"Today is gonna rule," Alex Loud said. She began to play the air guitar and bang her head, her black hair whipping back and forth. She worked her fingers along an imaginary fretboard and strummed so hard that the strings would have snapped if the instrument were real. She spun around and kicked over the wastebasket next to her sister Jessy's bed, pretending it was an amp and she one of those crazy sixties rock stars who destroyed all their equipment at the end of their set.
She only stopped when Jessy cried out in alarm. "My trashcan!"
Alex opened her eyes - which had hitherto been squeezed shut - and saw a mess of tissues strewn across the floor. Jessy, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a dorky red sweater with a cat emblazoned across the chest, stood in the doorway to the hall, her hands pressed to the sides of her head like she was trying to keep her brainmeat from falling out...which would be a pretty big job since she was an honor roll student. She flicked her eyes to Alex and her expression hardened. Alex forced an anxious smile and dropped to one knee. "I was just about to pick it up," she said.
"While you're at it, you should clean up your side of the room.," Jessy said and crinkled her nose in disgust.
That earned a big eye roll from Alex. Eleven, endlessly talented, and strikingly beautiful with her Latinx features, Alex was chill, the kind of girl who rolled with the punches and went with the flow. Jessy, who was ten, on the other hand, was a total spag who lost her mind at the drop of a hat. She reminded Alex a lot of Squidward, only Jessy was less of a butthole. If Alex made the grave mistake of leaving a single sock on the floor, Jessy would cry and complain like her name was Karen, and on the very rare occasion that Alex left a dish or glass in the room, Jessy would launch into a tirade about bugs and stuff. "Do you want roaches to come? Because this is how roaches come."
Yes, Jessy, because everyone knows that roaches magically spawn from glasses and dirty silverware.
Alex loved her sister to death and every time they were apart for an extended period - like that time last summer when Jessy went to history camp - she felt lost and restless much the same way that a woman might after losing a limb. Even so, Jessy really got on her nerves sometimes. She had to remind her that Jessy couldn't help it; she was literally a basket case. Six months ago, she was diagnosed with OCD, generalized anxiety, and a bunch of other stuff that Alex couldn't remember because she needed headspace for important stuff, like how many units Back in Black sold or quotes from horror movies ("I'm running this monkey farm now, Frankenstien.") Because she was a certified loony tune, Jessy couldn't be held liable for being a wet blanket wrapped around a stick in the mud. Sure, it got old, but what are you gonna do?
Sometimes you just gotta grin and bear it.
"My side of the room looks fine," Alex said. She swept the tissues into the can and righted. "See?" She swept her arm out to indicate how clean and tidy her side of the room was.
Only it wasn't.
Boy was it not.
Books, dirty clothes, and vinyl records lay here and there like flotsam bobbing in the water after a shipwreck. Toys that Alex hadn't played with in years poked out from underneath the bed, and a stack of dirty dishes was piled on her nightstand. An empty bag of fun sized Doritos was stuck between the mattress and the box spring (how did that even happen?) and clandestine cans of Pepsi that she sneaked out of the fridge were tucked into the super secret hiding space between the bed and the nightstand, concealed unless you knew to look for them. She counted five stacked one on top of the other. Chip and cookie crumbs were ground into the carpet and dark spots told the sad tale of liquids spilled and not cleaned. Alex winced because now she looked like a fool. "Okay," she admitted, "so my side of the room is kinda gross, but I don't have time to clean it right now. I have to get ready."
Jessy crossed her arms sternly over her chest. Even though she wasn't Ronalda Anne Santiloud's biological daughter, she somehow managed to look just like her in that moment. "That sounds like an excuse," she said. "What do you need to get ready for?"
"The field trip, duh," Alex said.
Today, October 15, 2041, was the most awesomest of awesome days to ever, uh, awesome. She and her fifth grade class, headed by their fearless leader Mr. Cooper, were going to spend the day at the Michigan State Capitol Building, where they would learn the ins and outs of democracy, eat bagged lunches in the rotunda, and possibly meet the governor himself. Her dad said that Governor Morrison was a "lying, brown-nosed little weasel" but Alex didn't care if he was; she just wanted to meet a famous person, and you can't get much more famous than a full-blown governor. Unless you're meeting the president, but she didn't think Barron Trump had the time to meet with fifth graders from BFE Michigan.
