It was a disturbing dream. Everything was in color, everything felt real, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, as a lucid dreamer, I knew it was just a dream. 

I was working at a day care that the dream said I had worked at before and was returning to after some time away. I didn’t recognize the place, but I was working there. The actual building was small, just some white concrete with a roof and glass walls to see outside. Everyone but a few people were outside. The back had a light concrete slope leading down to the little pond with crystal-clear water; the area surrounding the water was covered in healthy green jungle foliage. 

Occasionally I saw a babysitter or the boss walk through the foliage. During the tour of the facility, I was brought through the greenery, having to fight some of the plants to get through, only to be shown a door leading to an alley on the left side. We had walked in from the right, trekking all the way around just to see this. 

The tour complete, we got back to work. I took care of many children throughout the day, varying in age but mostly handled toddlers and babies. I wasn’t told the name of any of them. As the day dwindled and the children were being picked up, I noticed the no-more-than-two-year-old sitting up beside me on the concrete had not yet been picked up by a parent. No one else seemed bothered by this. 

I noticed the boy had filled his diaper, so I hurried to gather a diaper and wipes to change him. He wasn’t wearing anything else, same as the other younger children, so I didn’t have to worry about moving his clothes out of the way. As I tried to clean him up, I noticed he was eating a hot dog with one hand and had some green leafy dip and chili dip beside him in a plastic container. I hadn’t seen how he got the food, but since it seemed to be distracting him while I cleaned him up, I wasn’t going to try to stop him from eating. 

The first issue I noticed was that it was taking a lot more work to clean him up than I had anticipated. I was desperately scrounging for more wipes when I noticed the dirty diaper was not rolled up and tossed. It was open and had the exact same colors as the dips the boy had been eating. To my horror, the poor boy was dipping his hot dog into the filth instead of the actual food. Any attempts I made to stop him, get the filth away, and keep him from eating any more of it were futile. All I could do was clean him up as fast as I could, pick him up, and get away from the problem. 

Holding the baby close, because to me he was clearly nothing more than a baby, I trekked through the foliage on the right side and was making my way toward the other side in this weird semicircle. I was hoping to save the baby and keep him away from the filth. Hopefully it was taken care of, since part of the job was cleaning up garbage. 

While in the foliage, I noticed some trash around, so I swapped the baby into one arm and picked up the trash with the other hand. I quickly noticed there was so much trash I was randomly finding that I would need to come back and clean out the area once the child is picked up and is no longer my responsibility. With this in mind, I took the trash I could in one hand and the baby in the other as I made toward the left side of the foliage, intending to exit the plants entirely. 

I tripped before I could make it out. I managed to hold onto the baby, thank goodness, but let the trash go to brace myself. Looking around, the baby was safe in my hold, but there was something else under the foliage. It was another baby. 

This baby was younger than the one in my hold. This one was clearly sick. The hair on her head had turned white and prickly like a hedgehog, and on top of her head there was a hole in her skin, revealing a purple, coconut-hard, raised growth inside. The word that came to mind was “tumor.” The baby had a tumor, even though I knew that wasn’t the right word for whatever this was. I just knew that the baby was sick and still alive somehow.

Knowing this baby was here, abandoned by someone—I wasn’t sure if it had been another babysitter or a parent somehow—I began to search for more. I found two others, both young. One little boy was sick like the little girl and was so little he couldn’t be older than a month or two. Another little girl was still healthy and closer to the age of the baby boy I was originally carrying through the foliage. 

I wasn’t sure how, but I managed to hold all four babies in my two arms and carried them through. I easily noticed how the foliage seemed to cling more, as if trying to steal the babies away. Once or twice a baby or two was pulled out of my arms, but I went back and got them. As I finally made it out of the jungle, hurrying toward the boss, I noticed I was missing the original baby boy I had been carrying and turned to see him stuck at the edge of the foliage without a complaint. I rushed back and got him, then brought him and the other three I found to my boss. 

The look on her face when I brought her the babies, worrying about their lack of care and even doubting my own care for children because of the find, made me confused. As I mentioned there might even be more babies lost in the foliage than the few I found, my boss stopped me and had an odd sympathetic and mournful look on her face. 

She said there wasn’t really a point to search or even to bring the sick ones I found to the hospital. They weren’t likely to survive anyway. She pointed out how the parents never came to claim the missing children. No one had. She said there was no point in attempting to save them since there was nothing we could really do. This broke my heart. 

Later that day we had a funeral for the sick babies in the concrete front of the building with glass windows. I didn’t count how many there were, but there were more than two. The still-living babies were kept in a pen on the concrete slope, playing together. There were more than two in there, but not many. 

When I woke up I knew what the dream meant: the children of the world are in danger. They need prayers and help. Those who haven’t been properly cared for don’t know what’s good for them and so are consuming filth. Also, so many are sick, dying, and have been abandoned. Meanwhile, the world is just letting it happen, saying there is no point in attempting to help since there is nothing that can be done. The devil is after the children, and the younger ones are in the most danger.

The night was usually a reprieve. We could walk around and commune together without fear of our warden tormenting us for a few hours. Just the other day she brought a human through our halls with a camera. Upon their approach Janitor put down his book, put his helmet back on, and hurried back to cleaning the floors. Penny was still in her room, so she was safe. Gracie hid behind her teddy bear as Miss Roberts approached, but I knew that would not be enough to protect her. I waved her back to her room across the hall as I scurried back to my own, keeping a close eye on Roberts and the human as they walked past. I may be the youngest animatronic here, but that did not mean I was the least damaged. Roberts was the reason my voice box was damaged and my face had melted off, leaving nothing but a smooth silver exterior similar to Janitor. I would not let any other animatronics in the building be hurt. There was nothing I could do as Roberts approached Ring Master, but thankfully nothing happened as the camera rolled. Now the night was filled with noise, the reprieve gone. The commercial, as Roberts had called it, was a job posting for a new night guard position. Perhaps Roberts saw humans as easily expendable, like the first night guards she had hired to torment us. Two didn’t survive my judgment, one of which still hung in my room as a warning. No one hurts my friends, and no one enters my room with malicious intent.

