Pushing Up Daisies - Part One (REWRITE)

Next part won't have the 'rewrite' in the title. Anyway. This part was very fun to write. I like it a lot. And the man who ran the cemetery will forever be 'the man who ran the cemetery', because I can't think of a good name for him :P And poor Benjamin Anyone.  But hello Fredrick!

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The mud of the graveyard gave in under Thalia's boots and pulled her down a little bit with every step.  The air smelled damp, which didn't exactly make sense, but she couldn't describe it any better. Thalia walked through the headstones without any real destination.  Her job was to find, and she was searching.

It was a dark, cloudy day, and it was raining.  It was always raining.

She sat down on a bench and closed her eyes thoughtfully, and then her mind slid away.  It spread out, slipping and snaking its way through the graves and monuments.  As soon as they were touched, the consciousnesses of all the rabbits and snakes and other such creatures lit up.  Thalia stopped the movement of her thoughts at a good fifty yard radius.  The simple, vague animal thoughts floated around gently in her head, not clamoring to be heard.  Thalia happily set about picking through them, but nothing jumped out at her.  None of them could be considered worrying or malicious by human standards, which meant that nothing was more than just typically animalistic.  The mind reader sighed, quite literally gathered her thoughts, and kept walking.

Her job was fairly simple: find and capture whatever was eating the new burials.  The graveyard did not discriminate.  According to the man who ran the cemetery, the process was usually a very simple one, as long as the clients payed.  First, a client would provide them with a new body, usually a dead one.  Then the people at the cemetery would clean it up.  Sometimes this involved killing the body, you know, just in case.  The next day, they'd stick the person in the ground, cover it up, mark it with a stone, and what's done is done.

Except that lately, the morning after the burial, the people at the cemetery would find the new graves dug up and painted generously with blood and bits of gore.  There would be no body.

That's where Thalia proverbially flew onto the scene.  It was a simple enough job, but there was one problem: the graveyard was big.  And Thalia was, in the nicest of terms, lazy.  But she kept plodding forward.  She had a job to do, after all.

The rain continued to drum on the world around her.

***

Anyone can recognize a monster when they see one.  It takes no prior experience with such things to know when you are about to be eaten by something that seems to be out of a storybook.  If one would like to arm oneself with the great weapon of knowledge, however, it would do one good to take a quick trip inside a local preschool and ask some of the children there to draw a monster.  Children know monsters far better than their parents, who think the only monsters are criminals and government officials.

Anyone can recognize a monster when he sees one, too.  He was a short, portly man with graying hair, probably somewhere in his mid forties.  He didn't have a wife or children and his parents had died the previous year, but he did have a nice job with the Sanctuary.  He also had a kind face, and despite his odd name, he was generally well liked by people.  Monsters too, apparently.

People were going to miss Benjamin Anyone.

***

The man who ran the cemetery was unimpressed.  Granted, he was always unimpressed, but now he was extremely unimpressed.  It was making him pace.  He didn't like pacing.  Just the other week a dog had bitten him and left him with a limp.  But pacing made him look intimidating, without or without the limp.

He stopped pacing.  “Miss Circe,” he said slowly, trying to hide his irritation, “I'm afraid I misheard you.”

“No, you didn't.”

He ignored her.  “Your words got jumbled in my ears, and I thought you were asking entrance to the ancient and restricted sections of our graveyard.  Would you be so kind as to repeat yourself?”

“I really don't see the point of that if you heard me correctly the first time,” Miss Circe said.

The man who ran the cemetery examined her shrewdly.  She was slumped in on herself,  scowling and dripping water all over the chair and the floor.  He crinkled his nose in distain. Someone would need to be called in to take care of that later, along with her muddy footprints.  The room was starting to smell very much like the graveyard.

“Let me ask you a question.  Do you know the meaning of the word 'restricted'?”  Miss Circe opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off.  “It means that even if you were the most important Grand Mage in the world, you would still not be allowed access to those sections of the graveyard.  Do you understand?”

Miss Circe frowned.  “I don't think it'd say that if I looked in a dictionary.  Where'd you get that definition?”

Putting up with this girl, the man who ran the cemetery decided, was going to be very hard indeed.

