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.
