“Nina,” whispered Greg. “We shouldn’t be out here at night.”
“Go home, Greg. I never asked you to come.” She walked on, the water continuously lapping around her ankles.
“If Mum finds out, we’ll be in huge trouble.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she won’t find out, isn’t it?” She spun around and glared at her little brother.
I lifted the sword—and set it back down. Pursing my lips, I glared at the weapon, then picked it up again.
The clanking of blades drifting in from the courtyard beckoned to me. Taunted me. I clutched the hilt between my palms.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I visualized the exercises my father had drilled into me.
The people here have always thought me peculiar.
Me and my family. A tyrannical, penny-pinching father. A harsh stepmother. And, of course, cold, forbidding spinster sisters.
It’s the rumors about me that make me laugh the hardest. To the people of this fair city, I’m also a kleptomaniac who’s stolen from her own family.
On August 19, as I planned my lemonade stand crawl for National Lemonade Day tomorrow, a perplexing pronouncement pinged my PDA: “Hue Splatman has given Mayor Butterbloggs six hours to surrender Adver City before he detonates a network of non-yellow paint bombs.”
I gasped. “Suffering citrus, how will we paint the town yellow? Lemon Fest will be ruined!”
When I heard about our scientists’ mutation experiments, I laughed. When I saw their results, I loaded my guns.
Tranquilizer guns, of course. As the lab’s lead animal caretaker, only the pistol on my holster was deadly.
“Don’t you have anything that’s not dangerous?” I asked Dr. Jantz, our lead geneticist.
Staring at the gray wall before him, Ben couldn’t quite remember how long he’d been sitting in the office. There were several chairs next to him, with the same cheap faux leather used at the DMV. There were no windows, and the only light came from old, pulsing fluorescent bulbs that filled the room
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“The wedding will be in the morning at the Crystal Pool. Small, with only one or two witnesses.” Aladdin cleared his throat andpushed back the dark curl that always fell onto his forehead. “Would you honor us with your presence?”
Grief grabbed my throat. So the arrangements were complete. Ever since Aladdin’s
August 31st
3:20 a.m.
I crept along the shadows of Buck’s Row in London, humming a song underneath my breath. Brownstone buildings loomed over me, and my foot clacked against a circular black plaque.
I giggled, a slightly intoxicated sound.
“Careful where you’re walking there, missum,” said a voice with a heavy London accent.
Whoever declared August National Family Fun Month must not have been a bridal consultant. Tiny cousins visiting with the bride are superb; peak wedding season is superb; enthusiastic dinos are superb. All three in the Daydream Bridal Boutique at once?
Think Jurassic Park if the jungle was made of fluffy petticoats.
“Surveillance to Headquarters, code red in Sector Five.”
I frown, tapping the holo-desk to activate the map. “The city square again? But we just—”
“Shh.” My boss, Josef, pushes his archaic spectacles farther up his nose, eyes locked on his screen.
I open my mouth to protest, think better of it, and check my smartwatch.
Blood sits heavy on an empty stomach, I thought bitterly as the crimson pool around me expanded. My insides howled with pain, yet I lay motionless, listless in my doomed state. The sticky sand embalmed me while the turmoil in my intestines raged in a battle between empty, gnawing pain and boiling, tumultuous nausea.
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Announcing the winners of the “Remember July” flash fiction contest!
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