“Run!” I shouted, grabbing Mortimer’s hand and tearing down the street.
The flutter of faery wings grew louder. The bastards were coming down hard, and no wonder, what with the payload I was carrying. I tossed the muffin box over my shoulder.
“No!” Mortimer cried, digging his heels in and pulling back.
“Just leave it.”
Mortimer snatched the box, shoved a blueberry muffin in his mouth, and kept running. Grabbing his hand again, I pulled him into a schoolyard. We ran across empty pavement marred with chalk lines. I ducked into a recess, hidden from the street, and tried to catch my breath. I heard the faeries fly past us; none doubled back.
“Good job,” Mortimer said, biting the top off his muffin and spraying faery dust down his chin.
“Good job?” I smacked the muffin out of his hand. “What did you have to go and rob them for?”
“It was a surprise, for you. You could be more grateful.”
I mentally counted to ten, then replied in the calmest tone I could manage. “We need to get out of here.”
“You could go over the back fence. It’s comes out behind the graveyard.”
A school-girl appeared from around the corner. Dyed black hair hung over her eyes. The only thing that wasn’t black was the silver charm bracelet on her wrist.
“Who are you?”
“Jezebel,” she said smugly.
“Uh thanks.” I grabbed Mortimer raced for the back fence. I vaulted the chain link, then waited for him to tumble over.
“Wait,” he said as I started running again.
I went back to see he’d found a corpse; freshly exhumed. I gagged, but Mortimer moved closer, peering at it with that dreamy look faery dust gave him. Taking another muffin out, he tapped it over the corpse, sprinkling dust on it.
“What are you-?” Before I could finish, the corpse blinked and sat up. Mortimer turned to me with a wide grin.
“Did you see that? Oh my wonderful creation.” He helped the corpse to stand. “You know, I think I could get into this.”
“As what? Mortimer the Reanimator?”
He frowned. “I wanna change my name.”
“To what?”
He smiled. “Frank. Doctor Frank.”
FFM Day 11
Prompt: Write a continuation of another participant’s story from the 7th (Muffin Time) and use the challenge rules from another participant (Include a bracelet, a quirky goth, 365 words long, school story, discovery of a corpse – from Days-Be-Strange). Also include characters from each story (Mortimer, narrator, and Jezebel) and a quote from each (“I counted mentally to ten” and “I wanna change my name”)
C. A. Harland 