A normal life

Sometimes I like to pretend I live a normal life.  When my neighbor's yappy chihuahua wakes me up in the morning (I've decided against the shotgun approach so far), I close my eyes and pretend that the thing's bark is my alarm.  I imagine getting out of bed, taking a shower, putting on makeup and heels, and running out the door to beat the traffic.

Boots laced.  Hair in a ponytail.

I create this whole office world in my mind–a frustrating boss who yells a lot, co-workers who act like high schoolers.  An air conditioner that doesn't work blasting lukewarm air into my office.   Of course I'd be in an office.  My temperament would not agree with a cubicle. 

Jacket from the kitchen, pear from the fridge.  Shoulder holster?  Check. 

But then, I wouldn't get to shoot people as they run away with someone else's stuff.  I'd never get away with wearing jeans and leather boots in the world of power suits and lattes.  Seriously, those people can't even function without drugging themselves every morning and afternoon. 

"Got the map?"
"Yeah, it's in my pocket."
A revving engine.  The click of seatbelts. 

I would listen to books on tape performed by full casts of actors with voices like James Earl Jones and Julie Andrews.  When people cut me off in traffic, I'd just smile because it might mean four more seconds of someone else living a life of adventure, while I was in the (relative) safety of my car.

Scrrreeeeeee!
"#*$&!  Learn to drive!"
"Geez, Méli.  Calm down."
"Sorry."
The target is in the university library.  Right turn, left turn, left turn.  Wait.  

At work, I would gossip by the water cooler with the other girls.  If there wasn't a water cooler, I would buy one and put it outside my office door so I could listen.  There would be a lot of drama that would make each day feel like the end of the world.

"Don't do anything stupid."  A linked pair of zip ties tucked into the waistband of my jeans.
"You know me, Tiberon.  I'll be fine."  As wicked a grin as possible. 

When I got home after work, I would wind down with a glass of wine.  Maybe scotch.  I'd watch old TV shows and knit hats for my friends.  My cat would curl up next to me and try to bat the knitting needles while I worked, and I'd scratch her ears and smile when she purred.

The whoosh of automatic doors.  Hushed whispers and footsteps.   
Up, up, up to the stacks.   Books.  Books.  Books.
The target.

I would go to bed early, wearing a silky pajama dress.  My dreams would be about waterfalls and rainbows and people at work and things I had read in the books I had stacked by my bed.

A gun clicks.  Zip tie around his wrist before he turns around. "You?!"
Another wicked grin.  "Me.  Let's do this quietly, yes?"
Down, down, down the stairs.  

Saturdays and Sundays would be for sleeping in. I'd have a living garden and green grass.  Clean carpet.  A fridge full of fresh food I bought at the market.

"I'm not getting in that car."
An elbow crunches into a nose.
"I'b gettinb in da ca!"
Squealing tires.  The drop-off. 

My friends wouldn't know what you had to pack to pick up a target hiding out in Sao Paolo or Niamey.  At our get-togethers, we'd talk about their children and PTA meetings and remodeling our houses. 

"Six grand." 
"Sweet, thanks." 
The dog's tail physically can't wave any faster. 
The holster and guns go back in the den.
I toss my jacket on a chair; it slides to the floor. 
Avel is waiting for me in the kitchen.  He grins.  

I think I would hate having a normal life.

Avel and the Alien, Part 4

The story began in Parts 1-3! -mg

After Ezequiel's declaration, Avel and I stared at him.  I'm not sure what Avel was thinking, but I was thinking "&*$@#".  I don't know if there are actually any curse words with five unspeakable letters, but if there are, I was thinking them all.

I broke the silence with: "Come again?"

"Those buggers don't come off, man," said Ezequiel.

"I'm not sure I believe you," I said.  I didn't.  I didn't want to, that is.

Avel was still silent, taking it all in.

Ezequiel sighed and ran a thick hand through his thinning hair.  "I don't know, man.  Did you try cutting it off–"

"It broke my scissors."

"–with a saw?" Ezequiel finished as he glared at me.

I hadn't realized he wasn't done with his question.  I glared back, sullenly crossing my arms over my chest and giving him my best impression of a bouncer.

The alien squeaked, and we all jumped.

"What if it gets hungry?"  Ezequiel asked. We all looked at the alien.