Roberts has been interviewing for hours. She sends them in groups, three or four at a time. Guide leads them past our rooms, where we have been warned to stay, and occasionally opens the door for the humans to gawk at us before the humans walk into the camera monitoring room. All remains quiet for a time, but the humans are supposed to make their rounds to each room eventually. Roberts never trusted us to behave, and I doubt she knows the meaning of the word. I broke the security camera in my room days ago, and each time Roberts has it fixed, I break it again. Roberts has no business in my room, and I intend to keep it that way. 

Various humans have entered my room tonight. Some were just checking to make sure I was there, while others asked for directions. I pointed, and they hurried away. One confused human said Ring Master had lost her cane and it had been left in my room. This is true, but it was not the only cane in my room. The human reached for the wrong cane, and though I tried to stop her, she snatched it and hurried away in fear. She returned with a chastised look on her face and asked again for the cane. I grabbed it and brought it toward her slowly, offering it to the human. She snatched it and ran. All was quiet for a bit until I could hear Janitor’s clunky feet chasing another human that had pissed him off, likely having tampered with the fuse box again. 

I looked around my web-infested room as I heard the latest group of humans scared out of the building. Roberts would not be pleased. A few minutes later, Janitor opened my door and handed me Ring Master’s cane, which I set against the wall for the next victim to come find. If we could scare away enough humans, maybe Roberts would have to shut down. I waited in the dark, listening to the spiders skitter across their webs with amusement. These beautiful creatures were my children now, and they accepted me as their queen, just as Guide liked to tell each human as they opened my door. I was left waiting again, sitting in the dark, waiting for my next victim to scare. 

The next human male who entered was different. He bowed his head in reverence when he saw me and did not flinch as I approached. He lowered himself to one knee and kindly requested Ring Master’s cane, calling me his queen all the while. No human had ever shown me such respect before. I gave him the cane, and he thanked me, bowing low to show respect. I was touched. He requested to leave my presence now so he could return Ring Master’s cane as he was tasked. Unable to speak, I nodded. He bowed once more and left after one last word of reverencing me as his queen once more. I stood there for a long while afterward. If I could smile, I would have. If more humans were like him, perhaps humans were not so bad after all. Surely not all could be like Roberts.

It felt like a dream. Two sisters traveled in the late hours of the night. Few shops were open and the streetlights had remained lit for some time. The building resembled a cargo ship made of copper turned green from exposure with the second story made of wood. The lights were still on. The two sisters entered. It was a modest shop toward the front, a few simple dresses and boots for sale. The mannequins with faces asked the sisters questions and encouraged the girls to come back later to check again if they did not find anything of interest now, all while the plump old shopkeeper read a book behind the old cash register. 

The first sister admired some of the dresses while the second looked further into the shop. Behind the wooden front section were shelves of books that spread into a colosseum with no roof above. The upper half resembled that of a shift with it’s masts and sails, rain not a bother despite the open sky above the books. Whether a bookstore or library remained uncertain, but the books spread out farther than the girl could view. A coliseum of books, indeed. 

The books she grabbed and looked through varied, but the one she found most intriguing seemed familiar in some way. The book was a children’s book based on Colin Morgan’s portrayal of Merlin, exploring Merlin’s adventures while awaiting King Arthur to rise again. The map inside included booted footprints visibling moving across the page and fading where no longer visible on the map. Flipping the pages brought her to Merlin on an old ship at sea, fighting an undead drowned spirit he claimed shared the name of the Greek god Triton, one of Poseidon’s sons. Merlin appeared occasionally from the water, grappling with the creature who kept trying to drag him under like a siren. Merlin dragged the creature on board and dragged him across dry land once the sailors landed. The sister could see these events before her, coming alive from the pages to the point if she reached out she could touch them. The water rising within the coliseum to set the scene and lowering the more Merlin was on land.

She snapped the book shut as Merlin walked out of sight and found herself back in the bookstore. She hurried to find more books similar to the one in her hands when she looked down to see the book had transformed. No longer a children’s book, it was a magazine pamphlet only holding the small pieces she had just read. The book itself was no more, just multiples of the same pamphlet, multiplying in her hands and not providing anything more. Annoyed and frustrated, the sister dropped the pamphlets and hurried back to the front section of the store where her sister was still admiring a pair of boots. The sister who had been reading grabbed the other and ushered her out. Night and day seemed to shift and the sisters watched the store, now closed. The sign on the door read the shop was only open Monday through Wednesday, but the sisters knew that the night before had been a Friday and it was not Saturday morning. 

Looking around nearby revealed familiar faces to the sisters. Old friends and colleagues who had arrived to help get the sisters back inside. There was something the sisters needed in there, though what remained unclear. Perhaps the children’s book that had disappeared. Perhaps something else. The dark skinned woman led the charge, using magic to bring some of the small statues and markings on the store to life as the group climbed the front of the building, hoping to reach the colosseum behind the locked doors. Before they climbed further than the start of the second story, the front of the building sung open like metal doors and everyone climbing fell to the ground. The colosseum beyond the from was in view, and water was pouring in over the sand. The drowned creature Merlin had fought the night before was crawling toward them through the doors, its lower half missing while Merlin was running across a section of bookshelves further on, and sails were spreading out over a wooden ship. Through all the chaos the sisters watched, waiting for the action to begin. 

