The Hangover: Part IV

11 HOURS LATER

Phil's back was aching. In the dark abyss of sleep, he could sense the feel of cool stone underneath him, wherever he was, as he began to pull toward consciousness. With his eyes closed and the world slowly coming back to him, he tried to piece together some form of tangible thought as he wondered why his hotel bed was so hard and cool.

And who the fuck was suddenly nudging him in the side with their shoe?

Grunting, Phil's eyes fluttered open and he turned his head further to the side to peer up at what looked to be a nun glaring down at him with her arms folded across her habit.

"Qui ets i què estàs fent a terra? Aixequi. Aixequi aquest instant, senyor," she was speaking at him.

Phil knitted his brow together and turned his face back down then to look straight ahead before moving his arms out from underneath his chest, placing his palms on the cool ground beneath him and pushing himself up. Slowly, he began to climb up to his knees where he stopped and looked back up at the nun.

"Sorry...uh...where am I?" Looking around, it appeared he was in some sort of very large Gothic cathedral.

"Què?" she shook her head, not knowing what he was saying. She then unfolded her arms and gestured sternly at him to stand up. "A dalt. Posa't de peu en els seus peus."

"Huh? I'm sorry. I don't speak Spanish."

"She is not speaking Spanish, sir," came a male voice in a thick Spanish accent, but clear enough to understand.

Phil realized where in the cathedral he had been sleeping; on the altar area. He winced. Oh, he was going to hell for this one.

"She is speaking Catalan." The man speaking was a Catholic priest, who was approaching Phil and the nun. "It is the co-official language of Catalonia."

"Cata-what now? Where am I?" Phil asked, finally on his feet. He was running a hand through his hair and suddenly he suddenly felt light headed. He teetered to the side and the priest grabbed his arm to prevent him from tipping over.

"You are in Catedral de la Santa Cruz y Santa Eulalia. You are, I take it, American. It might just be easier for you to call it Barcelona Cathedral."

"Wait. Barcelona? I thought you said I was in Cata—"

"Catalonia. Yes, Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, which is one of seventeen autonomous communities here in the Kingdom of Spain."

"No," Phil began to shake his head.

"Yes," the priest insisted, gesturing to the nun that it was okay for her to leave. "Està bé, germà. Vostè pot obrir les portes ara," he said to her.

"Molt bé, pare." She turned and glared one last time at Phil before walking away toward the main entrance, her shoes clacking softly on the ground.

"No, this cannot have happened again," Phil muttered. He turned to the priest. "I'm sorry, Father, but I gotta find my friends and get out of here. I'm getting married tomorrow."

The priest nodded in understanding and smiled. "Congratulations."

"Thanks and, uh...sorry...for sleeping on your altar. I don't know how I wound up there."

Once more the priest nodded and smiled. "I was not always a priest. I understand."

Phil flashed him a smirk and gave a wave as he stepped down from the altar, grimacing at how sore he felt from having slept on such a hard surface who God knows how many hours. He looked down at his wrist watch which said it was ten minutes before nine in the morning and judging by past experience, he was probably only going on about three hours of sleep. Four if he was lucky. Letting out a yawn, he felt around for his cell phone and was thankful to find it in his back pocket. He fiddled around and then brought the phone to his ear, looking around at the amazing architecture but not really giving a fuck.

"Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Dr. Stuart Price. I can't get to your call right now because I'm out of the country and busy with my best friend's wedding. If you leave your name, number and message I'll get back to you as soon as I can. If this is a dental emergency—"

Phil didn't finish listening to the rest. Why wasn't Stu answering his phone? He always answered. As he walked by a grouping of pews he saw something out the corner of his left eye and turned fully to find Alan asleep on one of said pews. Sliding into the row, Phil leaned forward and smacked Alan on the back of the knee, causing the potbellied man to jerk awake and fall about two feet to the floor below.

"Alan, wake up. We have a situation."

Whimpering from his face making contact with the floor first, Alan did his best to sit up and turn to face Phil. "Phil?" he asked nervously, sleep keeping his from opening all the way at the moment. "Did it happen a fourth time?"

