec Elvis et les furets confetti souffle les plumes hors du gorille et de faire cacatoès brilliant! - Glittering turd pancake with Elvis and ferrets confetti blows the feathers off the gorilla and cockatoos make shiny! (Yeah, I was feeling random…)

Imbécile! C'est une Angry Video Game Nerd devis! Mon Dieu, l'homme, le droit d'auteur ne mot ait un sens pour vous? C'est peut-être nouvelles pour vous, mais blague vol est une chose sérieuse! – You fool! That is an Angry Video Game Nerd quote! My God, man, does the words copyright have any meaning to you? This may be news to you, but joke stealing is a serious matter!

The songs are:

I Am Cow – The Arrogant Worms

I Feel Pretty – West Side Story

Natural Woman – Aretha Franklin

Friday – Rebecca Black

The Happy Song – Liam Lynch, I think.

SuperFreak – Rick James