"That would be bad," I said.  "Like, really bad."

Avel poked the alien, then prodded his red and purple-y skin where it met the tentacles.  The purple was spreading.  I mean, I could literally see it moving, like clouds across the sky on a windy day.

"Have you eaten anything today?"  Ezequiel asked suddenly.

"Ezequiel!  How can you think about food right now?  There is an alien poisoning your friend!"  I threw both of my hands out, gesturing to Avel.

"Yeah, so?  I'm hungry.  You hungry?"  he said to Avel.  Avel nodded.  They left me standing along in the bathroom, open-mouthed and making all sorts of surprised sounds: "Ah...uh...huh...oh."

After I recovered, I found Avel and Ezequiel eating triple stack roast beef sandwiches in the kitchen.  Ezequiel's woman of the week was there, wearing booty shorts and a tank top so small it was probably, in reality, a bikini top.  These things are often confused in some people's lives. Not mine, mind you.

"It's a garage sale," Ezequiel was saying.

As he spoke, a small group of teenagers walked through the kitchen, all with fumbling grips on a ginormous flat screen TV.  We waited for them to go through before speaking.

"Why...er, why are you having a garage sale?" I asked.  "Nothing going?"

Ezequiel shrugged and then grinned.  "I've gone straight."  His smile went even wider as the chick in the bikini top slid into his arms, gazed into his heartless eyes and smiled like a kid grabbing cookies out of the cookie jar.

"Ha!"  I said.  It came out as half of a snort.  Very ladylike, I know.  "No, really.  Why are you selling all your stuff?  And who are they paying?"  I turned slowly, my arms open to the clothes, furniture and knickknacks on display.

"I've got a man in the garage," said Ezequiel.

I rolled my eyes.  "Don't we all."  I didn't mean anything by it; I just couldn't think of anything more clever to say.

Avel was still quiet, carefully finishing his sandwich and being busy looking super thoughtful.

"Avel?  You OK?"

Avel nodded and took the last bite.

"Do you need anything else?"

Avel shook his head and swallowed.

Ezequiel and I didn't know what to do.  Usually Avel was the one with the right words or plan for a situation, so we were in completely new territory.  I didn't like it.  We waited for twenty minutes – TWENTY goshdang minutes of customer after customer walking through with stuff.

And then finally, finally! Avel cleared his throat. "I'll be right back," he said.  And he just got up and left the room.

"Where's he going?" I asked, appalled.

"Dunno."  Ezequiel turned in his chair and watched Avel for a second.  "Out back, I think."

"Should we go with him?"

"Nah, I think he's good."

I took a few steps in the direction Avel had taken, but Ezequiel grabbed my wrist – he had surprisingly soft hands.  "Let him alone, Meliora."

"But..."

"Alone."

So I had to actually sit there and wait with him and the other chick, which was awful, let me tell you.  Too many sickeningly adorable things happened in the next few minutes.  I'm not going to tell you a single one of them, because just thinking about that terrible time makes me want to throw up in my own mouth.  

Finally he came back in, looking a little more refreshed.

"Well?"  I asked.

"It's gone," Avel said.

Ezequiel and I exchanged looks, which was a rather uncomfortable bonding moment for me.

"What?"  Ezequiel said.

Avel shrugged and began to make himself another sandwich.  "I just asked it to go away.  It was very compliant once I explained the situation."

I grabbed the bottom of his shirt and lifted it up.  His skin was only faintly purple, and it was definitely minus one medium-sized shaved alien.  I dropped his shirt and looked at the cuts on my arm.  They were almost healed, and the purple was fading there, too.

"Weird," I said.  "Do you feel OK?"

"Sure," Avel said.

"So, where's the green bugger now?" Ezequiel asked.

"It crept into the bushes by the trampoline."

A moment later, we heard a woman scream from the backyard. Avel winced.

Ezequiel groaned.  "&*$@#."

I closed my eyes, then opened them quickly and grinned.  "Time to go!"


end.

Avel and the Alien, Part 3

I know you want to read Part 1 and Part 2 before you dive in...So go ahead! -m

The thing squeaked a couple of times when the shaver started clearing away fur, but it didn't fight me until I accidentally hit one of the tentacles.

"Skeeeaww!"