Phil let out a languid and frustrated sigh. "I think so." He offered Alan his hand and helped him up to his feet.

Alan, who was without his poncho from the night before but was surprisingly fully dressed, glanced around at where they were. "Are we in a church?"

"Yeah," Phil answered. "In Barcelona."

As that bit of information registered with Alan, his eyes widened with amusement and he giggled a little under his breath. Phil stepped back out of the pew and flexed his shoulders backward till he heard a small pop and relief flooded his senses. That was the tension in his back he needed to get rid of from sleeping where he slept.

"I just want you to know, Phil, that I didn't drug any of us," Alan assured right off the bat, touching Phil's arm. "Did you, Phil? I won't think any less of you if you did."

Phil looked down at Alan's hand, then up at his face, shaking his head. "No. I learned my lesson after New York."

"Maybe we just drank too much?"

"Maybe. It has been a while since I drank excessively. But I can't actually remember how much I might have drank." He gestured for Alan to follow him as he began to walk down the center aisle area between two sections of pews that led to the altar. "Let me try and call Stu's phone again. He's always with us when we wake up so he has to be around this church somewhere."

Phil went to Stu's number again and just let the phone ring without bringing it up to his ear. He listened carefully to hear ringing from another phone. Alan looked at Phil and followed suit, cupping his hands over his ears to help him hear better. And, sure enough, the closer they got toward the confessionals, the more pronounced the sound of a phone ringing could be heard.

Phil smirked and knocked on the confessional door the ringing was coming from. "Hey, Stu, it happened again," Phil began as he opened the door and peered inside at the figure slumped over with Alan's poncho covering their head like a security blanket.

"Hey, my poncho," Alan pointed out.

"Stu. Wake up, man." When Phil reached inside and pulled the poncho out, tossing it over to Alan, he stopped what he was doing and just stared inside the confessional. "Doug?"

Inside, Doug was stirring awake, trying to adjust himself from the awkward position he had been sleeping in. Bringing a hand up to his face, he ran it back across the top of his head, blinked a few times and then finally focused on Phil and Alan staring back at him. "Hey, what time is it?"

"About nine in the morning," Phil replied, not understanding why Stu's cell phone was ringing in a confessional where Doug was, but more importantly that Doug had woken up with them after a blackout and wasn't lost for the umpteenth time.

"I feel like I got hit by a truck. What time did we get to bed?" Doug was sitting up a little more, not completely registering where he was just yet.

"Probably only a few hours ago."

"Hey, we didn't lose you, Doug," Alan remarked, pulling his poncho on over his head and momentarily getting caught in it.

That's when it finally hit Doug. His eyes widened and he stood up. "Shit, what happened?" He began to pat himself down for something, maybe checking for missing appendages.

"We had another blackout," Phil explained. "And we're in some cathedral in Barcelona."

"Barcelona?" Doug couldn't believe his ears. "How did we get here? It took an hour by plane to get from the Barcelona airport to the Ibiza airport yesterday. Did we get here by someone's plane or by someone's boat? Oh, shit. Tracy's probably worried about where I am..."

Alan pulled something out of his pants pockets. It was the pamphlet from the day before folded up in three parts. Opening it up, he scanned it over. "Ferry boats from Sant Antoni to Barcelona can take up to nine hours of travel time," he read.

"Okay, well, I think it's safe to say we didn't come by ferry." Phil looked down at his phone, trying to mentally figure things out.

"Let's just find Stu and see what we can do about getting out of Barcelona and back to Ibiza," Doug suggested, adjusting his disheveled dress shirt he had worn the night before to Phil and Sam's rehearsal dinner and then out for the Jack and Jill party.

"We can't call him," Phil informed. "I think you have his cell phone. I called his number and the ringing led Alan and me to you."

Doug shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling out not one but two cell phones. "I guess you're right. Okay, so maybe we just give a look around this cathedral and see if he's asleep somewhere?"

