turkey with tomato eyes. “She’s coming.”
“Who’s she?” Lane snarls in his ear, her voice is barely above a whisper.
“The Lord of Memories, she rules over these lands. We are only visitors in her domain; her realm. We visit her domain EVERY time we recall a memory. She’s kind enough to let us in. She’s very nice that way; our lives would be so boring and unproductive if we couldn’t remember anything. People who upset her always forget their past. Every time you forgot the answer on a spelling test it was because you upset her, she wouldn’t let you enter into her land.”
“But, I don’t understand…”
Night grabs Lane’s arm and forces her to kneel in the chocolate slime. He smiles brightly up at a woman wearing a beautiful gown with rainbow beads and diamonds dripping off of the lacy black fabric. Her nails are super long – as long as Night’s – and her hair is the color of the ocean at night, flowing gentle down her back like a wave. She has one pink eye and one purple. She’s wearing bright pink lipstick.
“This,” Night presents her with the ice cream container, “Is for you my Lord. I’m so happy we could come and visit your land! I promise the dreamer did not see us!”
The Lord inclines her head, smelling his offering. Without a sound, she nods and carries on as if she had never seen them, taking the ice cream with her. Night and Lane are left sitting there as the world darkens around them, going freezing cold.
Lane and Night are back in the freezer at the grocery store, smashed between a really large frozen turkey and three hundred small bags of carrots.
A woman carting a set of twin three year olds pushes her cart by, the wheels squeaking like a terrified mouse. They go unnoticed.
Night licks Lane’s cheek, tasting it as if she were edible.
“Only pets lick!” Lane snarls, trying to wiggle her way around the turkey; wanting out of the icy prison. “Come on! I know where we’re going next!”
Pet Shop
It doesn’t take them THAT long to reach Lane’s favorite shop. She and Tommy used to come here all the time.
The store is abnormally packed for this time of day. Steering Night down an aisle selling dog toys, Lane stops by a pile with a bright yellow and red ‘for sale’ sign huge above. There’s a purple stuffed creature with a bear head and stringy arms and legs with tennis balls for feet and hands. She squishes a tennis ball and giggles at the thing’s horribly painted-on face and blue eyes. Below it is a toy made completely of rubber – it looks like a game controller with crazy neon pink buttons. Beside it is a fabric doll with a demented smile and chewed off lips. This one is marked down 75% off. Someone must have returned it AFTER their dog tried to eat it.
Lane picks up a chew toy with raspberry red lipstick and creepy large green eyes and braided twin hair. The body is just a long braided blue and white rope. Happily, she presents it to him, holding it up to his mouth.
Cocking an eyebrow, Night takes a bite out of it and keeps it in his mouth, munching down on it. Martha, the nice sales lady that Lane and Tommy always talked to, looks on in horror. She doesn’t ask Lane if she would like to see the new fish they just got in like she always does. Martha knows that Lane should be in school right now.
Afraid that Martha might go all mean on her and rat on her to her parents and the school, Lane drags Night down the aisle, darting behind a super-sized fish tank with a scary huge fish with fangs hovering inside.
Lane makes a fishy face at it, giggling at her reflection in the glass. Night continues to chew on his toy.
Tiptoeing past Tigger, the fish guy standing on the ladder, trying to clean the top tank with a vacuum cleaner that looks like a robot with a super-sized arm, Lane takes Night clear across the store.
“Here,” Lane takes the toy out of Night’s mouth and shoves a collar with bright pink sparkles and glitter with a bell at him, “Try this on! I want to see if it fits!”
Obediently, Night takes the collar, unbuckles it, and slides it around his neck. It’s fits perfectly but Lane doesn’t like the collar so she steals it back, pulling it so hard off of his neck the clasp scratches him, drawing blood. A tiny line of blue bubbles up from the cut; he pretends not to notice, pretending it’s a piece of string.
Lane watches in awe as the wound heals seconds later leaving his skin perfect once again.
Night picks up a black collar with cartoon smiling skulls on it with pink bows and puts it around his neck. Lane shakes her head; this is not the collar she wants him in. She makes him try on a green one with a lizard painted on it next, then one with the words ‘BFF’ blinged out in neon yellow. Both are tossed in the reject pile.
