Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." I present to you, in no particular order or relation to each other, rewritten scenes from the Twilight series. I have no set posting schedule—this is purely for my own amusement and steam-letting, although I hope you'll be amused as well. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them.

From Twilight Chapter 2: "Open Book"

Bella unloaded her groceries, at first thinking that she hoped her father wouldn't mind her method of food storage placement, then reprimanding herself for such a foolish thought. Here she was, appointing herself responsible for both the grocery shopping and the meal preparation for her household at the age of seventeen, and her concern was upsetting Charlie's kitchen cabinets? Nonsense. He didn't have much that wasn't canned soup, crackers, or pork rinds anyway. She chalked up her momentary insecurity to that boy, Edward Cullen, being absent today after behaving so oddly yesterday, like she'd committed a heinous crime by walking into biology class. And that face he made, like there were skunks about—he was the one who smelled like Consuela, the heavily-perfumed hooker who worked the Phoenix Transit Central Station. Bella sighed, trying to mentally rid herself of the unsettled feelings. In the grand scheme of things, it was a relatively minor incident, but the whole thing was completely throwing Bella off for no good reason, and she didn't like feeling that way. Stupid, snooty, rich boy.

When dinner was started, Bella sighed and fired up her stone-age computer. She didn't want to seem ungrateful—after all, Charlie didn't have to welcome her into his home—but she was irritated that he insisted on buying a cheap, second-hand computer that was clearly made back when CPUs didn't accept any storage device greater than a 3 ½ inch floppy disk. It didn't even have USB connections, for god's sake. And why on earth was he using dial-up instead of broadband? "Ten dollars a month for internet service," was not cost-effective logic, not when it tied up the sixty-dollar-a-month phone line, potentially preventing emergency messages from getting through to the sixty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year police chief. Ridiculous.

Predictably, there were several e-mails from Renee. With a sigh, Bella read Renee's messages. It appeared the first was sent while Bella was still on her flight to Washington.

Bella,

Write me as soon as you get in. Tell me how your flight was. Is it raining? I miss you already. I'm almost finished packing for Florida, but I can't find my pink blouse. Do you know where I put it? Phil says hi. Mom.

Bella felt a pang of guilt; she should have called her mother as soon as she arrived in Forks instead of waiting two days, but she really didn't have anything much worth reporting, and it was actually something of a relief not to have to reassure her mother every five damn minutes. Also, Bella wasn't stupid; minor league teams didn't have to report to Florida for spring training until February, and it was only four days into January.

The second e-mail came in about eight hours after the first…why on earth was Renee e-mailing her in the middle of the first night, especially with Bella starting school the very next morning?

Bella,

Why haven't you e-mailed me yet? What are you waiting for? Mom.

"Honestly," Bella huffed to herself, "you'd think she was a little lost puppy." This would not be happening if her parents allowed her to have a cell phone. Unlimited text messages, no more need to wait for e-mails. Then again, Renee wasn't working anymore, and whenever she wasn't working she had a poor sense of what other people might be doing with their day. The last thing Bella needed was for her mother to send frantic, repetitive text messages asking after lost articles of clothing and wondering whether the water bill had been paid…in the middle of a trigonometry quiz.

So maybe a cell phone wasn't a good idea after all. Bella loved her mother more than anyone in the world, but Renee never allowed her daughter a moment's peace unless she was on a date or too caught up in a trashy romance novel to want to talk—back in Phoenix, Bella frequently reflected on the fact that the only way to enjoy time to herself was in a large, loud crowd of people content to ignore her. Forks was at least peaceful—it was the only thing she might have liked about small town life—and Bella wanted to have a chance to enjoy the novelty of it while it lasted, before the constant rain inevitably washed away whatever positive outlook she managed to dredge up. E-mails were easier to ignore until she was ready to deal with them.

Isabella… the last message said, sent this morning,

If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling Charlie.

"Right," Bella sighed, clicking on the reply button. "Because you can't just call me here at the house. If you're going to make a long-distance call, it's going to be to Charlie at work." So much for the illusion of control over her own communications.

Mom,

I'm writing to you from beyond the veil between the living and the dead. My plane crashed, and Charlie didn't think it was worth his time to call and let you know. By all means, call him now and pester him right in the middle of arresting someone. When you do, make sure you mention how difficult it is for a ghost to send e-mail on a computer that predates the actual internet. Also, tell Phil that Rabbi Darren was right about everything, except for all the stuff that Lama Gyatso was right about, and that other stuff we heard from that Hindu swami that time we got lost in Albuquerque. Remember when we asked him "Where are we?" and the reply took three hours?

Your shirt's at the cleaners. The pick-up ticket is tacked up on the cork board in the kitchen, right where I told you it would be before I left. Don't forget to pack an umbrella. Florida is a coastal state, you know. Please drive carefully, and if you and Phil are too sleepy or the weather gets bad, for God's sake pull over and find a hotel for the night. Grieving for my loss is no excuse for bad driving decisions.

Love you. Miss you. Be safe. And don't worry about me—I'm fine, I promise.

After thinking carefully, Bella added:

I might not be able to write again for a while, though. I think there's something wrong with my computer. Love, Bella.

After confirming that her message had been sent, Bella went downstairs and looked carefully at the refrigerator, where her father had helpfully posted his schedule for the week, before she took the marinating steaks out of the fridge. She had the money for a new computer, but Charlie wasn't the type to excuse "wasting" funds on a newer model of something he already had a "perfectly decent working version of" at home. She couldn't just tell her father he'd bought an obsolete, piece of crap, electronic paperweight that was only slightly preferential to an abacus and a Pony Express rider, even though he had.

