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. 

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.

The medication was supposed to make things better not worse. The first prescription was an antidepressant that made the level of anxiety disappear. The anxiety remained but I could not tell at what level my anxiety was. Normally I was able to tell what level I was at any time I checked in with myself. With the prescription the levels were wiped out, so I thought I was at a constant level two. I was not at a two.

            I was working, physically shaking as if I was at an eight, when I realized my body was trying to tell me my anxiety was spiking. That was not good. The medication was supposed to be helping. After consulting my doctor, she assigned me a new prescription called venlafaxine. This one would be an antianxiety medicine. I monitored myself on it for several days before coming to the conclusion that I liked it.

            I felt calmer than usual, and my body was not shaking to warn me about my anxiety. I could tell my anxiety levels and when they would adjust. For the most part I remained at an almost constant four unless I spiked or managed to get down to two. I worked on selfcare and other things to help keep my anxiety low alongside the medication, but the medication itself was a big help. There were a few days where I went without the venlafaxine just to see how I was doing. The anxiety spiked more without the medication than with.

            The doctor liked the results but decided to up the dosage from thirty-five milligrams to seventy-five milligrams. Within four weeks with the higher dosage, I felt no different than with the lower dosage. The doctor was not disappointed but also was not pleased with that result, so she upped the dosage further to one hundred and fifty milligrams of venlafaxine. I was calmer as a result and felt like checking in with my anxiety levels very little. I could still check in, but my anxiety remained low and rarely spiked unless I was facing multiple large stressors. That was a big improvement compared to normal.

The panic attacks were unaffected, though, so she added 10 miligrams of propranolol to lower my heartrate and upped the venlafaxine to 225 miligrams. The anxiety was low, the panic attacks almost nonexistent, and my head was completely clear and focused. I was thrilled. My doctor was pleased with this result and continued the prescription while also encouraging that I continue my counseling. The goal was for the medication to help act as a baseline to reach in lowering my anxiety and the counseling would focus on helping me achieve it on my own without the medication. The counseling had succeeded in helping me lower my regular anxiety down to a two in the first place and occasionally I even reached a one point five, but that was rare. My anxiety was still ever present and would spike regularly with no logical explanation, hence the doctor was prescribing me antianxiety medication to use as a tool to figure out what I was supposed to normally feel like.

I was enjoying the venlafaxine, but I did not intend to be stuck on pills for the rest of my life. I was already stuck taking the iron supplements daily due to my anemia that refused to go away, and I did not want to get stuck with more pills to swallow every day for the rest of my life. I just needed to figure out how to feel this relaxed on a regular basis without the medication. Challenge accepted.

The party was fast approaching. The food trays had already been preordered and she would pay for them at pickup the day of. She had ordered large trays of sandwiches, wraps, and a veggie tray. She had just picked up the drinks, consisting of sprite, rootbeer, water, and ingredients to make Shirly Temples. The two packets of water held twenty-four bottles each; the two packets of sprite each held twelve cans; the two packets of rootbeer each held twelve cans. Based on the expected guest list and their preferences, the party should be good on drinks. A platter of cookies for desert was also collected.

Next on the list were the decorations. Originally the party was supposed to occur around Halloween and would have had Halloween decorations. The party had been pushed back due to scheduling conflicts with other organizations, so the party was now right before Thanksgiving break. The decorations would need to fit the season but also be free of seasonal restrictions. The party was meant to be hosted by Miss Scarlett, so the color red would need to be used partially. The others agreed that gold would work well with the color scheme.

She entered the Party City in search of decorations and plating. The fancy looking transparent plastic plates and champagne flutes worked perfectly. The search for decorations was slightly more difficult. Nothing in the store fit the murder mystery theme. There were still some Halloween decorations out and a handful of Fall or Thanksgiving decorations were out. She found some small foam pumpkins in white and gold that she added to her basket. She found disposable red tablecloths and added those to her basket as well.

She found a few small gold table decorations and some autumn leaf table mats that also ended up in her basket. Nothing else she found in the store really fit the theme she was looking for. She found some multicolored chocolate coins in red, green, yellow, blue, purple and pink. The pink could symbolize Mrs. White since there was no white coin. The other colors fit the other characters perfectly. She grabbed a bag to add to the cart and planned to spread various coins around the tables.

That should suffice for the decorations. They did not need to go too elaborate with the party. All that remained to obtain was a CLUE themed prize for the raffle. She had already purchased a card game version of the CLUE game to put into the basket, but she needed a basket to put it into and some candy to add to it. She planned to put some of the multicolored chocolate coins into the basket but there needed to be more.

She found a small gold basket for the prize to sit in. The CLUE card game would arrive in a day with plenty of time before the party next week. The prize needed to be more than what it currently was. She added a few more candies to the basket and a small squishy toy. College students seemed to love small squish toys. That would have to do. There was a budget to keep in mind. She made her way to the checkout counter after one more look around. The party would be spectacular.

I tend to be known as the tea queen in my family. My specialty is drinks, especially sweet tea. I do not cook very often but I do occasionally. I am not the best cook in the kitchen but there are a few recipes that I know and can cook well. One recipe is my mother’s lasagna, another is spaghetti, cream of chicken noodle soup, my own creation of pad Thai, salmon, Nana’s shepherd’s pie, and gumbo.

The gumbo recipe was my mother’s recipe. She learned the recipe from Grandma but made a few changes to the recipe. Grandma would make the rue while leaving the fat and the bones in, not even taking the bones out to serve. Nothing went to waste, and nothing was ever tossed out. Mom knew that we would refrain from trying the gumbo when we saw the bones in it, even though it was delicious. Mom kept the bones out.

I make gumbo based on mom’s recipe with my own adjustments. I always end up burning the rue, so my timing varies from my mother’s instructions. I start by cooking the chicken breast and shredding it when finished. I start the actual gumbo by melting the butter in the giant pot at medium heat, then add in the chopped onion and let it cook for five minutes. I stir occasionally to keep it from burning which is something that has happened more than once. I mix in the half cup of flour, two tablespoons of garlic powder, then salt and pepper.

After five minutes I add in the chopped celery and cook for five minutes rather than seven, the way mom does, stirring occasionally while praying the rue does not burn. I add in the chicken broth, usually three boxes, and stir. The rue is no longer in danger of burning by that point. I start slicing the sausages into semicircles then. I only eat the Eckrich sausage and only in the gumbo; all other sausage makes me sick. Once the sausage is sliced it goes into the gumbo followed by the shredded chicken breast.

Next the rice needs to be cooked while the gumbo settles. Normally mom would have started the rice while making the rue, but I tend to wait until the end. We use Jasmine rice in my family. Once the rice is done the gumbo is ready to serve. Grab a bowl and fill it with rice on the bottom, then ladle the gumbo on top until satisfied that the bowl is full. I like to make sure to ladle enough sausage and chicken into my bowl. I usually have to dig for the chicken since the sausage will float while the chicken sinks.

If I made the gumbo same as mom, the celery and onions would be burnt. She does not burn hers, but I always end up burning them unless I cook them my way. If I made the gumbo grandma’s way, I would be picking bones and excess fat out of my bowl. The gumbo is delicious, but I prefer not being wary of my food. I do not cook much, but I love cooking this.