The Drug Test

The Sasquatches stood in a line, shoulder-to-shoulder, shuffling slightly. They stared timidly at the grass. Before them, an authoritative figure paced backward and forward, throwing them a dirty look once in a while, even pausing to spit on the ground angrily once or twice. He was wearing a referee's uniform.

The Sasquatches were naked.

"Is this really necess-" began Doyle, the team captain of the Mansfield Sasquatches, but he was drowned out by the referee.

"SILENCE!"

The word echoed several times and it rang in their ears for a full minute and a half.

"I think you all know why you are here," whispered the referee eventually. "There has been an outbreak of cheating in this competition, and we are determined to put a stop to it. Touch football is intended to be a clean sport."

He frowned for a moment, evaluating the nude team members before him, who were most visibly unclean.

"Drugs, gentlemen. Performance enhancing drugs. Stimulants. Amphetamines. Anabolic st-..." he paused, observing the members' physiques. "No, probably not that one. But there's got to be something..."

He handed Doyle a large bucket, twenty or thirty litres in size, and nodded.

"Uh...?" said Doyle.

The man frowned. "Your sample, please."

Doyle looked around awkwardly. They were in the middle of Field 1, with a crowd of confused onlookers scratching their heads nearby. Eventually he complied.

"Now pass it along to the next."

Doyle passed the bucket to David, who awkwardly received the bucket with one hand while using the other to cover his privates.

"Your sample, please," repeated the referee.

"What... you mean... right here?" stuttered David. "In the same bucket?"

"Yes, yes, we don't have all night. Just swirl it all together, we can't afford to drug test everyone individually."

"I'm not sure if that-"

"Just do it!"

David complied slowly, removing his trembling hand from his groin, and attempted to deliver his sample.

"I can't! I'm too nervous!" he wept.

"NOW!" roared the man, charging angrily. David urinated in fright.

The bucket was handed from member to member, who delivered samples in a surprising variety of colours.

"I think you all know there will be serious repercussions for your actions," announced the referee, picking up the bucket with one gloved hand and a moderately disgusted look on his face.

"But ref-" interjected Sam, who was struck down immediately by the man's closed fist.

"I don't want to hear your excuses!" he barked, spitting angrily in four directions at once.

"But we never took any-" began Dani, who fell victim to the referee's uppercut before she could finish.

"Lies!" he shouted. "One look at the scoreboard and we all know what happened!"

He pointed to his scorecard. 7-7. A draw.

"The Sasquatches didn't lose their last game!" he crowed happily, as if claiming victory. "A hilarious proposition, and yet here we are!"

"We can explain!" cried Sarah, but she was mowed down by a hailstorm of bullets.

"Twelve seasons!" the ref yelled. "That's how long I've seen your team fail. Week after week. Yes, you won a few games when the opposition was literally disabled, and once you even had an athletic fill-in who helped you win a game. But this time it was different. You tied fair and square."

The Sasquatches looked around at each other in surprise. Could it be... had they possibly... improved?

"No," said the referee, "I would have none of it. NONE OF IT. There is a reason for this madness, and I shall see the universe restored to its natural order."

 * * * 

One Week Later

"... dangerously elevated levels of sodium and creatinine, surprisingly high levels of glucose indicating disastrously unchecked diabetes, at least sixty different metabolites of cannabis... possible LSD usage, although it's hard to tell because some idiot mixed all the samples together..."

The doctor stood in the touch football clubhouse, reading the results of his analysis to the referee and the Sasquatches, who were seated around him. He continued:

"Cause of unusual odour remains undetermined, although the novel colour was probably due to excessive beetroot consumption."

Matthew nodded simply.

"However, there was no indication of performance enhancing drug use. In fact, the low levels of testosterone across the board is concerning. I would actually consider prescribing--"

"Alright, that's enough!" snapped the referee. "We've all heard enough. I caught the buzzwords: 'testosterone'... 'metabolites'... 'glucose'... Clearly you boys have been doing some pretty hard stuff!"

The Sasquatches hung their heads in shame. Bruce attempted to hide his bong behind his back, but the referee caught him in the act.

"Aha! Got you! What do you have to say for yourselves?"

Kristen raised her hand timidly.

"Yes?" he asked.

"We're sorry! Please don't punish--"

An arrow pierced her shoulder and she reverted to silence.

