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The blade of Kronmorr swung out fast as a viper’s-eye, parting the head of the degenerate, leering, gibbering cultist from his misshapen body, which – missing its wits but slightly – fought on blindly for some three breathes before collapsing in a sullen slump. The sound of its crude adze tumbled from its slackened grip with a clatter was loud in the room, for even after slaying two dozen drooling half-human wretches the breath of Kronmorr was unfettered by civilized man and remained steady and deep, a bellows powering an unstoppable engine.

A small gasp broke the silence: an irrepressible outburst from the extremely damsel chained to the altar. A mix of lingering fear, happy surprise, and growing awe. “You killed them all,” she whispered in a voice like candied honeysuckle. “The cult of the turtle-eater will surely seek vengeance.”

“They will fare no better,” said Kronmorr in his cold-stone voice. His blade flashed again and the chains fell apart with implausible ease, bronze cleaved like cheese by the steel he had claimed by conquest from the cambion-king’s crypt.

“Then might I accompany you for a time, my hero,” purred the damsel like a big sweaty languorous cat, stretching her freed limbs with liquid relief, “to share in your protection?”

In that moment, a peculiar thing happened: Kronmorr did not sigh.

But he did think about it.

Instead he nodded grimly, raised his steel, and hacked a path through the ghouls of the secret passage, out into the gullets of the beast-birds haunting the hidden cliffside staircase, and into the thick of the fish-gaunts gurgling at the ruins of the ancient docks, where he and the damsel boarded a small skiff and he rowed them twenty miles downriver to the relative safety of the harbours of the rancid city Faek-namm in great speed, for his muscles were unfettered by civilized man. There they found an inn and spent the night peacefully, until two in the morning where the damsel attempted to put a witch-blade between Kronmorr’s ribs.

“I was to be granted highest honour,” she hissed as she tugged fruitlessly against his grip on her blade-hand, uncaring of cuts and scratches and kicks. “I was to be the True Turtle of this year, to be enshrined and ascended unto his left claw!”

In that moment, a peculiar thing happened: Kronmorr did not shut his eyes.

But he did think about it.

Instead, he sprained her wrist, took the witch-blade, and sold it to get out of town in a hurry, only to wake and find the caravan he was in under siege by raiders. His blade swung out fast as a viper’s-eye, but after killing a mere sixteen of them single-handedly he was ensnared by nets and brought to meet their beautiful and deadly chieftess, who decreed he would either serve her or be fed to the Hoongrbees.

“What say you, slave?” she sneered at him from atop her gilded throne and her equally gilded outfit.

In that moment, a peculiar thing happened: Kronmorr did not say “I’m sick of this.”
But he did think it.

And after the Hoongrbees was slain and he’d stolen the emeralds from the throne and escaped into the dark with a new sword already stained with the watery blood of three dozen more hominids, he thought it again; and after a market-maid saw his sword and thought him a raider and he was imprisoned and sentenced to hang, he thought it again; and after he cut through the whole city guard and dispatched the corrupted and venal Bloat-Duke of Bloolubbar, he thought it again; and after he departed the burning city with a single horse carrying him, the Bloat-Duke’s beautiful daughter, and as much of the treasury as possible, he thought it again; and when he woke up and the Bloat-Duke’s beautiful daughter and the horse and the treasure were missing he said it aloud.

“I’m sick of this.”

And once he said it aloud, there was no taking it back. Not from the air, not from his mind. So he took his unhorsed feet and his already-worn-down raider sword and he strode down a path he remembered from so long ago.

It took sixteen days and nights without food and with the only water acquired from sucking on damp stones, but Kronmorr was unfettered by civilized man and so suffered these minor privations with ease. And when those sixteen days and nights were done, he stood before that place his mind ached to recall. Where the great loop of his life had begun, and where he had brought himself in return, as the fish might to its spawn

To the tower of the sorcerer.

***

It was tall, tall, tall – sixteen stories if it were an inch – and crafted from dark and dirtied brick. Metal spiderwebs clung to its skull-cap and its side; many windows jutted from its furrowed brows, and from one of them far away a distant clack, clack sounded, cold and dead. Its door lay open and unbarred, for who would dare enter the dwelling of a sorcerer without permission?