“I'm sorry, Miss Circe, but I can't let you into those parts.”  He smiled in what he thought was a fatherly manner.  “Perhaps there are still places you can check?  It's only been about three days since you started looking, and our graveyard is very big.”

She crossed one of her ankles on top of the other knee and raised an eyebrow at him.  The feeling that his mind was laid out like a book for her to read was back.  “I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't speak to me like I'm five.  Also, please remove that ridiculous expression from your face.  It'd be really unfortunate if you got stuck like that.”

His smile faltered, then fell off completely, and Miss Circe gave him an approving nod.  The weird feeling went away as she got up and stretched.  “I'll look in the potter's field, but I'm going to need access to those old graves eventually.”

“I really don't think you will.”

“Something's eating your burials.  Do you want me to find it or not?”

He glowered at her.  “Get out of my office.”

***

The sewers of London are not a pretty place.  In fact, the sewers of anywhere are not pretty places.  The details of sewers are best left unspoken, though they are very wet, dark, and smelly.  The perfect place for a monster.

The monster didn't have a name, but it was a he.  If he did have a name, it would have been Fredrick.  It had always seemed like a perfectly respectable name to him, and monsters do want to be respected, even the ones who like to eat freshly dead things.  Monsters are people too.

Fredrick could be mistaken for a giant snake, or maybe a bird, or perhaps even a turtle.  He actually looked like some sort of demented mutation of all three.  With claws.  Big, sharp claws.

He was quite far away from his usual home.  He didn't normal stray so far – not all monsters like to be adventurers – but he was hungry.  Hunger, in a monster, is a powerful thing.  Blood dripped from his jaws – thick, warm, and wet.  Fredrick's latest meal had been tasty, but quite messy.

One thing is to be understood about monsters, and that is that they don't understand that the dead body they just ingested was your great Aunt Susie.  They just do what their instincts tell them, with minimal thinking.

Fredrick lifted his nose into the air and sniffed once.  Then, with the grim certainty that monsters always seem to have, he turned and started home.

***

Dead people, Thalia discovered, were not good company.

You could walk around a graveyard all day, and not one of them would talk to you.  Ghosts, or at least ones who want to chat, are apparently quite hard to come by.  There didn't seem to be any zombies, either.  That was disappointing.  Thalia would have liked to see a zombie.  It would have given her something to kill.

She sighed in frustration, snapping her mind back.  Not even the potter's field had wielded any results.   She turned and walked back towards the main cemetery.  Nothing was out of the ordinary.  Not even the few dead minds she did happen encounter.  They just promptly told her to shove off, and that was normal for a mind reader in a cemetery.  Was the man who ran the cemetery just setting her up?  Was this all a joke?

No.  She shook her head furiously.  No, there was something.  There were even some things.  Her mind would brush them occasionally, just enough to get a feeling, and then they'd be gone.  Vanished.  That wasn't normal, and that was also the most irritating part.

Thalia stopped by a gravestone and smiled at it wearily.  The stone read 'BEATRICE.'

“Hello Beatrice,” she said.  “I don't suppose you could help me.”

“Why, I do suppose I could.”

Current State of a Story

Err, well......this is not a story, but it has to do with one.

I'm going to re-write "Pushing Up Daisies".

It....it just......it's not what I wanted it to be. When I started "Pushing Up Daisies", it was a much darker, creepier story. It had a more twisted plot with much more adventure. I think I strayed from my original plan because I was worried about keeping people waiting for the next part. So I want to redo it. Everyone who was in the story so far will be in it again, I promise. I can't promise how soon, though. I feel like I introduced everyone too quickly and brought them all together too fast. Timing, people. Timing is everything.

So, yes. Same cast of characters, same title, just new plot. Trust me, I love funny fanfics as much as anyone, but "Pushing Up Daisies" wasn't meant to have humor as a main theme (though there still will be some, obviously)

And another reason I want to redo it is that I'm not happy with my character in it. As I've been writing her more in private projects, and writing other characters, I've come to have her be a more well-rounded person, with more dimension. When I look back at my first blog posts and at my very first fanfiction, and I look at my writing now...it's come a long way, but it still needs to improve.  And so does my OC.

