Episode 1: The HOA From Hell

The morning sun hit Chillada's windshield like an ex's text at 2 AM, harsh, unwelcome, and impossible to ignore. He'd been driving all night, fueled by gas station coffee and a Spotify playlist titled "Songs To Outrun Your Problems To."

Sunset Beach. The invite said this was the place. "The party of the century. Don't be a little bitch. -Anonymous"

Classy.

He pulled his vintage Jeep onto the sand, because parking lots are for people who follow rules, and surveyed the shoreline. His signature sunglasses, the ones that had seen more bad decisions than a Vegas wedding chapel, caught the morning light.

The beach was empty. Dead. Not "peaceful morning" empty, "something terrible happened here" empty.

"Well, this is some bullsh,"

A crumpled flyer smacked him in the face. SUNSET BEACH BLOWOUT: CANCELLED. BY ORDER OF THE COASTAL COMMUNITY PRESERVATION SOCIETY.

Below it, in aggressive Comic Sans: "Noise complaints will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. -Patricia Pemberton, President"

"Patricia," Chillada muttered. "Of course it's a Patricia."

He found the locals huddled near the pier like refugees from fun itself. Coolers sat unopened. Bluetooth speakers stayed silent. A man clutched a bag of charcoal like it was his firstborn.

"What the hell happened here?"

A sunburned guy in board shorts turned around. "The HOA happened, man. Patricia Pemberton and her army of Karens shut everything down. Said we were 'disrupting the coastal ecosystem.'"

"The coastal ecosystem."

"She's got a petition. Three hundred signatures. Mostly from people who moved next to a beach and then complained about beach activities."

As if summoned by the mere mention of her name, a golf cart crested the dune. Behind the wheel sat a woman in her mid-fifties, visor clamped down like a helmet, clipboard clutched with white knuckles. Her shirt read "COASTAL COMMUNITY PRESERVATION SOCIETY" in letters so aggressively sans-serif they could've filed a tax return. On her visor, a small pin glinted in the sunlight, an odd beige color, shaped like an octagon.

"ATTENTION," Patricia announced through a megaphone that absolutely no one asked for. "This beach is now a DESIGNATED QUIET ZONE. No grilling. No music above 40 decibels. No..."

She spotted Chillada and froze. For just a moment, something flickered across her face. Recognition? Fear? She recovered quickly, but not quickly enough.

"No... pineapples?"

"Lady, I've been called a lot of things," Chillada said, adjusting his shades. "But I gotta say, that's a new one."

"You're not on the approved beach-goer list."

"There's a LIST?"

"Background checks. Character references. Proof of adequate sunscreen SPF." She held up her clipboard. "This beach has STANDARDS now."

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and her face went pale.

"Excuse me. I need to take this."

She stepped away, but Chillada had excellent hearing. Comes with not having ears, weirdly enough.

"Yes, I understand," Patricia whispered into the phone. "The pineapple is here. No, I don't know how he found this location. Yes. I won't fail you again."

She hung up, composing herself before turning back. But Chillada had already filed that little conversation away for later.

He looked at the defeated locals. At the silent speakers. At a grown man literally crying into his bag of Kingsford.

Something inside him snapped. The part that usually said "don't engage" and "be the bigger person" quietly clocked out and went to get a beer.

"Alright, Patricia. How about a bet?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I don't gamble. Gambling is,"

",for degenerates, yeah, I figured. But hear me out. Surf competition. Me versus whoever you want. I win, the beach party happens. You win, I leave and never come back."

"And why would I agree to that?"

Chillada smiled. "Because you're absolutely convinced you're right about everything, and this is your chance to prove it publicly."

Patricia's eye twitched. He'd found the button.

"Fine. But I'm not surfing. I'll send my nephew. He's a professional."

"Professional what?"

"Accountant. But he did surf camp in 2003."

The competition was a bloodbath. In the metaphorical sense. Mostly.

Patricia's nephew, a pale man named Theodore who clearly hadn't seen the sun since the Obama administration, stood on his board like a baby deer on ice. Chillada, meanwhile, carved waves like he was writing a breakup letter to the ocean, aggressive, fluid, and deeply personal.

He launched off a swell, executed a 360 that violated at least two laws of physics, and landed to cheers from the growing crowd.

Theodore, not to be outdone, attempted to stand up. He did not succeed. His board shot out from under him like it was fleeing a crime scene. Theodore himself became one with the sea in the most undignified way possible.

"THEODORE!" Patricia screamed.

"He's fine!" someone yelled. "He's just floating there!"

"Face down!"

"He's fine! Probably!"

While lifeguards fished out Theodore (he was fine, just dramatically embarrassed), Patricia made her move. The Coastal Community Preservation Society descended on the beach like a swarm of sensible cardigans.