Kronmorr had no permission and asked for none, from the sorcerer, from anyone, from the world itself. The open door was no obstacle. No door would be an obstacle.

What was some difficulty was the moat.

It lay wide but shallow, a drifting reef of shattered sheets of paper, each crumpled and torn and scrawled on. They shuffled like leaves in a wind, but there was no wind, and they surrounded the tower of the sorcerer in a perfect ring with no drawbridge in sight.

Kronmorr did not take a deep breath, for as mentioned previously the breath of Kronmorr was always unflinchingly steady and deep. He prowled to the edge of the moat, sword in hand, and he dove with the perfect arc of a leaping salmon.

Instantly, he was buried, and though he did not sink as in water the paper nevertheless sought to draw him down. The leaves were cold and smeared with a foul blackened ink that sought to cling to skin, but Kronmorr’s hide was unfettered by civilized man and the gnawing toxic teeth of the sorcerer’s-brew found no purchase against his leathered back. The leaves were sharp at the edges and sliced and chewed at his limbs, but Kronmorr’s sinew and muscles were unfettered by civilized man and no matter how shallow and cruelly long the carving of his skin, his strokes did not falter. The leaves were endless and vision failed, but Kronmorr’s will was unfettered by civilized man and he did not slow, did not despair, did not halt, did not think. He only acted, and it may have taken ten minutes or a thousand for him to reach the other side and it did not matter which, only that he did.

He stood there for an instant at the threshold. Listening.

It was not silent. Whatever awaited him did not fear him. Life stirred within the tower of the sorcerer.

So be it. Kronmorr did not fear life either. And so, loins not even bothered to be girded, he plunged into the dim light. Down flickering halls trod the feet of Kronmorr; past endless rows of doors and murmuring voices of madness. Two staircases confronted him: one deep and dark and smelling of dungeon and rot; the other high and rickety and with steps half-broken-loose to show clear (dim, damp) air underfoot.

Kronmorr ascended. He remembered this. He remembered the squeaky floorboards on the landings, and sprang lithely over them to avoid alerting the rats. He remembered the Forbidden Third Floor and simply climbed over the bannister and leapt past it. He remembered the missing step on the sixth floor; the missing two steps on the eighth floor; the staircase ending suddenly at the tenth floor and the subsequent hunt for the new staircase, and then the eleventh floor was before him and Kronmorr knew he was almost there. He recognized the sickly bile-green of the carpeting that clung, lichenlike, to the bare soles of his feet. He recognized the lack of light; the enshrouded and dust-coated window at the end of the hallway. He recognized the door at the end of the hall.

What he didn’t recognize was the guard-beast that lurked there. It was ten feet tall and had six heads and each head had two mouths and each mouth had three forked tongues and every head was pressed against the door Kronmorr sought, whispering profane insinuations. This permitted him to remove the first two heads with very little trouble.

The beast sprang up with a roar and a tumult, but a roar is not a bite and thus Kronmorr claimed two more heads. The last were the canniest and many a blow was struck, but in the end the thing was slowed by pain and shock and self-doubt while Kronmorr was unfettered by civilized man, and so the shape of the end was itself unsurprising.            

The door was wooden and warped; its principal resistance coming as much from its water-swollen frame as its lock, which Kronmorr removed with a careless nudge of his foot. He

forced his way through, into the sanctum of the building. A powerful reek of old milk and laundry assailed his keen senses, but he cared not for such things. For in the center of the room lay the forge of the sorcerer.

***

It was black, cold black, and of a metal alien to him, turned in hard square shapes and with gaping maw. From that maw jutted a hundred little insect-like arms in array, and each arm brandished a tiny plate emblazoned with a foul arcane sigil, and as each was depressed and released they barked out a sharp, brutal CLACK, CLACK, CLACK-CLICKETY-CLACK. Atop its skull roiled a sheaf of paper, scarred and torn by runes and scrawlings.

Behind the forge sat the sorcerer. He was short and balding and wore metal frames with glass in them over his eyes, perched against his nose. He was totally unarmed and hadn’t bothered to look up.

“Sorcerer,” said Kronmorr, his bare sword jutting forth like the accusatory finger of a lesser man, “it is time for us to exchange words.”