Granny needed her bread and pastries. Not to mention the other items that had run out. The pantry was bare after last night’s supper, not even a crum left in sight, so someone would be tasked with fetching more groceries. Red’s mother, with her curly locks of blonde hair and matching name, was tending to the garden, which still had a long while before ripening. Granny, with gray hair and round spectacles, planned to spend the day mending the blankets and clothes left in a large pile by her rocking chair. This left Red, wearing a faded blue dress, with the task of fetching the groceries. She wrapped her warm red cloak around her shoulders and pulled the hood over her light blonde hair, half pulled back from her face by a single hair pin, before she left the house with a small coin purse tucked in her pocket and a reed basket on her arm. 

She walked into the surrounding forest without hesitation. At only five years old, she knew the way to the Gingerbread House by heart. “Just follow the path through the trees,” her mother had told her long ago. “Once you know the way you will never be lost.”

Red followed the path through the trees for a short while before she came across a shaggy gray wolf that growled at her upon sight. The wolf was missing a paw, only a stump just above the ankle, and was favoring his opposite side. The wolf’s shoulder above the stump was scratched bloody, drying but not fully scabbed over. The wolf growled at Red as she attempted to approach. She needed to get around the wolf, but leaving too far off the path might make her lost. She tried to walk around the wolf at a close enough distance to the path, but he would not let her. 

Red pouted for a moment at the wolf. The wolf was neither impressed nor helpful. Red sat down on the path a few feet away from the wolf and stared at it. After some silence between them, the wolf hobbled a little closer. Red watched him with only a slight hitch in her own breathing. She let the wolf get close enough to smell her slowly outstretched hand, watching carefully for any sudden movements. The wolf seemed to be doing the same as he slowly sniffed her hand and looked up at her. 

After a few moments of staring, Red reached her hand out toward the wolf’s bloody shoulder to check the damage. The wolf growled at her, so she unhooked her cloak from her shoulders and threw it on top of the wolf. The wolf stilled under the cloak and suddenly began shifting under the cloak, morphing into a grown man with dark gray hair and dressed only in tattered rags. He clung the cloak closer to himself with his single hand and stared at Red with wide eyes, who blinked at him in return. 

“How did you change me back?” He asked in a gruff-sounding voice. “I haven’t been able to shift back in so long…”

Red shrugged. “You’re wearing wearing my cloak so you won’t growl or bite me,” she told him. 

He blinked at her and nodded twice. Red reached her hand out toward his shoulder once more, and other than a flinch, he did not respond. The bleeding had mostly stopped and was drying, but the cut still looked bad. Red huffed and reached to the hem of her cloak, which the man tugged away quickly with wide eyes, making Red glare at him. 

“You need a bandage,” she told him and snatched the bottom of her cloak before he could move, tearing pieces of it off and pouting at him any time he tried to move away from her hands. 

Eventually, she managed to wrap the strips of her cloak into a makeshift bandage around his shoulder. Once she was done, she stood up and placed her hands on her hips. The two stared at each other for a while before Red told the man, “I want my cloak back when we’re done.”

“Done with what?” He asked, clutching the cloak closer to himself. 

“I need to get food from the Gingerbread House. You can come with me, but you need to bring my cloak. No growling or biting.”

The man only nodded at her, blinking rapidly. He stood up with her help, his one good hand, keeping the cloak on himself. Red nodded to herself once he was up and led him down the forest path to the Gingerbread House. Not long later, they found themselves in a small clearing with only a single building in the center. The building was none other than a house made of gingerbread. It was a large building, adorned with frosting and giant candy for decorations. The windows were made of smooth rock candy. Gumdrops were lined up to form a path towards the front door, which was made of chocolate bars. The shingles of the roof were candy corn. The chimney was licorice and was not smoking for once. 

Approaching the building further, Red could see no light emitting from the windows. The sign on the front door read “Closed” for some reason. Red had never seen the bakery closed before. The owners must be away, she decided. Peering at the shelves through the windows, Red could clearly see all the usual groceries Granny and her mother had her fetch. All she needed was to get inside and she could get what she needed. Red tried to open the door but found it locked. 

Red huffed and crossed her arms, glaring at the door. The door did not open on it’s own so she tugged out the hair pin holding back her hair and attempted to pick the lock. The man behind her just watched her. Eventually, she heard the lock click, cheered to herself, and managed to tug the door open. The man waited outside as Red entered the bakery, hurting to the bread and sweets she knew to get. She added eggs and a small bag of flour to her basket as well. There was only so much she could carry on on her own. Satisfied she had everything in her basket, Red pulled out her coin purse and set a few coins on the counter. Finished, she placed the purse back into her pocket and exited the building. After closing the door, she used her hair pin to re-lock the door. After finally hearing the lock click into place, Red heaved a relieved sigh. 

She put her hair pin back into her hair to keep her vision clear and turned to look at the man who just blinked at her. Red reached into her basket, pulled out a small roll, and shoved it into the man’s face. He blinked at the roll before biting into it from her hand. She left him until he finished it, still clutching her cloak when thunder rolled overhead. Both looked up at the sky to see the clouds had darkened and moved overhead. 

“That’s not good” Red decided. 

“Just a bit of rain,” the man replied with a one-shoulder shrug using his good shoulder. 

Red looked down at her basket, worrying her bottom lip at the thought of the bread getting wet. She had come all this way for the bread, and now it would be ruined. She glanced over at the man and her eyes slipped to her cloak, which he was still clutching to himself like a lifeline. Her cloak protected her from rain and was designed specifically to keep her warm and dry. Wrapped in her cloak, the bread would be safe. 

She reached for her cloak, but the man jumped away, his eyes wide. “What are you doing?” He demanded. 

“I need my cloak back now,” she told him. “To keep the food dry.”

The man shook his head. “This thing is the only thing keeping me in human form right now.”

