MIMI ATTACKS! by Hayden Thorne

MIMI ATTACKS! by Hayden Thorne

Book 5 in the Masks series

Following Arachnaman’s bigoted, hateful attacks, life in beleaguered Vintage City finally quiets down, but it doesn’t last long. Eric’s father begins to show symptoms of extreme fatigue, symptoms that Eric notices in a number of other people he sees elsewhere. Along with the superheroes, he tries to find a common denominator in all this, the surprising result being a new perfume shop that hawks very strong fragrances. A familiar pair of supervillains is suspected, but before the heroes can further investigate the motives behind this threat, people exhibiting symptoms of illness are transformed in the most shocking way, throwing Vintage City in a state of panic.

In the meantime, Eric monitors the Unofficial Calais Fan Club, which is now exploding with romantic Mary Sue fanfiction involving Calais as well as curious messages posted by a girl who’s apparently wildly in love with the superhero. References to her making “new friends” alert Eric to suspect that she and the current mayhem being inflicted on Vintage City are somehow tied together. The stakes are now raised for Eric, whose father has become a victim to a new crime wave and whose superhero boyfriend might also be under threat. All this, and he’s yet to survive school and find a job.

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EXCERPT:

I stopped about ten feet from the pile of crates and boxes. “Look, you’d better give yourselves up now before you get into more trouble,” I said.

The munchkin whispers continued. Then they fell silent, and I waited for another minute. I opened my mouth to say something when a figure appeared from behind a battered box.

It was a little girl, creeping out in a rainbow-striped T-shirt and shorts. She looked at me without blinking, her stolen stash hanging from both hands. Without saying a thing, she inched closer, and I couldn’t help but crouch down to come as close to her height as possible. Maybe having some towering gay boy who was running on perpetual sexual frustration intimidated her.

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound as gentle as I could. “No one’s going to hurt you. It’s not your fault you’re breaking the law.”

She nodded, pinching her mouth into a tight line. I waited for her to come closer, but she stopped about three feet away. It was pretty hard to read what could be going through her head at the moment. I’d never been in a situation where I had to communicate with a saucer-eyed kid-adult before. The only thing that crossed my mind was the thought that she looked like a Japanese anime character without the funky colored hair.

“Hey,” I said, even braving a smile. “Could you help me find your friends?”

She regarded me for another second, all sweet and cute. Then her face contorted, turned red, and she yelled, “Now! Get the motherfucker!”

And just like that, I heard shouts and screams coming from everywhere, and I turned in time to see a couple of tiny boys flying out from a pile of crates, their little faces twisted in rage. They landed right on top of me, and I fell back with a loud yelp. Stars exploded behind my eyeballs, and the world spun crazily. From elsewhere, I heard other little voices shout, and soon they were all on top of me, pounding away with their fists, kicking me, and in one case, biting my arm.

“Ow! What the hell! Get your stinking paws off me! Ow! Ow!” I flailed, pushed, squirmed, kicked, and tried just about everything short of actually punching a toddler, but there were too many of them ganging up on me.

“Someone grab his arms!” a girl cried out. “He’s yanking at my ponytail!”

I felt someone lock on to my left arm, nearly twisting my elbow out of its socket. I managed to turn my head and catch sight of a curly-haired boy literally clinging to my arm with both hands and legs, pulling it away from my body and forcing it down on the ground. I only had one arm and two legs to use against about six or seven psychotic kids.

“Let’s use him for ransom!”

I gritted my teeth and struggled more even though my energy was totally spent, and my back hurt, with me being pinned on top of my bulky-ass messenger bag. The world continued to whirl around in a bizarre psychedelic pattern, and I was getting really dizzy. My limbs were all sore, and my legs throbbed with pain from being kicked repeatedly.

“Hold his legs! Quick!”

Both my legs immediately flattened out on the ground, with two kids holding them down. They gripped my ankles and sat on my knees, tearing another jolt of pain from my strained muscles. For one crazy moment, I had to stop and think about what they’d just said, and I shook my head at it before continuing my one-armed struggle, which, I was sure, looked pretty pathetic from an overhead view.

“Got you now, you little meddler!” a boy crowed, and my right arm was finally immobilized. Like my left arm, someone had wrapped himself around it and brought it down, so that I lay on the filthy, slimy ground with my limbs all splayed out. Not only were toddlers clinging to them to keep me from moving, but I had a couple of girls sitting on my groin, which was a bad, bad, bad thing.