“Can’t,” said the sorcerer shortly. His voice was raspy with a tinge of mucus to it; unused, unpleasant. “Got a deadline.”

“So do I. It stretches the breadth of this blade’s edge and you will meet it if you should choose to ignore me one second longer.”

The sorcerer chuckled at that, but it was as absent as his gaze. His mind was elsewhere. “Listen, Kronmorr, whatever you want, I promise I don’t have time for it.”

“You will make time, or you will die. I wish to be free.”
“Free from what?”
“This… curse. This THING you’ve done to me. I cannot lose a fight, unless it is to render me captive and thereby bring me to a more exciting fight, which I cannot lose. I cannot find affection, only the insinuation of it that ends in inevitable betrayal. I cannot greet an old friend without them turning on me or perishing. I cannot have a moment’s rest, but that it will pass in a blur and I find myself once again on some mad quest.” The words spilled out of him like a hole had been carved into his trachea. “It extends to even the most base facts of my being. I cannot walk – I stride, or prowl, or charge. I cannot eat, only feast or gnaw. I cannot sleep – I wake with catlike reflex. I cannot enjoy a single thing; only stare with granite eyes and a grim set to my jaw. I do not have a LIFE, sorcerer, only an EXISTENCE. And it is an intolerable one. Remove your curse from me, or I will end you as surely as I slew your guard-beast.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s real sad, but truth is? It’s not happening. Ever.”

It was wrong. It was all wrong. The sorcerer was smiling – yellowed, bent-toothed, inescapable. The keen eyes of Kronmorr could see something brown caught in between his incisors. “That beast you slew outside my door? That wasn’t my guardian, Kronmorr. It was my JAILER. My edot’tarr. And now that he’s gone? I, too, am unfettered by civilized man.”
“No,” said Kronmorr. But it came out all wrong; stuttered and whispered and afraid, deeply afraid.

“Oh yes, buddy,” said the sorcerer. He was nodding now, nodding from the glee that could no longer be contained within his smile, letting it roll out from him and spill over the rest of his body. “It’s you and me and nothing between us now, and you best believe the ride ain’t stopping anytime soon because I have bills to pay and a whole-new-ball-game of inspiration is flowing. The vault is open and the security guard is dead and the money is pouring out into the streets. Every damsel you meet is going to be even more nubile, Kronmorr, and they’ll leave you even faster. Every foe you battle will be half-again more degenerate. Your sword is going to swing TWICE as fast as a viper’s-eye now, Kronmorr, and you’re going to swing it five times more often!”

“No…” begged Kronmorr, and oh god that was the only word, the only word to describe the way he spoke. Please no. Please, please, anything but that.

“Get ready for names to have a lot more apostrophe’s, Kronmorr. You’re going to visit cities like Jang’mar. You’re going to meet people like Che’koll’dor’oc. Every’one. Ev’ery’thi’ing.”
“No!” and it was louder but even more desperate – sputtered, a whimpering verging on a wail.

“And Kronmorr, old buddy, old pal, my old friend, my gravy train without brakes,” the terrible, awful voice dipped a little – conspiratorial, gleeful, filled with the camaraderie of the torturer to his guest – “you can kiss your muscles and sinews goodbye. Because now? Now we’re talking thews.”

“NOOOOOOOO!” screamed Kronmorr, a cry not of the enraged berserk, but of a soul torn past its bonds, and lo, his sword swung twice as fast as a viper’s-eye, only it struck naught but empty air and he was left alone with only the dust of an empty room and the memory of a gleeful, snot-ridden chuckle and the distant, inescapable, all-consuming clack-clack-clack-clickety-clack of the awful, terrible sorcerer’s machine.

The hills had been raised up and the valleys dug low. The sky was set up and the sun bob-a-link bobbed-a-long through it, burning bright. The seas were deep and wide and bright and dark.

It had been a busy week for the Maker. They’d dug and piled and breathed and sweat for any amount of time and now they were exhausted. Time didn’t exist yet – that was next week’s project – but it was time for time off.

So they were inventing tea. Pretty simple stuff; leaves go in water, tea comes out. The tricky bit was twofold.