So the governor it was.
Truth be told, Alex didn't really care about the governor or politics. Political stuff bored her to tears and made her want to dive headfirst into a shallow pool. She was really excited for missing a day of school. Alex was just as smart as Jessy if not even smarter, but you wouldn't know that from her grades. She was what her mom called a "slacker." She did well in subjects she liked, but everything else was a big nope. She would get distracted, stare out the window, and wish she was doing something cool, like not being in school. She'd be happy with a field trip to the landfill if it meant getting out of class for the day.
"That's just an excuse," Jessy said. "You can clean your side of the room."
"No, I really can't," Alex said. "I have to, uh…" she looked around the room to see just exactly it was she had to do. It was 6:30. She didn't have to leave for school until seven. She had already brushed her teeth, gotten dressed, and packed her backpack. Mom packed her lunch last night and...yeah, there was really nothing she had to do. She could totally pick her side of the room up a little bit. In true Alex fashion, however, she just didn't feel like doing it. Why do today what you can do tomorrow? Or next week? "Put my socks and shoes on," she finally said.
Jessy arched her brow incredulously. "That takes two minutes," she said.
"Not the way I do it."
Sighing, Jessy shook her head. "Fine. Whatever. But if it's not cleaned up tonight, I'm telling Auntie Ronnie Anne that you have buggy soda cans next to your nightstand."
Alex's jaw dropped. "They're not buggy. Have you ever seen a single bug in here? No, you haven't."
"Because I clean up after you and I'm getting tired of it. You need to grow up and clean your own messes." She whipped her eyes to a pair of underwear on the floor. She wrinkled her nose and looked at Alex. "The least you can do is pick...those...up."
Okay, fine. Alex bent, picked up her underwear, and threw them at the dirty clothes hamper. "She shoots...she misses. Dang it." She sighed, walked over to the hamper, and jammed the underwear in. It was kind of full and *sniff sniff* kind of smelly too. Mom used to do hers and Jessy's laundry once a week but as soon as Alex hit the big 1-0, she stopped coming around. I want you to do it yourself, she had said. You need to learn independence. Ugh, but I don't want to be independent. I want to be a kid and let you do everything for me.
As you might have predicted, Alex let her dirty clothes hamper get overfull before reluctantly dragging it to the laundry room and shoving the contents into the washer. It would be a lot easier if she didn't do that, but every time she looked at the hamper and thought I should really do some laundry, she'd come up with a hundred other things she would rather do with her time. I mean, come on, she went to school for eight whole hours every day, her time was very limited and very precious. That she had to spend even a fraction of it on dumb grown-up things like doing laundry and cleaning her room was a travesty. A travesty, I tell you.
"There," she said. "My unmentionables are out of sight and out of mind."
Jessy sniffed the air.
"They're not that bad," Alex snapped. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish preparing myself for a day of fun and civics at the Capitol Building." She turned her back on Jessy, went to her dresser, and looked at herself in the mirror. She started to play air guitar and bang her head again, giving herself a headache but not caring because today was gonna be great. No school, a bagged lunch, and hanging out with her boyfriend Tim. Days like this don't come around very often, folks, so when they do, you gotta squeeze every little bit out of them that you can.
And that's just what she was going to do.
When Jessy finally buzzed off, Alex opened her dresser and rooted around for a pair of socks, finding one under a pile of undies. She went over to her bed, sank onto the edge, and pulled her socks on, followed by her shoes. Her eyes landed on the hairbrush lying upon the nightstand, and she stole a quick look around. Satisfied that she was alone, she picked up up, spun it around so that she held it by the bristly part, and pressed it to her lips. Well, hello there, Tim. Wanna do something nasty while the teacher isn't looking? I've been practicing really hard. Almost as hard as you are.
She darted out her tongue and licked the handle.
It tasted like plastic.