I wasn’t turned on by the pressure, no. I realized then that I needed to take a leak so badly. Little screwballs.

The dust finally cleared, with all of us panting and gasping for air. I was drenched in sweat as I stared dizzily up at the sky. “So what now?” I finally demanded once I found my voice again. “Are you going to sit on me like this all day or something? Not very impressive if you’re all trying to score your way up the supervillain ladder.”

“Oh, look, he’s beaten, and he still gives us sass,” the curly-haired boy on my left arm said. He actually sneered. “Typical.”

“Sounds like my twins,” the little girl, who was my distraction earlier, said. She was the one who sat on my genitals. That was a totally inappropriate -- not to mention illegal -- picture we made. I glanced down at her and saw her stick a thumb in her mouth. Yeah, absolutely, totally so not legal.

I squirmed despite being pinned down like that. “So what’re you all going to do now? Hold me for ransom? How? You don’t even have a plan. My family ain’t exactly swimming in cash, and the superheroes will kick your teeny asses and probably pass out from boredom doing it.”

“Yeah, really sassy,” someone piped up.

“Sassy can be a good thing. It’s great distraction, if you ask me,” a voice said from somewhere down the alley, and my heart leaped. I actually grinned at the sky even though it threatened to spew acid rain on us.

“Heya, Miss Pyro!” I called out. “Good to have you here!”

“How’s it going?” she replied, all cheerful. “How’s babysitting working out for ya?”

“It sucks ass.”

“The heroes!” the toddler sitting on my right leg cried out. He and his buddy had their backs to where Miss Pyro stood -- or hovered. The rest of their gang just froze where they were, glaring and channeling all their toddler fury into those expressions.

“Well, just one for now,” Miss Pyro said. I heard the crunch of her boots against the slimy asphalt.

I cleared my throat. “Uh -- try not to turn me into Peking duck when you save me, okay? I kind of want to live long enough to marry Peter and run off into the sunset with him.”

“No sweat. I’m doing a head count right now.”

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MY ONLINE SECRET ADMIRER by J. Tomas

MY ONLINE SECRET ADMIRER by J. Tomas

While bored in his Computers class one day, junior Mike Halston stumbles upon another student's anonymous blog and is surprised to find himself listed as the sexiest guy in their class. So what, someone has a crush on him? Who could it be?

Enlisting the help of his best friend Talley and his best girl friend Marie, Mike tries to figure out the identity of the mysterious blogger. Unfortunately he suspects it may be a female student, since only his friends know he's gay.

Then a second blog entry makes him realize the blogger is someone close to him. Could it really be Marie? Or does Talley know more than he's letting on?

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EXCERPT:

I finally admitted to Marie that her name was on the blog, too, but only because I wanted her help. “Prettiest, really?” she cooed, as if there were any doubt. She knows she’s pretty; she just wants to hear someone else say it. Crunching on her salad, she mused, “You and I should run for homecoming court. King and queen, right here! I know one person who’d vote for us.”

“You don’t know who’s blog it is,” Talley pointed out.

Right. That cooled her a little. “We should find out,” she said. “It can’t be too hard -- just ask everyone in class who’s already started their blog. I mean, really. It isn’t due for months so I’m sure only one or two people have bothered ...”

She trailed off and looked at me, a blank expression on her face. I’d seen it often enough to know that meant she was getting an idea. “Wait. Who do you think’s already started their blog?” she asked, looking at me.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Someone super smart, or a brown-noser, someone who always gets good grades ...”

My gaze trailed around the cafeteria and settled on the hunched-over back of Jaime Tuttle. She sat at the end of the last table in the room, closest to the door, as if she planned to snarf down her lunch and make a mad dash for the library or something. God, no, I prayed. It couldn’t be ...

But Marie had followed my gaze, and a sly smirk spread across her face. Lowering her voice to a scandalous level, she whispered, “You don’t think her, do you?”

As usual, Talley seemed out of the loop. I could never tell if he was really as dumb as he looked, or if it was just easier for him to play that role. “Who?”

“Jaime Tuttle.” In a sing-song voice, Marie added, “She likes the gay boy. She likes the gay boy.”

I kicked her under the table. “Shut up, will you? Someone’ll hear you and then it’ll be all over school.”

Beside Marie, Talley mumbled, “I’m surprised it isn’t already. Ow!”