“Well too bad,” she replied with a huff and her hands on her hips, the basket of goodies now set on the ground. “I need it back.”

“No!” He yelped as she reached for it again, moving further away. 

She chased him around the clearing until she managed to snatch it off of him. Within moments, the man was once again a dark gray wolf, with the makeshift bandage still wrapped around his shoulder, and snarled at her. Red stuck her tongue at him and hurried back to her basket; the wolf following her and nipping at the cloak. Red pushed the wolf’s head away and lifted her basket, wrapping her cloak around it as the wolf attempted to nip the cloak once more, lifting his paws and scratching her legs slightly as he did. Red pushed him away again and began running back through the trees, following the path home with the wrapped basket close to her chest. The wolf remained on her heels and occasionally scratched those heels all the way as the rain began to fall.

Her dress soaked through, Red was grateful she had wrapped the basket up as she caught sight of home. The wolf was growling and snarling close behind. Red ran up to the front door and knocked on the door using her shoulder, her arms full of the basket as she tried to use a foot to push the enraged wolf away. The door opened and she managed to slip inside before shoving the door closed with her weight before the wolf could follow her inside. The wolf was still growling on the other side of the door as Granny and Goldie wrapped Red up in one of the mended blankets, trying to dry her off. Goldie took the basket from Red’s hands and began putting away the groceries as Granny looked over Red’s wounds. The scratches were not bad, so Red decided the wolf had not been trying to hurt her. She listened to the growling outside with the rain as her mother began cooking and Granny bandaged her small wounds. 

Eventually, Goldie brought Red’s cloak back over to her and wrapped it over the blanket, helping Red warm further as the growling quieted and eventually stopped. Intrigued, Red approached the window and opened it slightly, peering out into the rain to see the gray wolf turned toward a white wolf that was approaching him. The gray wolf let the white wolf approach him and nuzzled his fur for a moment before suddenly he was morphing back into human form. The white wolf morphed into a pale human woman with long white hair and clothed in a thin white dress. Red watched as the woman in white reached out her hand to the man, and taking it, led him back into the woods. 

“Oh! That’s Artemis and James!” Granny cried, peering over Red’s shoulder and making her jump. 

Granny pulled Red away from the window as she mused, “Haven’t seen those two in a while. Wonder why James was growling so much, though. He could have just knocked on the door and I would have let him in. This is no weather to be out in.”

“He didn’t transform unless he was wearing my cloak,” Red told Granny. “Or until that lady showed up.”

“That’s odd,” Granny decided, sitting Red down at the dining table. “James can normally transform into any animal he chooses and change back without trouble. I wonder why he was stuck.”

Red shrugged. “Who were they?” She asked as Granny sat beside her. 

“My siblings,” Granny replied with a huff of laughter. “I guess it is high time I tell you about them, my parents, and where we come from.”

“Are you sure she’s old enough, mom?” Goldie called over her shoulder. “I don’t think she’s old enough to learn about the island, yet.”

“Oh, she can handle it,” Granny insisted, sharing a conspiratorial wink with Red. “I’ll only tell her the important bits if you’re so worried.”

“If you’re sure,” Goldie replied. 

Red listened intently to the stories Granny began to tell.

Fight or die. Those were the only two options. No one was sure how it all came to this, but here everyone was. Water surrounded the entire palace and filled the courtyard. The faded pink stone of the palace reflected in the water’s surface. The wooden reed roof casted shade over those in view and hid those who were not. The green smoke that coated the tips of the green team’s arrows wafted into the air as the red smoke of the red team’s arrows did the same across the courtyard, each smelling of ozone. This was no game. This was life or death; freedom or enslavement to the winner.

The teams, red and green respectively, were determined based on the color of the arrow tips, each arrow glowing and emitting smoke. The green team and red team mirrored one another in physical appearance, but contrasted with one another in dress. The green team wore traditional and modest clothing with hints of armor on the soldiers while their princesses were pushed aside and left to wait out the war. Meanwhile the red team were dressed in armored gowns, built for war, with modernized elements of the women’s traditional dresses.

I was on team red, positioned on the left-side tower roof with my arrow notched against my bow and aimed across the water. There were far too many greens left in sight. I let my arrow fly and it hit one of the green soldiers, the red smoke wafting up from the wound as the soldier crashed into the water below him. I notched my next arrow as I chose my target. I had repeated this practice for the past hour, shooting down every target I could. I had lost track of the days of this battle long ago.

I nearly missed sight of the green-smoked spear as it flew toward me. I attempted to dive out of the way, but the spear pierced my shoulder and tugged me forward. The chill of the water shocked my system as I struggled against the spear continuing to pull me toward the green-knighted source. I managed to yank the spear out of my shoulder just as I was pulled up to the soldier in silver with wide, nervouse eyes. By the look of him, he was just a boy not yet grown his first chin hair. I would bet I was his first catch with the spear based on the look of surprise in his eyes.

A throat is cleared behind him and he yanks me up by my uninjured shoulder and further inside. There is a group of soldiers behind him, all far more mature and seasoned than the boy who caught me, led by the only woman in actual armor I have ever seen from the green side. She looks me over and calls for someone out of sight, who drags a poor girl who looks exactly like me into the room. Her skin is copper and her long hair is black, pulled into three sections all the way down her back. I have the same hairstyle, but where she wears a light blue fitted top and harem pants with golden slippers, I wear blue and gold lightweight armor tailored to provide me with ease of movement and less heavy drag compared to what the green team is wearing.

“This is our Jasmine,” the soldier informs the woman as she looks between myself and the young girl who stares at me with wide eyes and fear.

