The Couch Chronicles: Pass The Joint

Stoney turned slowly toward them. The room seemed to tilt, though that might have been the couch sinking another inch toward the floor.

“Hear me out,” he said.

Every person in the room groaned except Ricky, who sat upright so fast the blanket slid into the chips.

Stoney planted both feet on the carpet. “The couch is a spaceship.”

“That is not hearing you out,” Drew said. “That is the sentence you say before making us regret having furniture.”

“No, no, think about it. We’re already seated. The coffee table is the control station. The television is the navigation feed. The cushions are suspension systems. The remote - ”

“Where’s the remote?” Jade asked.

Stoney froze.

The remote had been beside the bowl of gummy worms a moment ago. He remembered seeing it. He remembered thinking it looked like a tiny black coffin. He remembered not touching it, which was exactly the kind of memory that became legally useless after the first joint.

Astra swept a hand over the table. “Navigation control is absent.”

“Somebody moved it,” Stoney said.

Milo pointed toward the refrigerator. “The fridge took it.”

“The fridge does not have arms,” Drew said.

“That’s what it wants us to think.”

Jade checked beneath a napkin, then beneath the pizza box. “Could be in the cushions.”

Stoney slapped the couch arm. “Nobody panic. We have a minor systems issue.”

The television flashed from blue to a field of stars. A low hum rolled through the room.

Everyone stopped moving.

The hum came from the speakers, or the floor, or possibly somewhere behind Stoney’s left ear. The stars stretched into long silver lines. The coffee table gave a tiny shudder, making the soda can tremble in place.

Ricky gripped the blanket. “That wasn’t doing that before.”

“That,” Stoney said, pointing at the screen, “is the ship responding.”

Drew stood up. “No, that is the television losing its mind.”

The hum deepened. The couch cushions pressed around Stoney’s hips with warm, leathery pressure. For half a second, the living room vanished beneath a wash of purple light. The coffee table became a glowing console crowded with dials, switches, and one enormous red button labeled ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Then the room returned.

The pizza box was still there. The soda was still sweating. The red button was gone.

Astra’s eyes widened. “The visual field is reacting to our collective conceptual model.”

“English,” Drew said.

“We’re making it happen.”

“Thank you. I hate that more.”

Stoney leaned forward. “All right. We need to get this beautiful bastard moving.”

He reached for the remote’s usual spot and found only a warm patch of table.

“Everybody search,” Jade said.

“No one leaves the command area,” Stoney ordered.

“We’re sitting down,” Milo said. “That’s not exactly a difficult order.”

Milo dropped to his knees and peered under the coffee table. He emerged holding a bottle cap, two pretzels, and a silver object that turned out to be the foil seal from a yogurt container.

“Evidence,” he said.

“Of what?” Drew asked.

“Remote theft.”

“By the refrigerator?”

Milo looked toward the kitchen. The refrigerator clicked on. Its motor rattled with the smug confidence of a machine that had never been accused in court.

“Exactly.”

Astra began arranging household objects across the coffee table. He placed a coaster beside the ashtray, balanced a spoon on top of a candle, and used a stack of takeout menus as what he called a “manual stabilizer.”

Drew watched him build the ugliest control panel in human history. “What are you doing?”

“Creating an alternate navigation interface.”

“With a spoon?”

“The spoon conducts intention.”

“The spoon conducts soup.”

“Only if the soup is properly motivated.”

Stoney grabbed the television remote from the air.

Nothing happened.

He looked at his empty hand.

For one gorgeous second, the remote appeared there: black plastic, two batteries, a smear of something orange near the volume buttons. Then his fingers closed on nothing, and it vanished.

“Did anybody else see that?” he asked.

“I saw you grab air,” Jade said.

“I saw the remote,” Ricky murmured.

Milo pointed at the ceiling. “It’s cloaking.”

“Why would the remote cloak?” Drew asked.

“Because it knows we’re looking for it.”

