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It was a cool and pleasant night in the house. After Tony had informed them that it was almost time for bed, Duck decided to go upstairs and open the bedroom windows so that it wouldn’t be so stuffy upstairs when that time came.
“It’s such a lovely night!” he noted when he looked outside at the glow in the dark star stickers attached to the felt sky. “It’s a perfect night for looking at things!”
“Indeed,” he heard a deep, monotone voice behind him.
Red Guy was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, yarn strings damp and dripping bits of water while he attempted to hastily towel off.
“What are you doing up here? Why are you all wet?” Duck asked.
“I took a bath.”
“You were downstairs just five minutes ago, though.”
“I take baths fast. I always worry that someone’s going to run in and try to teach me something while I’m in there.”
“Fair enough. That’s why I only go to the bathroom once a week,” Duck nodded.
Red Guy joined him at the window and they both looked out at the sky. “You’re right, it is a perfect night for looking at things. The cardboard cutout looks lovely,” he said as he noted the moon.
After a moment it started to become apparent that the cardboard moon wasn’t the only thing that Duck was interested in looking at. Red Guy turned his head when he realized that he was being watched by his puppet companion.
“You know,” Duck said, “now that that one’s downstairs and we’re all alone and the lights are back on, you can look at me some more if you wanted to.”
The strings on Red Guy’s face suddenly went redder as he contemplated the offer. “I don’t think I would mind looking at you some more,” he admitted.
The two were both looking at each other longingly for a long, lingering moment when all of a sudden a white spotlight flooded in through the window from outside.
“Not so fast!” an angelic voice interrupted.
“Oh no,” they both said simultaneously as a white gloved hand threw a handful of glitter into the window and a cherubic figure flew in from outside.
The plump cherub quickly inserted itself between them, breaking up their longing gaze. “Looking at each other before marriage is a path that leads to Hell, my children! You both need to step back and leave room between your eyes for Jesus!”
“We were only looking at each other. And then maybe we were going to hold hands,” Duck said.
“I would have liked holding hands,” Red Guy said.
The cherub looked infuriated at their admission of sin. “Leave. Room. For. Jesus!” he shouted at them both.
“I don’t see the point. We’re both adults here. Shouldn’t we be able to do whatever we want?” Red Guy said.
“I want to set a car on fire!” Duck proclaimed.
“Maybe not that.”
They heard a muffled voice on a book shelf trying to get their attention. They all stared at the shelf, watching something wiggle and a pair of hands trying to grasp the shelf to gain enough purchase to remove itself from between an album of pictures of spoons and a book titled “Cooking With Spleens”.
Finally the book managed to pop out from their tightly packed bookshelf. The book had a diagram of the human body on it and its eyes and mouth disturbingly matched up with the ones on the diagram.
“Hello, my friends! Are you ready to learn about sex education?” the book shouted cheerfully. The book suddenly noticed the plump cherub hovering with an angry felt expression on its face. “You again? Haven’t I told you to stop spreading your purity culture nonsense onto these poor children?”
“Children? We aren’t children!” Duck said.
“I’m most certainly an adult. I have a PhD in bird watching, which I would like to use right about now, thank you very much,” Red Guy said.
The cherub quickly got in his face and shouted, “Keep your eyes off the duck-crow-bird person! If you engage in this immoral sin, you will both get pregnant and you will die!”
Red Guy backed away as far as he could get to keep the cherub out of his face. “Pregnant? I uh, don’t think I can...”
“I laid an egg once!” Duck announced.
Red Guy was looking at Duck again, but this time in concern. “What did you do with it?” he asked.
“I fed it to you at the park!”
“Can we change the set to the bathroom? I think I have to throw up now.”
The book quickly got between the cherub and Red Guy. “Not so fast! You don’t have to die! You can protect yourself from unwanted pregnancies and STDs by wearing a condom!”
“A what?” Red Guy asked.
“Do you wear it on your head like a hat?” Duck asked.
“No! On your penis, silly!” the book replied. It flipped open several pages to a rather explicit diagram. “You put it on like this!” he said before holding up a banana.
“Please tell me you’re not going to sing a song about this,” Red Guy pleaded.
The book chuckled heartily. “No, silly! It’s awful hard to sing a song through text!”
“Oh. I suppose I hadn’t thought of that.”
The cherub took offense and interrupted. “You can’t show them that immoral, pornographic material!”
“Medical diagrams are not pornographic. It’s just explaining to them what their own bodies look like.”
“Mine doesn’t look like that, though. It’s too straight and not long enough,” Duck said after staring at the diagram for about a minute.
“Yes, neither of mine look like that either,” Red Guy nodded.
Duck nodded, paused, and turned his head. “Wait...did you say ‘neither’?”
They heard footsteps shimmying up the stairs as it became closer to bedtime. Yellow Guy sauntered in and saw the cherub and book both hovering in the room and Duck and Red Guy staring at each other.
“Hi guys, what’s going on? Are you learning something without me?” Yellow Guy asked cheerfully.
“Oh great, now everybody’s here. Might as well invite the entire household,” Red Guy sighed.
Duck shrugged. “Well maybe we can still...”
Tony quickly interrupted with, “There’s a time and a place for looking at each other, and now in front of polite company is not it!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be downstairs?” Red Guy asked.
The cherub, not willing to give up his cause, rebutted the conversation with, “No premarital gazing in this household! Premarital gazing is a gateway to more serious offenses, like kissing or scrapbooking! The only way to stay pure is to abstain from immorality until marriage!”
The book shoved the cherub aside and there was a crash as it collided with one of the stage lights offscreen. “There is no shame in looking at each other outside of marriage. You just have to remember to keep yourself safe! If you wear a properly fitted condom on your eyes before looking at each other, you can prevent most accidents from ever occurring!”
“I don’t think that’s how...” Red Guy tried to interrupt.
“If you abstain from looking at each other in sin, you can prevent all accidents from occurring!” the cherub rebutted.
“I was an accident!” Yellow Guy said cheerfully.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and all of them stared at Yellow Guy, obliviously standing in the middle of the bedroom with all attention suddenly on him. Red Guy was the first one to interrupt the awkward silence.
“I just remembered that there’s a bag of Chuddle Dollops on the kitchen counter. I’m going to go eat them,” he said before turning around and leaving the room.
While the book and the cherub both argued upstairs, he went to the kitchen and sighed as he located his favorite snack. He was just about to open the bag when he heard a rustling coming from the pan cupboard.
“What the bollocks?” he said when out of the cupboard poured a bag of junk food with arms, legs, and eyes.
“Hello, mate! Are you about to eat fifteen minutes before bed? Did you know that you shouldn’t eat up to three hours before sleeping?”
“I hate this place,” Red Guy said.