A free tentacle waved at me, nearly whacking first my arm, then the shaver.  I had about a third of the alien shaved and didn't really know what to do with the tentacle.  So I hit it back, slamming my hand into the tube.  Except...well, maybe I should have thought a bit longer about how to hit a moving object.  My hand didn't hit the tentacle, my wrist did. I yanked my arm back, cradling it against my chest.

"Ow!"  There were four tiny scratches on the inside flesh of my arm, right where it's nice and tender, and the skin around them was bright red and tinged with purple.

Avel twisted to look at me, so I showed him my wounds.  He grabbed my wrist and licked the scratches, smacking his lips.  "Poison.  Interesting."

"What?  Poison?"  The purple and red spread up my arm.  "Oh, *&$%."

"What's wrong?"

I pushed Avel closer to the back of the couch so I could get a good look at Avel's skin.  It was purple and red all over, and spreading quickly in the direction of his heart.  "I think it's getting into your bloodstream."

"So that's why this hurts so much," Avel said, trying to laugh.  He looked seasick and was covered in a sheen of sweat.

"You look like crap," I told him.

"Don't make me throw up on you, Meli."

"Right.  OK.  Do you want me to keep going?"

"Can you see the whole thing?" 

"No."

"Then keep going."

"Are you sure?  If it's poison, maybe we should call someone?"  Avel didn't answer, so I resituated myself, ordered my nerves to ignore the burning sensation spreading up my arm, and got to work.  Green fur fell in waterfalls, revealing green skin polka-dotted with black freckles.

"Still hurt?" I asked.

Avel cleared his throat and swallowed.  "Yep."

I finished shaving and sat back on my heels.  "Done."  I took the head off the shaver and smacked the entire thing against my thigh, knocking green fur onto the floor.  While I did this, Avel very slowly and carefully put his hand on the alien and inspected it.

"It feels like a dolphin," he said.  "I wonder..."  He pinched one of the tentacles and tried to pull it off of his skin.  The alien squealed and Avel winced.  It didn't look like the alien was going to budge.

"He's like a fuzzy dolphin-porcupine-octopus...thing," I said.  I reached out to poke it, but changed my mind when I saw the barbs.  I wasn't exactly keen to get nicked again.  "Now what?"

Avel sat up, carefully not touching or otherwise disturbing the formerly fuzzy alien.  "We're going to see Ezequiel.  Go grab your keys."

My stomach twisted.  I didn't like Ezequiel.  He didn't like me, for that matter.  Probably something to do with, oh, I don't know, the fact that I shot him in the shoulder once.  Twice.  In my defense, he was trying to mug me in the middle of a job.  In his defense...yeah, he deserved it.

I dragged my feet to get my keys and purse from my room, resurfacing by the front door just after Avel.  He was wearing a huge, ugly hoodie that hid the alien nicely.  We drove to Ezequiel's place in the southeast part of the city.

The neighborhood is all tiny bungalow houses on terrifyingly steep rolling hills.  It reminded me of San Francisco on steroids, if that's even possible.  Instead of parking by the house, Avel had me park at the bottom of a particularly steep hill, and we walked up.  By the time we got to the top, my legs were shaking and I was breathing like an asthmatic in a marathon.  Avel, of course, looked as fresh and relaxed as ever.  Well, I mean, if you didn't count the fact that he looked like he wanted to die.  Alien parasites do that do a person, I've learned. 

Ezequiel's house was usually darker than a seedy bar, and I always had felt like I was supposed to whisper a password to get in.  But today the house was surrounded by cars and people, and all of the lights were on.

"What the heck's going on here?"  I asked.  A nearby couple heard my comment and gave me a weird look, scowling as they looked me up and down.  "Can I help you?" I said to them, returning their scowl.  Avel didn't give me a chance to hear any response – he grabbed my arm and pulled me through the open door.

Everyone inside was crowded around tables piled with stuff.  Old stuff, new stuff, stuff in boxes and bags and cellophane wrapping.  Avel wove through it, still holding my arm, and got us to the back of the house.

Ezequiel was standing with his meaty arms crossed over a faded, grease-stained Coors t-shirt. "Brother," he said to Avel as they shook hands and pounded each other on the back.  He glanced at me.  "Meliora."