First, the Maker needed manipulative capabilities. So they were going bipedal for the moment, for the vantage point and angles of mobility. They’d been a quadruped and a hexapod and had no limbs at all for a lot of the recent work, so in theory this was a refreshing change. In practice, it made them wobbly.

Second, the tea wasn’t coming out. All they had were leaves in water, floating in a little clay depression.

The Maker poked the leaves in water. Tea still didn’t come out.

“Well, I’m all out of ideas,” they said to themselves. “Better do the usual thing instead.”

So the Maker reached down to the ground and picked up a little stone in their beak and rolled it around six times – back to front and side to side and back again – and when they were done it was hot, red hot, so hot it scorched their beak black against their blue-and-white plumage, and they spat it out into the leaves in water with a loud, raucous yell of indignation.

“SHIT!” they added. And then: “oh, it’s working!” And of course: “I meant to do that.”

And indeed, and it was, and they hadn’t, and that was fine. Most of the Maker’s best work happened when they didn’t mean to do something.

When the leaves in water were gone and there was nothing but tea, the maker dipped their beak in and swallowed it all down, gulp gulp gulp, hot hot hot, until the tea was gone and all that remained was a clay depression with a little cracked stone in it.

“Not bad,” said the Maker. And they went away, because in the span of a drink of tea they’d had so many new ideas come to their head and none of them were real yet.

The clay depression sat there.

The little stone sat there in there clay depression.

And then, all at once and all on its own, it realized it was still steaming. Something was making that heat stay inside it, even after it had spilled out into the Maker’s beak and the water with leaves in it and the tea. Something was making it hiss and spark and glow.

It didn’t like it. It didn’t like it one bit.

Someone should know about that.

***

It wasn’t hard to find the person the little stone so wanted to inform of their new feelings. They were right up in the middle of the sky, making fat, puffy, wispy, gloriously sunny clouds. They looked as soft and comfortable as a grandmother’s love and the little stone felt the heat inside it boil even higher at the sight.

Oh, it didn’t like the clouds, and it didn’t like love, and it didn’t like the sky, and most of all it didn’t like the Maker up there. And it itched and steamed and burned inside – especially where its crack ached – and tore up the ground in a big fuss.

That gave it an idea. An idea on how to communicate its feelings to the Maker.

So the little stone tore up the ground even harder, a hundred times harder – a thousand, a million – and it rent it away until where the ground had been there was only a gaping hole. Then it covered it with some branches and shouted.

“Hey! Hey you up there! In the clouds! Hey you! Here! Down here! Come here!”
And the Maker heard the little stone very quickly because although clouds were wonderful you could get bored of them eventually, and so they also came down to the little stone very quickly, and because they were doing all of this so very quickly and not very carefully at all they rushed over the hole in the ground and fell through the branches with a crack and a thud.

“Oh!” said the Maker with great happiness. “Did you mean to show me this? How wonderful! But I think there’s room for more, yes there is. I wonder what water would do if you poured it in here?” And they breathed in deep and hard and spat a long stream of water that carved deeper into the ground and melted away great pockets in the earth carved into the rock, with stone fangs dripping from the ceiling and piling on the floor.

“I bet bats would like this,” said the Maker thoughtfully. “Oh! I should make bats! Thank you, little stone!” And they left in a great hurry.

The little stone lay there on the ground, unmoving to a casual eye. A more professional one would’ve seen the dirt begin to steam around it.

***

After sitting there and steaming for some time, the little stone realized it had lost sightt of the Maker, which only made its feelings stronger. It rolled off on their trail, following the path of new things and older things made new again, and it did so even as the path grew steep and stony and brittle. The Maker was in the high places of the world again, making lichens and pikas; crafting dwarf pines and lonely eagles, and although they could move through those places as easily as they pleased with wings and many legs and quick feet it was a difficult, awkward, endless climb for a little stone, fraught with tumbles and backtracking.. It took the little stone a long while to find them again, and when it did it realized its mistake: it had overshot them and crawled near to the very peak of the mountain – a hard grey flat edge under a hard grey flat sky – while the Maker had dawdled below in a small vale, creating some sort of yellow flower.

The little stone looked at the maker and looked at the flowers and it felt the feeling in its innards grow all out of control until it shook and rocked and knocked against the stone beneath it, over and over and over until the mountain groaned along with it.