There is nothing I can do to help her until or even if the battle is ended. I look over to the soldier who caught me and can see the conflict within his eyes. He never wanted to be here in the first place, I would wager. I turn back to the woman eyeing me up with a nod of satisfaction. She says something I do not quite understand, but then again I do not need to. She nods at the soldier holding the other Jasmine and he takes her away. The woman talks to her other soldiers, trying to use me as an example, as I meet the eyes of the one soldier who caught me. I silently plead with him to let me go and help me escape. By the look in his eyes he wants to but fears the repercussions of the action. If I can put enough distance between myself and the woman in front I should be able to escape and this boy will not interfere with my escape. He may even help, slightly.

I look up at the canopy that makes up what little of the roof is here. I can use it to my advantage. I kick the woman’s leg as she faces away and she stumbles toward her other soldiers. I take the chance and pull out of the boy’s weak grip on my shoulder, ignoring the pain in my injured shoulder as I reach above and haul myself into the rafters above. The woman, I notice below, is furious and attempting to make her way up toward me. I continue climbing higher across the rafters and make my way back toward the courtyard once more, where arrows of green and red smoke are flying through the air. I climb along the pink walls, using the stones to hold my footing where I can and pray that none of my teammates will hit me with their arrows by accident.

The woman from before is close, but kicking debris toward her each time she gets too close holds her off just enough for me to escape her grip. High enough up, I push off of the wall with my feet and plummet toward the water, which stings the wound in my shoulder at the same time it soothes. I swim as fast as I can toward my team’s side of the palace and am relieved as three of my teammates reach me and haul me up onto solid ground. I look over my shoulder back at the other side of the watery field to see the angry woman yelling, not hearing a word she says based on the ringing in my ears, and the boy who caught me staring after me with a mix of relief and worry in his wide eyes.

This war is not over yet, but it may be soon if more soldiers on the other side are like that boy. I will ensure he is safe and well cared for, alongside the other poor souls, once we win this war. I give the boy a smile and a small nod, which he returns with growing relief in his gaze. He turns and runs back behind the wall, disappearing from sight as someone begins to stitch up my shoulder. I inhale and exhale as I plan my next move, looking around the ruins of the palace across from us for my next target.

The love of stories started when she was a toddler. Grandpa George would stay at the house to watch Angela while her parents were at work, and he would read to her. Once she could walk, she would toddle over to the bookshelf, pull out a book, toddle back to her grandpa, plop down on the floor, and shove the book at him until he read it. Once the book was read all the way through, she would take the book back to the shelf, retrieve another one, and repeat the process. This was the case until she learned to read herself, but still occasionally insisted that her grandfather read to her.

As she grew older and gained a handful of siblings her grandfather would gather the grandchildren close and encourage them to make up their own stories. The children would sit on the back porch with a treat and each take turns adding a line to the story. This sparked the notion of creating stories within her. As the spark festered, she read every interesting book she came across. She was ahead of her reading level in class, and she could pronounce the more complicated words better than the other children. She only struggled with vocabulary words by mixing up the definitions.

There were several instances where she got in trouble for reading during class. She did not want to participate in math after the alphabet was introduced to the regular equations and the science equations put her off the science exercises. She completed her work in class as quickly as she could so that she could get back to reading her books. The practice of finishing her work before everyone else allowed her to read more in class without her teachers getting mad at her. This practice persisted throughout the rest of her education.

She enjoyed practicing her penmanship in both cursive and print, her handwriting changing to a combination of the two styles over the years. She enjoyed reading history books because of the stories held within. She was a favorite at the school library, checking out a new book every few days. Some days she finished a novel in eight hours and would come back into the library the next day for a new one.

She was ten years old when she started writing after watching a favorite television show and imagining herself as a character within. She started writing her own version of the show with herself, interacting with the characters, and going on adventures. With the first draft incomplete, she decided that she could write the story better and immediately rewrote it a different way. She would repeat this process and continued to rewrite the story before it was truly finished. By then the story no longer resembled a fanfiction of the original show but was its own story with only a handful of remaining similarities to the show. This was the beginning of her writing career.

She continued writing as she grew older. Some of her stories started off as fanfiction that she rewrote until the stories no longer resembled the original sources except for a few similarities and others she wrote from random imaginings or from real world inspirations. Her siblings became main sources of character inspiration, resulting in multiple characters being based on her siblings with adaptations. She let her siblings decide some of the details about the characters she based on them.

The first novel she published she finished writing when she was seventeen. Multiple publishing houses refused her manuscript until she self-published with an online publishing company that allowed her control over her royalties and allowed her to design the book cover. She dedicated the book to her grandfather who passed away shortly after the novel was published. Her profit from the novel was little as most people who purchased the book were her relatives, but she was thrilled and relieved at having accomplished writing and publishing her first novel.

As she finished high school and worked small jobs part time, she began her book collection made up of books she had already read and enjoyed. By the time she arrived at university she had a collection of fifty books that made up her personal library. She studied literature and creative writing, hoping to improve her own writing. She wrote down the stories that she and her siblings had made up with her grandfather as kids, publishing them as short stories once her youngest sister finished the artwork for the manuscripts. These stories were also dedicated to Grandpa George.

After she graduated from university, Angela sought out job opportunities that would allow her to write. She hoped for a well-paying job that would allow her to pay the bills while she wrote her own stories on the side. She had difficulty finding the right job. She ended up working as an editor of formal documents at a business company, which paid her well enough but drained her energy and she stopped writing for pleasure.

She continued to read when she could, collecting more books so that her personal library included more than one hundred and fifty books. Reading helped soothe her ache for stories, but she felt herself growing antsy after going so long without writing. After some encouragement from family, she managed to write a short story, though it physically hurt to write after going so long without writing. She continued to write, working on more novels and short stories, and the pain gradually faded away. She found that writing was a muscle that needed regular exercise and writing for short periods each day helped.

