Once upon a time, in a faraway land called California, there were five fairly handsome singers—although, admittedly, one dressed rather shoddily on a regular basis—who were renowned throughout the land. They had many admirers, and three of these singers had found true love for themselves. The other two still struggled, but, alas, it was not their fault that they could not find the perfect women for themselves.
Our story begins with a car ride. One very long and exasperating car ride in which these men seemed to be lost and, being men, refused to ask for directions.
“I swear, we took the right exit,” Nick Carter insisted as he stared at the map in his hands. “Exit thirteen, right?”
The driver, Brian Littrell, shook his head as his eyes, shielded from the bright sun by tinted lenses, scanned the landscape. Southern California is a land of sweeping plains, dry desert-like terrain, and plenty of empty space. “Maybe you’re wrong. I wish the GPS hadn’t broken down for the five millionth time.”
“Dude, you can afford to get a new system. Why don’t you?” AJ McLean, resident bad dresser, commented from the backseat where he was wishing desperately for a cigarette and knowing that, if he lit one up, Brian would have his head on a platter.
“Because I know that there are other, cheaper ways of getting somewhere,” Brian answered quite crabbily. He checked the rearview mirror and sighed. “Nick, call Kevin and Howie and see what they think. They’re still behind us.”
Nick looked over his shoulder at the car behind them and pulled out his cell phone. Tapping a few buttons, he set the phone to his ear and listened. “Hey…No, it was exit thirteen…I knew we took the right exit!…No, it looks like it’s supposed to come after thirteen miles on this road…Seventeen and a half? Dude, does your GPS system work?” He looked over at Brian with a confused look on his face and shrugged. “Okay, that’s weird…Yeah, I’ll let him know. Cool.” He hung up and shook his head. “This is the right way.”
“Well, that’s just strange,” Brian said and continued to drive. “We haven’t passed a single car on this road, coming or going.”
“We’re in an alternate universe,” AJ said in a slightly creepy tone. “Not a single living being in sight.” He looked out the window in time to catch tumbleweed blow by. “Yep. We’re definitely lost.”
Brian huffed. “We’re not lost. What did Kevin say?”
“He said we should stop at the next gas station and ask for directions.” Nick rubbed a hand over his choppy blonde locks. “Who knew going to this stupid lake was going to take us this long? Man, the wives and babies must be there by now.”
Brian grumbled under his breath. His wife was notorious for being on time to everything, and she was sure to have arrived at the picnic location by now. After all, they were already fifteen minutes late. “Fine. We’ll stop at the next station.”
After several more minutes of aimlessly driving along the same deserted countryside, the two cars finally neared a desolate, dusty, and rather decrepit gas station. Its pumps were mostly rusted over and looked as though they’d been transported from the 1940s. Paint peeled off the main building and, if it hadn’t been for the giant dog that thumped its tail as it lay outside the door, the whole place would have seemed completely abandoned.
AJ, a giant dog lover, sat up and squinted through his sunglasses at the lazy canine. “Hey, look! It’s a dog!” he exclaimed, quite obviously stating the obvious. He leapt out of the car when it stopped and hurried to pet the pooch. The dog, clearly not having seen much affection in its life, began to slobber all over him. “That’s a good dog. You must be sick of seeing nobody, huh, boy? Huh?”
Brian and Nick shook their heads as they climbed out of the car and turned to watch a second car pull up behind them. Two more men climbed out, one tall and dark-haired and the other short and grinning foolishly at the sight of AJ with the dog.
“Man, he never changes, does he?”
“Did you expect him to, Howie?” Brian asked with a smile. “So, who’s going to go get directions?”
The tall, dark, and handsome one raised his hand. “I’ll do it. The four of you would probably forget them by the time you were finished hearing them.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kevin,” Nick stated sarcastically. He looked around at the rather depressing landscape. “I’ll come with you. Maybe this place has snacks or something. I’m starving.”
“We just had breakfast a couple hours ago,” Howie called after the two retreating men. “How could you possibly be starving already?”
Brian placed a hand on Howie’s shoulder. “Let it go, Howie. Let it go. It is best that we not think about how his stomach works.”
Howie shook his head, and the two men went to crouch by AJ and his best friend the dog.
Inside the station’s mini-mart, Kevin and Nick were frowning at the gleaming appliances and the clean, streamlined interior with its aisles of tasty-looking snack foods. The interior was hugely disparate from the outside.
“Like stepping out of the forties and into the nineties,” Kevin muttered to Nick as they wandered through. Nick’s arms were already full of candy bars and packages of potato chips.
“Hey, I’m going to go get us drinks.” Nick balanced his snacks in his arms and hurried off to the back of the store.
Kevin rolled his eyes and turned towards the register where he could see no one working. There was a bell on the countertop with a label reading “Ring for Service,” so, being the smart and common sensical man that he is, Kevin rang the bell.
For an instant, he could’ve sworn there was a puff of blue smoke, though, when he blinked it was gone and, in its place, there was a beautiful young woman standing before him. Her hair was like gleaming ebony and fell in waves to her waist. Her eyes were bluer than the cloudless sky outside, her lips as red as a rose, and her skin was as creamy and pale as…well, Kevin’s mind couldn’t quite come up with more analogies, so he settled for as creamy and pale as cream cheese.
Not that this was a very romantic analogy, but anyway…
“Hello.” Her greeting sounded almost musical, and Kevin’s brows furrowed. “How can I be of service to you today?”
