Best Costume Contest

My wife seems to really be enjoying this and as the night goes on and we mingle with more people she can’t help but show me off. By this point, tons of people must have seen me. I hear an announcement at this point that best costume is starting and people should place their nominations in the box up front. I could care less, but tons of other people head over there and participate. After a while voting seems to die down and the announcer grabs the box. He goes to a few others and they all go over the nominees. After a little while the announcer starts up again. He says that the four people with the most nominations should head up. First, he calls a woman I know from a local coffee shop. She is wearing this very extravagant ancient Chinese dress, her face painted all white, it looks very good. He calls up a man who I know to run the local gym and he’s wearing this very intricate armor and has a large fake sword. He calls up another woman who I don’t recognize and she is wearing some kind of elf costume, but it’s so detailed it’s more like a cosplay, probably a character from some game or anime.

Then I hear, “This couple is known by a lot of us for their annual bet. The one that decides what they’ll be wearing tonight. This year they held nothing back and clearly a lot of you noticed. Our last nominee is Dennis Kingsmen!”

Wait, was that my name? I look to my wife who just has a huge smile on her face. She grabs me and helps me out of the stroller and pushes me towards the stage. “Go, go!” she says.

As I walk over I can feel the stares of hundreds of people looking at me. As I get on stage and take my place next to the other three. There for the entire crowd to see I can’t help but feel my face begin to burn red. I can only imagine how pathetic I must look compared to the three wearing their cool and beautiful costumes beside me.

“Okay!” The announcer says, “Now that we have our four nominees. Look at the large screen behind them.” I noticed it on my way up here, a large screen was behind the stage. “Take out your phone and type in the URL on the screen. It will take you to a poll we’ve set up. We’ll give you all ten minutes to cast your votes. Our nominees will stand here so you can check their costumes out and make a decision.”

I look behind me and see a timer start, underneath which were all of our names. Over the next ten minutes, I watched in real-time the votes being cast.