The prologue will still be the same because that was part of the original plot.


I'm sorry about this, but I want to be proud of my writing. Hopefully everyone will enjoy the rewrite as much as they did this attempt.

Hey Look a Post

This is not a story.  I forgot that it's New Year's Eve today, and totally forgot to write something.

2011 was probably the best year of my life so far.  There were bad parts, but the good parts out weight those by, like, a million. And because I forgot to write a story or a poem, here's two quotes by one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman:

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness.  I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can.  And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

And......

"I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and like in return.  And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind."

I like these quotes.  These are good quotes. And now go look at Neil's hope for this year, because I'm too lazy to just put it in here myself: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html

Thanks, Mom, for that link :)

So yeah. Let's make 2012 as good a year as 2011 was! :D


Until the apocalypse kills us all and we all come back as zombies :P

The Apocalypse

The Divine and Diabolical powers got impatient and tried to bring about the End in 2011 instead of waiting until 2012. The world came out of it OK, but there's one particular unidentified immortal being who isn't very happy about all of this. And she has something to say about it.

Happy Holidays, everyone :)
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The End had come and gone, and really, the world wasn’t much better or worse for it.  There were just a lot less people and a lot more zombies.  But that was okay, most people reasoned.  Less people meant more resources – thus better lives – for the survivors, and more zombies meant that zombie hunters had more prey to hunt.  So really, the End hadn’t been such a bad thing.

Of course, that was all in the perspective of humans, and humans couldn’t be trusted.

Anna and Alex were sitting in a diner together.  Alex looked like a fairly normal young man.  Perhaps he did scowl a bit more than usual, and yes, perhaps his eyes were an unnatural red, but people these days had learned not to judge.  He was glaring out the window at the hazy drizzle.  Alex didn’t like the rain.

He glanced over at his companion.  Anna was holding a newspaper in front of her face, and her fedora was pulled low over her dark eyes.  Alex knew that even if he spontaneously combusted, she would probably just ignore it.

A zombie stumbled into the diner, roaring and gnashing its teeth.  Four zombie hunters sitting at the bar spun around on their spinning stools and shot it repeatedly until they were sure that the undead was really dead.

Alex yawned and sipped his coffee.  Anna turned a page in her newspaper.

“You'd think,” Anna said after a while, folding her newspaper shut and setting it down carefully on the table, “that people would be talking more about the fact that we just experienced Armageddon.”

“You know what they say.  ‘Talk is cheap, but a wise man chooses when to spend his words’.”

“Yeah, and when that wise man is getting his throat torn out by zombies because he was too much of a prick to scream for help, I’ll be laughing.”

Alex’s eyebrows slowly traveled up his forehead and were quickly concealed by his fantastic hair.  “Someone’s not happy.”

“I’m not paid to be happy.”

“You’re not paid at all.”

Anna sighed huffily and glared at him.  “I wasn’t looking forward to the End, okay?  I quite liked the world the way it was, thank you.  But there wasn’t much I could do about it, considering that I was stuck upside-down in a supply closet until the actual day of the End.  So what I thought, while the blood was rushing to my head, what I thought was, ‘Okay, the world is going to end.  Too bad.  But at least it’ll be something new and interesting, to see the world during the rapture.’  And guess  what, Al?  It wasn’t interesting.”

“…Anna,” Alex said.  “The seas boiled.  The ground shook.  People died.  The dead were raised.  Volcanoes exploded.  And you’re telling me that you were bored by it?”  He shook his head.

Anna spread her hands.  “I expected the world to be left in more carnage.  Obviously, it’s not much of an apocalypse if there’s still civilization after it.  Besides, there was not clear winner.”

“A truce was called,” Alex sighed, resting his cheek on his hand.

“Exactly.  In all our millennia of living, Alex, you ever hear of the Divine and Diabolical powers calling a truce?  I think not,” Anna shot back.

“Well, whatever.  I think we can agree 2011 was a pretty rubbish year for the End to come about.”

“They should have waited until twenty twelve.”

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I love winter break. It gives me time to work on my book. Obviously, I take advantage of this time and do what I always do, and that is slack off xD I should just compile all the things I write when I'm procrastinating and try to get it published as a short story book.

