It was a dream come true! As the year was coming to a close, I got invited to a sticky sleepover with my fellow content creators, with whom I’d get to be glued, conjoined or something else! Now, it was a slumber party, so I arrived in my usual sleep wear: white t shirt, black pajama pants, and was delighted to see all the different pajamas the others were wearing when I entered. Already, various characters and artists were stuck to each other and I wanted to get in on the action. When I overheard something about a spell going wrong, I briefly thought of my own magical character, TF Central for whom my account was named. But bringing him in would be an unpopular disaster.
Anyway, I thought I understood how this whole “stick yourself to someone else” thing worked when I spotted a large blonde woman. It was Vocal, one of my oldest internet friends, and she didn’t have a partner. Picking up a glue bottle, I pounced, intending to hug her and then seal the hug with my glue.
It hurt when she dodged out of the way and I face planted.
“What the hell, dude?!” asked Lonic, one of the artists invited to the party. Like me, he didn’t have a partner but he also didn’t want to stick to another guy. “You’re supposed to ask permission first!”
Embarrassed, I picked myself off of the floor. Thankfully, the glue wasn’t open yet.
“Sorry. I thought it was like a water balloon fight or a prank war, you know? Uh, Vocal? Did you want to get stuck? I have this deck of cards, so we-”
“Oh, sorry, I already promised I would share clothes with someone else.”
The evening didn’t really improve after that. I kept trying to find a partner, but everyone was either busy, taken or uninterested. What was the point of a togetherness party if I was going to spend it alone? Moodily, I ate the usual sleepover food (pizza, wings, et cetera), drank some booze, and watched the others have fun.
“Hi there. I’m looking to make my debut, so can I join you?” came a woman’s voice. It sounded like the artist Emmie, but it was strangely auto tuned. I looked up to see an Emmie robot standing in front of me, smiling. I looked around to see who she was talking to before realizing she was actually addressing me.
“You want to get stuck to me?” I asked
“Sure, if you want.”
“Well, I have a deck of cards here. Best two out of three hands on five card draw gets to choose the position?”
“That works for me.”
As we played our poker, I was beginning to wonder if this was really happening. Was this robot really interested in using me to become a new character debutante, or if she was just programed to find lonely losers and tell them whatever they wanted to hear. By the time I lost my final hand, I decided I didn’t care: she’d deny the latter either way and a pity partner was still better than nothing. When it came time to decide the position, the Emmie robot poured glue on her arms and gave me a big hug. She was remarkably soft for a robot. I hugged her back (no glue on mine) and we went off to join the other party goers.
After that, the rest of the night went a lot better. We played “doubles twister” (an idea of mine), which got pretty chaotic for people who were joined with more than one person. We watched Christmas movies like Die Hard and Shazam, and generally, a nice time was had by all.