"Ezequiel."

"What can I do for you?"  Ezequiel asked.

Wordlessly, Avel led him into the bathroom and I followed.  It was the one place that wasn't full of people, and it was surprisingly roomy.

"I need your...expertise," Avel said.  He nodded to me and I shut the door, and then he pulled off the hoodie.

Ezequiel whistled and then cursed in Spanish.  At least, I'm pretty sure he cursed.  My Spanish isn't so great, but it sure sounded like cursing.

"That's not comin' off, man," Ezequiel said.

Avel and the Alien, Part 2

Check out Part 1 (or any of my other mostly fictional blog series) before you start reading! -m

We went into the house and I made Avel lay on the kitchen counter so Fuzz and I could be on the same level.  I grabbed a pair of kitchen shears and found one of the tentacles under the green fur.  I placed it between the blades.

"OK, brace yourself," I said, and squeezed.

Nothing happened.  Well, something happened, of course.  There was a ton of screaming from both Avel and the thing.  But the scissors didn't do their job.  In fact, they snapped in half.

"Crap," I said.

Avel was moaning.  "That hurt!"

"Sorry.  Want me to try again?" I reached for the tentacle again, even as Avel yelled at me to stop.  The green creature made unhappy sounds and dug its barbed tubies deeper into the side of Avel's waist.

"Stop!" Avel bellowed.

I let go and the fuzzy thing settled back down.  "What's your problem?"  I growled, annoyed with his tone.  "I'm trying to help."

"Well, you're hurting more than your helping."  He sighed heavily  and pulled himself to a sitting position.  He was really pale and covered in a shiny sheen of sweat.  Avel sat still for a minute, silently inspecting his parasite. 

It was dark green and covered in fur that was thick and coarse.  There weren't any eyes, or even an "up" or "down" end.  I had no idea where the noises were coming from.  The tentacles were about the width of my pinky and edged with sharp barbs, like thorns on a rose.  Around the mouth of each tubular tentacle was a ring of those barbs, which was how the thing had attached itself to Avel.

"Can I ask you what happened, exactly?" I asked warily.  I glanced outside, where the rain was beginning to let up.

Avel didn't look up at me as he continued to carefully prod at the green thing.  "There was some sort of box in the middle of the yard.  I went to check it out and this thing jumped out and attacked me."

I grunted and walked away, tossing the broken shears in the trash on my way.

"Where are you going?" Avel asked, sounding dismayed.

"I'm gonna check out the box thing," I said.  I slid open the door and looked around.  There was a black metal box sitting in a small crater in the middle of the formerly pristine lawn.  I whistled and went over, inspecting it with my foot.  The metal was hot and the whole thing was steaming.  I looked up, half expecting to see something else in the sky.  Stray raindrops tickled my cheeks.  There was nothing but gray clouds in the sky.

Back inside, Avel was on his feet and waiting for me.

"I think it's an alien," I declared as I shut the door.

Avel rolled his eyes.  "Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous.  I seriously think it is."  He still appeared skeptical.  "Well, what do you think it is?"

We both looked at the thing.  It looked like Avel had glued a green, headless stuffed animal to his shirt.

"Mutant leech?" Avel ventured.  I almost laughed, but he shuddered and I held it in.

"Alien.  Leeches don't have tentacles."

"Fine.  Here," he said.  He handed me a small bag.

"Your shaver?"  I pulled out Avel's electric shaver and flipped it on, then turned it off again.  It took me a second to catch up.  "No.  That's just nasty," I said.  "You seriously want me to shave it?"

Avel shrugged, then grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled.  The tentacles had burned through enough of it that the shirt – which had been one of my favorites, by the way – came right off.

Even with a fuzzy green alien sticking its barbed tentacles into his skin, I couldn't help but grin at my bare-chested boyfriend.  Lord, was he attractive.  Is attractive.  Anyways.

"Why are we doing this?"  I asked.

Avel talked to me over his shoulder as he went over to the couch, which he had covered with an old sheet.  "I need to see what it looks like," he said matter-of-factly.

"Oh."  Of course.  All I could see was fur.  Without the fur, we'd be able to see what the thing really was. I tossed the shaver bag onto a chair and tried to grin.  "So, are we thinking 'buzz cut' or something a little longer?"