Rapid Eye Movement

"People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles.  Dreams are real.  But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."

- Neil Gaiman

•••

Ren could feel herself.  She could feel the crisp, pastel blue sheets crinkling under her as her muscles tensed, could feel the warm weight of the comforter wrapped in a messy nest around her body.  The mattress was doing what all good mattresses do and was sagging comfortably under her weight.  There was a fluffy pillow under Ren’s head.  Somewhere in her mind, she was perfectly aware of all of this.  A part of her knew that she was asleep and dreaming.

The lights were going out, one by one.  All the students were being ushered out of the school.  It was nighttime.  ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’ didn’t come into it.  It was a dream, and dreams didn’t need to have a point.

The floor was glowing green.  That was bad.  Something bad was going to happen when the entire floor turned green and when the lights all went out.  For some reason, Ren wasn’t running away like everyone else.  There were people stuck in the school’s lower level.  Someone needed to go save them, and in dreams, the dreamer was always either the victim or the hero.  Ren was the dreamer, and right now, she wasn’t a victim.

Something in the outside world jolted Ren, trying to bring her back to consciousness.  But the dream wasn’t letting go.  It tugged and pulled at her, like the rough waves of the ocean, keeping her from waking.

The stairs were all green.  The antagonist of this dream didn’t want to be beaten.  Ren swung her leg over the balustrade and with a sort of terrified, excited scream, she slid down the railing.  Her no-longer-white sneakers flew out in front of her and caught the rushing floor square in the face.  Momentum was nonexistent right then, and she didn’t go tumbling into the wall.

The ghastly green light began creeping out from the shadows, reaching slowly for her.  Ren took off at a run.  The thing hiding in the dark wouldn’t wait much longer.  She was playing a game against time and she was losing.  It was a dream, but the sense of urgency was scarily real and overpowering.  The orchestra room.  There were people trapped in the orchestra room.  Ren wondered how she knew that

.

But in dreams, you just know things.

Ren’s mind lurched again, balancing precariously on the edge of consciousness.  She didn’t want to wake up yet, though.  Too many of her dreams were ended at the wrong times.

Someone was calling after her.  She recognized the voice, but couldn’t place its owner.  They were telling her to come back.  But Ren’s legs wouldn’t let her.  Dreams were powerful, especially when a lucid dreamer decides not to take control of their own dream.  The dreams sink their claws in then.  They realize they are in control and go power-crazy, refusing to be dominated.

‘You had your chance,’ the dreams say.  ‘You had your chance and you didn’t take it.  It’s our turn now.’

Ren flung over the doors of the orchestra room.  Someone screamed.  A mass of shadow rushed at her face.

She woke up.

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This is how I spent my day: sitting on my couch, looking up quotes by Neil Gaiman, contemplating irrational fears and other aspects of life, and finally, writing this. Sometimes I think I think too much. Basically, this was a way for me to organize my thoughts about some things. When I dream, I'm a lucid dreamer. I almost always know that, yes, I'm dreaming, and nothing is real, but I don't take control of my dreams like some people do. A common accompaniment to lucid dreaming is rapid eye movement cycles. REM sleep has more "creativity" than NREM (non-REM) sleep, and dreams that occur during REM are more easily recalled.

Over the past few days I've been having loads of dreams (I don't dream that often). The dream that Ren endures during this story is quite similar to one I had last night, though mine had the Harry Potter cast in it (I don't know why). The "bodily awareness" that is described in the beginning isn't something that happens normally, I think. I get it a lot though. Just last week, during a lovely dream about a zombie apocalypse, I was perfectly aware that I was sleeping on my fist, which was jammed in my tummy. Also, Ren's name is just me changing the last letter of REM. Did anyone notice that? (Oh my God, why is this so long?)

Distorted Cages - A Poem

Title is kind of crappy :( Ignore it, I couldn't come up with a better one. Here's another poem. I swear I'll have a happy one up soon! But read this for now. Haven't been able to write poetry since my poem spam last month. It feels good to write like this again.

