The Great Mesmero entered the room and spoke to the young woman sitting at the computer. “You have not vacuumed, I perceive.”

She turned in her chair. “No. I was over at the next-door neighbor’s all morning. Lucky for you, she’s not going to press charges.”

The Great Mesmero smiled and made a small gesture, as though he were wiping something away. “But of course. That is to be expected, my dear.”

“Not forever. Post-hypnotic suggestion doesn’t last too long. I had to promise her you’d fix the broken tread on her front steps before she agreed not to make a fuss.”

The Great Mesmero turned to look at Gail. “I didn’t break her steps. I never even entered her yard.”

“I know, I know, all you did was work in the garden naked and convince her that you were really wearing clothes. I get it. Kinky, but you didn’t hurt anybody. The thing is, she remembered after a while. She was in the house, doing some dishes, and suddenly realized you were out there in your birthday suit, and that’s when she started screaming. But she’s okay now, and like I said, she’s not pressing charges.”

The Great Mesmero stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should pay her a call.”

“Perhaps you should wear pants when you go outside! Geez!”

The Great Mesmero patted her shoulder. “I shall endeavor to remember. The mere fact that I did such a thing really does, in your parlance, suck. But I shall make a clean sweep. You do not need to—”

“I don’t vacuum, Frank. Administrative assistants don’t clean. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish answering your fan mail. Oh, and we might have a gig in Finland. Hopefully we’ll hammer out the details this afternoon.” She glanced down at her desktop and saw the envelope. “And another thing. The blank pieces of paper won’t work on me. I want a real paycheck by the end of the day, or I walk.”

The Great Mesmero nodded, embarrassed. It was rather unfortunate that his new assistant wasn’t susceptible to suggestion.

Copyright 2008 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

The Great Mesmero entered the room and spoke to the young woman sitting at the computer. “You have not vacuumed, I perceive.”

She turned in her chair. “No. I was over at the next-door neighbor’s all morning. Lucky for you, she’s not going to press charges.”

The Great Mesmero smiled and made a small gesture, as though he were wiping something away. “But of course. That is to be expected, my dear.”

“Not forever. Post-hypnotic suggestion doesn’t last too long. I had to promise her you’d fix the broken tread on her front steps before she agreed not to make a fuss.”

The Great Mesmero turned to look at Gail. “I didn’t break her steps. I never even entered her yard.”

“I know, I know, all you did was work in the garden naked and convince her that you were really wearing clothes. I get it. Kinky, but you didn’t hurt anybody. The thing is, she remembered after a while. She was in the house, doing some dishes, and suddenly realized you were out there in your birthday suit, and that’s when she started screaming. But she’s okay now, and like I said, she’s not pressing charges.”

The Great Mesmero stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should pay her a call.”

“Perhaps you should wear pants when you go outside! Geez!”

The Great Mesmero patted her shoulder. “I shall endeavor to remember. The mere fact that I did such a thing really does, in your parlance, suck. But I shall make a clean sweep. You do not need to—”

“I don’t vacuum, Frank. Administrative assistants don’t clean. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish answering your fan mail. Oh, and we might have a gig in Finland. Hopefully we’ll hammer out the details this afternoon.” She glanced down at her desktop and saw the envelope. “And another thing. The blank pieces of paper won’t work on me. I want a real paycheck by the end of the day, or I walk.”

The Great Mesmero nodded, embarrassed. It was rather unfortunate that his new assistant wasn’t susceptible to suggestion.

Copyright 2008 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

The problem with fraternal twins, their mother reflected, was that they weren’t alike. Or, rather, they may be alike in their needs and desires, but not in their—

“Robot!”

“Human!”

“Robot!”

“Mo-o-o-om! He’s doing it again!”

Kendra pulled the rest of the wash from the dryer and carried the basket upstairs. “Dustin! Keith! Both of you, go to your rooms!”

“It’s not fair!”

“I never—”

“Do I have to count again?”

The boys knew the look on Kendra’s face, and went quietly to their separate rooms. Neither of them even slammed the door this time. School vacations always started well, but by the end, Kendra was always desperate to get the kids back into school again.

It didn’t help that the boys were so different. When people met them on the street, they assumed Dustin wasn’t hers. The parts of Dustin that were inherited from Kendra were more psychological, she supposed. She was folding the laundry now, trying to sort what seemed like dozens of socks, but a persistent banging drew her attention.

Was it Dustin, or was it Keith? Both?

Kendra stood up and opened the door to Keith’s room. The boy was on his back on the bed, kicking at the wall. He looked up guiltily. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Knock. It. Off.”

“But Dustin—”

“No. And if I hear one more peep out of you for the next ten minutes, no video games for the whole day. Got that?”

Keith let his feet fall to the bed. “Got it.”