She pushed it into her mouth and bobbed her head slowly back and forth along the shaft, licking the underside just like that Cosmo article she read told her to. 50 Ways to Drive Your Man Wild. Hey, wait a minute, I have a man. I wanna drive him wild. The article said that guys love blowjobs. At first, Alex thought that blowjobs were where you literally blew on your boyfriend's weiner like it was a fleshy birthday candle, but further research told her that there was actually no blowing involved. She had been using her hairbrush to teach herself how to "give head" and was pretty confident that she was 100 percent perfect at it, but there was only one way to know for sure.
The idea of getting Tim alone and putting his wee wee in her mouth made her heart quicken and her stomach feel strange. She honestly couldn't tell if it excited or terrified her.
Probably both.
Excitified.
Yeah, she liked that word.
She kept putting it off the way she kept putting off doing her laundry but she figured that today was today; she never had the time to be alone together without parents lurking around but if they could find a quiet area at the Capitol - like, say, a janitor's closet - they could maybe get something going.
The handle touched the back of her throat and she gagged. She pulled the brush out and coughed so hard that the edges of her vision tingle gray. For a terrible moment, she thought she was going to puke all over the floor, but she managed to get control of herself with a series of deep breaths.
Okay, that was not fun. Jeez, Cosmo, you're gonna kill someone if you keep this up. She sat the brush on the nightstand and favored it with a doleful look. When it came to the finer points of sexual acts, she was no expert. In fact, she was a novice. Having said that, she was pretty sure that choking on your boyfriend and then puking on him wouldn't drive him wild.
It would only drive him away.
She sighed.
Oh well.
She just wouldn't deep throat him.
Anyway, she had to finish getting ready. She got up, grabbed her backpack, and left the room without turning the light off. In the kitchen, Mom and Dad were eating breakfast while Jessy stood at the counter pouring herself a glass of orange juice. "Good morning, Krusty crew,' Alex said.
"You're unusually chipper," Dad said.
Alex grabbed a fruit bar from the pantry and sat next to Jessy. "Today's the big field trip," she said.
"Did you forget. Lame-o?" Mom asked.
"I guess so," Dad said. "Where are you going again?"
"The Capitol," Alex said proudly.
Dad froze.
Uh...did she say something wrong?
"The Capitol?" he asked.
Alex gave a jerky and tentative nod. "Yeah. The state one."
"That place is full of crooks,' Dad said. "I'd rather you take a field trip to a prison."
Mom rolled her eyes. "Don't listen to him. The men and women working at the Capitol are some of the best and brightest in the state. One of them might even be president one day."
"And if we're lucky, they'll get taken out," Dad said.
Mom shot him a dirty look but he ignored it.
Okay, Alex didn't know exactly what he meant by taken out but she doubted it was on a date. She caught a glimpse of the clock on the microwave, realized she was going to be late, and crammed the whole fruit bar into her mouth. "Gotta go, bye," she said and got up.
"Have fun," Mom said.
"If any politician comes at you," Dad said, "aim for the heart. That's the only way to kill them."
Alrighty then.
Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, Alex left the house, stopping to lock the door with her key since Dad would get upset if she left it unlocked. Anyone one could walk right in, Alex. What were you thinking? She shoved her keys into her hip pocket and hurried down the walk.
The morning was bright and cool. Golden shafts of sunlight fell through the blazing trees lining Cleveland Street and the mouth-watering scent of burning leaves scented the air. She looked around and saw Mr. Jointer down the street burning piles of red, orange, and brown tree droppings. Alex took a deep breath.
She choked on a bug.
Oh, gross, what are you doing here? It's fall. You should all be dead or hiding underground or whatever it is you do.
Alex coughed and spat, then went on her merry way, whistling a light and happy little tune that made dogs howl in pain, leaves fall from tree branches, and brittle glass break where it stood. She wasn't the best singer or whistler, but being the best doesn't matter when your name is Alejandra Carmen Inigo Montoya Loud.
Two blocks from the school, Alex stopped and checked her phone. Ten minutes to spare. Ha. She knew she was really hoofing it but she didn't think she was making time that well. To kill a few minutes, she walked around a big oak tree in someone's front yard and kicked a few burrs around. A car crept to a stop at the curb and Alex stiffened. Uh-oh, child abductor alert.