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Rusted, locked up bird cages

Breeding places for old rages

The glowing light seems so surreal

Death has already closed the deal

While broken hearts steadily bleed

Betrayal plants a sullen seed

The pressure tears at happy minds

And individuality meets its binds

Heartless jailers stand alone

Trapped in silent jails of their own

Humans are sheep, with gods as herders

You never forget the eyes of a murderer

Good reasons don’t exist anymore

The only ones given are sad and poor

There isn’t anything worth anything left

“Death” will always rhyme with “breath”

The clock is running out of precious time

And everyone is guilty of the same crime

The longest word used to be “smile”

But now it doesn’t stretch a mile

It doesn’t stretched out of sight

And crumbles under the weakest might

A pathetic, worthless, melancholy gesture

It only helps old wounds fester

It’s ridiculous how pathetic we are

We don’t take care of the land we scar

So many now have nowhere to go

Choking to death in the endless snow

Even if tears are shed

Blood will still always run red

Cruelness is so easily shown

Nobody has a good thought to loan

There is no significance in a single tear

And every day is lived in fear

Mechanical laughter and brainwashed thoughts

Has anyone even considered the cost?

Is this what we are, so blatantly conceited?

The human spirit is so defeated

Is this the definition of a good world?

It’s a place where evil plots are easily furled

Rain and petals float softly to the ground

Just cover your ears – block out the sound

A broken person doesn’t speak

Once strong thoughts become weak

There is no border between hope and despair

Dreams are torn down without a care

The gates have finally swung tightly closed

The final song has been composed

Through a distorted lens, a perfect world is seen

People go on what they just barely glean

Incorrectly, a criminal is hung

The dead sing what can’t be sung

It doesn’t matter how loud you cry

We still don’t know what it takes to fly

The Adventures of Holly Quill and a Penguin: Part One

Well, here's the first part of a side fanfiction revolving around my OC, Holly. She doesn't get much love. I mean, Soot at least had a cameo appearance in "Pushing Up Daisies", which Thalia is featured in, but NO HOLLY. So I decided to introduce her with a bang. Well, not really a "bang", more like a rampaging rhino and a crazy penguin. In Australia.
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For some odd reason, Holly wasn’t very surprised when she found herself clinging to the back of a rampaging rhino for dear life on a Tuesday.  There was just something about Tuesdays.

All the zoo-goers were running around screaming.  Or, at least the adults were.  Holly felt sorry for them, somewhere under her feeling of ‘Holy bananas I’m riding a rhino oh my God oh my God.’  The kids were all either laughing like maniacs, standing there like idiots with their mouths open, or bursting into spazz dances of terror.  It was amusing.

The rhino, which Holly had named Rick Riordan the Raged Rampaging Rhino (Tiddlywinks for short), roared.  It sounded like a freight train.  A very angry, rhinoceros-y freight train.  Holly wasn’t entirely sure it was a real rhino.  Tiddlywinks may very well have been a monster in the disguise of a rhino.

“Should’ve listened to Sharon and bought that book on magical beasts,” Holly grumbled to herself.  “Then I’d know if this stupid thing was real or not.”

Apparently, Tiddlywinks did not appreciate being called ‘stupid’.  It came to a sudden, screeching halt, bucking its rear end into the air.  Holly was too busy thinking about what books she should read to find out more about magical creatures when she got home and didn’t notice herself go flying into the air.  Only when she reached the height of her arch and was upside down did Holly realize that she was no longer clinging to Tiddlywinks’s armored back.  The next realization was that she was flying.  Holly just had time to think ‘Look Ma, no hands!’ before she went crashing into the icy water of the penguin enclosure.

Anyone who has ever gone flying face first into the pool in a penguin enclosure knows that it feels rather like belly-flopping onto concrete.  Very cold, wet concrete.  But as most people had probably not ever done such a thing and didn’t know what it felt like, Holly considered herself to be special, as only a couple unlucky souls in all of history had probably been doomed to share her fate.  In fact, she might have even been the only one.

“I’m the Chosen One!” Holly shouted, but the fact that she was still underwater made her ridiculous claim sound only like a bunch of bubbly gurgling.  Realizing her mistake, Holly used the water to guide herself to the surface.  Her head broke the surface, and she gulped at the air ravenously.  Holly let the water push her to the edge of the pool, as her hair was plastered all over her face and made seeing rather difficult.  If she just tried to swim, she’d probably end up drowning.

