Trapped in Sharknado

"Wait, wait, wait, slow down, Richard," Doyle interrupted Richard mid-sentence. Richard panted, exhausted from the two-block sprint he just ran from his house to Doyle's. "You made a what?"

"It's a DVD player that puts you in whatever DVD you play in it," Richard gasped in between breaths. Basil entered the living room with a coffee mug in his hand. He took a small sip, recoiled from the heat of the drink, and blew into the coffee to cool it down.

"How'd you do that?" Doyle asked as he leaned forward to grab a slice of pizza on his living room table.

"Do what?" Basil asked while blowing into his mug. Richard sighed, but the other two mistook his sigh as heavy breathing from exhaustion.

"He made a DVD player that puts you in the universe of whatever DVD you play on it," Doyle explained, chewing with his mouth open.

"Seriously? Like inside the universe? Can you interact with everything?" Basil asked

"Yes!" Richard exclaimed as he threw his arms up and fell back on the couch's backrest. "You can interact with everyone and everything! You can even change the storyline!" Doyle did a fist pump.

"YES. Let's go try it out! I'll go grab a few DVDs," Doyle said as he ran to his bedroom.



"How's it work?" Basil asked as he dipped his tongue into his coffee. Richard sighed again.

"Do you really care, Basil?"

"No, I suppose not. Just trying to make conversation, jeez." Bazil drank from his coffee mug as Doyle entered the room. He had three DVDs in his hand, fanned out so that all three titles were visible.

"Okay, so I got Star Wars Episode IV, Zombieland, and Hard Meaty Death Part 7: Jerome Unleashed. Which one do we enter first?"

"Wait..." Richard started, finally catching his breath, "Was that last one... porn?"

"Heck yeah!" Doyle exclaimed, "You said full interaction, so..."

Basil groaned. "Of course, Doyle. Always thinking with your head, huh?" Richard pretended to be disappointed at the misuse of his revolutionary new technology and tried to sell that fact by performing a facepalm. But we readers know that the sprint isn't the only reason why Richard was so winded when he got to Doyle's house.

"Fine. You guys just use that DVD player for boring things while I have the time of my life. I'll keep it here anyway in case you guys change your mind." Doyle placed HMD7:JU on the living room table as Richard plugged his DVD player into Doyle's wall outlet. He pulled out three pressure plates and connected each of their wires to a video splitter attached to the DVD player. Richard then placed the three pressure plates on the ground in front of Doyle and Basil.

"Okay," Richard started, "So we insert the disk..." Richard inserted a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into the DVD player.

"We step on the plates..." The three of them stepped onto the black, square-shaped plates roughly a foot in length as Richard continued.

"Type in a few controls on my Wrist Modulator..." Richard's fingers flourished, hitting a few hundred buttons on a watch-like thing on his wrist.

"And we hit play!" Richard hit play on the DVD player's remote. The DVD player whirred, first softly but gradually getting louder. Suddenly, the three were sucked into the pressure plates!



Doyle immediately vomited.

"Oh god. I was not prepared for that," He said. Basil also held his forehead, woozy from the trip.

"Takes some getting used to, being converted from physical into digital. Feels like getting sucked into a straw, doesn't it?" Richard laughed as Doyle continued throwing up his innards.

Basil looked around. "Are we in... the chocolate room?"

"Yep!" Richard responded. Basil stared in awe at the colossal candy cane mushrooms and the red translucent lollipop trees that sparkled like stainglass windows. Basil took in the hypnotic scent of gumdrop pumpkins, candy grass colored like emeralds, and the mighty chocolate river that ran through the entire enclosure.

Richard ripped out a patch of candy grass from beneath his feet. "Personally, I like the candy grass the best. The other stuff's nice, but the candy grass is awesome," he said.

"Everything here is... real?" Basil asked. Doyle finally stopped vomiting and wiped his mouth.

"Mhmm," Richard mumbled as he swallowed the grass. "Any DVD, we can make real."

"Where's Wonky, or whatever his face is? Isn't this that Tim Burton movie?" Doyle coughed out. Richard checked the Wrist Modulator.

"They've already left. Unlike the movies, we aren't locked to the camera's point of view. We can explore the entire movie universe if we want to. So while Willie Wonka and the rest of his entourage is out there doing their thing, we can stay here and snack in the chocolate room!" Richard replied, screaming the last two words from the top of his lungs. An Oompa Loompa working beside the chocolate waterfall looked over at Richard before returning to work.

"But why here? Why this exact spot?" Basil liked to ask questions to help the reader understand what was going on. You might want to thank him in the comments.

"Well, my Wrist Modulator here has two basic dials. One dial controls the time in the movie that we appear in, but the other dial controls where," Richard explained, "Whatever time I set the second dial to, that's where we'll appear in the movie, down to the exact frame. That's how we can be in the chocolate room without Charlie and everyone else ruining our fun. I simply set the first dial to near the end of the movie and the second dial to the chocolate room. Neat, huh?"