She wrote a little every day and read every chance she could, working the routine into her daily schedule to soothe herself and reenergize after a draining day. She met a nice man, Jeremy, at Barnes and Nobles. He was interested when she rambled on about the books she read or was writing and asked her out on a coffee date. Dating had been a struggle for years prior due to her dates not being readers or more interested in other hobbies. Some of her dates claimed she read too much, and others disregarded her reading hobby as something to grow out of. Jeremy did not read as much as Angela but did enjoy reading. He appeared enthralled by whatever story she ranted about. He never interrupted her stories or seemed frightened by her book collection when she showed him. He often asked her to talk about stories she was passionate about and they spent many hours discussing her books and reading together.

He took her to Barnes & Nobles on a handful of anniversaries and let her pick out as many books as she wanted to add to her collection. He never complained. On their fourth-year anniversary he proposed as soon as they got home from one such trip and they married a year later. He installed a large bookshelf in their home that held her growing collection of over two hundred books, including her own published books, while she was pregnant with their first child. When he showed her the library he had built for her she wept and kissed him.

Just until a spot opens, I reminded myself, she is only here until a spot opens and then she will move out. I took a deep breath, set down my phone on the charger, and cracked my bedroom door open. I did not see her there, so I opened the door further and looked around, closing the door behind me. There was no sign of Drea, so I moved toward the back door. I fed and watered the dogs and cats before leaving out the backdoor. I fed the chickens and collected two eggs from the nests, locking the coop behind me.

I turned to see an old woman with a snarl on her face as she walked past. It was Drea, an old family friend of my godmother, Aunt Helen, who was living with us at Aunt Helen’s house. Drea had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few months prior and Drea could not safely live on her own anymore. Aunt Helen had taken in Drea shortly after my sixteenth birthday, six months ago, so that Aunt Helen could care for Drea until she passed. Aunt Helen had also put Drea on a waiting list for a retirement home that would be able to care for her better. Aunt Helen was currently away on a two-week business trip, leaving me to watch over the house, the animals, and Drea until her return. The situation had been manageable and routine until recently. For some reason Drea suddenly seemed to despise me. I told myself it was because she did not remember me.

I watched Drea walk around the back of the house for a moment before I approached the backdoor. I pulled at the door handle, but the door was locked. Drea had been locking every door she could recently, so I was not surprised. If Drea was outside while the backdoor was locked, then the front door had to be unlocked. I walked around the house to the front, finding Drea walking around the other side and glaring at me upon sight. She headed toward the front gate, trying to unlock the newly added gate lock without success.

I took a deep breath and turned to the front door, ready to open it with the code to the keypad. I tugged on the screen door to get to the keypad, but the screen door would not budge. I looked at the screen lock to see that it was locked from the inside. I took another deep breath in. I ignored Drea’s attempts to wrestle the gate lock into submission and made my way back around the house to the backdoor. I tried the backdoor again, but it refused to budge. I looked around for the spare key, but the key was missing from its usual place and nowhere in sight.

I struggled to keep firm control over my breathing. Both doors should be impossible to lock at the same time with Drea being outside because both must be locked from the inside; therefore, one door is always unlocked if Drea is outside. That should have been a fact. Both doors were currently locked, and both Drea and I were outside. The situation should have been impossible. I looked around for the key once more and found no trace.

I should call Aunt Helen, I told myself, but then remembered I had left my phone inside to charge while I went to feed the chickens. There was no way to call for help. Even if I could call, I did not have Aunt Helen’s number memorized. I could go over to one of the neighbors’ houses. The ones next door often helped Aunt Helen when she needed help, so they had her number and could call her and ask where the key had been moved to or what I should do.

I set down the eggs and walked back to the front of the house, where Drea was failing to pull open the screen door.

“Don’t pull on that,” I told her. “You locked us out, remember?”

Drea snapped back “I know, I know,” and continued her assault on the screen door’s handle before releasing it and walking around the house once more. I approached the front gate and reached to unlock the gate when a thought occurred. Drea could not be left alone, lest she hurt herself. I could take Drea with me over to one of the neighbors’ houses, but could I keep Drea from wandering off? If Drea had still been in a following people around mood, as she had been mere days before, it would not have been an issue. Ever since the sudden change in personality that occurred four days ago, with Drea refusing to listen to anything I said, this was not a high probability.

I could not leave. No way to call for help. No way to get into the house. I was already sweating, and the sun had only been up for a few hours. The night nurse had only left half an hour ago. I inhaled deeply and let out the breath as slowly as I could. I looked out over the gate to see a handful of people walking or biking past, enjoying the morning. I reacted as soon as a lady walked close enough with her dog, her phone in her outstretched hand. I waved her down, told her of the situation, and asked to borrow her phone to call a lock smith. The lady graciously agreed, handing her phone over the gate as Drea walked back around the house behind me, grumbling about something.

I pulled up a search engine on the phone in my hand and found the phone number of a locksmith. I dialed, received an answer, and was told the locksmith would arrive within half an hour. I hung up the call, thanked the lady as I handed back the phone, and turned back to Drea. The wait was torture, but the locksmith arrived, and I unlocked the gate for him to enter, locking it quickly after. The locksmith failed to unlock the back door and the screen door in the front on the first few tries, but eventually opened the screen door after poking a hole in the screen and lifting the latch. With access to the keypad, I was able to enter the house and pay the locksmith. After I let him out of the front gate and locked it behind him, I snatched my phone from the charger and called Aunt Helen to inform her what happened.

Aunt Helen refused to believe that the back door had been locked at the same time as the front door but did tell me where the spare key had been moved to. The key had been right in front of me when I had been looking, apparently having looked past it repeatedly. After a long discussion, Aunt Helen informed me she would be reaching out to people to help watch Drea. Drea would be put into a home where she could receive better care as soon as a spot opened up. I shuddered as the tears rolled down my face. Will a spot open up?

