"100 Themes Challenge"

2. Love

"Hold out your hands, bat boy."

Count Fangula squinted suspiciously down at Little Ghoul before turning back to the half-finished jigsaw puzzle in front of him. "You don't need help making a yarn ball. Buzz off."

"Yes, I do!" she insisted, stomping her tiny foot like a child on the verge of a tantrum. "You want it to tangle while I'm trying to roll it up?"

"This is my 'not caring' face," he deadpanned, adding another piece to his puzzle. "Why don't you go ask Flabber? Or con those annoying kids into it?"

"'Cause I'm asking you!"

He bared his fangs and hissed, and she growled right back at him, causing him to blink in surprise.

Wolfgang had finally had enough, and he rolled up the paper he had been reading and bopped them both on the head with it, delivering an unintellible scolding of growls and emphatic hand (or, rather, paw) gestures.

"What?" Fang jerked a thumb in Little Ghoul's direction. "She started it!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

Mums jabbed Fangula with a bony Elbow. "Oh, just do it already. You know you'll get no peace until you do."

It was hard to tell if the 5,000-year-old mummy was smiling or not, but Fangula thought he sure sounded amused, and he answered Mums's elbow jab by grabbing a dusty throw pillow and swatting him in the face with it.

Dust exploded in a cloud that filled the entire parlor, and Frankenbeans's nose began to twitch. "Ah...ah..."

"Frankie, no!" Fangula tried desperately to cover his puzzle, but it was too late.

"AH-CHOOOOO!"

The colossal sneeze sent puzzle pieces flying outward in a colorful fan of cardboard which clattered to the floor, and there was a moment of shocked silence before the house monsters (with the exception of a crestfallen Count Fangula) erupted with laughter.

"Frankie, how could you?" the vampire groaned, surveying the mess with a frown. "That's four hours of my afterlife I'll never see again..."

"Aw, quit your belly-achin' and help me with this," Little Ghoul tossed Count Fangula a hank of black yarn, which he reflexively caught and regarded with a pout before relenting and doing as he was told.

"Flabber watched from the parlor doorway as his room-mates began a conversation that sounded more like an argument, if one didn't know how to read between the lines. The phasm found it by turns exasperating and hilarious how the monsters could be at each other's throats (literally, in Fangula's case) one minute and best friends the next.

"What are you making anyway, squirt?"

"None of your business."

When had this ragtag group of misfit monsters become a family? Flabber neither knew nor cared; he was just glad that it was so.