Page 17 of Confessions of a Middle Aged Dragon Queen
“I sure did,” he unashamedly admitted. “And you could be reading mine if you were paying attention. Didn’t your momma ever tell you that when Mates first meet, they simply cannot hide anything from one another?”
“Well, shit,” I breathed. “She damned sure did, but I was so sure I would never find you that I just…”
“I’m gonna turn you into an ever-burnin’ torch, put you on my deck and splash you with water from my hot tub!" Maisie's voice filled all of Wikiwatchee Watering Hole Beach, Crocodile’s Cock, and Turtle Toe Bay, which I cheered aloud and mentally to my three cohorts and anybody else who was listening, “Give ‘em hell, Maisie!" Then to my Mate, I added, “Yep! Maisie is my baby sister. She is also the Dragon Bootay Coroner and just happens to be pregnant with triplets– my nieces. Oh, and she’s apparently found a way to get the gag out of her mouth.”
“That explains all the extra Magic. The babies are helping her fight. I wondered what was nipping at the hair on my arms,” he chuckled. "Maisie is strong, and her Magic is white as snow and as powerful as any Fae,” he added, slowing just enough to get in step behind Maeve as she snapped, “Follow me. I know where they’re taking her.”
“I thought we all did,” I challenged. "Isn't Maisie in the house?"
"No!" Caroline, Kai, and Theresa all countered at once.
"Look!" Kai added with a quick flick of his chin that had my head snapping to the left to see why he was all wide-eyed. Doing two back-to-back double-takes and adding several rapid blinks of my eyes, "What in all the holy fuckinations?" flew out of my lips before I even knew I was even thinking the words.
Coming to a screeching halt, Kai set my feet on the ground between Maeve and Theresa before barking in a hushed whisper, "Get down. Don't let them see us until we're ready. The element of surprise is on our side."
I know we all looked like the kids on that goofy TV show starring the crazy purple dinosaur when they're singing that silly song– Sally the Camel– because as one of us knelt down, another popped up. We all needed to know Maisie was still okay, and we weren't all sharing a mass hallucination from inhaling too much fresh air. It was the damnedest thing. Absolutely nuckin’ futs crazy, and that's coming from a five-hundred-and-sixty-seven-year-old Dragon Queen who thought she'd seen ninety-three-point-seven percent of everything there was to see.
You don’t believe me? Okay, picture this:
My beautiful sister’s left wrist and left ankle were tied to a thick, crooked cypress tree trunk. On the right side, her wrist and ankle were stuck to part of the trunk of a petrified mesquite tree with some unknown bright green goo that was emitting a stench I had never experienced before. As if that wasn’t enough, she was being carried by and between two men who resembled professional wrestlers from the '90s, as if she were the banner a high school football team was going to crash through as they ran onto the field.
Thankfully, they hadn’t painted a team logo, and there were no pom poms in sight. That would have been the final straw for my dear Maisie. She would have already been scaly and breathing flames in every direction. I had never figured out, or had the nerve to ask, why she hated football and all its accouterments so very much, and suffice it to say, I wouldn’t be asking anytime in the near future either.
Her long hair, always perfectly coiffed– dark brown, almost black, and perfectly wavy/curly just like mine– was gnarled and matted with blobs of the sticky, bright green goo and adorned with twigs positioned to look like Wyvern wings. If they only knew how much Maisie loved her spectacular mane, how much time and attention she paid to it to be sure there was not a single hair out of place. Oh, buddy, when she saw what they had done to her hair, not even the Great Goddess was going to be able to save them.
And the travesty didn’t stop there…
Her fair complexion was smeared with the smelly, chartreuse gunk and what looked like juice from raspberries, painted in six stripes on each of her cheeks. If she hadn’t been in mortal danger, I would’ve been pissed. Those fucking assholes had made her up in a way that mocked the Cherokee heritage on my Dad's side…
Well, hell, I was pissed. The crazy bastards were manhandling my youngest sister and my yet-to-be-born nieces. Who the in all the holy fuckinations did they think they were?
Speaking of the insane idiots slowly marching in parallel lines...
I had to do a double-take, for the second time, to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating. It was the weirdest thing. There had to be forty guys, big guys, marching in step, with their arms stretched in front as far as they would reach, the tips of their fingers touching the idiot before them, all forming lines that led to the two musclemen toting my sister like a parade banner.
That should've been enough. But wait, there's more. These asshats put the nuts on top of the messed-up, crazy-ass, freaky, fartatstic sundae of insanity taking place not twenty yards in front of us.
From one of their marching steps to the next, Magic filled the air, and the idiots went from wearing jeans, T-shirts, and work boots to being outfitted for Halloween– or a Mardi Gras Float. Atop their heads were trucker hats with horns popping out of the top. Over their shoulders were backpack-like straps that held tiny, papier-mâché wings the color of overfired clay pots exactly between their bulging shoulder blades.
But wait, there was more.
No, the crazy did not stop there.
On all their hands, still outstretched and touching the dude in front, were tawny leather work gloves with misshapen and bent roofing nails pushed through the tips to resemble what I could only imagine was supposed to be talons. And just like, my mind forced my eyes to look at their feet, and sure enough, there were the same screwed up nails poking out of the toes of camel-colored work boots. It was wild. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to let Aideen come forward and set them all ablaze.
But I didn’t...
I stuck to my guns and followed the rules.
And was I rewarded for my restraint?
No. No, I was not.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the leader of this merry band of screwball psychopaths, a guy that was at least half a foot shorter than all the others and tucked away at the front of the line where I couldn’t see him, yelled, “Halt!” As the group came to a jerky halt, he kept going for five... long... steps before spinning on his toes, throwing back his shoulders, and throwing both arms straight in the air with such force he actually had to take a step back to keep from falling on his ass.
And that’s when I saw it.
A plastic monster mask, circa 1972, covering his face. Yep, that’s right. It was thin, molded plastic with holes on the side where the silver grommets that were holding the rubber band poked through, and that rubber band was stretched so tight around his big, fat head that it trembled with the strength it took not to explode into a hundred pieces. It should've been creepy. It should have made anyone who had ever seen the movie Halloween, the Rob Zombie remake, run screaming into the night to find a closet where they could hide. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that's what he was going for, but to my sister, friend, Mate, and me, it was just sad in the weirdest, most fucked-up way possible. Grown men, dressed like some kind of mixed-up, hardware store, dollar bin rejected Wyvern wearing sun-bleached plastic masks, trying to do only the Goddess knew what was more than a bag of mixed nuts, it was the whole damn farm! All I could think of was calling Dr. Maxine Monroe at Bailmore Hall and having them all committed.