Avel snorted, which was probably as close to a laugh as I was going to get. "Just use the head that's on there."  He beckoned for me to follow as he lay on his side, full-length on the couch, but I was frozen.

All I could think was that something was going to go wrong, the shaver was going to slip, the alien was going to suck out all his blood, then go after me...I think they were very typical worries for when an alien leeches onto your boyfriend.

"Meli?"

"Yeah?"  I shook my head, clearing it of the mental image of a half-shaved green monster tearing me and Avel to pieces.  It wasn't very pretty.

"You gonna do it?"

"Oh.  Yeah.  Sorry."  I turned on the shaver and lowered it to the green fur.  I was shaking, my heart was pounding like crazy, and I was holding my breath.  Oh, yes.  This was going to go well.

Avel and the Alien, Part 1

Before I split with Avel and went to work for Mr. Oulara, there was about a year when things were good.  Great, even.  I mean, I wasn't treated like a princess or anything, but he didn't run off when the police were coming and stuff like that.

The weather was strangely rainy that summer.  I should have taken that as a clue that everything else would be strange, too.  But, no.  I maintained a positive outlook.  Silly me.

So it was a Tuesday, and we didn't have a con going, which was even stranger that the rain wildly pattering on the windows and roof.  Avel was reading a book about Nikola Tesla, and I was trying to think of something sweet and clever to write in my sister's birthday card.

"What was that?"  Avel shut his book quickly and sat up straight, head cocked to the side in prime listening mode.

"I didn't hear anything," I said, the end of my pen clenched between my teeth.

"It came from the back," he said.

I grunted.  His house was large, and we were in the den near the front of the house.  I have no idea how he'd heard anything.  But Avel stood up and dropped his book on the couch.  "I'll be back.  I'm gonna go check on things."

"Uh-huh," I said, writing You're freaking AWESOME  very carefully in the center of the blank space of my sister's card.

Avel stepped over me and I tried to playfully grab his foot as he did, but he just ignored me.  I labeled the envelope, stuck the card in, and licked the nasty adhesive.  I was pinching it all together to make sure it stuck when I heard Avel scream.

"Meliora!"

I was on my feet and halfway to the back door before he could call my name again.  I was moving so fast I almost forgot to slide the glass door open before I barged through it.

Avel was writhing on the grass, sopping wet.  His hands were clawing at something on his left hip, and he was still screaming.

I blinked in the rain and almost face-planted on the slipperyness of the ground. "What's wrong?  What is it?"  I had to yell over Avel's screams.  I landed on my knees next to him and tried to keep him from writhing.  I couldn't see anything in that dang rain, and he just wouldn't stop moving.

"It's on me!  God! Shit! It's on me!"

"What?"  I reached and rolled him over, half sitting on him so he couldn't twist away.  I could feel something hot and fuzzy stuck on him, just underneath his ribcage on his left side. "Stop moving!"

Avel shuddered and held his arms aloft, struggling not to move.  The fuzzy thing squeaked when I poked it.

I breathed deeply, flinging soaked hair out of my eyes.  The fuzzy thing was literally attached to Avel.  I carefully lifted the fur on the sides and saw that it had tentacles...tentacles that had burned through Avel's t-shirt and were now sinking into his skin.

"Oh, shhhh...oot," I said, trying to not sound too freaked out.

"Get it off!" Avel yelled.

I stuck my fingers under the green fur and pulled.  Avel screamed, and the thing screeched.  The tentacles stretched to their limit but didn't come free.  The thing shivered and pulled itself back down, landing with a THWOP against Avel's ribs.

"I...uh, I don't think it's going to come off."

"Try again!"

So I stood up, got on the same side as the thing, and grabbed it.  And pulled.  And yanked.  And twisted.  But that little booger had a death grip on my boyfriend.  I gave it one last pull, a pull which was so hard and ill-planned that I ended up on my butt on the ground, thunder and lightning overhead, icy rain pelting my freezing skin.

Avel stopped writhing and screaming long enough to yank me up and drag me inside, where we would hopefully have better luck detaching the fuzzy green parasite.  