Kevin tried to straighten his expression. “Um, yeah. I was hoping you could give me directions to Lake Isabella from here. My friends and I appear to be a little lost.”
“Ah, I see.” She smiled at him, and, for a second, he thought he heard harpsong. “Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? You’re almost to your destination, though there’s still a few…places you must cross. If you stay on this road, you’ll soon see the signs and know that you weren’t quite as lost as you thought you were.”
He didn’t quite know what to make of her words, though he thought there might have been another meaning to what she was saying. No one could ever say that Kevin wasn’t sharp as a tack. “Uh, okay. So we’re headed in the right direction?”
“Oh, yes.” She continued to smile, and it was starting to cause butterflies to flutter in his belly. “Definitely going in the right direction.” She looked past him, and Kevin turned to find Nick standing there with his arms full, his eyes glued to the woman behind the counter. “Hello.”
It took Nick a few moments to find his tongue. After all, this young woman was probably the most beautiful one he’d ever seen. “Um, ah, yeah, hi. I, uh, we, um…”
She laughed and the sound was like music to Nick’s ears. “Why don’t I ring those up for you?” she suggested sweetly. “And then you can be on your way. You don’t want to be late, do you?” Her eyes flitted from Nick’s to Kevin’s. “That won’t do at all.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Kevin replied slowly, still trying to figure out what her deal was and not quite succeeding. Beside him, Nick clumsily dropped his things on the counter and turned beet red with embarrassment.
A few minutes later, Nick’s snacks were in plastic bags, and Kevin thanked the young woman. “We’d better get going. You were right. We’re definitely late already. Thanks for the help.”
“Oh, it’s not trouble at all.” She reached under the counter and slid something across the countertop towards them. “I think you should take this with you as well. It will help in your journey.”
Nick only stared at the small, brass compass, but Kevin picked it up and studied it. “It’s pointing east,” he told the young woman. “I don’t think this is going to be of much help.” Setting it down again, he smiled at her. “Thanks, but we have GPS in my car.” He started out of the store. “Have a nice day. Let’s go, Nick.”
But Nick stayed behind to dawdle a bit longer with his new love. “So, what’s your name?” he asked, leaning against the counter.
She merely smiled at him and nudged the compass towards him. “I think you need to take this and go back to your friends. You have places to go, things to do.”
“Well, yeah, but they can wait.” He picked up the compass anyway. “You could come with us.”
“I don’t think so,” she said softly. “No, I really don’t think so. You’d best be on your way, Nickolas Carter. You really don’t want to be late.”
Nick frowned. “Hey, how did you know my name?” But, when he looked up from the compass in his hand, she was gone. “Hello? Hey, where’d you go?” But silence was all that met him. “Okay then. That was the most not-so-subtle brush off I’ve ever had,” he muttered under his breath and headed out of the store.
The other four men were gathered around the cars, and Kevin was pointing in the direction in which they’d previously been heading. When Brian and AJ spotted Nick and the bulging bags in his hands, they started poking through to find something to eat. After all, grown men need sustenance. Especially grown men about to embark on the wildest journey of their lives.
“Yeah, you’re welcome, too.” Nick rolled his eyes before dangling the compass in front of his eyes. “So Gorgeous Girl kept saying I should take this compass, and I did.”
“What?” Kevin glanced over at him. “Nick, that’s broken. It’s no use. Besides, we know where we’re going now.”
Nick squinted at the compass before shaking it a little. “Maybe we could rattle it back into place.”
Howie reached over and took it from him. “Nah,” he said after a moment of studying it and trying to shake its needle. “I don’t think so. This won’t get you anywhere. Wonder why anyone would give you a compass?”
“How random,” AJ said as he took the compass from Howie. He, too, shook it a little. “Well, at least we know which way is east.”
“Oh, yay. That’ll help tons.” Brian snickered as he waved the compass around in the air, pretending to look for a signal. “Yeah, a broken compass will get us to Isabella real well.”
Kevin rolled his eyes and took the compass from his cousin. He turned it over and squinted at the inscription he suddenly discovered engraved on the back. “Hey, there’s something written on here.”
“Let me see.” Nick tried to look over Kevin’s shoulder. “Shoot, I can’t read that. It’s, like, microscopic script.”
“It’s not that bad,” Kevin replied as he continued to try to decipher the message. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. ‘From here to there, from there to here. Witches and princesses, magic and royal messes. Princes to the rescue, from here to there. Let them all beware.’” He finished reading the inscription and frowned. “How weird was that?”
AJ chuckled. “Who the hell writes crap like that on a compass? Like, was that for real?”
Wind whipped wildly through Howie’s hair, and he glanced up as clouds began to cover the bright sun. “Did anyone check the forecast? Was there a freak storm warning on there?”
Nick squinted as the wind whipped dirt and dust around him and brushed it off his face. “This stuff is kind of stinging my face. Why don’t we get back in the cars and-”
He broke off as a huge, wild gust of wind dragged him off his feet and slammed him into something hard. Even as he struggled to pick himself up off the ground, he could hear pained yelps from his friends. Before he could yell out to them, the world seemed to explode, and everything went dark…
Story Notes:
This is just a fun little idea I thought of last week. It's pretty much going to be updated when I'm having creative issues with the other fifty stories I've got in progress LOL I hope you enjoy as this is all meant in humor and good fun!