Then there’s the collar with grommets and the one with butterflies and the one with unicorns but the one they both really like has spikes, nice pointy ones. They’re dark purple. There’s a leash to match.
Night likes the treasures so much he buys them. Lane doesn’t have her allowance on her; that and she spent most of it on a video game that she had been planning on playing with Tommy. Then he moved. She tried video chatting with him online but he never picked up.
Night takes the toy and the collar and the leash out of the blue plastic bag and throws it in the garbage can as they exit the store. With practiced hands, he slides the collar into position and shoves the chew toy into his back pocket; pulling out a chocolate chunk candy bar from his front one. Lane steals it, opens it and gives it a good lick; claiming it with her gross girly germs.
Giggling, Night steals it back, shoving the whole thing in his mouth; his cheeks blow up like a chipmunk hoarding nuts. Munching quickly, he swallows it in one gigantic gulp. Smiling wide, he shows off his chocolate stained teeth with pride; licking the inside of his mouth with his tongue. Leaning over, he licks her again.
Lane is not amused but she can’t help but giggle, deciding to take her new found pet on a walk; snapping the leash into place around the metal rung on the collar. Pulling lightly, she leads the way, followed closely by Night who gets a strange surprised stare from the mail carrier; she wasn’t expecting to see Lane not in school with a strange boy with a collar around his neck and a leash in her hand.
The pair parade down Main Street past the Firehouse and Train Station, past the sign leading to the old abandoned airport and Tina’s Coffee Shop where Lane and Tommy used to buy yummy strawberry pastries. Tina is just putting out the chalkboard sign with today’s lunch menu on it as Lane and Night stroll by. She drops the board on her foot and stares in horror at the leash.
Night, being the good pet that he is, yanks Lane over to poor Tina and helps pick up the downed sign; the pink chalk words have been smeared. Tuna special now looks like Tin space and Red Hot Chilly Cheese Burger looks like Rod ot Chill Chee Burg.
“Chilly and Cheese!” Night bounces up and down; quickly licking the black board to see if it’s edible. It’s not. He wrinkles his nose in disgust; displeased by the chalky flavor and weird crunchy texture. “Can we?”
“WE,” Lane hisses in his ear, “Are SUPPOSED to be in school. Someone is GOING to tell on us!”
Night’s tummy rumbles loudly like a rabid hungry beast that already ate ten hungrier beasts but still wants a thousand more. “But,” He whimpers like a pathetic dog caged in the pound, “I’m hungry. Can’t we just..?” He points to the sign and rubs his belly.
Lane snarls. “NO!”
Pulling on the lead hard, Night pitches forward and conks his head on the concrete sidewalk as he face plants. Blood explodes out of him like a burst balloon. Tina doesn’t seem to notice, she’s too fixated on correcting the verbal debacle on her lunch board.
Thinking quickly, Lane drops the leash and grabs a handful of dirt from around the cactus plant set in a nice large plastic tub right next to the entrance to the Café; right next to the overgrown rosebush. Fist full after fist full of course brown clay is hurled at Night’s head; covering him like a crumbly chocolate brown bla
nket.
When Tina looks around, all she sees is a mountain of dirt on top of Night’s head and Lane kneading it together like pizza dough. She’s halfway through making the right side of the castle she always saw in Tommy’s favorite video game – Monsterville.
“What on earth are you doing young lady? Why if you’re mother only knew…” Tina huffs and goes back to fixing the board; Lane takes a good look at what it says.
The words ‘lunch menu’ aren’t there. It says ‘dinner menu’ in bright neon pink block letters.
Night’s stomach roars again like a lion. “Can we PLEASE eat something? I have a lot of money and I’m super hungry. I know that your mom is on a date with a guy from work and your dad, who lives twenty minutes from here in the town of Time, is sitting down in front of the TV watching a movie about werewolves and vampires, eating a large cheese and veggie pizza from Bazzaro’s Palace. Neither one of them knows that you weren’t at school today. I called the school pretending to be your dad; called you in sick.”
“How did you...?”
Night clamps a hand over Lane’s mouth and shakes his head no and points at the open door; taking her hand and leading her inside. Halfway through the entrance, he stops, fiddles around in his back pocket, moving the chew toy, and pulls out a black hoodie with grommets on the hood. He wraps Lane in it, removes the