The television shrieked. The star field twisted into a tunnel. Every loose object on the coffee table slid toward the center, including the gummy worms, which dragged themselves across the wood like colorful little corpses.

Stoney planted one hand against the couch back. “Astra!”

“Already compensating.”

Astra turned the spoon clockwise.

The hum became a growl.

The couch shifted three inches to the left.

Not metaphorically. Not in the grand interior landscape of their shared high. The whole couch scraped across the carpet with a heavy, ugly groan. The coffee table bumped its knee against the couch. The soda tipped over and poured directly into the ashtray.

Jade stared at the spreading brown foam. “That feels bad.”

“It’s coolant,” Astra said.

“It’s soda.”

“Those are not mutually exclusive.”

Drew lunged for the can, knocked the yogurt foil into the ashtray, and accidentally hit the candle. The candle rolled across the table, struck the stack of menus, and launched them into the air.

The television displayed a spinning red warning:

WRONG CONTROL SURFACE.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Stoney shouted.

“It means the ship rejects the spoon,” Astra said.

“Then why did you use the spoon?”

“I was testing it.”

“You tested it with the couch!”

The couch lurched again. Stoney’s shoulder slammed into Astra’s. Jade slid sideways into Milo. Ricky disappeared beneath the blanket entirely.

From under the blanket came his muffled voice. “I’m in the engine room.”

“You’re in a blanket,” Drew said.

“The engine room is blanket-shaped.”

The room stretched.

The walls pulled away until the living room became a vast command deck suspended in blackness. The television expanded into a panoramic windshield. The coffee table rose on glowing legs. The couch remained beneath them, enormous and upholstered, its cushions shaped like armored bulkheads. Beyond the glass, purple nebulae boiled around a field of floating refrigerators.

One refrigerator rotated slowly in space.

Milo pointed. “I fucking knew it.”

Stoney gripped the edge of the coffee table. “We’ve got a hostile fleet.”

“That’s not a fleet,” Drew said. “That’s the kitchen appliance section of a department store.”

The nearest refrigerator opened its door.

A beam of cold white light shot toward them.

Jade threw a pillow at the television.

The pillow struck the screen.

The screen flickered. The command deck collapsed back into the living room, but the couch remained tilted at an alarming angle. The pillow slid down the television and landed in the bowl of gummy worms.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then the refrigerator in the kitchen clicked off.

Milo whispered, “It knows we saw it.”

Drew pressed both hands to his face. “I’m going to bed.”

He took one step toward the hallway.

The television flashed:

CREW MEMBER ABANDONING POST.

A siren blared.

Drew stopped. “I am not crew.”

The couch bucked.

Drew flew backward into the armchair, which rolled two feet and wedged itself against the wall. A packet of hot sauce launched from the coffee table and slapped him in the forehead.

Stoney pointed at him. “Good catch, navigator.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Later. We’re in a traffic situation.”

The remote appeared again, this time hovering above the coffee table.

Everyone saw it.

It rotated lazily in the air, buttons glinting under the lamplight. The volume button pulsed red. The channel buttons shimmered blue. A tiny beam of light projected from its tip and painted a dotted route across the television.

Stoney reached for it.

The remote shot upward.

Jade grabbed for it and missed. Astra tried to catch it with the spoon. Milo threw the yogurt foil. Ricky hurled a handful of gummy worms from beneath the blanket.

The remote dodged every object with the effortless contempt of a housefly.

It drifted toward the ceiling fan.

“Oh, no,” Drew said.

The fan was off.

The remote slipped between two blades anyway.

The fan switched on.

Air blasted across the room, carrying ash, napkins, crumbs, and one deeply unfortunate pretzel into a whirling orbit. The remote spun with the fan, flashing channels across the television so quickly that the screen showed a cooking show, a horse race, a weather map, a screaming man in a mask, and what looked like the inside of a whale.

Stoney stood on the couch cushion.

