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“Hey, little bro. How’s the patient?”
Orange shrugs, stepping back to let Dark into the entryway. “Pretty well, all things considered. We keep telling him to stop talking because it’s gotta hurt, but he won’t listen.”
“Hmm. Well, I brought popsicles and pudding and Jello, so maybe he’ll stop talking long enough to eat some,” Dark says, kicking off his shoes with rather more violence than necessary. One shoe lands by the front door. The other goes sailing across the living room and into a potted plant.
“We can hope,” Orange says. “C’mon, he’s upstairs.”
“So, what’s Yellow like when he’s loopy?” Dark asks as they mount the stairs. “I mean, all you other guys handled it really differently. You slept for, like, twenty hours straight. Green wouldn’t stop listening to the song ‘Birds’, and Red was convinced that he was a bird.” He frowns. “Honestly, Blue was the most normal of all of you. He just forgot his order of operations.”
Orange grins. “You mean you aren’t supposed to wash your hands before you go to the bathroom?”
Dark gives him a flat look. “Anyways, what’s Yellow like?”
“Uh…you’ll find out soon enough.” Orange raps on Yellow’s door with his knuckles before pushing it open. “Hey, Dark brought snacks.”
“I am telling you, Green, you must search the room and destroy all the hidden cameras at once,” Yellow is saying, giving Green a pointed glare. Green’s mostly ignoring him, bopping his head to the music playing in his headphones and giving Yellow an occasional, “Sure, sure.”
“Orange,” Yellow says, turning and giving Orange a desperate look. With his face still puffy, he reminds Dark of a serious, bespectacled chipmunk. “I know it sounds crazy, but I am telling you: our lives are the Truman Show.”
“The what now?” Dark says, bemused.
“It’s a TV show in a movie,” Orange says, waving one hand. “Alan watched it with us one time. The premise is basically that this one guy has lived his entire life on this movie set and he doesn’t know it but everyone else is an actor and his life is basically a TV show.”
“That’s…creepy.” Dark frowns. “Let’s maybe not watch that one with Vic, yeah? That sounds…triggering.”
“Yeah,” Orange agrees.
“Here,” Dark says, fishing around in his bag of groceries before coming up with a plastic cup of Jello. “Look, lemon. Thematically appropriate.”
He tosses the Jello to Yellow, who just sits there and watches it arc towards him. The Jello hits him in the chest and tumbles onto the blanket.
“Whoops.” Dark makes an apologetic face at Orange. “Reflexes are still a bit slow?”
“Try nonexistent,” Green grumbles. He gets up, stretching. “Will you switch with me, Orange? I need some fresh air.”
“He doesn’t really need someone with him every single second,” Dark points out.
“We’re not taking chances after what happened with Red.”
“Ah, good point.”
“I’ll get you a spoon, Yellow,” Orange says. “Dark, will you stay with him for a sec?”
“Sure.” Dark tosses the bag of groceries onto the end of the bed and sits down, folding his arms. “So, Yellow. Why are we a TV show?”
Yellow looks around, a suspicious expression on his face. Then he leans forward, until his nose is nearly touching Dark’s ear.
“The ducts are too big,” he whispers.
Dark arches an eyebrow. “So?”
“Hollywood always gets that wrong,” Yellow says, waving his hands wildly and completely forgetting his early paranoia as his voice rises to nearly a shout. “They know nothing about HVAC, Dark. Nothing.” The last word is a hiss filled with hatred.
“Oookay.”
“Just how big do they think ducts need to be?” Yellow rants, stabbing the cup of Jello sitting in his lap with his pointer finger and giving it a murderous look. “There’s no way anyone could sneak into a room using the ducts! The supply ducts for the diffusers would only be six or eight inches across, and so would the return ducts!” The Jello suffers under Yellow’s poisonous glare. “They know nothing,” he repeats.
“Okay. So…ducts aren’t that big? Why is that a problem?”
“Have you seen the ducts in Stick City?” Yellow hisses. “I’ve seen a six foot by six foot bathroom with a two foot square supply duct! The ducts are too big! Hollywood slipped up! The watchers have made their fatal mistake!”
“I got you a spoon,” Orange says, coming back into the room. “Let’s maybe slow down on the conspiracy theories and eat some Jello, okay?”
“You do not understand the gravity of this situation, Orange,” Yellow says coldly.
“Dark.” Orange gives his brother a pleading look. “Back me up here.”
Dark’s eyes are wide, his mouth slightly open in astonishment. He seems to be having some sort of revelation.
“What?” Orange asks. “Dark, why are you making that face?”
“I think he’s right,” Dark whispers.
“Does anybody know why Orange is screaming incoherently and threatening to force-feed Dark Jello until he stops enabling Yellow?” Green asks, popping his head into the kitchen.
Blue and Red shake their heads.
“Me neither. Eh, they’ll figure it out.”