In loving memory of my funball-ish, little

 friend Scotty (1998-2020)

AJ Arquette's best friend also happened to be her neighbor, living only two houses up from her.

Her name was Twist, and she was a brave, playful girl whose interests included ghosts, puzzles, monsters, animals, and candy. She had chocolate-brown eyes, shiny chestnut hair with a red hairbow on top, and a squiggly scar reaching from her left eyebrow down to her chin (hence her name), the result of a corkscrew incident from when she was three. She also had braces on her teeth and wore a yellow dress with a red bow tied around the middle.

One breezy October night…

“Have a piece o’ pizza!”

Twist was staying at the Arquette house for a sleepover with AJ, so Blaze was taking the girls to Piece o’ Pizza to get a pepperoni deep-dish.

While Blaze was ordering the pizza, the girls decided to check behind a door labeled “STAY OUT”, which led to a narrow hallway, at the end of which was a tub filled with free pizza sauce, which they took.

Later…

The girls were watching Dragon Ball Z in AJ’s TV room when a noise suddenly erupted from the kitchen. A quick round of rock-paper-scissors dictated AJ as the person to go check it out, and she returned even paler than normal.

“Uh, Tw-Tweesty?” she squeaked, her striped-stockinged legs quivering like noodles in a fry-pan, “I zink our pizza sauce wants us for d-deenner!”

Indeed, both of the cups of sauce the girls had brought home had come to life, and one of them had gone after the girls!

“TIME TO DIE, LITTLE GIRLIES,” the gooey sauce monster gurgled as it slithered into the TV room and proceeded to eat the knob off the door.

AJ let out another squeak and curled up in her corner of the couch. Twist tried valiantly to think of a way out, but kept coming up short, so...

“RUN AND SCREAM FOR OUR MOMMIES!”

So they did, creating a hole not only in the Arquettes’ TV room wall, but in the bedroom wall of the deaf man next door as well.

“MOMMY, DADDY! HELP!” Twist screamed in between tears of fright.

“MOMMY!” her messy-haired friend sobbed, “AU SECOURS! I’M TOO MIGNON TO DIE!”

Meanwhile, on the east side of the Arquette house…

Blaze was just putting on her sleep lotion to finish her bedtime preparations when she suddenly heard a BOOM, a CRASH, and two high-pitched screams, followed by her mommy sense going off. The girls were in trouble!

Flipping her slippers on and picking the wedgie out of her boyshorts, Blaze marched over to her door and ran face-first into a wall of pizza sauce, meaning she’d have to dig to get to her “bebe” and her “bebe’s” friend.

“Don’t worry, AJ! Mommy’s coming!” she called as she dug. "Oh, and you too, Tweest!"

Back at Plot A..

The girls had taken refuge in the deaf guy’s coat closet, which was an odd choice because 1) Twist had wet herself; and 2) AJ was beginning to have a panic attack because she was terrified of the dark.

“Get your flashlight, Tweesty! Get your flashlight!” the silly girl practically whined, trying her darndest to keep her voice no louder than a whisper even as she began to hyperventilate and lose her cool, “It’s d-dark and scary! Ze zom-athiests are gonna get us any second!”

Twist checked her socks, but she couldn’t find her flashlight anywhere. “Sorry, Angie. I must’ve dropped it in the TV room back at your place.”

AJ began to cry. “I-I wanna go ‘ome! I want my mommy to make ze sc-scary dark go away! I don’t want ze d-dumb zombies to take away my belief in God!”

Twist tried to talk her friend out of her panic attack, all while a spider web-spun down from the ceiling and began tugging on a frilly, cottony substance, thinking it was one of its old webs when in reality it was Twist’s dress collar.

“It’s -- mmpf -- OK, Angie,” the brave girl said, letting out a little grunt every time the spider tugged upward on her collar, “There’s -- mmpf -- nothing out there trying to -- mmpf -- get us besides that -- mmpf -- pizza monster and -- OK, who the Sam Hill is pulling on my dress?”

She reached behind herself and, upon realizing it was a spider --

“AAAHHHHH! A ZOMBIE SPIDER IS TRYING TO CHOKE ME!”

Both girls ran out into the hallway, screaming for their mommies again, whereupon they were picked up by their collars by the pizza monster.

“Me eat little girlies for late-night snack!” the monster gurgled.

The girls squealed and blubbered in terror: “No, no, no! Don’t eat us, si’l vous plait! We don’t taste good!” / “I’m a vegetarian, I’m all skin and bones!”

But luckily, AJ’s mom was there to save the day with a weed flamethrower that she used to melt the pizza monster.

“Mommy!” AJ cried, jumping into her mother’s waiting arms.

Even though Blaze wasn’t her mother, Twist still ran toward the French cafeteria worker and hugged her leg...then threw up pizza sauce on the deaf guy’s floor.

“Le ew!” the two French girls gagged.

“Sh-shut up,” the brave girl snapped weakly, still holding onto Blaze’s leg and heaving.

~The end!~