The driver side window buzzed down and a head poked out.
Oh, no, it was even worse than a child abductor.
It was her aunt Lynn.
"Hey, you," Aunt Lynn said, "what's up?"
Alex froze.
What should she say?
See, Aunt Lynn was a workout nut. She was one of those people who think their lifestyle is soooo great that it should be shoved down everyone's throats, whether they wanted it to be or not. She was constantly dragging Alex into her shenanigans. Last summer, she pulled Alex out of bed at 6am four days a week to jog with her. Worse than the grogginess was Alex's certainty that they would find a body. Joggers always found bodies.
"I'm going on a field trip," Alex said. She glanced at her bare wrist as though she were looking at a watch and let out a nervous laugh. "I'm late. I gotta go."
She started to rush off but Lynn put the car in park, threw open the door, and jumped out, shoulders hunched like an Old West gunslinger at high noon. "Race you there," she said.
Before Alex knew what was happening, Lynn was running to the school and for some stupid reason, Alex was runing after her. They dodged traffic, hopped a fence, and reached the paved playground. Red-faced and winded, Alex dropped to her knees and tried to catch her breath while Lynn did a celebratory dance complete with hip thrusting and finger wagging. "I'm the winner, you're a loser, I'm the best, you're a snoozer," the thirty-three year old adult sang.
Alex gasped for air, fell onto her side, and curled up in a weeping, shaking ball. Lynn looked down at her and her expression sobered. Tbh, she looked scared. "Uh...I gotta go. Live ya, bye."
When she was gone, Alex struggled to her feet and stumbled to the side door, leaning against it and waiting for her heartate to go down. She was not used to exerting herself like this and for a minute there, she was almost certain that she was going to die.
Taking a deep breath, Alex pulled the door open and went inside. A long, crowded hall lined with lockers lay ahead of her. The chatter of talking kids broke over Alex like the roar of the surf pounding the shore and she inhaled deeply through her nose. Ahhh, smells like a field day in here.
That and body odor.
Sheesh, guys, it's called deodorant. Use it every once in a while, will you?
Alex's locker was on another hall near the nurse's office, where she often pretended to be sick so she could get out of school. Of course, it rarely ever worked. Mom was wise to her tricks and rarely let herself be fooled. The last time Alex had the school call home, she had to up her game so much that she had to fake cancer. She even cut some of her hair off with a pair of safety scissors.
Mom didn't believe her.
Shoving her way through the crowd, Alex made her way to her locker. She put the combination in and opened the door. Print outs of YouTube creators, cute musicians, and a bunch of photos of her, Mom, Dad, and Jessy papered the inside of the door and a mess of books and loose papers filled the space beyond. She unzipped her backpack, took out her text books, and shoved them in. She slammed the door just as her friend Meagan walked up. A tiny Asian girl with straight black hair and almond eyes, Meagan and her family moved to Royal Woods from China four years ago. She was really smart - smarter than her and Jessy combined - and was extremely interested in learning state secrets and sensitive information, for some reason. When she wasn't reading from the little red book she carried around with her, she was recording conversations, tapping telephones, and asking everyone what they thought of the Chinese Communust Party, then writing their answers in a notebook. Kind of weird, but whatever. Alex had been taught to not be judgemental or to shame people for being strange.
"Hey, Meggie," Alex said, "excited for the big field trip?"
"Very excited," Meagan said. She opened her satchel and dug through it. "I have cameras, recording equipment, and everything else I need to gather intelligence for Chairman - I mean, my unslakable thirst for knowledge." She flashed an anxious smile.
Oooookay, whatever.
"I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with Tim," Alex said. She looked around the hall but didn't see him anywhere.
The bell rang, and Alex and Meagan went to their class. Tim was sitting in his usual spot by the window and Alex grinned when she saw him. He was too busy talking to the guy ahead of him that he didn't notice her creeping up on him, didn't realize he wasn't alone until her fist crashed into his arm. "Hey, ugly," she said, "how's it hanging?"