“Good.” Kendra closed the door and knocked on Dustin’s. No reply. She pushed it open and closed it behind her. Dustin was in the chair at his desk, hugging himself. So much bigger than your typical eight-year-old… Dustin never had it easy. She smiled. “You okay?”

“He was kicking out H-U-M-A-N in Morse code.”

“How do you two know Morse code?”

“Boy Scouts.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “He didn’t mean it. He just wanted to get your goat.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I know. But he’s your brother, and he loves you. The same way you love him. Believe it or not, every set of brothers fights this way. It’s called sibling rivalry.”

Dustin shrugged.

“You want me to leave you alone for now?” he nodded. “Okay. Dad’ll be home soon. We’ll play Monopoly, okay?”

“Okay.”

Kendra was still folding laundry when her husband came home. “Hey, babe. You look exhausted. Want to order Chinese?”

“Yeah. The kids might like that. They’ve been fighting all day.”

“About what?”

“What do you think?”

David shook his head. “This has got to stop. Maybe we should go to a family counselor. I’ll check online tonight, see if the insurance covers it.”

“We knew it was going to be tough when we got married, hon. I didn’t know how tough it would be. The kids. They’re so different.”

“They’re both ours, Ken. No matter how they look, they’re both equal parts of you and me. Dustin and Keith.”

“I know.” She smiled. “The Human-Robot family. The Cyborg Bunch.”

The LCDs in his eyes flashed. He loved the way Kendra smiled.

Copyright 2008 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Warren shoved the remains of the pizza into his mouth and licked his fingers. “Let’s pick him up.”

Mitch eyed the man standing on the block ahead. “I don’t know, it’s supposed to be so dangerous.”

“That’s what a lost weekend’s about, man. Mystery!” Warren picked up the brown bag from the floor between his legs and took a sip. “C’mon, have some before we pick him up.”

Mitch took a nice long pull. The light turned green. “I don’t know…”

“It’s green, man. Let’s move it.” Warren rolled down his window as they moved across the intersection. “Hey, dude, hop in.”

The man—boy, really—hesitated. He was barely out of his teens, but something about the roughness of his demeanor belied the youth in his eyes. “Where you headed?”

“Where ya wanna go? We’re on a road trip, dude. Hop in, it’s okay.”

Mitch didn’t say anything. The boy looked at him, trying to figure out what was going on. Mitch looked out the driver’s side window.

Then the boy was in the back seat, Warren was blabbering about splitting gas, and Mitch was pulling forward, toward the exit to the expressway. East or west? It didn’t matter, he supposed. He decided on east, for no reason he could think of.

The car smelled of pizza. Maybe that was why the boy decided to get in. He looked hungry. The boy looked up and caught Mitch scoping him out in the rear view mirror. Mitch looked away guiltily.

Warren was still talking. There was no stopping him, it seemed. “Yeah, man, it’s a lost weekend. We might head upstate, score some ’shrooms, some ecstasy, something like that. How about you? You get high?”

“I have,” the boy allowed. He rolled his head to one side, stretching. He had a tattoo on his neck, Mitch noticed. “Haven’t in a while.”

“Ha! You wanna? ‘Cause we’re gonna get wasted, dude. We’re gonna get so fucking wasted, and then we’re gonna rent some hookers and do blow off their ass. It’s gonna be awesome. You in?”

The boy shifted uncomfortably on the back seat. He caught Mitch’s eye in the mirror again. There was something fearful in the boy’s eyes; something pleading.

“You should definitely come in on it with us, dude. I mean, you might as well, you’re along for the ride anyway, right?” Warren picked up the forty-ounce from between his feet and took another slug. “Pass it around, man. We’re getting wasted already.”

Warren turned around to pass the beer to the boy in the back. Mitch drew the semi-automatic from under his belt and blew Warren’s face off. He put the gun back, pulled over to the side of the road, opened the door and kicked what was left of Warren out onto the berm.

Mitch looked at the boy in the back seat. “You okay?”

The boy blinked.

“You have a little blood on you. Here, take some Kleenex.”

The boy fumbled for the tissue and dabbed at his face.

Mitch smiled. “You don’t talk much. I like that. You can sit in the front if you want.”

The boy hesitated.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to. I can even drop you off at the next rest area. Whatever you want.”

Slowly, the boy got up and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Cool. My name’s Mitch. What’s yours?”

“Craig.”

“Nice to met you, Craig. I think you’re a much better bet than Warren was.”

Craig grinned. “He just wouldn’t shut up, huh?”

Mitch gunned the motor, and the Mustang sped off into the night.

Copyright 2008 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Vivian rolled onto her back and watched the little wisps of clouds make their way across the sky. “It’s funny to think that such a little cloud could make a thunderstorm,” she mused.