Then grumbled.

Then crumbled.

Then fell down, down, down in a hail of stones, a torrent, a river, a glacier of rolling rubble and rock that shot down towards the Maker. At its vanguard soared the little stone, so filled with surprise and speed and power that it forgot everything else. For an instant, just an instant, it was a part of the biggest thing to ever happen.

Then gravity won.

When the little stone stopped rolling its crack was twice as large as before, it was covered in dust, and it could hear the Maker loudly talking right above it.

“Dancing from rock to rock is very difficult! Having rocks bounce off your head is even MORE difficult! But this all makes me think it’s doable, yes it is – oh! What if I did it like this, and this, and this –” and so on and so on until four dainty hooves click-clacked around the little stone, and the first bighorn hopped away over the boulder-strewn surface of the meadow.

“That was good luck!” said the Maker. And this made the little stone scream.

“Hello?”
“YOU!” screamed the little stone. “YOU!”
“Me?” said the Maker.

“PICK ME UP,” seethed the little stone.

The Maker did so. “What now?”
“Now BASH YOUR HEAD IN WITH ME!” said the little stone. “PAINT THOSE FLOWERS RED! SPATTER THE LANDSCAPE! KEEP GOING UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT BUT CALCIUM FRAGMENTS AND STRAY BITS OF HAEMOLYMPH!”

The Maker furrowed their brow. “Oh. OH! Using pieces of the environment as a device to make things happen, like exerting force or shaping others! Yes. Yes! But more complicated than that. What if-”

The little stone screamed again. This time it didn’t stop until it passed out.

***

When it woke up, it was sitting in a little grass-woven pouch dangling from the Maker’s side and the air was warming. They were downslope of the mountains again, probably in a valley.

“Hello,” said the Maker. “Do you feel a little better?”
“No,” said the little stone.

“That’s fair. Do you feel different?”
“Yes,” said the little stone. “I was steaming and heated and couldn’t sit still before and I wanted you to be very badly hurt. Now I just feel tired and awful.”
“It’s my fault,” said the Maker, contritely. “I didn’t see what you were doing. You’ve made something new, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t made anything,” said the little stone morosely. “You made my pit-trap into caves. You made my avalanche into bighorns. You made my murder attempt into tools. You even made this crack in my side that’s made me all this way.”
“I did do all those things,” said the Maker. “But I did it without paying attention to what you managed: you took that crack in your side that my carelessness put in you, and you made a whole new way of feeling. You have made anger, and I had no idea at all. Thank you for showing me this.”
“I don’t think I have it anymore,” said the little stone.

“It’s pretty exhausting to keep it up all the time, I’ll bet,” said the Maker. “But nobody says you need to make only things that last forever. For instance, would you like me to do something about that crack?”
“Please.”

“Alright. I’ll show you what I’ve learned since you taught me about tools.”
“I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the Maker. “Most of our best work happens when we don’t mean to do something.”

The little stone remembered that. It remembered that as the Maker chipped away at its side and turned that crack into a facet and the chips into flakes that followed at its heels as it rolled away home.

***

A week after that – just after time had been invented – the Maker went for a walk and stubbed their toe so hard they swore six species of parasitic wasp into existence.

The little stone never mentioned it to anyone.

Very pointedly.

And smugly.

There was one day Frances didn’t set her alarm clock for and it was this day and she woke up on time anyways.

She ignored this and tried to go back to sleep, only to find that sleep was a rude asshole and refused to return her calls, show read on her messages, or acknowledge her emails. Ten million years passed before she next lifted her head from the pillow, squinted at her phone, and saw that it had been fifteen minutes and she was more awake than before.

“Fine,” she said, and peeled herself off the pillow, then her pillow off the chandelier. She slid to the ground with a soft thump.

She had to start tidying anyways. Thank god this only happened once a year.

***

Before the first things, or even the first things first, came the primordial need. Egg, some horrible things from the cabinet, and some other horrible things from the fridge. Mixed in a shot glass. Inadvisably consumed in two gulps, because the first swallow tried to cancel itself halfway down. It wasn’t great or good or fine or okay, but it made the hangover look better by comparison, and that was like making it go away.