She dropped into the chair behind him and he rubbed his arm with a grimace. "Well, it was hanging good until you showed up."
Alex beamed. "Now it's hanging great. Ready for our big adventure?"
"As ready as I'll ever be," he said.
Tim thought the Capitol was going to be boring. In his defense, it would be, but he was missing the forest for the trees. They were going to be out of school for a whole day, and that made even the most boring thing on earth seem cool by comparison.
"Today's gonna rule," Alex said, "just you wait, Timbo."
Though she wasn't trying to imply anything when she said that, her mind flashed back to the brush and her resolution to suck Tim's dick and she felt all weird and fluttery again. Alex didn't think of herself as especially "sexual" the way some girls were - you know the ones, they dress like hos and act like sluts from fan fiction written by preteen boys who wouldn't know how to write a girl if they were one - but she was a normal person and normal people reach an age where desires arise. Some people online made it sound like oral sex was a one sided thing and benefited only the receiving partner, but Alex didn't qute see it that way. She wanted to make Tim feel good, sure, but she really wanted to do it for herself. The thought of doing "the deed" made her hot and flustered and even if it turned out to not be what it was all cracked up to be, eh, at least she tried it.
She had kind of decided to go through with it, but she didn't say anything about doing it today. And if she did, she had already forgotten. Let's just say this: It was on the table and wouldn't be off the table until it had been done, at which point she would either like it and do it again or she wouldn't and would not do it again.
That wasn't the hot issue, though. With or without oral, today was still going to be the King of Days.
"I'll only like it if I get to sit in the governor's chair," Tim said.
"My dad says the governor's chair is full of cooties."
Dad did not, in fact, say that, but it sounded like something he would say, so she went with it.
"Only if you sit in it," Tim quipped.
Alex's jaw dropped and she leaned forward to smack his shoulder. He laughed and pulled away. "I don't have cooties. You're thinking of yourself."
"I've been cootie free for three whole years," Tim said.
"Congratulations," Alex replied.
The bell rang and a few minutes later, Mrs. Young came in. She went over "field trip etiquette" and reminded everyone to use the buddy system because politicians routinely kidnapped lone children and sold them as sex slaves to Hollywood. She didn't actually say that part, btw.
At nine, everyone grabbed their things, lined up, and marched outside, where a bus was parked at the curb. Alex and Tim sat together in the back, AKA the cool kids' section. The ride to the Capitol building took an hour and a half. Mrs. Young and her assistants Mr. Scott and Ms. Johnson led the kids in a rousing rendition of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall and The Wheels on the Bus. The shouting, giggling, and off-key singing gave Alex a headache. She would have preferred some Linkin Park or Slipknot, but she doubted the chaperones would go for that. Tim, ever the charmer, spent the whole ride playing some dumb war game on his phone. "Let me guess," Alex said, "you're fighting wave after wave of Nazis or zombies."
He looked up at her. "How did you know?" he asked seriously.
"Because those are the only two enemies anyone puts in games," Alex said.
Tim considered her point. "True, but they're kind of safe, you know? One's a cold, mindless scourge driven by dumb impulses and the other is zombies."
"It's so old hat, though," Alex said, borrowing a phrase from her 90-year-old Pop-Pop (actually, Dad's dad was Pop-Pop so her great-grandfather was Pop-Pop-Pop). "Like...yeah, we get it, Hitler sucked, but Chairman Mao killed a bajillion more people than Hitler and instead of dunking on him like they do with Hitler, everyone kisses China's butt."
In the front row, Meagan turned around and narrowed her eyes.
Is that a listening device in your ear or are you just happy to see me?
"We really need to have a conversation about that," Alex continued.
Tim looked at her like she was crazy. "No we don't."
She started to reply, but realized what she was saying, and pressed her hand to her temple. "You're right. What am I even thinking? God, Dad and Jessy are both rubbing off on me. I'm gonna wind up geek who dweebs out about dumb stuff."
"You better not," Tim said. "I wouldn't hang with you anymore."
Oh, yeah? After I get done driving you wild, you'd hang out with me even if I grew a weenis.
That made Alex grin.