"Awesome," Basil said as Doyle spat out a chunk of a candy cane tree.

"Heck yeah, it's awesome!" Richard exclaimed. "Since the DVD player fills in the rest of the universe based on the characteristics the camera saw, we can visit any scene before or after the camera passes by! Imagine being able to interact with Hobbits in The Shire! Or stay in Hogwarts while Harry's in the Triwizard Tournament! Or-"

"Or have sex with Megan Fox while Shia LaBeouf is fighting Megatron! Haha, awesome!" Doyle exclaimed, kicking open a gumdrop pumpkin.

"Or..." Richard continued, "Seeing daily life on the Death Star while Luke gets trained by Ben Kenobi! Although I don't recommend doing that since the Death Star will inevitably blow up and I don't know what happens if you die in here. Frankly, I don't want to find out."

"Another thing," Basil started as the author keeps thinking of loopholes you guys might notice, "What about those movies where we have long periods of time passing, like the intro to Up, or movies where chronology is weird, like Memento?"

"Man, you are just full of questions, Basil," Richard responded. Behind Richard, Doyle screamed in agreement. "So in those kinds of movies, you'll see the world change around you before your own eyes. I've seen cities age 100 years in a nice crossfade. Same thing applies to achronological stories. Memento, you'll probably see a person exit a store, then in the next cut you'll see him buying something and paying, then you'll see him enter the store. Cloud Atlas, you'll probably see Earth in the 19th century in one second, then in the future the next.

"The universe around you changes to the time on the first dial, but you won't be affected by it. Think of it as if you were watching a normal movie. You see the world affected by the time, but you yourself stays in your own timeline behind the fourth wall. Only now, we can interact with things," Richard finished, amazed that it took two paragraphs to explain that.

"Last thing," Basil started, "What happens if we do something that prevents other things from happening? Like what if in Star Wars, we kill Luke?"

"I tried doing something like that, but I killed Hagrid instead," Richard started again. Doyle was busy picking fights with Oompa Loompas, laughing when as he kicks them into the chocolate river. "What happens basically is that the universe changes according to what you did. I killed Hagrid in the first movie, so instead, Snape picks up Harry from their tiny island, becomes Harry's best friend, and pretty much nothing exciting in the movie happens. Quirrell survives but never gets the rock, and the first year was pretty boring. If I had killed Dumbledore in the Sixth book, Voldemort would've probably gone after me. Get it?"

Basil nodded. "Yeah, I th-"



Doyle vomited again, this time in his living room.

"Gross, you got the vomit on my pressure plate!" Richard yelled.

"How'd we end up back here?" Basil asked.

"We can only leave the DVD when the movie reaches the credits, unless there's a post-credits scene like every Marvel movie, "Richard explained as he wiped Doyle's pressure plate on the living room carpet. "I tell you, it sucked waiting for the Shawarma scene to come when I figured this out."

"Okay, great!" Doyle screamed, "That's all the audience surrogation we need, now let's put in something awesome, like freaking Zombieland!"

"Okay, fine, just let me go to the bathroom first." Basil rushed off to the bathroom.

"Let me clean off your pressure plate too," Richard said, disconnecting Doyle's pressure plate and taking it to the kitchen sink. Doyle looked at the DVD player, then looked at his copy of Hard Meaty Death Part 7 on his kitchen table. He smiled.



"Okay," Richard exhaled, "So approximately what time is Bill Murray's house at?"

"Uh, around 47 minutes, 36 seconds," Doyle replied mischievously as he prepared to meet Jerome.

"Okay. 47 minutes, 36 seconds," Richard repeated as he adjusted the time on his dial. "I'll imagine we'll want to stay there for a long time, so we'll set the timer at thirty minutes from the ending."

The three stepped on their pressure plates. Richard his play on the DVD remote and the DVD player started whirring.

"BWAHAHAHA," Doyle cackled, "WELCOME TO HARD MEATY DEA-"



This time, Basil vomited on the wet concrete overpass they stood on. Doyle looked around.

"What the... This isn't Helga Humperdink's bedroom..." Doyle complained.

"Wait a second, you put in Hard Meaty Death?!" Richard barked at Doyle. Doyle responded with an evil laugh as he nodded.

Basil wiped his mouth. "Is this... LA? And... is there a storm going on?" Doyle's eyes widened as he realized where they were.

"Oh god... Guys..." Doyle started, "So sometimes, I'm lazy and forget to put my DVDs in the right cases..."

"Why do I care what the hell you do with your DVDs?" Richard snapped, "I don't wanna get raped by 'Hard Meaty Death!" Soon, Basil realized where they were as well.