Twelve, Part 5

Tessa was gripping my hand like it was the last thing in the world she would touch. It hadn’t occurred to me that she lived in her own illusionary world, but I thought of it now and realized that without her own coating over reality, everything probably seemed foreign, maybe even terrifying. Her eyes were so wide open I worried that her eyeballs would fall out.

“Hey, are you OK?” I asked. The girl stared at me, unfocused and flailing in a sea of unfamiliar colors and textures.

“I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…” she murmured like a mantra. Flexing her fingers over and over again, Tessa tried to create illusions around her. She did it the same way Avel did, by focusing on something from afar, flexing her fingers, and tilting her chin up.

“Madam?” someone called out. I turned. In our haste to get Tessa in a room where she could freak out in privacy, I had bypassed the ticket checker. Apologizing, I handed over our papers, heart beating like a tom-tom.

“Alright, grazi,” he said after giving Tessa’s fake passport a cursory glance. I looked him in the eye and smiled, wondering how much he had been paid off today.

Pulling Tessa along like a stuffed toy on a child’s leash, I wound around the upper level of the ship before stopping in front of room 112. Tiberon was close behind us, his massive shoulders taking up every inch of space in the hall. He tried to turn sideways to allow a couple of tourists to pass, but even that didn’t help much. They had to wait for us to get into our room before they could venture any further down the hall.

When I let go of Tessa’s hand she collapsed on the spot. I didn’t even have time to think about catching her. Tiberon was holding too many bags to be of any use. We both exchanged looks, expecting the worst and feeling like terrible guardians. I was about to put my hand on her back to try and comfort her when I heard the strangest sound: laughter.

“Uh…Tessa? Are you…OK?” I glanced up at Tiberon, who shrugged. Tessa’s giggles filled the room when she rolled onto her side, her hair splayed fan-like on the bland blue carpet. She smiled up at me, one of the first smiles I had seen her produce without any traces of mischief or false happiness.

“I’m grand, grand, grand! Wonderful!” She cracked up again, unable to control herself.

“I’m gonna go check out what they have to eat,” Tiberon said, leaving me with the hysterical kid. He shut the door quietly, and I wish I had glared after him the way that I wanted at that moment, because, well, in my experience, you don’t just drop a partner in the middle of a firefight.

Just as the door clicked, Tessa lifted up her head and grinned at me. The laughter was gone, as was the unfocused gleam in her dark eyes. I suddenly felt uncomfortable and exposed and I reached for my gun. It wasn’t there. My boots squeaked as I shifted position.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“I’m tired of laughing,” she said. “Let’s go do something.”

“How about we wait for Tiberon to get back?” I asked. I didn’t like the way her eyes were glinting. As if in response to this thought, Tessa stood up suddenly, white teeth flashing. Her hair looked almost black again, and her face was in shadows since we hadn’t turned on any lights yet. The only light was coming from the window behind her.

“How about we wait for Tiberon to get back?” she said, mimicking my tone and mocking it. I reached for the knife in my boot, ready to restrain her with force, then checked myself. I was going to use a switchblade on a little girl? What kind of idiot does that? I pulled my hand back up to my knee and stood, looking down on her and enjoying the extra height my boots gave me.

“Would you rather do something else?” I asked. “I’m wide open for ideas.”

“How many of those little pills are there?” she asked out of the blue. When I looked her in the eyes, though, I had a wiggly little feeling that the twenty minutes since I gave her that first dose had all been planned. I was being set up.

“Got a whole bag of them,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. Tiberon, you leave me again and I’ll kill you, I thought. Tessa smiled sweetly and brushed a wrinkle out of the bedspread before sitting down. After she patted the mattress next to her, I sat down, too.

“How big is the bag?” she asked.

I hesitated, then held out my hands like I was holding a cantaloupe. “This big. Give or take.”

“I see,” Tessa said. She put a hand to her chin. “And how often must I take them?”

“Every two hours,” I said, not wanting to lie about that part, since she would figure it out soon, anyways. I could see why the Palermo guys were so nervous about her. Tessa reasoned like an adult and creeped me out like a talking snake. And then she put her hand on mine.

“It’s alright, you can trust me. I won’t do any illusing.”

I could hear the unspoken loud and clear: Don’t you dare make me take another pill.

“I’m sorry, but Avel said they had to be every two hours,” I said as I pulled my hand out from under hers. Tessa looked up at me from under her black eyelashes and looked like she was about to say something when Tiberon came back in holding a plate of sandwiches, pizza, and cartons of milk and juice.