"Bella," Charlie said later, "supper was delicious. When you said you could cook…"

"You were expecting Mom's Three-Bean-and-Marshmallow casserole?" Bella finished for him, making a face. She hated Three-Bean-and-Marshmallow casserole; she wasn't sure what the worst part was, the marshmallows, or Renee's idea that the way to make it patriotic for Fourth of July was by using red kidney beans, white cannellini, and blue jellybeans. "No thanks, I want to keep my food down."

When the dinner dishes were done Bella sat with her father in the living room, watching his favorite sitcom, CSI: Miami. "Look at that crap," Charlie jeered at the screen as David Caruso put on his sunglasses. Indoors. At night. Again. "They collect a smeared, partial fingerprint, and they not only turned it into a full thumbprint, they got a criminal database match on it in thirty minutes. Un-freakin'-believable."

The women in Charlie's life (what few there were) liked to say that self-expression was not his forte. They were wrong; a police officer has to be able to express himself in order to write reports and testify in court. Charlie's problem, or rather Renee's problem with him, was that she spoke Flighty, Needy, Overly Emotional Female while he spoke Police Work.

Bella, who was fluent in both, said, "I know, right? That kind of thing takes weeks." She actually enjoyed this show, even if it was painfully inaccurate. Renee never did understand this side of her. "And the women are forever collecting evidence with their own hair down, while the guys are breathing all over the stuff they're supposed to be processing. Contaminate as you go, I guess."

"Sloppy," Charlie agreed. Maybe this Dad stuff wouldn't be as hard as he thought. They could just bond over cop shows and procedural dramas. He didn't even mind that he was missing the NFL playoffs. Much. Come Superbowl Sunday, though…

Bella waited until a Dell commercial aired before she casually mentioned, "By the way, I tried to use my computer this afternoon. I was able to send one e-mail to Mom, but after that it started doing something funny, and then it died on me."

Charlie swore softly.

"We should probably take it somewhere," Bella said. "Any chance it's still under warranty?"

"I bought it off a guy who was upgrading," her father sighed, remembering the gray-haired man who promised the unit was 'top of the line…a few years ago, when it was new.' A few years, my ass.

"We could take it to the Geek Squad," Bella suggested, managing to get across just the right amount of hopefulness. "It should only cost a few hundred dollars to fix it. Where's the nearest Best Buy?"

"Over a hundred miles away." Charlie pressed his hand to his face. "And I only paid a hundred bucks for the whole computer."

"Probably cost more to fix than it's worth, then," Bella pretended to sympathize.

"Your mother's going to have a fit if she can't get in touch with you," Charlie griped. "It was her one condition to letting you live with me." He sounded a little sad, Bella realized—he really did want her to be here, even if he didn't know what to do with her now that she was in his house.

"We could call that company, Dell," Bella said quietly, thinking about the disappointment in her father's voice. "They put together exactly the kind of computer system you need and ship it to you." After a pause that was just a beat too short, she added, "I have that money I was saving up to buy a car."

Charlie looked at his daughter for the first time. He'd always believed his child was a terrible liar, a quality highly valued in both criminals and teenagers. While he couldn't say she was lying right now, per se, she was definitely hiding something. Even so, he had to admit to himself that a computer that cost less than a quality cellular phone probably wasn't the smartest purchase he'd ever made.

"I'll pitch in to cover tax, shipping, and an extended warranty," Charlie offered, "up to five hundred dollars." He paid more than that in monthly child support checks, and yet his ex-wife somehow couldn't keep all her utilities paid—not that Bella was aware Charlie knew this. He was also perfectly well aware that Renee would not be sending him child support now that the tables were turned, but he chose not to pursue it. Bella was already unhappy about being here in this tiny, unexciting town; vilifying her mother wouldn't help anything. "Just don't get anything needlessly expensive. I'm not an ATM."

"Thank you, Dad," Bella smiled, getting up to refill her father's soda.

"And—" he stopped her.

"Yes, Char—Dad?"

"Mark's going out of town this weekend, and he's my K-9 unit guy." Charlie smoothed down the left side of his mustache, something he always did to help himself think. Generally it made the potheads he caught at Forks Cemetery pretty nervous. "I trust it won't be too much trouble for you to take care of Izzy for him while he's gone?"

Bella's smile faltered, but only briefly—it was bad enough when her private thoughts took on an unattractive whiny turn; she wasn't about to resort to ugly faces and a bad attitude like an ungrateful brat. "Of course not," she replied, thinking of the canine that was her namesake. What exactly did one do to entertain a hound dog trained to sniff out drugs, bombs, and dead bodies? In January? Play fetch with snowballs? Let it track down hibernating squirrels? Take it for a walk past the most suspicious-looking house in town and see if it gave some kind of narc signals? Whatever it was, she'd be doing it without one peep of complaint. Small price to pay. "I'll call Dell tomorrow, okay?" She would also work on her argument for subscribing to high-speed internet, but for tonight it was best to quit while she was ahead.

That night Bella tiptoed down the stairs, feeling somewhat guilty but mostly triumphant as she retrieved a bottle of cold water to drink and replaced the large, circular, computer-killing magnet on the refrigerator door. Mischief managed, she laughed to herself.

Charlie, lying awake in his room, heard the sound of his daughter moving through the house like it was her own and smiled. It had been more than three years since Isabella had spent a night under this roof, three years since they'd been an actual family, not just two relatives who vacationed together or spent awkward Christmases in Arizona in his ex-wife's living room. Skullduggery, Charlie mused, thinking of his friends who had teenage hell-raisers of their own. I'll take it.

Small price to pay, indeed.