"You will not be allowed to play in the finals," the referee announced. "For this season, you will be stripped of all your points and relegated to the bottom of the ladder. I hope this teaches you all a lesson about cheating in sports."

No one spoke. They dared not remind him that they were already at the bottom of the ladder, and would never have made the finals.

The referee left the room, and the Sasquatches tended to Kristen's wounded shoulder.

"Does anyone know any girls who can play for us next week?" asked Doyle.

Tenille opened her mouth to speak. An anvil landed on her head.

The New Recruit

The Sasquatches sat in a humid, pitch-black darkness, the steady drip, drip of a leaking pipe blending rhythmically with the wheezing snores of one of its members. The smell of fried chicken, stale burger crumbs and long-discarded fast food wrappers, lingered potently in the air.

The walls rattled gently as the snoring continued, the air vibrating with anticipation. A voice spoke.

"When is she coming?"

The snoring came to an abrupt stop.

"Wha-?! Who's there?" moaned a sleepy voice.

"It's just me -- Aaron," replied the team captain, Aaron Doyle, with a depressed sigh. After eleven seasons of continued failure on the football field, he was beginning to resent the dismal attention span of his players. "Please try to stay focused for a few more min--"

The snoring resumed, ferociously drowning out the captain's voice, rattling the walls and the air with surprising force.

The remainder of the team sat in the dark room without speaking: David, occasionally delivering a silent yawn which smelled oddly of burnt fish sticks; Yongas, shifting uncomfortably in his seat to adjust something between his legs; and Sian, performing endless sets of push-ups in a woefully misguided attempt to inspire her teammates into action.

The snoring subsided.

"Is he awake again?" asked Yongas, trying to squint through the darkness in Bruce's direction. "He's not dead, is he?"

"I don't know, let me check," sighed Aaron, heaving himself up onto his feet to check on his team mate. "Oi, Brucey," he called, groping blindly through the air. "Are you okay, mate?"

He slapped the air and made contact with Kristen's face.

"Oops, sorry Dave," he said. "Nice chops though, bud."

He finally made it over to Bruce and gave him a poke. "Speak to me, buddy. You hurtin'? Was it that fifth bucket of jerky? I can't imagine five kilos of beef jerky is healthy for any man, but a bet's a bet, and you lost, remember?"

The snoring returned - a feeble sign of life.

"Good enough for me," Aaron shrugged, sitting back down on the couch and landing clumsily atop a startled and unimpressed Danielle.

"Two hundred and twenty," gasped Sian from the corner of the room, finishing her eleventh set of push-ups. "Come on, guys, get it in ya! We need to traaaiiin."

Stu merely grunted. David licked at a pile of nearby burger crumbs, cautiously assessing their edibility. The tempo of Bruce's snoring did not change.

"I thought she'd be here by now," mused Kristen, plucking self-consciously at something on her cheeks. "Did she say when she would arrive?"

Aaron shifted uncomfortably in his seat, a struggling Danielle still trapped beneath him.

"About that," he muttered, twiddling his fingers nervously. "I may have... led you on a little bit. Our newest member was not very... cooperative."

"What were her exact words?" asked someone else, the source invisible within this pitch-black room.

"Well, to be entirely truthful, it was something along the lines of... 'I would never join the Sasquatches even if you paid me a million dollars, which I know you don't have'. Naturally, I accepted her challenge, robbed a liquor store, and bribed her to attend this little meeting."

"You got a million dollars from a liquor store?"

"I... yes," stuttered Aaron, shifting more nervously than ever in his seat, a squashed Danielle hammering his back with her feeble little fists, which bounced off his body like pathetic little bouncy balls.

"Didn't a bank get robbed just last week?" continued another one of the voices in the room.

"Yeah," said another, "that bank was like three blocks from your house, Doyle. You didn't rob a bank to hire this new player... did you? She must be really good!"

David gagged in the corner of the room; it seemed his experiment with the burger crumbs had gone awry.

"I didn't rob a bank. Like I said, it was a video ezy--"

"I thought you said it was a liquor store."

"Do they even have video ezy anymore?"

"It was obviously the bank."

"No," struggled Aaron, "it was like, one of those hybrid liquor-video stores."

"That's not a thing that exists."