“So I raided the kitchen. Little chef guy wasn’t too happy that I didn’t want to wait for the buffet,” he said as he kicked the door shut and put the tray on the empty bed. It took him a couple of seconds to catch the look in my eyes. "What?"

I looked as nonchalantly as possible at Tessa, who was still glaring in her "I'm angry" pose. Tiberon squeezed his lips into a thin line, completely failing to understand the clues of the situation. He straightened while tossing a box of chocolate milk to Tessa.

"Meliora and I were just discussing the idea that I really don't need to take those pills so often," Tessa said. I looked at the girl with surprise. I had never told her my real name; as far as I knew, she still thought I was Renee.

"Who told you my name was Meliora?"

"Nobody," she said, fingering the milk carton and pushing the flaps back to open it. "I just knew."

"You mean you were listening at the door, don't you?" I asked. She just grinned.

"You and Tiberon talk very loudly, Meliora," Tessa said. She downed some of the chocolate milk, then wiped traces of it off of her mouth. "Especially about the twelve little things you have in your pocket. Oh, I'm sorry. It's down to eleven, isn't it? Eleven little pills? I was just wondering, how are you going to get me to America if you think the boat is eating your toes?"

Tiberon looked down at the floor, half expecting to see it rise up and attack his feet. I kept my eyes on Tessa. We still had an hour and a half before the first pill wore completely off. Ninety minutes to prepare for battle.

Twelve, Part 1

Twelve little pills. They didn’t budge in their tiny plastic bag as the town car went over a speed bump. I pushed them around, organizing their round brown bodies into four neat rows. They were big enough that the rows stayed put, and I smiled to myself. Another speed bump. We were hitting them pretty fast, definitely too fast for them to be any use. I guess when we got in and my colleague put his gun to the driver’s head, he believed us when we told him to leave as quickly as possible.

This would usually be the part where I revealed what we were doing, or what the little pills were. But the thing is, I had no idea. None of us did. It was one of those jobs that had you playing so far out of your normal playing field that it didn’t seem shocking when someone showed up with a bazooka made out of candy mints. That was just part of the job. The weirder thing was when that stuff worked. One of our group members was still in the hospital thanks to that bazooka. I’ll tell you this: getting a hole blown in your stomach is not more pleasant when it’s done with red-and-white striped sugary bits.

Tiberon, my colleague with the gun, turned and grinned at me as we hit yet another speed bump at 53 miles an hour. I glanced up and saw the driver’s face reflected in the rearview mirror. He wasn’t enjoying this as much as we were; yet again, who would? It’s not every day that you and your boss’s car get jacked in the middle of downtown and you have to drive your guests to the airport. I imagine I wouldn’t have been too ecstatic, either. It’s why I refuse to drive town cars.

I grinned at Tiberon and turned my attention back to the twelve little inanimate bodies in my hands. I assumed they were meant to be swallowed. I mean, what else would you do with capsules like this? Throw them? They couldn’t possibly manage to be airborne for longer than a couple of seconds, more if you threw them out a window. My instructions were to get them through security, then onto the plane. Easy cheesy. No one could see these things in their rectangular plastic bag and think, “Those are worth $6 billion. I’m going to confiscate them.” Nah. They were more of a “You’re one of those vegan thingies, aren’t you?” sort of pill. Thank goodness for that.

We hit the last bump at nearly 60 an hour and I narrowly missed getting my skull slammed into the ceiling. Glaring, I yelled, “Watch it! You don’t have to kill us!” Tiberon laughed and patted the driver on the top of his head.

I hated not knowing what I was doing, or why. But I wasn’t the brains this time. Maybe that was what really bothered me. I was supposed to be the brains. I always did the planning, the team gathering. Tiberon I knew ‘cause we’d worked together before. The other guys, who were following us in the Camry, they were complete strangers. But I trusted them because I trusted Avel. And Avel was the brains.

Debatedly, I thought to myself, smiling as Tiberon and I got out of the car, yanked our fake weighted baggage out of the trunk, and sprinted inside.

If Avel said that these twelve little pills would mean no more cons, and no more annoying police chases, then OK. I could do that.