The three of them split up and checked every nook and cranny available to be checked that wasn't off limits to tourists or general outsiders like them. Eventually, Phil made his way out of a gate to a cloister where he was met by several white geese waddling around a fountain in the center. He nearly stepped on one has he called out Stu's name a few times. A short amount of time later, Doug walked out into the cloister and noticed the geese right away with a smirk on his lips.

"I just tried asking a nun if she'd seen Stu but she just started lecturing me about something in Spanish."

"If it's the same nun who woke me up, she wasn't speaking Spanish," Phil replied nonchalantly as he held up his phone. "I think we should try calling the girls. Maybe Stu pulled a you like when we were in Bangkok for his wedding. Maybe he's back at the resort."

"Good idea."

Alan walked out just then and immediately grinned from ear to ear when he saw all the geese. "Oh my goodness," he gushed. "I wonder if any of them ever laid a golden egg before." As Phil selected a number to call, his blue eyes wandered over to watch Alan approach two geese with his hand outstretched only for both geese to snap their beaks defensively at him, causing Alan to jerk backward.

Phil chuckled slightly under his breath and then focused on the phone call which went straight to voicemail after a few rings. "Hey, this is Tracy. Can't get your call right now. Leave a message and I'll get back to you!"

"Tracy's not answering," Phil said to Doug, immediately scrolling through some other phone numbers to try.

"Maybe she's still asleep at the hotel or busy with my kids."

"Yeah, probably. Let me try Sam."

Doug raised an eyebrow and smirked up at Phil. "You didn't call the woman you're marrying tomorrow first?"

"Well, Tracy's always been the go-to person we call when we fuck up. Why break with tradition?" Phil brought his phone back up to his ear as Alan suddenly ran to the opposite side of the cloister, being pursued by an angry goose.

"Down, boy! Down!" Alan was shouting, pointing his finger like a parent reprimanding his child.

"This is Sam. Sorry I missed your call. Do your thing after the beep."

Phil muttered something incoherent under his breath, then audibly, "Got Sam's voicemail, too."

"Alright," Doug sighed. "Third time's a charm? Try Lauren's cell."

Phil did just that and after the second ring, he got an answer. "Hello?" came Lauren's voice.

Phil breathed a sigh of relief. "Lauren, it's Phil. Is Stu there?"

"No. I was actually just getting ready to call you. He didn't come back to the hotel last night."

"Fuck," Phil groaned. "Listen, Lauren...I don't know how or why, but we blacked out again and ended up in Barcelona."

"Barcelona? And Stu's not there with you?"

Phil shook his head despite Lauren not being able to see him doing so. "No, we woke up in a church. Doug has Stu's phone. We can't find him."

"So, let me get this straight. You lost my husband this time?"

"Looks like it," Phil spoke, looking around the cloister. Doug had wandered over to Alan in order to help assist him in call off the attacking goose. "I tried calling Sam and Tracy and got their voicemails. Can you pass the message on to them about our situation?"

"I would if they were here."

Phil was silent for a few moments. He didn't even blink. He just stared blankly ahead for what seemed like forever before replying with, "Wait...what do you mean they're not there?"

"I threw up at that bar we were at last night so Sam's sister-in-law Emily said she'd come back to the hotel with me. Sam's sister Amanda and her two friends Yolanda and Sean got back around one because they were tired and the rest of you weren't done partying yet."

"So, you don't know if Sam, Stu and Tracy would've wound up in Barcelona with us as some point last night or are somewhere else in Ibiza right now?" he questioned. "Fuck me."

"I'll be heading down to the hotel's restaurant with Henry for breakfast in a minute. I'll ask around if anyone's seen them. Maybe they got back so late they haven't even gone to bed yet and are already downstairs eating, or maybe they're out for an early morning swim."

"Whatever. Can you just keep me updated?" Phil requested. "And if you can't get a hold of me on my phone, you can call Doug or Stu since Doug has both phones."

"Alright. And, Phil...if I can't find my husband here, you sure as hell better find him and bring him back to me in one piece. I'm serious. No missing anything."

"I promise, Lauren. We'll keep each other updated if we find anything out." As an afterthought, he added, "One more thing..."

"Yeah?"

"Don't tell Sam's parents about this, especially her mother. We don't need her going Mommy Dearest on us."

