Page 104 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

Jolly Green Daddy by Allysa Hart and Rayanna Jamison

Prologue

The King and Queen were dead. Those were the whispers I heard as I made my way through the village toward the beach. I could see the emergency vehicles on the horizon, and the lack of flashing lights told me the rumors were probably true. As I walked, the sky seemed to darken with the weight of the news. My chest felt heavy. For a small island village like Venus, this was a devastating tragedy. The effects would be widespread and long lasting. I stared at my feet and the ground beneath me as I contemplated the future of the land that I loved. When I looked up again, everything had changed.

Something was off. The villagers seemed to be happy. They were singing and dancing in the streets.

There was a low rumble of murmurs carrying on the breeze, and I stopped to listen.

“All hail the queen,” they chanted. I looked up the hill toward the castle, and my jaw dropped in shock. The structure was there, in the same place it had always been, but nothing about it was the same. New and gloriously pale tan stones had been carefully stacked together to form winding staircases and tall turrets with well-kept grounds on a lush backdrop of roses and green fields. Now, the castle was darker, a gray box-like structure with towers that seemed to reach to the sky, making me recall the fairy tales of my youth. The grounds were hidden behind moss covered stone walls, and all the normally lush greenery was a dull brown. I shook my head and looked again, my confusion growing when the image didn’t change.

The gloomy castle seemed out of place amongst the cheerful village, and the cheerful village, well, that was just plain wrong. Where were all the Coast Guard boats and emergency vehicles that had been blocking the roads only a few minutes before?

I looked away from the castle that seemed to dwarf the town when I heard a scuffle in front of me. A beautiful woman with ruby red hair that fell to her waist, an hourglass figure, sea blue eyes, and a stunningly clear complexion that made her look like a porcelain doll was arguing with Grayson, the local fisherman. The two of them shouldn’t have blocked the road, but I couldn’t get around them. It was almost as if I had been blocked by some sort of invisible forcefield. When I tried, the woman grabbed me, held me in the air, her tiny hand holding me entirely captive as if I had been bound by rope. Somehow, her petite arms hoisted me into the air above her head. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening.

“You!” she screamed, pointing at me. “Who am I?”

Startled and confused, I looked down at her, and then at Grayson.

The look on his face was a mix of anger and confusion, but I was only able to make eye contact for a second before my full attention was pulled toward her.

“Queen Delta is the most beautiful woman in the land. Maybe in the entire world. Her red hair sparkles like the rubies in her crown, her skin glistens like the morning dew, and her blue eyes shine like the sea on a summer day.” The words fell from my lips like I had recited them every day for a year, yet they felt foreign. I had no memory of the stunning woman in front of me, yet I was helpless. I wanted nothing more than to fall to my knees and worship her.

I couldn’t comprehend what Grayson was saying to me, my sole purpose in life at that moment was to bathe in the presence of my queen. I was about to say so, when he knocked me from her grasp and charged her. I stood for a moment not knowing what to do, but the queen waved me off and I could not disobey.

Keeping my eyes trained on her, I bowed as I walked backwards, thanking her profusely for the honor of her time. She wasn’t paying me any attention, fully engaged in her argument with Grayson.

As I reached my cottage, I stood outside the entrance to my garden, watching the scene unfold from afar. Jealousy washed through me at the idea that he was deemed worthy to stay near her and I was not, but I had been dismissed and there was nothing I could do about it. I stood watching the scene unfold when, out of nowhere a bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, hitting Grayson square in the chest. Another arc shot towards me, and then my world went black.

My body ached. It was the first thing I became aware of as I groggily came to. What the hell was the number of the truck that hit me? Except I knew I hadn’t been hit by anything. The memory of the entire encounter was fresh in my mind, including the lightning that had flashed across the sky, hitting first Grayson, then my house, and then me. I remembered it all, including the part where I saw a giant octopus-like creature with bluish skin, eight arms, and large slimy tentacles, wearing the Queen's crown precariously perched atop its misshapen blob of a head. Where that image fit into the picture, I wasn't entirely sure. The whole day had been strange.

A sudden pain hit me then, flooding my body with heat and the oddest sensation. I both felt and heard the rip that tore through me. I looked down at myself in shock. What I was looking for, I had no idea. To confirm that I was all in one piece, or maybe to determine whether or not I needed to go to the hospital. If not for broken bones and internal injuries, then maybe for a concussion or mental illness because nothing about this day or these memories made sense.

But when I saw myself, it made even less sense. My clothes were ripped, the shreds now hanging off my body as my muscles bulged under the tattered fabric. My legs were like tree trunks, so large I couldn't see my own feet beneath the massive rectus femoris bulge that blocked my view. And my skin… no longer a tanned golden brown from hours spent tending my garden in the sunshine, now it was an all-over odd shade of dull green. The color of cooked green beans.

"What the hell!" I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. That was when I looked down. The road beneath me was not road at all. Where was all the hard, hot asphalt I’d just been walking on? It was gone, replaced by light fluffy clouds that misted up, twining in ethereal wisps around my ankles as I walked. Everywhere I looked, all I saw were white clouds and blue sky.

And me.

Giant green me.

Nothing else was here. Except, oddly enough, my house, plucked from the streets of Venus. And my garden. They were both there. Slightly bigger than I remembered and nestled amongst the clouds.

Frowning, I walked to the edge of the cloud I now stood on, crossing it in a single stride with my enormously long legs, and peered over the side.

"Hello?" I called out. "Hello?"

Nobody answered me. I was alone. Alone in the sky, giant and green.

Chapter One

Three and a half years later…

“Maren!” Vicki, my elderly and evil stepmother screeched from inside the house. With my headphones in, I could have pretended not to hear her, but I knew from experience that she would not stop screaming for me until I answered. God forbid, it took too long because then I would have to hear about it all week, and for years to come. Standing from the spot where I knelt in my garden between the zucchini and tomatoes, I stretched my back and took a few deep breaths of the fresh clean air before going back into the stuffy cottage.

I hated everything about the small village where I live, and I would have left it happily if it weren’t for three small things—my promise to my father, my best friend Arianna, and my garden.

The promise to my father involved not leaving Vicki alone, even if she was one of the meanest, laziest bitches I’d ever met. I’d never gotten along with her and if I had known my father was going to die young, leaving me stuck like this—with her—I never would have made that promise.

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