The light came on suddenly. Everything was illuminated: three couches, arranged in a U-shape, with a large square coffee table in the middle. Empty cardboard buckets, boxes, cartons, wrappers and cups littered the table and floor, their contents long since devoured by the hungry football team who now lay slouching around the room.

David was on the floor licking at a pile of burger crumbs, which was now revealed to be swarming with ants.

Dani had managed to grab hold of a nearby lamp, and was now forcefully whacking Doyle around the head with it in a renewed attempt to get him off her.

Sian was soon discovered doing pullups on the roof, two metres above everyone's head.

Kristen was resting her head in her hands, so that both sides of her hairy face were conveniently hidden from view.

Bruce was now standing, with meaty sweats dripping from his shirt like a torrent of rainfall.

Stu was playfully fighting an invisible foe with an imaginary lightsaber, while seated.

The location of Yongas' pants was unknown.

And another girl stood beside the light switch: Camille "Painstorm" Layt.

'Painstorm', a lovely girl in almost every way, had a reputation for sheer ruthlessness on the football field. Her eyes now glinted dangerously at the sight before her...

"What are you all doing in my house?" she asked. "At 4am in the morning?"

"Camille!" exclaimed Aaron positvely, leaping to his feet and striding over to her. He extended a hand hopefully but she did not shake it.

"I thought 4am was a weird time for a meeting..." mused Kristen.

"Yes," snapped Camille, her eyes glinting dangerously. "It is."

"Well," spluttered Aaron, dancing to his feet. "Since we're all here anyway, perhaps we could take this opportunity to discuss business."

He rubbed his hands together hopefully. Camille simply folded her arms.

"Like I said, we are prepared to offer you a generous salary of one million dollars."

Camille laughed. "Have you even seen me play?"

"No, but you'd be a million-dollar player! You'd be an instant pro."

"Paying a person one million dollars doesn't automatically make them a..." began Camille, but then she sighed. "Okay, fine. Send me the money and I'll do it."

"You will?" gasped Aaron, excitedly. "You mean it?"

"Sure," shrugged Camille, "but on two conditions: firstly, I guarantee nothing."

"Understood," nodded Aaron determinedly.

"And secondly, you must vacate my house immediately."

"I'm afraid that's going to be a deal breaker," frowned Aaron. "We've already moulded ass grooves into these couches: we're in it for the long haul."

Camille sighed. "There's a 24-hour McDonalds down the street, you know..."

"For real?" asked David, looking up from the floor, excitedly, and removing a hand from his pants. "How far away?"

"About eighty metres," shrugged Camille.

Stu rose to his feet slowly and pointed a finger angrily at his sister: "I'm afraid that's going to be a deal breaker."

"I'll drive you there," she pleaded. "I will literally drive you eighty metres down the street to McDonalds if it means you will leave my house."

The Sassies looked at one another thoughtfully. It appeared they had stumbled upon the jackpot...

* * *

Four Months Later:

"Alright team, gather round," grunted Doyle.

It was a humid night, and the final match of the season had been hard-fought and incredibly exhausting. The final score was 14-1.

The Sassies hobbled over to the sideline, panting heavily, in desperate need of water, air and beef.

"As you know, it was a difficult season for us, but at last, the horror run is over."

"I don't know," mused Stu. "It seemed fairly par for the course if you ask me."

"That's what I thought too, but according to the Guinness World Records, we now have the longest losing streak in the history of sports." 

"Any sports?"

"Any and all, according to the official wording."

"That's quite unambiguous."

"They wanted to make it very clear that we were the worst."

"I guess your plan failed, then, hey?" asked David.

"What plan?" replied Doyle.

"The plan where you robbed a bank, and paid Camille one million dollars. And then she joined the team."

"Huh?"

"And Camille bought us all new gold-plated jerseys."

"I don't remember that."

"You're wearing one right now."

"Oh. So I am. It's kind of heavy."

"Yes. In hindsight, I'm not sure gold-plated jerseys were a sound investment."

"Well, you know what they say about hindsight."

"Yes, I do, but I'd be surprised if you--"

"It gets the early worm."

"Of course it does."

The lights to the football field switched off suddenly, putting an abrupt end to the season.

The Sasquatches stood in a humid, pitch-black darkness, the steady drip, drip of fresh sweat blending rhythmically with the wheezing snores of one of its members. The promise of fried chicken and burgers wafted on the breeze. A hard-fought season of touch had come to a close. It was time to celebrate.