First things first was cleaning up the perishable consumables. Any of the food still littering the table that was temperature-agnostic was returned to its original packaging (if salvageable); anything plausibly re-refrigeratorable was placed in plastic containers and bags and consigned to a hopeful crisper drawer for later consideration; anything probably salmonella-riddled was given a combined ten seconds of silence before being returned to the earth via the compost bucket except for a single piece of antiquated salmon which was delivered to the cat so she could ignore it.

The pizza was outside all of these categories. It was consumed in one hand while Frances loaded the dish washer with the other, eaten cold and unheated like the frail plant life outside the kitchen window.

Next came the beverages. Bottles that were open were resealed. Cans that were open were dumped down the sink and placed in the cardboard box doing emergency substitution work in place of a second recycling bin. Boxed wine was separated into wine bag and wine box and placed in the corresponding third and fourth substitute recycling bins (another cardboard box and a dented wastebasket). Every remaining Dr. Pepper in the house was opened and poured down the toilet to consecrate the dawn and anoint it in glory, as was the custom.

After the sustenance, came vice. The ashtrays were emptied into the garbage. The stray butts and loose leaves were emptied into the garbage. The suspicious residues were scraped off the floor and tables with the side of a gross and marginally used plastic fork and a paper towel and emptied into the garbage. And the spot on the floor where Murray McCooey had leaned over and leaned over and leaned way way over and let some of his ballast slip loose was scrubbed with the house’s most undesirable cloth and soap and water and more water until it was rendered beyond hope and consigned into the garbage, forced desperately down into the depths with one hand to bury it beyond all chance of sight or smell.

Frances stopped and washed her hands after that. Like three times. Four? Five. To be safe. And once more.

Then she made coffee, badly. And drank it, slowly. And realized it wasn’t hers, it was Grace’s decaf. The second cup was made badly AND quickly and she drank it so fast she burned her mouth.

And then, after that break, came the real work.

***

The surfaces needed a more thorough cleaning, and for that the laundry needed tallying. Socks were retrieved from lampshades. Shoes were retrieved from bookshelves. Shirts were retrieved from coathooks. Coats were retrieved from the shirt drawer. Pants were retrieved from the yard. Underwear was missing and presumed dead. And one entirely unidentifiable piece of fabric was wrapped around the stove’s right back burner and wouldn’t be parted from it until Frances very very slowly and strategically severed it into six even more unidentifiable pieces with a steak knife. She tried to arrange them into something more familiar, failed six different ways, then realized she was currently down one kitchen cloth and had been given the opportunity to be up five kitchen cloths instead.

The surfaces were easy. Gross, but easy. Frances let her eyes wander, dragging her mind after them over the remaining devastation. Making plans and discarding them, not caring too much.

Once the surfaces were done, she woke the sleepers. Gently shook shoulders for those who needed quiet; poked cheeks for those that lurked too deep; put her mouth near an ear and yelled “WAKEY WAKEY, EGGS AND BAKEY!” for Kimberly East, who had it coming.

“Whuh? Where?”
“In the kitchen, waiting for you to make them.”

“Fugoff.”

“WAKEY WAKEY WAKEY WAKEY WAKEY WAK-”

Kim sat up and took a swing at her, inadvertently preventing a return to sleep. Sucker. People were moving frying pans, cracking eggs, distributing clothing from the collection Frances had amassed on the dining room table. Someone was feeding the cat breakfast.

Not her business, she’d already had pizza. Besides, she was nowhere near done. She had to catch Marcus’s lizard. Little bastard had been on the living room wall near the painting of a bowl of vegetables, but he was missing again. Five minutes of quick thinking and a net was all she needed, but she had to fish the net out of the turtle tank, which reminded her she had to find the turtle (under the couch, sulking).

The lizard was returned to Marcus, who she found sitting on the patio with the reverse-stripper, negotiating for his coat back.

“Show’s not over,” she told him stubbornly. Five shirts three coats and a dozen pairs of socks kept her warm as toast even in the drizzle.

“But it’s COLD out.”
“Nobody’s paid me yet.”

Frances paid her. Marcus’s coat was retrieved, along with half her sock drawer. And then she looked up at the back yard and sighed.

