Boys Night Way Out

Boys Night (Way) Out

## Blurb

**HERE COMES THE GROOM...**

"Just don't ship me off to another dimension."

Not the typical thing you need to tell your best man when he's planning your bachelor party.

But Jason Thayer isn't your typical groom. And Alastair Stone isn't your typical best man.

When a mellow party-train journey to Lake Tahoe with some buddies turns into a surreal mind trip with no exit in sight, Jason will need to use all his wits to find his way out of the madness.

Grab a drink and party on, Jason. You're in for the ride of your life.

## Plot

It’s time for Jason’s bachelor party, and Alastair is in charge of the festivities. He drives Jason up to San Francisco, keeping tight-lipped about what’s in store, saying only that they’re going to Lake Tahoe. They arrive at a train station where an old-fashioned steam train waits in the track. Stan Lopez greets them, and Alastair explains they’ll be taking a drunken train ride to Tahoe for further inebriated fun.

On the train, Jason is greeted by Leo Blum, Amber’s youngest brother, Connor, and many other of his friends from the phases of his life: high school, the police academy, his more recent life in the Bay Area… The train starts off while Jason and his buddies hit the bar car and the drinking begins. A bit later, already feeling his drinks, Jason leaves his friends in the dining car and heads back to the bar car and the lav there. He finishes and is about to rejoin his friends, when all the lights go out.

### Pause here a moment WARNING, Possible Spoilers Ahead

The lights return after Jason makes his way back out to the bar car, where he finds Alastair and Stan unconscious – passed out or sleeping – and he’s unable to wake them. The bartender is even missing. In the other two cars it’s the same; all his friends are out cold except Connor, who begins to stir groggily. The phone is dead, as is his cell phone, and he and Connor find that the very sturdy door to the engine is locked. They make their way back to the bar car, noting that the stars and scenery visible earlier are also gone, and Connor (part bear shifter) can’t even smell trees or engine oil.

Before he can try to wake Al, Jason sees that the bartender, a snakey red-headed guy, is back in place. He and Connor berate the guy, wanting to know if he’s responsible. They even try to grab him, but he’s able to eerily evade their reach. He says no one’s been harmed; they’re just sleeping, and Jason – and the unexpected Connor – need to figure out what’s going on and fix it before it’s too late. He tells them to look out the window, where the scenery has changed to include creepy mobile trees chasing them, even knocking and banging on the train. He says the priority is to get to the engineer to stop the train.

Trying to ignore a weird alien porno now playing on the TV, Jason tries to wake Alastair, convinced that he or Verity is behind this. But Connor says he smells like he really is out cold. The door they came in through can’t be budged. The bartender has disappeared again, but left two drinks – green and blue. Jason decides the blue drink matches his shirt and downs it, urging Connor to take the green one that matches his. The car changes to a psychedelic, graffiti-covered space with a drawing of a padlock at the door.

Once more warned to hurry by the now-female and naked bartender, Jason and Connor search the place for a drawing of a key; Jason has caught on that this is some kind of weird, extreme escape room scenario. As the alien porno switches to an alien orgy, Jason figures out that the knocking on the train is a sequence. He duplicates it, revealing star patterns on the bar. He eventually figures out that one resembles a key which, once drawn, can be maneuvered to the padlock. The again-male bartender reappears to remind them they have two more cars, and had better hurry.

When they reach the next car, it’s pitch-black at first. When light returns, the dining car is fancier, and there are lots of headless dummies seated at the tables, each with a screw coming out of the neck and a cloche in front of them. The bartender says to look at the night’s selections. Jason starts looking under the cloches and finds the heads of his friends, and some additional strangers. At first, he and Connor screw the heads onto all the dummies, but nothing happens. He instructs Connor to unscrew the heads from the strangers, and put them back under their covers. Once done, all the strangers disappear, and the dummy friend heads start grinning, though the door to the next car is still locked.

The female bartender arrives with a menu for Chez Nostalgia. It’s blank, and she tells Jason to write his own menu. Connor, meanwhile, is fidgeting with the wine bottles on the tables, and the train is gaining speed. Jason asks Connor what’s on the wine labels. Each has a date, most different, but not all. He has Connor help him arrange them chronologically, but dummy Alastair looks disappointed. Jason thinks harder, and decides to rearrange the dummies by when he first encountered each of them. The female bartender tells him he’ll be stuck here forever if his hospitality doesn’t improve, and the train is still gaining speed. Jason realizes that the dummies need the wine poured.

When the last glass is filled the lights go out, and the male bartender whispers in a panic that ‘it’s found them’. He ushers them in the dark to the next car, which is now an old-fashioned gentleman’s club. Alastair, Stan and Leo greet them in Hefner-style smoking jackets, while six others from the alien orgy are scattered around the room. Women in G-strings circulate, and the men urge Jason to relax and enjoy, all while they begin grinding and groping. The female bartender, though, insists they’re almost out of time.

First Connor, then Jason begin slipping under the spell of the place, though Jason keeps thinking while the male bartender is in a near panic. Jason tells the bartender he might as well just go along, Amber is OK, but when in Rome… This makes Connor angry, while the bartender is telling him he’s almost out of time. Jason says no, he has plenty of time, and calls on Verity to show herself.

People and creatures disappear, leaving Alastair, Stan – now Eddie, a redressed Connor, Verity, and bartender Ian. Jason explains the little clues and inconsistencies that helped him figure it out. The mages had combined their talents to create the illusions, while Connor played ‘straight man’, feeding him misleading clues. Jason apologizes to Alastair for figuring it out early, but Alastair doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s reassured that ‘mundane’ Jason can handle himself and think through magical problems, because the world just seems to keep getting more dangerous.