While Tim went back to playing his game, Alex stared out the window at the passing countryside. She saw farms, forests, streams, and little towns huddled off the highway. Soon, that all gave way to drab urban sprawl. Eventually, the bus left the interstate and roamed a maze of crisscrossing surface streets before finally reaching the Capitol building. The driver threw the doors open and everyone piled out, Mrs. Young and her posse leading the way. "Everyone get with your buddy," she called. "And remember the rules."
Something about keeping your hands in the vehicle at all times, right?
The domed building loomed over them, its marble columns putting Alex in mind of paintings she'd seen of Ancient Greece. Big stone steps led up to the double doors where a couple of soldiers checked everyone's IDs. Mrs. Young explained that they had been there since the Capitol Riot of January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC and that they subsisted off of tree nuts and the occasional stick of beef jerky.
Okay, Alex made that last part up.
Inside, a grand rotunda greeted the group. A statue at its center looked down at Alex with a stern expression, and as she and the others walked around it, she swore that its eyes tracked her. She nudged Tim with her elbow and nodded at it,. "I think he's checking you out."
Tim sized him up. "He's a little too tall for my tastes."
"He's gotta be fifteen, sixteen feet tall," she mused. "I wonder how big his dong is."
"Two inches," Tim said.
"So much bigger than yours."
He shoulder-checked her. Wheeling around, she slapped at him but he ducked and her hand came down on open air. "Come back here, chicken," she said. Tim tried to get away so she gave chase, stopping only when Mrs. Young yelled at them to stop goofing off. Hiding behind the fattest kid in class, Tim shot her a cocky grin, and Alex felt that familiar pinch in her middle.
Oh. yeah, she was totally s'ing his d today.
From the rotunda, the group went down a hall with a black and white checker pattern on the floor and gleaming oak walls. Framed portraits of past leaders watched the procession and globe shaped lamps overhead lit the way. Alex fell in next to Tim and flicked her eyes to his crotch. What would it be like? Would she choke and gag like she did on the brush? She read that cum tasted thick and snotty. That, frankly, was a huge turn off; like, really, nothing''s worse than snorting and getting a huge loogie in your mouth. Yuck. She'd probably tell him to pull out before he "got there." Maybe one day she would partake of his boy juice, but that day would likely not be today.
As Mrs. Young regaled the class with the history of the building and of Michigan itself, Alex looked around for a suitable private place to engage in her first sexual experience. She spotted alcoves, bathrooms, and Meagan with her ear pressed to the door to a meeting room. She figured they could go into the bathroom, but that wasn't really "private" per se. Anyone could walk in and if they happened to look under the stall, they'd clearly see that someone was kneeling in front of someone else. That would not be good. She could already imagine how her parents would react if they found out she had been caught doing something nasty with a boy in the can. Mom would flip her freaking lid and Dad would want to kill Tim. No, they needed to go somewhere no one would happen across them. She bit her bottom lip and swept the hall with her gaze.
Finally, she saw it, a janitor's closet on a cross hall, a drinking fountain to one side.
Perfect, she thought.
She grabbed Tim's hand and forced him to slow down. Mrs. Young and the others went ahead, not noticing that they had left two of their own behind. Alex pulled him to the door and opened it. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Wanna make out?" she asked.
Tim looked at her.
She looked at him.
"Hell yeah," he said.
Alex dragged him into the room, looked around to make sure that the coast was clear, and shut the door behind them. The closet was dimly lit but surprisingly spacious, with a slop sink on one wall and a pegboard on the other. The floor was cement and shelves of supplies surrounded them. Alex turned to Tim and for a moment they awkwardly stared at each other. When he didn't do anything, she took a deep breath, shoved him against the wall, and kissed him. He put his hands on her hips and swirled his tongue around hers. Her center tingled with excitement and her heart pounded. She slipped her hands under his shirt and traced the outline of his chest with her fingertips. She pressed her body to his and the bulge in his pants made her knees weak.
Pulling away from his lips, she smiled at him and sank to her knees. Tim's eyes widened and he stared down at her in shock. "What are you doing?"
She fumbled at the front of his jeans, her teeth brushing her lower lip.
