Page 16 of Let Me Win You

That booming voice sounded closer, “Nicole, darling, please…”

I glanced over my shoulder to see the monster gaining on me. His tail snaked behind him, propelling him forward with an astonishing speed.

I screamed in terror, pushing my legs to run faster.

A pair of strong hands suddenly plucked me from the tall grass, lifting me off the ground. And I came face to face with a woman.

Dressed in a long, elaborate gown, she was about twice my size, with a semi-transparent body that glowed and shimmered with pink. But at least she had feet instead of a tail and no horns that I could see.

“And what do we have here?” The woman gazed at me with curiosity as the color of her dress, hair, and body slowly turned from baby-pink to dark magenta. “Where are you running, sweetie?”

“I just want to go home,” I whimpered, trying to catch my breath. “But… A green monster… A snake-man is chasing me.”

She exhaled with understanding. Her mouth pressed into a firm line of displeasure as she glanced over my head back into the field where the snake-monster must be getting closer.

“He’s neither a man nor a snake.” The woman sighed. “But yes, all my sons look and often act like real monsters. Of course, we can’t let him have you.” She placed me in the crook of her elbow before heading toward the town.

Not running, the woman moved swiftly. Her legs, much longer than mine, took us to the town seemingly in no time at all.

She carried me through a few narrow side streets, then walked up three steps to a wrap-around porch of a cute, two-story house.

It looked like a street café or a countryside restaurant with small round tables and wicker armchairs. People sat at the tables or mingled around. It would’ve been a lovely scene, had the “people” been actually people and not the mostly naked,humanoid shapes that were almost see-through and glowed with different colors.

“What is this place?” I asked quietly the pink woman, who had turned from pink to purple meanwhile.

“It’s a teahouse,” she replied casually. “My daughter, Kindness, runs it. It’s cute, isn’t it? Even if a little boring.”

She took me to a round table with four armchairs. An older woman the color of lavender occupied one of the chairs. Dressed in a white, flowing robe, she was one of the minority who wore clothes around here. She also seemed to be closer in size to me than to the pink-purple woman who’d brought me here.

“Look what I found, Charity.” The tall, purple woman sat me down into one of the armchairs at the table.

Charity stared at me with her lavender eyes that matched her long hair pulled up into a bun.

“Oh, not again,” she groaned. “Did Avar bring you here?” she asked me. “That bastard! Is he at it again?” She slammed with her fist against the crisp white tablecloth, making the dainty little teacups and saucers on the table jump and clink.

“Who’s Avar?” I asked the purple woman, who was ever so slowly turning to red now. The multi-colored creatures around me were hard enough to deal with, but this woman’s shifting lightshow was so disorienting, it was giving me a headache. “Who are you? And where the hell am I, anyway?”

The now burgundy-red woman calmly took a seat at the table, next to the lavender one.

“I’m Pandora, and this is Charity, my daughter.”

Charity looked at least twice as old as Pandora. It made no sense that she was her daughter. But nothing in this place made sense. I felt like Alice when she fell through the looking glass or into the rabbit hole. Maybe I just had to accept that everyone was crazy here, including me?

“Avar is my son, the Sin of Greed,” Pandora explained. “The one who chased you is Invi, the Sin of Envy. I have five more sons in addition to those two, and they’re all nothing but trouble.” She waved her hand in the air. “If you want advice from the mother of sins and virtues, don’t ever have children, my dear. Trust me, life is much easier without them.”

“I’m…um…” What was I supposed to say to that?

A massive emerald glowing shape appeared from around the corner of the house. The thick tail of the monster slithered between the tables and chairs on the patio, forcing a few of those present to scramble out of the way or to jump over it.

The giant snake-man spotted me in an instant and moved determinedly toward me.

I jumped to my feet, knocking back my chair.

“Stay away from me!” I shrieked.

He stopped as if hitting a wall. His features scrambled into a pained expression.

“Nic… It’s me, Invi.”

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