Holly dragged herself onto the dry, rocky, blessedly solid ground.  Tiddlywinks was still causing anarchy, but that could wait until Holly had caught her breath.  After she had regained feeling in her limbs, Holly moved her hands around ridiculously in the air.  The water evaporated from her clothes and hair, leaving her contently dry.  She didn’t need to move her hands like that, but it was fun nonetheless.

Her hand suddenly flew to her face, and she successfully punched herself in her nose.  Sometimes, she wondered if her IQ really was 208.  Maybe there had been a smudge on the result paper and Holly’s IQ was only actually 8.  Sharon always said that whenever Holly managed to get her foot stuck in the leaf blower.  But then again, Sharon was the one who had run screaming around their house with a butcher knife, trying to kill a fruit fly.  Holly’s aunt was strange.  But punching herself had revealed that, yes, Holly was wearing contacts and had left her glasses at home – she hadn’t lost them.

A penguin walked over and pecked Holly’s head.  Holly twitched and glared at the penguin.  “Go away.  I’m not a fish.”

Peck.

Twitch.

Peck.

Twitch.

Peck.

Twitch.

Peck.

Twitch.

Pe-

“Raaahhhh!  Stop pecking me!”  Holly flailed back and forth, waving her limbs around like she was having a seizure.  After a few minutes of spazzing, Holly flopped back onto the ground and looked triumphantly at the penguin.

It pecked her again.

“You,” Holly hissed, “are one persistent penguin.”

Peck.

Twitch.

Holly pushed herself to her feet and started looking for a way out of the penguin enclosure.  The persistent penguin followed her around, occasionally pecking her hand.  Holly found a latter, then looked at the penguin and sighed.

“Oh alright.”  She picked it up, tucked it under one arm and scampered up the latter.  She jumped the little fence around the enclosure and walked off whistling, as though screaming people, random penguins, angry rhinos named Tiddlywinks were part of her everyday life.

The ground in front of her exploded.

Holly screamed and fell over as a large chunk of concrete hit her head.  She felt the blood run down her already bruised face, dripping onto her shirt.  When the loud, offending noises and flying bits of road seemed to have come to an end, Holly warily pried her eyes open.  The sky was very blue.

She dragged herself to into a sitting position and held the penguin – which was somehow completely unharmed – in front of her.  “You okay?”

The penguin nodded, which was rather creepy.

There were footsteps – not running footsteps, just footsteps.  They were coming towards Holly, but quite honestly, contemplating the nodding of her penguin was far more interesting than looking up at the person approaching.  She was probably going to get killed like that someday.

“Are you alright?”

The person talked funny, like all the people here in Australia.  Holly looked up and gazed at the person blankly.  It was a young man, probably around twenty five years in age.  He needed a shave, had brown hair, bright green eyes, and a long brown jacket.  He looked completely normal.

Then again, he was holding a gun and was the only person besides Holly who wasn’t having a heart attack right now.

“Are you a mage too?” she asked.  Holly already knew the answer, but she figured asking was politer.

The man smiled.  “Yes, I am.”

Holly nodded.  “Cool.  I’m an Elemental.  I don’t think you are.  Not sure why.  Call it a women’s intuition.  You exploded the road.”

“Of course I did.  It was awesome, for one thing, and there’s a rhino running loose for another.”

“Tiddlywinks.”

“What?”  The man looked confused.

“The rhino is named Tiddlywinks,” Holly said, standing up.  “Well, that’s short for Rick Riordan the Raged Rampaging Rhino.”

“The zoo named a rhino Tiddlywinks.”  The man shook his head.  “What is the world coming to?”

“No, I named the rhinoceros.  What’s your name?  Mine is Holly Quill.  I’ve been referring to you as ‘the man’ in my head, and it’s getting rather troublesome.  I want to know your name.”

The man looked at her skeptically.  “How do I know you aren’t trying to kill me?  Hell, it may well have been you who set ‘Tiddlywinks’ free.”

