After a hell of a lot of drinks, we somehow got it into our heads that it was a good idea to storm the castle. We were literally going to head down to the Hall of the Drunken King and fight our way in to see Harry so we could tell him a thing or seventeen.

In case you didn't know, the term "storm the castle" literally means to attack the stronghold. You see it in some of the monster movies where the villagers finally decide that they've had enough of whatever monster is currently terrifying them, and take up torches, pitchforks and other pointy instruments as makeshift weapons. The aim is to take the castle by surprise and force and to drive the evil out of the land forever.

Urban Dictionary has a completely different meaning which details putting the moves on a girl, so since that isn't relevant, go ahead and ignore that. You can come back to it later if you need any tips. We're going to deal exclusively with the monster clearing variety of storming.

As a quick FYI: deciding to storm the castle while drunk out of your mind is usually an extremely bad idea, especially since there were only the five of us and we really had no idea what we were doing.

"You're out of your fucking mind!"

I'd called up Claude to see if he wanted to join us and also, could he maybe call up one of his more disreputable associates and get us a carload of guns and ammo? We had decided that flaming torches were definitely not a good idea, but that we probably needed to be armed to the teeth. Since none of us knew where we were going to get any pitchforks, it seemed like a good idea to load up on guns. It also seemed like a good idea to call Claude with this request but that might have been the whole bottle of tequila talking.

Needless to say: we were all really fucking drunk.

"It will be so easy dude! I promise! We roll up, armed to the teeth and be total badasses."

"The word you're looking for is 'arrested' or better yet 'shot'!"

"So no guns?"

"No guns!"

"How about just one? A teeny tiny one."

"I'm hanging up and calling the cops myself and I'm going to beg them not to shoot you since you're all idiots!"

Claude hung up and I stared at the phone until Frankie shoved an almost overflowing glass of Whiskey into my hand.

"Drink up! Gotta keep your blood to alcohol ratio up! What did he say?"

"It sounded like a no," I said, and took a big gulp of the whiskey, appreciating the spreading warmth of the alcohol in my body. "Did anybody call an Uber yet?"

"We're waiting for Stanley. He decided he just had to sing 'Baby Got Back' and he's totally killing it!"

We were in the Fox and Fiddle on Bloor, since it was the closest reputable bar to my work, and Stanley was indeed killing it on the karaoke stage. The Fox had a rotating schedule of Karaoke DJs come in every night after 10 PM and apparently this was where Stanley dropped in every Thursday after the meeting and before he headed off to work security a few blocks uptown. If you've ever had to drag a friend who loves karaoke away from the bar when he still has a song coming on then you know exactly the kind of shenanigans that were going on.

"Fuck it: I'm getting him," I said and stumbled off through the crowd, amazed at how much the alcohol was affecting me. I'd consumed a bottle and a half of tequila over the past two hours so that in itself wasn't unusual. The bartender had wanted to cut me off a long time ago, but I had looked him deep in the eye and given him my best smile and he had shrugged and continued to give us all the alcohol we wanted. It had left me with a weird feeling kind of like a buzzing in my skull... but that was easily solved with the application of a couple more glasses of tequila and whiskey. I knew I wasn't that drunk, but I was determined to not be any less drunk before this whole storming the castle thing started to sound like a bad idea.

I drunk-shoved my way to the stage and waved to Stanley. He spotted me and waved for me to come join him on stage, so of course, I did. I mean, I was drunk, so what do you really expect. Stanley was just as drunk and wrapped his gigantic arm around my neck affectionately.

"We gotta go, man!" I yelled to him. "We gotta go a put a stake through Hary's heart."

I wish I could say that I didn't say that at the same time Stanley shoved the mic over to my face for me to sing the next line. I wish I could say that I was sober enough to realize what had happened. Yeah... that's not going to happen.

Everybody was already looking at us, but now they were all paying attention to someone admitting to planning murder on stage. Fuck!

"It's okay, though," I said into the microphone. I tried to be as convincing and earnest as possible. "He's a vampire, so he deserves it."

The crowd cheered at that for some reason, but there were definitely some weird looks from the more cautious customers. We didn't stick around after that. We got the hell out of there, no matter if Stanley had three more songs coming up that he really wanted to sing.

We hung around outside the bar while Frankie settled up his bill, and I noticed the nervous energy we were all carrying. I wondered if anybody was getting second thoughts yet—

"Are we actually doing this?" Benjamin wanted to know.

"We're totally doing this!" Natalie roared a little too enthusiastically, but I was glad to see she was so fired up.

"Storming the castle!" I joined in.

"Is your friend coming through for us?" Stanley asked and took a long swig from a silver flask. "You know, the one with the weapons?"

"We might have to resort to pitchforks," I admitted. "Do it old school. We should get some torches. Can we get torches?"

Natalie raised her hand meekly. "I've got some Tiki torches--"

"No. Definitely not. No freaking way."

"This is going to be the worst assault in the history of ever," Benjamin said.

"Only if we use Tiki torches, so we're still in good shape," I said, but there was still some lingering doubt in my mind. I just didn't say anything about it. "Come on you guys! Did General Custer let overwhelming odds turn him back? Did Napolean turn his nose up at Waterloo? Did President Whitmore let those aliens take over the planet after they blew up the White House?"

They were all giving me flat looks that said as drunk as they were, they all thought I was out of my mind. Either that or fucking stupid.

"First of all," Benjamin said. "Custer and Napolean lost. And the third one was a movie, so you lose points just for that."

"You guys are getting way too sober, way too fast," I said. "We're going to need another bar."

"Changed my mind," Benjamin said. "Slowest assault in the history of ever."

******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********

The book is now AVAILABLE in Hardcover, Paperback and Ebooks. It's going to live here free on Wattpad, but if you love the story and want to support your awesome author (me), grab a copy from one of the lovely retailers below. Who knows: maybe it can become a bestseller with the help of you lovely WattPadders

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