The grandchildren had just walked back into the house from the neighbor’s pool. Bundled in fluffy towels, the grandchildren wandered around the house, grabbing clothes, and taking turns dressing in the bathroom. Damp hair and mismatched outfits clothed the grandchildren as they gathered back in the living room. The television was turned on as the old man sat down in his recliner. All eyes turned to him as he asked if anyone would like to hear a story about a family secret.

The six grandchildren gathered closer to hear the story. Once settled on the living room floor the grandchildren focused on the balding man dressed in a maroon hoodie, grey sweatpants, fluffy socks, and loafers. A Looney Tunes cartoon was playing on the television screen, but all eyes were focused on the old man. His name was Anthony “Tony” Barrera Sr., a man of many stories according to his grandchildren and many tall tales according to their parents.

Tony’s mother, a small and frail old lady with bright curly red hair dressed in a fluffy purple robe and cat slippers walked around the room passing out little flower cookies and SunnyD bottles to each of the grandchildren. The grandchildren eagerly took the offered treats and thanked their Nana as she made sure they all had their share. Once all the children were fed, she sat down in her pink rocking chair to listen to the story alongside them with a reminiscent expression adorning her face.

The stories Tony had told his grandchildren before ranged from his own past to stories he made up to entertain them. This story was from his time as a boy in Crawley, England, before his parents remarried and moved back to Corpus Christi, Texas. This story took place while he was enrolled at a school taught solely by Catholic nuns for his secondary education. Both girls and boys were enrolled at the school.

It had all started on a day when the boy’s restroom was unavailable for use due to repairs, so Tony and the other boys had permission to use the girl’s restroom until repairs were completed. Upon entering the girl’s restroom to use the facilities, Tony noticed something about the girls’ restroom that was different from the boy’s restroom. The girls’ restroom had doors on the toilet stalls. After taking care of business, Tony went to the principal’s office instead of class to make a complaint. The principal was Sister Gertrude, a grouchy old nun who disliked Tony for various reasons including pranks and attitude. Her frown grew sour as she looked up to see Tony walk through her door and soured further when he asked why the boy’s restroom did not have any toilet stall doors.

“Boys don’t need stall doors,” Sister Gertrude replied dismissively and turned her attention back to the papers on her desk.

Tony argued that such an idea was not fair and insisted that the boys’ restroom needed to get doors on the toilet stalls. Sister Gertrude insisted that there was no need, and that the idea was ludicrous. Tony tried once more to appeal for the boys to get stall doors later that day, but Sister Gertrude refused to hear any more on the subject and sent him back to class.

The next day at school, there were screams coming from the girl’s bathroom and Sister Gertrude was called to see what the ruckus was about. When she and the other nuns entered the girl’s restroom, they found that all the toilet stall doors were missing. Sister Gertrude at once suspected Tony to be the culprit, since he was the only one who had complained about not having stall doors in the boy’s restroom. She checked to see if the doors had been moved to the toilet stalls in the boy’s restroom, but they were not there. She called Tony into her office upon his arrival for the day and demanded that he return the doors. Tony denied taking the doors, so Sister Gertrude demanded to search his house. Tony’s family did not oppose the search and welcomed the congregation of nuns into the house, garage, and yard to search.

Sister Gertrude and other nuns searched all over the house but could not find any sign of the doors. With no success in tracking down the existing doors at the school or Tony’s house, new doors were ordered and installed in the girl’s restroom but not in the boy’s restroom. The day following the installation of the new toilet stall doors, the new stall doors were missing as well. Sister Gertrude once again suspected Tony of having taken the doors, but he once again denied the accusation. When another search of the house found no sign of the doors, new doors were ordered and installed solely in the girl’s restroom. Just as was the case the first two times, these new doors went missing in the dead of night.

Sister Gertrude accused Tony of stealing the doors a third time, but no evidence could prove this claim. Searching the house resulted in wasted time since the doors could not be found there. The toilet stall doors were nowhere to be found. When the new set of stall doors were ordered, Sister Gertrude added extra to the order than before. The first doors installed were in the boys’ restroom, followed by the girls’ restroom. Tony neither said nor did anything the first day that doors were on the boys’ toilet stalls and none of the stall doors were removed from the girl’s restroom again. The following day of the new stall door instillation, Sister Gertrude walked into her office to find every single one of the missing toilet stall doors stacked on her desk alongside a note that read “that wasn’t so hard.”

Sister Gertrude demanded that Tony admit he was the one who took and hid the doors, but he refused to admit anything. With no proof that he was the culprit she was not able to reprimand him. She had been correct that Tony had been the culprit, and he was proud of the fact that she was never proven correct. The family secret Tony revealed was not that it had been him who stole and hid the toilet stall doors from the girls’ restroom. The secret was where the doors had been hidden.

Each time that the doors had gone missing, Tony had snuck into the girls’ restroom at night, unscrewed each door from the hinges, and brought them back to his house. The reason the doors were never found each time Sister Gertrude and the other nuns searched the house was because the nuns were looking in the wrong place. The doors had been stashed up inside the roof of the garage of the house, where no one had checked. Tony’s family knew this, but no one snitched on him to the nuns leading the story to become a family secret.

“Why did no one snitch on you, grandpa?” the youngest granddaughter asked.

“We agreed with him that the situation was unfair,” Nana spoke up. “When something is unfair, you must fix it. Tony’s actions were justified and got the result he wanted.”

He was not sure how it happened. The pain began two or three days after the dentist appointment. His teeth had to somehow have been sharpened like knives that were shredding the inside of his cheeks. He had only gotten a tooth filled on the top and one on the bottom on opposite sides of his mouth. The pain grew to the point that speaking hurt. He kept biting his tongue by accident. He tasted iron every time he spoke or ate. His parents had given him some pain medication to help but the pain never fully left.

