Monster - A. Lee Martinez [73]
Judy twisted her face in a childish scowl. “He’s a dummy. And he’s mean.”
“You don’t like him, then?”
Judy pretended to stick her finger down her throat and made a retching sound. Then she giggled.
Lotus asked the stone, “That man is the anomaly, the thing you kept hiding from me? One little human? You realize how easily I could kill him right now.”
She caressed the stone, and it shuddered.
“Oh, fine, play your game, then,” said Lotus. “We’ve done this a thousand times before, and it always turns out the same. But perhaps this variable will spice things up a bit.”
“What’s that?” asked Judy.
“Nothing, dear. If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to take care of.”
Judy was too busy staring at her own hand to realize Lotus had left until four minutes after the fact.
Judy continued to drink the tea. Each cup tasted more wonderful than the last, and everything seemed so much more amusing. She spent twenty minutes contemplating a red dot on the tablecloth, wondering if it was part of the pattern or a stain. She failed to notice anything else, including the small furry beast that slipped through the kitchen cat door.
At a casual glance, it could easily be mistaken for another cat. A little plumper than usual, missing a tail. The ears were larger, too. And, if someone noticed the rest of the details, they might also notice that the creature had more of a fox’s face and that it stood upright, though it had a tendency to steady itself with its knuckles when it walked. But nobody really would’ve noticed because nobody was supposed to notice. It was just one more feline in a house crawling with them.
The creature hopped onto the table, finally drawing Judy’s attention.
“Hello,” said Judy, bobbing her head with each exaggerated syllable. “Hello, hello, hello.”
The creature squeaked like a monkey as it pushed the teapot off the table.
“That’s not very nice!”
Screeching, it kicked her cup away, sending it shattering onto the floor.
Pendragon and the cats all raised their heads at this strange intruder, but by then it had darted out of the room with incredible swiftness, a fuzzy red blur.
The fox-faced creature slipped into the living room, where Ferdinand was occupying herself with a crossword puzzle while Ed read a copy of Animal Farm.
Ferdinand set down her pen and stared at the puzzle. She wasn’t very good at them, but there wasn’t much else to do at Mrs. Lotus’s.
“What’s a five-letter word for ‘a skeleton component’?” she finally asked Ed.
“White,” suggested Ed.
“That’s a color, not a component.”
Ed turned a page in her book. “Calcium?” she said absently.
Ferdinand performed a quick calculation. “That’s seven letters.”
“Is it?” said Ed.
Ferdinand grumbled. She didn’t know why she’d asked. Ed was never any help with crossword puzzles. Secretly, she wished Mrs. Lotus would buy a television, but Lotus was quite adamant against the notion. This didn’t leave Ferdinand many choices. She couldn’t just keep reading and rereading the same book over and over again like Ed.
Ferdinand reached for her pen. It was gone. A glance around the floor turned up nothing. She stood and hefted the recliner over her head.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ed.
“Lost my pen,” said Ferdinand.
“There are more pens in the kitchen. A whole drawer full of them.”
“It was my lucky pen.”
“Since when did you have a lucky pen?” asked Ed. “Since now.” Ferdinand dropped the chair and snorted. “I’ve got a third of this puzzle filled out, and that means that the pen must be lucky.”
“Mrs. Lotus says we make our own luck.”
“Mrs. Lotus says a lot of things.” Ferdinand blew a bubble and sucked it back in.
“Can’t you just find a new lucky pen, then?” asked Ed.
Ferdinand spat a wad of gum into the trash basket beside her and crammed several fresher pieces into her cheek. “It doesn’t work like that. You don’t just find lucky pens. It’s not like you can go to the lucky pen store and buy them by the handful.”
“I bet Mrs. Lotus could make you one if you asked her,” suggested Ed. “She knows