"You never watch Syfy, Richard?" Basil asked as he looked up at something in the sky.

"No!" Richard yelled, "Why would I watch-" He quickly noticed that Basil and Doyle were both looking up. He turned around.

"Oh shit," Richard said blankly as he looked at the massive Sharknado tearing apart LA.

"We're so screwed," Doyle croaked.

"Well, those sharks look like they're really far away... Maybe they won't hurt us..?" Basil suggested, though his intonation said otherwise.

"Yeah. We'll be fine, just stay out of that tornado's way and wait until Cassie Scerbo blows up the tornadoes," Doyle reassured.

It was at that point that a colossal CGI shark, at least 16 feet in length, landed right on top of Basil, crushing him to a red, bloody pulp and sending chunks of Basil flying into Doyle and Richard's faces. The shark wriggled its body, trying to move but only succeeding in grinding Basil's bones into a finer dust.

"JESUS CHRIST!" Richard screamed. Doyle collapsed to his knees, sobbing.

"We're gonna die! In a Sharknado!" Doyle screamed, pounding on the concrete ground, "And I didn't even get to touch Cassie Scerbo's boobs!"

"Calm down, Doyle!" Richard yammered, "We'll survive! We just have to take shelter in the airport that doesn't get destroyed!"

"But how are we gonna get there?! It's miles away and it's raining sharks!"

"We'll steal a car! Look at all of them, just casually driving through LA like nothing's happening! We'll use the badness of this movie against it and exploit all of its flaws!"

The two walked to the side of the freeway and waited casually until they spotted a white car approaching them. Richard shoved Doyle into the car's path and the car came to a screeching halt right in front of Doyle's surprised body. Even a single millisecond later and Doyle would've been hit.

Richard approached the driverside door, opened it, pulled the driver out, and kicked him in the face, knocking him unconscious. He motioned to Doyle to enter the car. Furious, Doyle banged on the hood of the car.

"What the hell was that for?" Doyle screamed.

"Hey, we got a car, why are you complaining? And you can thank Clarence Porter for that plan, I watch all of his episodes." Richard winked to the readers, then drove away.



"So we're at the airport. Now what?" Doyle asked, looking around at the drenched airfield. A few sharks fell sporadically onto the pavement.

"Well, we got here faster than the Sharknado cast did, so I guess we can just kill time. The tornado's gonna arrive right after they do, so we should get ready for that."

Doyle became excited. "So I get to meed Cassie Scerbo?! AWESOME."

"Yeah, well don't get too excited. She's in love with Ian Ziering right now, don't forget that."

"Oh, don't worry. I can change that."

The two rummaged around the airfield's equipment warehouse, which, surprisingly, was filled with chainsaws, propane tanks, and nail guns, as opposed to, say, spare airplane parts. Richard assembled a few makeshift bombs from the propane tanks. Doyle was in the middle of staring at the mirror, practicing pickup lines when the two heard the wind whistling nearby.

"Is that..?"

"Yep," Richard replied, "It's the Sharknado.

"Shoot! What do we do!"

"Well, in the movie, they managed to resist the force of the entire tornado by hiding in a closet behind a bit of sheet metal. All we have to do is tie ourselves to the building and we'll be fine.

The two grabbed coils of rope and tied one end of their rope around their waist. They tied the other end on a metal pole in the warehouse, not bothering to tie double knots. Richard stared at his watch.

"It'll come in five, four, three..." Abruptly, the howl of a tornado filled the air, coupled with the scream of a poor woman sucked up by the tornado! The warehouse rattled and shook and the roofing tore away from the rest of the building! Yet interestingly Richard, Doyle, and all of the equipment in the warehouse remained stationary. Not even a single strand of hair on their heads lifted towards the tornado.

"I have an idea!" Doyle screamed over the tornado, "We could end this entire movie right now if we put a bomb in this tornado!"

"Good point!" Richard replied. He grabbed one of his makeshift bombs and threw it into the tornado!

"Wait!" Doyle shouted. "Weren't you supposed to count before you hit the flare?!"

"Doesn't matter!" Richard bellowed, "It'll still explode!"

"Let's hope so!"

They continued standing still in the midst of a tornado raging around them. It was quite boring to them, really. I guess they could pretend to be swept up by the tornado, but if Ian Ziering could resist the entire pulling force of a tornado with one hand, then it's not really that big of a problem now, is it?

Eventually, the tornado subsided, just as abruptly as it had arrived. The two untied themselves and waited for the cast of Sharknado to appear.

"Well? Where's Cassie Scerbo?" Doyle inquired.

"I don't know... they should be here by now..."

"Should we check on them?"

"Yeah, we probably should."