Her mother looked up from her gardening. “It can’t. That’s a stratus cloud. It’s up too high, and not dense enough.”

“Oh. Well, what if it really wanted to make a thunderstorm?”

“It would have to be much, much thicker. It would have to be a cumulonimbus cloud. Cumulonimbi are very, very tall, and much lower in the sky. Now, what happens when it rains—just a normal rain shower, I mean—is that particles get caught in the clouds, so that all the water vapor condenses onto the particles, and that condensation adds enough weight to the particle that it falls from the sky, collecting more condensation on the way, and when it reaches us on earth, it’s a raindrop.”

“Grandfather told me raindrops are the angels’ tears of joy.”

“What have the angels got to be happy about? The earth is filled with war and famine. Now, what happens during a thunderstorm,” her mother continued (Vivian propped herself up on her elbows to look at her mother now, because suddenly this promised to get interesting), “a thunderstorm occurs when two air masses, called fronts, collide.”

“Collide?”

“Bang together.”

“Why are they called fronts?”

“I don’t know. Skip that.” Her mother picked up a trowel in one hand and a little rake in the other. “Now, imagine this one is a great big mass of hot air, like you get in summertime. This other one is cooler air. And they’re both going in different directions very fast, like this.” She brought the gardening tools together with a clang.

“So thunder is the sound of bunches of air hitting each other?”

“No. Well, sort of. Actually, it’s the sound of lightning.”

“Grandfather said thunder was the sound of Thor’s mighty hammer.”

“Let’s leave your grandfather out of this for the time being, shall we? Now, lightning is generated when—”

Vivian eased herself down onto her back again, looking up at the little wispy bits of clouds while her mother went on talking and waving the garden implements around. The clouds had moved a little bit in the last few minutes. One of them looked like a little man, waving. It was silly to call them stratus clouds. Each one was an individual, you could tell just by looking at them. She waved to the little cloud man. In her mind, she re-christened him from “Stratus” to “Ernie.”

“Attention, Ernie. Make me a thunderstorm,” she murmured.

Ernie waved back merrily.

Copyright 2008 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Josie leaned back on her haunches and looked at the sky. The clouds looked dark and wet. Not much time. She bent forward and kept plucking, moving faster. There were a lot of plants left to pull if she wanted to have enough for Jasper. Not having enough for Jasper was unthinkable.

A raindrop felt cold on her shoulder. Josie was grabbing at the stalks with both hands now, pulling two at a time in her rush to get done. The basket had to be full, overflowing. It would take at least to the end of this row of plants to have enough. She was barely a third there. She willed her fingers to move faster, tugging the stalks free from the soil and tossing them into the basket in one clean movement.

It hadn’t been this way before she had the baby. When she’d first discovered Jasper—or rather, when he revealed himself to her—everything had seemed so relaxed. Her needs and his fed one another in a sort of symbiosis Josie had never experienced before. When she remembered the months before the baby, she recalled serenity, clarity, peace.

The back of Josie’s tank top was damp with rain. She was pulling the plants as fast as she could. There had to be enough for Jasper. There just had to.

Josie stood up, hefting the basket up onto her shoulder. The house stood halfway across the field, perhaps a quarter mile. The walk back, carrying the weight of the basket, stepping carefully among the rows of plants, was the hardest part. The soil turned to mud under her shoes, making wet sucking noises with every step. She had to walk quickly, but she couldn’t risk losing any of her harvest. It took longer than she’d hoped, but she made it up to the front porch.

She kicked off her shoes on the mat by the front door. “I’m back!” she yelled, entering the hallway. The house was quiet. “Jasper?”

Her heart was beating very fast. She walked down the hall, looking into rooms as she went. No one. She retraced her steps and climbed the stairs, clutching the basket. “Jasper?”

Both bedrooms at the top of the stairs were empty. The only sound from the bathroom was the drip of water in the shower. “Jasper?” The door to the master bedroom was partially open. Josie tapped softly. “Are you there?”

A sigh. “Yes.” The enormous rabbit was seated, Buddha-like, on the floor, facing the window.

Josie’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I’m so glad you’re here. I brought your carrots.”

“You are late.”

“I know. I’m sorry. The rain—”

“You will not be late a second time.” Jasper turned slowly to look at her. In his arms, he held the baby. He stroked its neck. “No, I don’t think you will be late again.”

The hairs stood on her arm. “Of course not. May I—?”

“Very well. Take him.” The rabbit gave her the infant.

“Thank you, Jasper. I promise to do better tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget his carrot.”

She took the vegetable and held it to her child’s mouth. The baby held it in chubby little hands, gnawing at the food with rodent-like incisors.

Jasper smiled.

Copyright 2008 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.