Behind her, a container of powdered bleach fell from one of the shelves, bursting with a white puff on the floor. They both jumped and looked at it.
Random, but okay. She turned back to him and squeezed him through his pants, giggling at the way he blushed and shook. She tried once more to unbutton his jeans, but a low scraping sound like metal on stone stopped her. "Do you hear that?" she asked.
Tim swallowed hard and nodded, "Uh-huh. I think -"
Alex turned just as something exploded through a jumble of mops and brooms standing on end. The tools clattered to the ground and Alex let out a sharp screech.
For a full ten seconds, she gaped at the thing, not believing her own eyes.
It was a desk lamp with a bendable neck and a circular base. It had eyes, a mouth crammed with razor sharp teeth, and little arms, its hands up and its fingers hooked into claws. It waddled forward, its cord dragging behind it like a tail, and Alex jumped to her feet. "Rawr. I'm a lamp monster," it said. Its cord whipped around and lashed Alex's leg. Alarm bells rang and her eyes bulged out of their sockets as she screamed.
"RUN!" Tim wailed. He pushed Alex toward the door and they scrambled over one another to get out, their hands pawing at the knob. The lamp monster scuttled deliberately after them. Alex finally opened the door and she and Tim stumbled out. Tim tried to slam the door behind them, but the lamp monster forced his way out, cord whipping. It hit Tim in the balls and he doubled over.
Throwing its head back, the lamp shouted. "BROTHERS! THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN! LET US ROUT THE HUMANS!
For a second, nothing happened. Then a painting fell from the wall and landed perfectly balanced on one corner. It turned to Alex and Tim, and then waddled at them. A fire extinguisher dropped from its mounted cradle and rolled away, its hose spraying white foam. Brooms, mops, feather dusters, and a vacuum cleaner came out of the closet behind the lamp.
Alex's jaw dropped.
"We gotta get outta here!" Tim yelled. He grabbed Alex's hand and pulled her away.
Behind them, the sounds of chaos reigned. A stapler threw itself at Mrs. Young and knocked her screaming to the floor. A guard drew his gun and fired, but a broom punched through his gut like a spear, and he sank to his knees, bleeding and pale. Doors opened and slammed as Alex and Tim passed, and pencils, pens, and markers rolled after them. A computer screen jumped out of a doorway and blocked Tim and Alex's path. The screen lit up and a robotic voice said, "You got mail."
Tim drew back his foot and kicked it. The screen cracked and it flew off to one side. Alex dared looked over her shoulder, and the things she saw would haunt her for the rest of her life: A screaming, thrashing kid covered in yellow Post-it notes; Meagan's own high tech listening equipment strangling her with its cord; lamps, CPUs, radios, and television sets surrounding fallen kids and stomping them into the ground.
It was hell.
Tim pulled her along and they reached the doors. Alex expected them to be stuck fast but they weren't, and she and Tim didn't stop running until they hit the sidewalk. They both doubled over and gasped for air. "That was close," Alex said.
"Yeah," Tim said, "but we should be safe n -"
A horn honked.
They looked up to see that they were surrounded on three sides by an assortment of cars, trucks, and minivans, their noses all pointed directly at them.
None of them had a driver.
Loud hard rock music cut on from one of the vehicles and filled the day as the engines started to vroom and roar.
Who made who?
Who made you?
Who made who?
The vehicles all surged forward at once and Alex barely had time to cringe before she was knocked down and sucked under the tires of a police car. Bones crunched, blood gushed, and the heat of the undercarriage scorched her flesh, making it bubble, blister, and run. A tire rolled over Tim's head and it popped, brains and blood spurting across the sidewalk. The cop car backed up and ran over Alex's legs and they shattered in a hundred places. She screamed. The car backed up again and came forward. The front tire squished her soft, fleshy center, breaking her ribcage. Blood and intestines shot out of her mouth as the tire slipped and spun in the red mess leaking from her chest and stomach. The color drained from her face and her head lulled limpy to one side.
The last thing Alex Loud felt before death stole her was her body separating in two chunks at the waist.
She was so wrong.
Today did not rule.
At least...not for humans.