"Okay."

After hanging up with Lauren, Phil put his phone away and covered his face with his hands. Doug walked over to him and scratched his head. Alan stood up from where he had taken a seat on the edge of the fountain to join the other two.

"What did Lauren say?"

"Stu didn't come back to the hotel last night and as far as she knows, neither did Sam and Tracy."

"So, our best friend and girls can be lost somewhere out there?"

Phil grimaced. It was a different feeling when it was his wedding that was the pending nuptial taking place one day after waking up from a blackout. The previous three times it had been happened to Doug, Stu and Sam's sister. When push came to shove and were he a heartless bastard, he could've easily walked away those other weekends. This was different. This was more personal because it was his fiancée that was missing."

"Maybe the three of them are together, waking up like we did and looking for us," Alan suggested, giving a few of the geese some serious stank eye.

"That's not a bad thought, actually," Phil remarked. "Okay...so, let's get out of this church and see where the day takes us. Maybe I can find that priest who was talking to me when I woke up. Maybe he saw one of the others with us or knows how we ended up here."

As the three walked out of the cloister and back into the cathedral, a goose honked at Alan, so he kicked it with the side of his foot.



Somewhere, in some sort of fancy penthouse suite, Stu was waking up. His glasses were crooked on the bridge of his nose as his eyes slowly opened and began to focus on his surroundings. As he looked around, he saw that he was in some ornately, gorgeous living room of sorts. He was sitting upright in a chair and when he went to stand up he found himself stuck in place and the force of going to stand caused him to fall forward on his face with no way to stop himself. The chair came with him and he let out a grunt of pain.

"Ow," he groaned. As he wriggled to right himself, he peered down at his chest and could see that his arms and legs were tied to the chair. His eyes immediately became big saucers and gradually he began to freak out. "What the fuck...what the fuck?"

"Stu?" came a groggy, feminine voice.

Stu rolled over to his side, the chair moving with him. He looked upward to notice two other chairs, with Tracy and Sam both strapped to them the same way he was to his. Sam was waking and looking toward him with questioning and tired eyes. Her upper right arm, which was facing him, had a large bruise on it and it looked very sore.

"Sam? I think something bad happened."

Sam's eyes began to take in Stu's position on the floor with his chair and quickly realized she was tied to her chair. Looking to her left she saw Tracy was still asleep with her head tilted back, her mouth slightly agape. Kicking her leg out, Sam was able to tap Tracy on the knee to stir her awake.

"Tracy...Tracy..."

Tracy woke up with a shudder and looked as if she was going to start hyperventilating when she saw the other two.

"Oh my God," she exclaimed. "What happened?"

Sam shrugged as best as she could in her restraints. "We don't know."

"I'll tell you what happened," came a male voice with a snide, French accent.

The man in question appeared in the doorway from to the living room area to the penthouse suite coming from probably the bedroom. Behind him were two massive, blonde Juggernaut types who would've fit in perfectly with a steroidal version of Hitler's regime some seventy-five years earlier. The Frenchman himself was also blonde, but not as fair-skinned as the thugs. His particular shade of blonde hair wasn't as light either. His eyes were dark and he looked incredibly haughty with a side of 'someone-just-pissed-in-my-cereal'.

"Who are you?" Stu asked, not able to see the man well enough from how he laid sideways on the floor with his chair.

The Frenchman gestured to one of his thugs to go over to Stu. The thug grabbed Stu's chair with him in it and lifted both up like a sack of feathers, and placed Stu and the chair upright, with Stu letting out a yelp in the process.

"I am Gabriel Marceau and you are my insurance."

Sam knitted her brow. "'Insurance'? For what?"

"Your lover boy has something that belongs to me," Gabriel answered.

Stu groaned. "Oh, great. What did Phil steal for you this time?" he muttered to Sam. She just frowned at him.

"He has two million euros that should be mine. Instead he has them. And, unless I get it in full..." Gabriel began to grin.

"What?" Tracy questioned, nervously.

"If I do not get my money in full by tomorrow morning, I will kill each of you...slowly...one by one."