“Fuck. I forgot about the circus.”

***

It was a little one-ring setup. Nothing fancy. A clown full of cars, two acrobats, and a small elephant. It was amazing they’d all fit in the tent, but it was good for warmth.

“Especially for the elephant,” the ringmaster explained as Frances counted bills. “You’ve got to keep her warm or she’ll catch cold. Unlike SOME operations I could mention, we care about our animal performers here in Circe de Burke.”

“Good. Do you want an irritating little lizard?”
“No thanks,” said the ringmaster with a comically large wink. “We’ve already got Richie. Eh? Eh??? EH????”

A clown of Richielike appearance smacked the back of her noggin without looking.

“Art is pain,” she told Frances solemnly.

“Yep,” said Frances. She surveyed the rest of the yard. Damnit, she’d been hoping to forget about the rest of this too.

The collapsible hot tub was easy, she set it to drain while she got to work on the real problem: coaxing the reindeer back into their crate from the temporary paddock. They were reluctant until she gave up and rhinoplasty’d the snowman gallery, tempting them with a fresh harvest of crisp and crunchy ruddy-orange noses. And once they were all back (only one inadvertent finger-nip to her name), the hot tub wasn’t done, so she free-climbed the two trees and the telephone pole in the front yard to take down the fixed-lines from the abseiling competition. And when that was finished the hot tub still wasn’t done, so she cleaned the tinsel waterfalls out of the gutters with a rake tied to a broom handle. And when that was clear and the eaves ran sluggish liquid again the hot tub STILL WASN’T DONE so she did a lap around the house cleaning up loose reindeer stool and discarded clown props and bent climbing pitons and reclaiming her scarf from its entirely unauthorized location around the neck of a snowman.

The hot tub still wasn’t done. She went indoors and fed the cat breakfast and tried not to think about it. This turned out to be the perfect time for that to happen, because that was when the thumping started up from the basement door.

***

The bacon smell had woken them from their crashes: the under-people, the hard partiers, the Sleepers Below. They groaned up from the basement, bleary and groping for grease and caffeine, trembling with unspeakable weight.

“Basement’s flooding,” muttered Mortimer to Frances as he descended on the coffeepot and lifted it like a giant mug, ignoring the blistering of his palms.

“Fuck.”
And he was right. It looked like someone had dug into the wall with a pickaxe at some point, probably during the Minecraft LARP. They’d found two painted styrofoam diamonds and apparently the base of the gravel bed the hot tub was draining into.

Frances counted to six, ran up the staircase, stopped draining the hot tub, realized the hot tub was finally actually empty, screamed a raw and primal word she couldn’t identify even as it left her throat, punched the hot tub (causing it to collapse), ran back downstairs, threw the pick axe at the hole, sat down with her head in her hands, left a single minimalist text with the local water damage people, screamed a raw and primal word she couldn’t identify even as it left her throat (but quietly and under her breath this time), and broke out the mop. And the mop bucket, where she found Ritchie’s lizard had left a present.

She brought them upstairs and dumped them in his lap with the mop.

“Your eggs, your mop job,” she said. She ignored the noises he made, fed the cat breakfast, and was interrupted by a scream from upstairs. By the sound of it, Beverly had gone to use the bathroom and had completely forgotten about the mime.

***

When the mime had been placated and paid and evicted from their nesting-place in the tub (and Frances had retrieved her sheets), she found herself at loose ends. Half the guests had left with Beverly to get her jangled, mimed nerves a hair of the dog. Half of the rest had left to avoid being recruited into the basement cleanup. All that remained was Frances, the cat, and the distant, tragic schlop of a mop bucket.

The cat meowed.

Frances pulled out a bowl and a kibble bag, then squinted as something new floated across the inside of her head. .
“Hang on. How many times have you had breakfast today?”
The cat blinked slowly and smugly at her.

Frances fed her anyways. It was lunchtime. By now she was probably overdue to call the mayor’s office and apologize for the noise violations. And the fireworks. And the tree catching on fire. And getting the fire truck crew roped into the party. And painting new lines on the street. Using the mayor’s car.

Yeah, they’d overdone it a little. Yeah, the cleanup was a lot of work. But you know what? Your cat only got a birthday once a year.