Ice Flue Chapter 14

“Will you put your inner hog child to sleep?” Elizabeth Dracula smiled, clutching a doll-sized creature emanating a buzzing orange light. She poured another cup of Hysterical Shriek Juice; it had to be imbibed fast or it would erode the titanium wine glasses.

“I feel so alone. I’m letting everyone down. I fear no one can ever find me here.” Stan’s hand shook as he placed it on Elizabeth’s scaly green thigh.

“That’s not how you touch me.” She leaned forward, her snake tongue piercing Stan’s arm and extracted a thin blue vein; it curled and swayed like an inquisitive worm. “That’s how you touch me.” She handed Stan the hairy hog child. His overpowering light blinded Stan. “You want to adopt him for dessert?”

The waiter cleared his throat awkwardly at having disturbed a private moment. Three shot glasses filled with sparkling light rattled on his tray. “I’ve already prepared some star streak. It would be rude to change your order now. A lot of lives have already been lost in the kitchen while procuring these.”’

Elizabeth guided Stan’s vein to each shot glass until it gulped their contents down.

Gangrenous spores infiltrated the room like dirt on a film frame. Beads of sweat poured down Stan’s forehead. “I need to leave the castle. I have to get back to the lab.

“Not yet, Stan. Waiter. Waiter!” Elizabeth snapped her fingers.

The waiter returned with an enormous silver tray. He stripped Stan, tied his hands behind his back with rope, hoisted him onto the tray, put an apple in his mouth, and stacked a pile of mint leaves near his backside. He carried Stan on the tray back upstairs to the castle bedroom.

A mermaid in a billowy dress read a magazine in the while a unicorn with a cigarillo furiously banged the keys of a typewriter at a desk in the castle bedroom. A printed newspaper jutted from the back of the typewriter bearing the headline ‘EPIDEMIC OF THE ICE FLUE.’

The unicorn ceased typing and smirked. “Stan Lunch?”

“He’s here to eat the time.” Elizabeth Dracula’s dress turned into a flock of red parrots. “Let a storm be born.” The sky turned blood red as the jackals chased the clouds past the bone-shaped castle of the Ice Princesses.