WARNING CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF MURDER AND EXECUTIONS BY BEHEADING

An old man on a flight from Southern to Northern California tells the stranger sitting beside him about the famous movie villain that had lived next door to him when he was a boy. An actor once well known for playing pitiless vampires and raving mad scientists, but who in real life had been gentle, caring and kind. And while his fame hasn’t endured the way Lon Chaney's or Bela Lugosi’s have, at the time even the movie critics who panned the low budget films he was in would concede that this startlingly ugly man brought a rare sensitivity to the roles he specialized in. As if he knew these monsters’ private pain.

Then the teller’s story takes a weird left turn. A theory about the actor’s supposed suicide which---as preposterous as it might all sound---would be nice to believe. Saying that rather than having drowned himself on that drizzly spring day in 1941 Max Grosz may have found his way to a second chance at life, and a different kind of movie stardom that would win the hearts of a nation...

Kelly looks at the time on her dash radio. She hopes Mr. Bounty will arrive soon. It’s been a long day for her, and she would like to get home and try to get some sleep in. She notices an older model incoming turboprop aircraft coming in for a landing. It taxies over to the hangar she was waiting at.

“Mom, are you sure about this?” Tizzy glances at her mother in the passenger seat of her police car.

She was driving her to the Honolulu Airport, instead of the private airfield they normally used. She knew whoever the men had been a few days ago had left. Tizzy knew government agencies don’t give up that easy on people.

“Don’t worry about me, sweetie. I’ve played this game before.” A grin appears on Cheshire’s face.

“If you say so. So, how long will you be gone, mom?”

4-20

Twilight... The last glimpses of the Sun's glow, the stars begin to shine, and what there is of the Moon, twinkles into being. A cool breeze toys with the few remaining leaves that survived the Winter's cold, drifting in swirling eddies of the gentle breeze. In the stillness of this moment, a few brave crickets chirruped, adding their claim to existence....

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

 

“You mean like when we get home?”

“This is my mom and dad and grandma and my brother Karsan and my sister Ami,” Devi went on. “Everybody, this is Zindla and her mom Syuna. They run the shop where I first came to this world.”

“See,” Devi was saying, “a blue or green robe means you’re a girl, and yellow, orange or red means you’re a boy. At least for the Zyuneban. The Stasa have more complicated rules. And I guess we’re Stasa now, instead of Zyuneban like I was last time, so... anyway, pick whichever robe you feel like, if you can find one that fits you.”

“This is going to be Sashtun’s first-ever movie, kids. It needs to be something special. Not whatever new movie you’re burning to see. Everyone, what’s the best movie you’ve ever seen?”

“We can sell it as a retirement package,” Carson said. “An eighty-year-old man might think it’s worth the... inconvenience of becoming a woman if he can be forty again.”

 

Chapter 38 - Love the Second Time Around

We had hardly had time to do more than exchange a chorus of 'what are you doing here' before a small whirlwind came clomping over with her braids a-flying. She enveloped her father in a enthusiastic hug, and to my surprise I found myself in her embrace a moment later.

"Daddy! I jumped and didn't fall down!"

“Do you spell police with two ells as well as pronounce it that way, Geoff?” asked Paul.

Part Six

They grilled him for over an hour more, getting some additional details, though frustratingly few of them. All of this information was served with a large helping of self-aggrandizement and matter-of-fact bragging. Fosworth clearly found the entire process boring and not worth his time, but was determined to make the most of it by making the most of his contribution in stopping the monster. He made clear through his attitude that he was cooperating for the good of the c\o\m\p\a\n\y\ team.

“And even if his story is untrue, it’s not necessarily a sign of mental illness in children his age to make up strange stories. So I’ll refer you to a child psychiatrist, but I suggest you keep an open mind and check that mural in Davey’s bedroom from time to time to see if it exhibits any... strange behavior.”

Part Three

"I'm starting to hate that doorbell," said Vic, as she walked quickly to their new apartment's door in response to said bell.

This time the caller was a clean but scrawny man perhaps in his mid-thirties.

"Hey. You changed your WiFi password," he said, with no preamble.

"No, it's the same one we've always used with this router."

"Then why can't I get on?"

"Well, you shouldn't be able to. Our WiFi has always been private, even before we moved in here last week."

“But why would Davey back up her story? Or why would she back up his, if it’s not true? I’m having a hard time believing it, but I’m having an even harder time figuring out why they would both tell such a far-fetched lie.”

She jumped out of the bath, hastily threw on a robe, and rushed to the room where the portal-cabinet was stored, carrying a towel. She was overjoyed to see the portal still open as she entered the room.

Zindla liked having a little girl around, even if she was older than she looked, and used to be a boy. Seeing her cousins and other children who lived in the neighborhood, she’d sometimes regretted being an only child, and now she felt like she almost knew what it was like to have a little sister. Devi was so enthusiastic and curious about everything; having her around was like seeing everything for the first time.

“Do you want me to show you how to sew?” Pasyala asked. “Or has your mother already shown you?”

 

“No,” Devi said at first. “Girls do sewing and knitting and stuff.” But then he reflected: People go into other worlds to learn valuable lessons and have adventures and stuff. The portal made me a girl, so maybe it wants me to learn about girl stuff before it will let me go home and be a boy again? “I guess I’m a girl now, so I can learn how to sew and stuff.”