“Captain,” Astra said, “get down.”

“Negative. I have visual contact.”

“You’re standing on the navigation array.”

“I am the navigation array.”

The cushion sank beneath his foot.

Stoney windmilled his arms. His heel struck the bowl. Gummy worms erupted into the air and floated around him in the fan’s wild current. One landed on his eyebrow. Another stuck to the side of his neck. A third slapped gently against the television screen and remained there, its sugar-coated body forming a bright orange comma over the stars.

Ricky crawled out from under the blanket and saluted. “Captain, the candy is breaching.”

“Seal the candy!”

“With what?”

“Your hands, Ricky!”

Ricky began catching gummy worms as they fell. Milo climbed onto the coffee table and tried to reach the fan cord. Jade grabbed Milo’s belt. Drew, still wearing the hot sauce packet on his forehead, shoved the armchair away from the wall and rammed it into the couch.

The collision jolted Stoney into the air.

He landed sitting upright in the middle cushion.

The television went black.

The fan stopped.

Every gummy worm dropped at once.

They struck the room with tiny wet plops.

The remote fell from the fan and landed perfectly in Stoney’s lap.

He stared down at it.

Astra stared at him.

Drew slowly removed the hot sauce packet from his forehead. “Nobody touch anything.”

Stoney lifted the remote.

The television came alive.

A route appeared across the screen, a bright red line leading through a swirling galaxy toward a destination marked in yellow:

WRONG COORDINATES.

“Okay,” Stoney said.

Jade leaned over the back of the couch. “That sounds bad.”

“It sounds like movement.”

“It says wrong.”

“Wrong is still a direction.”

Astra snatched up the remote, but the buttons had gone soft beneath his fingers, as if the plastic had become warm wax. He pressed power.

Nothing.

He pressed volume.

The ship groaned.

He pressed channel up.

The living room shuddered. The refrigerator door flew open in the kitchen. Cold air spilled across the floor, carrying the smell of leftovers and betrayal.

Drew pointed at Astra. “Stop pressing random shit!”

“I’m not pressing randomly. I’m mapping the interface.”

“You’re changing the channel!”

“The channel is the route!”

Stoney grabbed the nearest object on the coffee table: the bottle cap Milo had found beneath the couch.

“Try this,” he said.

Astra looked at it. “That’s a bottle cap.”

“Exactly. Dumb household object. The ship won’t expect it.”

“That is not how controls work.”

The television flashed:

MANUAL OVERRIDE AVAILABLE.

Astra went silent.

Stoney shoved the bottle cap against the remote.

The cap clicked into place over the power button.

The ship inhaled.

The sound came from the television first, a deep electronic draw. Then it came from the couch. The cushions expanded beneath them, pushing out warm air that smelled faintly of fabric softener and weed. The coffee table lights flickered on. The living room walls turned transparent.

Somewhere beyond the glass, something enormous began to wake.

Ricky gripped Jade’s sleeve. “Is it supposed to breathe?”

Astra watched the instruments bloom across the television. “In stereo.”

The couch exhaled.

The room vanished into stars.

Stoney’s hand tightened around the remote. The route ignited, dragging a red line through the galaxy at impossible speed. Nebulae smeared past. Refrigerators scattered. A giant yellow moon spun backward, wearing what appeared to be a mustache.

The couch tipped forward.

Everyone slid toward the coffee table.

Drew caught himself on the ashtray. “Where are we going?”

Astra checked the glowing route. His face went pale beneath the purple light.

“Coordinates are locked.”

“Can you change them?”

“No.”

“Can you stop it?”

“No.”

Stoney grinned as the couch thundered through the stars.

“Then buckle the fuck up.”

The television displayed their destination in enormous letters:

WRONG COORDINATES.

The couch lurched again, carrying six fully grown adults nowhere at all across the living-room carpet while their minds shot straight into the worst possible direction.

End of chapter one. 7 more chapters and about 14,362 words in the full book.