"Confiscate the coolers! Silence the speakers! This beach will be QUIET if I have to,"

A motorcycle roared over the dune.

Berry Blaze landed her bike in a spray of sand, sunglasses gleaming, somehow holding two cases of White Claw without spilling a single can. Because Berry Blaze was a goddamn professional.

"Sorry I'm late!" she called out. "Traffic was a bitch. Also I stopped to key a Tesla that cut me off. Don't worry about it."

"Berry!" Chillada grinned. "Perfect timing. We need a distraction."

"Say less."

What followed was beautiful chaos. Berry did donuts around the HOA members, kicking up enough sand to constitute a minor weather event. Old Man Jenkins, who everyone assumed was just a beach fixture at this point, revealed he'd buried a full PA system under his "fishing gear."

"I've been waiting for this moment for seventeen years," Jenkins said, tears in his eyes, as he unearthed a subwoofer the size of a mini fridge.

The locals formed a human chain, passing coolers overhead, liberating grills from Patricia's golf cart prison. Someone found a generator. Someone else found an inexplicable amount of tiki torches.

By noon, Sunset Beach was transformed into what could only be described as "an HR violation in paradise."

Chillada stood behind a makeshift bar, mixing drinks with the intensity of a man performing surgery. His signature cocktail, "The Tilted Sunrise", was rumored to have once caused a man to quit his job at Goldman Sachs and become a surfing instructor in Costa Rica.

"Three shots of rum, splash of pineapple, and what I like to call 'poor decisions,'" he explained to a growing line of eager beach-goers.

"What's 'poor decisions'?"

"More rum."

Patricia stood at the edge of the party, clipboard shaking, watching her quiet zone become the loudest celebration the California coast had seen since Prohibition ended.

"This... this isn't REGULATION," she sputtered. "This isn't APPROVED. This isn't,"

Berry Blaze rolled up beside her and shoved a White Claw in her hand.

"Patricia. Babe. Sweetie. Honey. When's the last time you did something that wasn't on a checklist?"

"I don't, that's not, I have RESPONSIBILITIES,"

"Cool, cool. So never. Got it." Berry cracked open her own can. "Drink that. Doctor's orders."

"You're not a doctor."

"I played one at a Halloween party once. Same thing, basically."

Three White Claws later, Patricia was teaching a group of twentysomethings how to properly organize a color-coded filing system. They were, inexplicably, very into it. But every few minutes, she'd glance toward the horizon, toward something no one else could see, and her hand would drift to that beige pin on her visor.

"She's either loosening up or having a breakdown," Berry observed.

"Either way," Chillada shrugged, "she's at the party."

As the sun began its descent, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink and "definitely too many jello shots", a young surfer stumbled up to Chillada, holding a barnacle-crusted bottle.

"Dude. DUDE. This washed up on shore. There's something inside and I'm like 80% sure it's not a severed finger this time."

"This time?"

"It's a weird beach, man."

Chillada uncorked the bottle. Inside was a weathered piece of paper, the kind that looked like it had been through some shit. Partial coordinates, scrawled in handwriting that screamed "written while drunk on a boat." Only one word was fully legible:

"TIKI"

And below it, barely visible: 1 of 3

Chillada frowned. One of three what? He pocketed the paper, made a mental note, and looked back at the party.

Patricia had sobered up. She was staring at him now, something cold in her eyes. She walked over, heels somehow finding purchase in the sand.

"You think you won something today," she said quietly. "You didn't. You have no idea what you've started."

"Lady, I just wanted to throw a beach party."

"There are no coincidences. The invite that brought you here? The bottle that just washed up? They're already watching."

She turned and walked back to her golf cart, clipboard tucked under her arm like a soldier carrying wounded.

Old Man Jenkins appeared at Chillada's elbow. He'd been silent for a while, which was weird for a guy who'd spent seventeen years waiting to blast a subwoofer.

"Don't mind Patricia. She's scared. Has been for years."

"Scared of what?"

Jenkins looked at Chillada for a long moment. Then he smiled, a knowing smile that had absolutely no business being on a beach bum's face.

"You'll find out soon enough. Keep that paper safe, son."

Before Chillada could ask how Jenkins knew about the paper, the old man had melted back into the crowd.

Chillada looked at the sunset. Looked at Berry, who was now arm-wrestling Theodore (Theodore was losing badly). Looked at the paper in his pocket.

He smiled, adjusting his sunglasses.

"Well, shit. This vacation just got interesting."

He walked back to his Jeep and tossed the paper into the glove box, next to three unpaid parking tickets and a truly ancient pack of gum.

He didn't notice the small drone hovering a hundred feet above, its camera lens focused directly on him. Didn't notice it had been there all day. Didn't notice when it silently banked east, heading toward a destination he couldn't imagine.