"OH MY GOD! LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!" Doyle wailed as he stared at the closet that the Sharknado cast hid in, or at least, what remained of the closet. The majority of the closet was blown apart by the raw explosive power of the propane bomb, and so were the actors hiding inside of them. The entire cast was now an unrecognizable mosaic of organ bits and chunks of flesh in a blood red closet. The only thing that hadn't been reduced to a liquid human slush was Ian Ziering's arm. which remained remained attached to the sheet metal he hung on to in the movie.

"WHAT I DID?! IT WAS YOUR IDEA TO USE THE BOMB!" Richard retorted as Doyle clawed at his forehead with both of his hands in frustration.

"Well now how are we gonna get out of here?" Doyle asked angrily.

"We'll have to wait until the credits come, which'll be..." Richard glanced at his watch. A horrified look immediately appeared on his face. "...Twenty minutes."

Doyle collapsed on the ground, then curled up in a fetal position. "We're not gonna make it. We're gonna die."

"No! We're gonna live! We just have to fight! Now we have four minutes until the tornado arrives, we have to hurry! Grab Ian Ziering's gun and a few chainsaws, we're gonna fight them off.



Four minutes passed. The two geared up. Richard held a chainsaw and a pistol with infinite range in his hands while Doyle held a shotgun and a chunk of Cassie Scerbo's left breast that he managed to find in the pile of viscera in the closet.

"Here they come..." Richard said, tightening his grip on his pistol as he saw the massive Sharknado in the distance. Doyle slapped the chunk of Cassie Scerbo onto his forehead, then gripped the shotgun with both hands.

"Just like Duck Hunt," Doyle laughed.

And the sharks began raining down on them by the hundreds. If sharks were a liquid, meteorologists would comment that gallons of sharks were pouring down on the airfield. But these sharks were very much solid, and were coming straight for Richard and Doyle.

Immediately, Richard started chainsawing sharks in half left and right. Within a minute, he had killed enough sharks to not only fully drench himself in manly shark blood, but he had also single-handedly sparked a new PETA campaign striving to ban chainsaws. As if by impulse, Richard sniped a shark almost 400 feet away from him using only a 9mm pistol. Then, he sniped another. And another.

Doyle wasn't doing so badly either. He shot shark after shark, doing his best to imitate Woody Harrelson in Zombieland. He even killed a hammerhead shark by slapping it across the face with Cassie Scerbo's breast.

But the sharks wouldn't stop coming. There must've been at least a million of them.

Click. Click click. The only sound that came from Richard's pistol.

"I'm out!" Richard screamed as he bisected a shark in midair.

"How many minutes left?!" Doyle screamed back, gunning down another shark.

"Let me check!" Richard glanced at his watch for a second.

But in that second, a massive hammerhead shark bit his head clean off. The rest of his body collapsed on the ground as blood poured from his head like Old Faithful during that time of the month.

Doyle freaked out. He ran to Richard's stumpy body and picked up his chainsaw.

"WHY WOUND YOU JUST DIE!!!!!!" He swing the chainsaw aimlessly into the sky, managing to kill a few sharks out of sheer luck. "JUST DIE!!!!!"



Doyle vomited, then looked around. He was back in his living room. He fell to his knees and sobbed, mourning the loss of his two best friends, not caring about the copious amounts of blood dripping from his clothes.

"It's..." he sniffled like a little girl. "It's all my fault. If I hadn't wanted to bang Helga Humperdink, none of this would've happened! Why do I have to be so selfish all the time!"

Doyle stood up. "From now on, I'll be a changed man! I promise to put the interest of others ahead of mine! I will never act selfishly aga-"

"Oh look, Doyle's back." Doyle turned around and saw Basil, drinking a cup of coffee. Behind him, Richard stood, also drinking a cup of coffee.

"You moron," Richard muttered angrily to Basil, "Should've let him keep going, he was having an epiphany."

"Wh-what?" Doyle stared at them dumbfounded.

"Yeah, so apparently..." Richard scratched the back of his head. "When you die, you get... sent back to the room. Perfectly fine, too. Fact, we didn't even vomit, it's a gentler trip than waiting until the credits. But uh... congratulations on surviving a Sharknado!"

"Oh." Doyle said blankly.





Author's Note: This story was written to the very last minute. And I mean, last minute. It's 2:30 AM and I just finished this. My god, I'm so tired.

Huge thanks to Rhea for making me think about Sharknado! Also thanks to Brandon, Kayla, and Brighid for help on general story ideas as well as Ivan for coming up with "Hard Meaty Death Part 7: Jerome Unleashed." I'll admit, I would've never come up with a name like that by myself.

Most of the research here was in watching movies. The times in the movie are accurate, meaning that at 47 minutes, 36 seconds in Zombieland, you'll be at the entrance of Bill Murray's house as well as the overpass in Sharknado. The time they had left was also roughly accurate.

I'm gonna go to sleep now. Picture day tomorrow and I am so tired.