He lasted a week and a half before calling the dentist. The business was closed due to Christmas break, but he managed to call his dentist’s personal number. He got the answering machine and left a message, explaining how his teeth had been hurting and how his mouth was physically bleeding as a result. He received a call back from the dentist two days later saying to come in the next day.

When he arrived at the dentist’s office, he knocked on the locked door but received no answer. He called the dentist’s personal number and explained he was outside. The dentist opened the door a minute later and let him in. They were the only ones in the building. The dentist checked his mouth and commented on the bleeding cheeks as well as the puss seeping out. They discussed how the dentist could not see any sharp edges on the fillings or any teeth being excessively sharp but was willing to help.

The dentist filed down some of the teeth and the result was phenomenal. The pain did not go away immediately but was immediately less intense. Talking no longer hurt. The dentist also pointed out that some of the back gums were covering up one of the back molars and could result in further cavities from the gums preventing proper brushing. He gave the dentist permission to cut the excess gum off and the dentist numbed the area before getting to work.

The dentist took a tiny laser and cut the gum out of the way. The dentist stuffed a roll of gauze into the area to stop the little bit of bleeding and cleaned the area afterward, along with the inside of the cheeks. The area felt different when he ran his tongue over it. The dentist gave him gauze, two bottles of a specific fluid to rinse his mouth out with for the next few days until the inside of his cheeks healed and told him to call if there were any other problems.

He headed home and found that his mouth did not stop feeling numb until eight hours later. He used the fluid the dentist gave him like mouthwash first thing each morning and before bed each night, applying gauze to the inside of his cheeks before sleeping. For the first four days the gauze came away orange or yellow in the morning but started coming away white on the fifth day. His mouth no longer hurt, and the inside of his cheeks were healed. He stopped using the gauze and stashed the second bottle away in the medicine cabinet for later use in case this ever happened again. That was an odd experience.

I was a lifeguard for a water park during the summer of 2019 and will never take a job as a lifeguard again. I took the job after having been on my school’s swim team for the past two years after being injured in wrestling the year before. I was a strong swimmer and had been trained in multiple lifesaving procedures. I was trained in foreign body airway obstruction (FBAO), assisted respiration (AR), cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and the Heimlich maneuver. We had specific whistle blows to signal when we would be entering the water for a rescue, when we needed a supervisor to come over, and when we just needed to get the attention of guests.

We would be tested three times throughout the season at random with a fake drowning to ensure we were all alert and would be able to successfully save a life if the need arose. The tests would either be one of the supervisors disguised as a guest and pretending to drown or a special doll that resembled a child. The first time I was tested I was not sure what was going on, then wondered if one of the other lifeguards surrounding me would go get the person, then jumped in for the rescue. Taking too long made me fail but it was a learning experience.

I had the opportunity to redeem myself two weeks later when the doll came down the current. I blew my whistle three times to alert that I was jumping in for a rescue, jumped in, grabbed the doll, and kept it afloat until we reached a safe area to get out. I passed easily and even accidentally passed someone else’s test when I spotted the doll before it could reach its designated tester, but no harm was done, and the other lifeguard got his shot to pass. I did not have my third test as planned due to the ownership of the company changing during the middle of the summer.

When the company changed ownership, many things changed. All the best supervisors either were let go or quit because specific people were let go or received payment cuts. As the summer continued many of the other lifeguards quit because specific supervisors had left while others left because the pay was not worth the amount of work in the heat and extra-long hours. Shifts on post grew longer with fewer lifeguards available and lunch breaks started to be pushed back later into the afternoon.

There were days when I did not eat lunch until three in the afternoon and other lifeguards would still be waiting for their lunch breaks. I ate as fast as I could some days in hopes of speeding up the lunch rotation since only one lifeguard per section could be sent to lunch at a time with how few lifeguards we had. Our lunch was free, at least, but our supervisors had to give us tokens to signify we were on lunch for the lunch people to give us our lunches. Although the changes were not ideal the job was manageable for the most part; although, I did start dreaming about when the summer would end, and I could return to school.

The biggest issue I had with lifeguarding and is the reason I will never be a lifeguard again is that when we were understaffed at the end of the season, already dealing with late lunches and excessively long shifts on post while being forced to bob our heads to the point of whiplash while scanning the water to prove we were scanning the water, every guest decided to ignore the lifeguards and do everything in their power to drown.

One such example was four weeks before the end of the season. I was on post in section one in the late afternoon with the sun beating down. I only had two more hours left in my shift for the day and had been on shift at my post for the past thirty minutes at least. I was scanning the water of the lazy river when I spotted a little girl laying on top of a tube. I blew my whistle at her and told her to flip over to sit in it properly. We had signs everywhere in the park showing how to sit in the tubes properly, yet we still found people like her who refused to listen.

She ignored me and I watched her drift into the current at the end of the slide which jet water down into the lazy river. The current shot her further down the lazy river and she faceplanted directly into a concrete wall. I blew my three whistles and dove in, reaching her in record time. I helped her up as her father came over and told me to keep my hands off her. If told to keep hands off, we were legally required to do so unless the guest lost consciousness. I stayed close as the father walked his daughter out of the river toward the three supervisors waiting nearby.

I was sent back to my post, taking back over from the lifeguard who covered my post when I dove in, as the supervisors checked over the girl. She ended up laying down for a few minutes before getting back up and running off. This was not the only incident of guests getting hurt from not listening to me or any of the other lifeguards, but it was the one that made me decide never to be a lifeguard again. Since that summer if I see someone drowning, I will dive in to rescue but I will never again be a lifeguard.