Holly rolled her eyes.  “I risked brain damage by the road you exploded to protect this annoying penguin, and I’ve just gone for a rodeo ride on the rhino that landed me in a pool of water.  No, I won’t kill you.”

“So we’re on the same side here.”

“Yes.”

“And if I just walk away?”

“I’ll follow you around, singing in horrid Spanish.”

“You’re not leaving me with any choice, are you?”

“That’s not how I operate.”

“Damn.”  The man shook his head and held out his hand.  “Israel Elysium.”

Holly shook Israel’s hand.  “Holly Quill.”

“I know that already.”

“And now you know it again.”

Tiddlywinks roared, surprisingly close.  Holly jumped in the air and screamed, still somehow clinging to her 

penguin.  Israel just whirled around.  The rhino roared again, probably mad at being ignored, and charged.

Israel obviously had more sense than Holly did.  He realized that shooting the horn of a rhino would probably have little to no effect, and that it would take some time for a charging rhinoceros to change course.  He sprinted around the giant hole in the road, well out of Tiddlywinks’s way.  Holly, however, stood there gaping at the rhino and did what most people would have considered to be the stupidest thing in the world – she closed her eyes and held the penguin in front of her for protection.

Surprisingly, the rhino skidded to a halt.  Israel’s jaw dropped.  The rhino seemed to the staring at the penguin and shaking in fear.  Holly opened her eyes, wondering why she hadn’t been impaled yet.

“…Tiddlywinks is scared of my penguin,” she whispered in awe.  She slowly circled around the rhino.  It turned with her, keeping its eyes trained on the penguin.  When Holly advanced, it backed up.  In her peripheral vision, Holly noticed Israel waving his arms back and forth crazily and mouthing something at her.  Unfortunately, he was too far away for her to see what he was trying to communicate.

‘What?’ she mouthed back.

Israel spazzed some more, mouthing the same thing to her.  She still didn’t get it, never halting her advance on the rhino.  Holly didn’t have to wait long to find out, though, as just then Tiddlywinks fell in the hole in the ground with a loud crash.

Holly blinked in surprise.  “Oh.”

Israel walked over, dragging his hand down his face in a comical manner.  “I was trying to tell you to watch out for the hole.”

“Well, we caught it, didn’t we?”

They peered over the edge of the hole.  Tiddlywinks was unharmed, though it did look rather angry to be in a hole.

Holly looked up and noticed some people in uniforms hesitantly approaching them.  “Uh oh.  Zoo keepers.  They’ll deal with Tiddlywinks.  Time to scram, Israel.”  She wrapped her arms more firmly around her penguin as they walked away.

Israel frowned.  “Are you going to put the penguin back?”

“No.  It’s my penguin now.”

“The rhino was scared of your penguin.”

“That it was.”

“Why?”

Holly snorted.  “That’s like asking ‘What the hell is a Hufflepuff?’  There is no answer.”

“True.”

“Was the rhino a real rhino?  I thought it might be a monster.”

“No, Tiddlywinks wasn’t magic.  It was just a really pissed off rhino.”

“Cool.  By the way, why did you blow up the road?”

“Because I was…” Israel’s face fell.  “Oh crap.”

“What?” Holly asked.

“I was chasing a serial killer.”

“Ah.”  Holly nodded like this happened every day.  “And now he got away?”

“I do believe so.”

“Then let’s go find him!”

“…You want to spend your Tuesday chasing a serial killer?” Israel asked incredulously.

“I don’t exactly have a social life,” Holly replied.

“Do you need parental permission?”

Holly shook her head.  “My parents are in Alaska.  I’m here with my aunt.  She won’t really care.  I’ll call her, but all she’ll say is something along the lines of ‘Don’t die.’”

I

srael nodded.  “Alright then.”  An explosion sounded from somewhere past the zoo gate, accompanied by a large dust cloud.

“Was that your serial killer?” Holly asked.

“Probably,” Israel said.  “Go put the penguin somewhere, then we can go.”

“No way.  Harry Potter is coming with us.”

“…”

“What?”

“You named the penguin.”

“Yes.”

“You named it Harry Potter.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the best you could come up with?”

“Yes.”

“We should probably go get the serial killer now, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all you can say right now?”

“…Yes.”