Her nails scratched his thick arm like a cat’s claws. “I can keep a secret, Talley,” she snapped. “You of all people should know that.”

I didn’t get a chance to ask what she meant by that -- hell, I’m his best friend, I know all there is to know about him, don’t I? But before I could find out, from the corner of my eye I saw Jaime stand and, for the briefest second, I could’ve sworn she looked my way.

Me. Great. Why does she have to like me?

Marie watched Jaime leave the cafeteria, then leaned over the table again, all business. “I’ve got a plan. She’s in my next class. I’ll just be all like hey girl, I hear you got the hots for my GBF --”

“Your what?” I asked.

Marie rolled her eyes. “My gay best friend, duh. Of course I won’t say that to her face. I don’t want her freaking out because the first guy she goes for likes dick.”

I tried to protest. “I’ve never --”

“Puh-leaze,” Marie cried, raising her voice to talk over me. “I’ll just say yo, I found your blog, and I saw you think Mike’s bringing sexy back, and I’ll see what she says. Simple as that.”

Talley grunted into his last slice of pizza. “Yeah, like she’s going to tell you.”

Over her shoulder, Marie told him, “You’d be surprised what some people tell me.”

The way she said it made me think she meant him. What could she know about Talley that I didn’t? But the bell rang before I could ask, sweeping us up with the crowd and ruining my chance to find out.

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RENFRED'S MASQUERADE by Hayden Thorne

RENFRED'S MASQUERADE by Hayden Thorne

Young Nicola Gregori has always wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a brilliant clock-maker who’s famous for his wild, fantastical designs. But his father instead sends him to school to learn more practical matters. Nicola, stricken with infantile paralysis that left him with a deformed right leg, becomes an object of mockery and cruel jokes in school. He learns that in order to survive his daily ordeals, he needs to vanish in the crowd, to stop aspiring, to stop dreaming, and above all, to believe himself unworthy of respect and love.

Tragedy strikes when Nicola turns sixteen. Gustav Renfred, an old friend of his father, takes on Nicola as his charge and whisks him away to an isolated islet filled with empty mansions and bordered by a bluebell forest. There Nicola slowly learns about the tragic story that tightly weaves together the fates of Jacopo Gregori, Gustav Renfred, and Gustav’s twin sister, Constanza.

Magic, impossible dreams, and unrequited love come together in Ambrosi, the Renfreds’ mansion, where Nicola is caught up in a world of haunting portraits, a ghostly housekeeper, and the mysterious disappearance of Davide, Constanza’s adopted son. When Nicola’s invited to one of Renfred’s magical masquerades, he discovers the answers to riddles as well as the mounting danger that the Renfred family faces with every passing hour.

With the masquerades’ existence depending on the physical and mental strength of an ailing Renfred, the task of solving the mystery of Davide’s disappearance before time runs out falls on Nicola’s shoulders, and he has no choice but to depend on things that he’s long learned to suppress: courage, self-respect, and the desire to aim for impossible goals.

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EXCERPT:

As they walked back to the ballroom, hand in hand, the heat that suffused Nicola’s face didn’t abate, though the languid strains of a pretty barcarolle distracted him a little from his embarrassment. They took their places again among the revelers, and while Nicola had never heard of people dancing to a barcarolle, they nevertheless managed to do so in what could only be described as a modified waltz. The movements were slower, more intimate, and less conducive to laughter and high-spirited exchanges. Partners held each other close, devoted all their attention to each other, and moved in graceful circles around the ballroom as though they were the only people left alive in the world.

For Nicola, the moment was beyond magical. His partner kept his attention on him, the intensity of Pierrot’s gaze softened only by that melancholy that had shown itself earlier and continued to cast a palpable shadow over him. Nicola tried to smile to set him at ease, but for all his trouble, he could only manage to encourage a faint curl of a pale mouth, and he grew tired of being cheerful even before the music ended.

For better or for worse, the piece to which they all danced was a long one, and to avoid being dragged down by his partner’s silent moodiness, Nicola tried to imagine a clockwork oarsman navigating its boat through the dark, silent waters around the island, its strokes keeping time with the music. As the seconds passed and the world continued to move in graceful circles around them, Nicola’s imagination continued to be fed, the images growing more and more elaborate -- more concrete, even.

He saw that the clockwork oarsman was not only rowing its boat in the moonlight, but that it also had two passengers -- more like shadows -- sitting close together, with one leaning heavily -- perhaps tiredly -- against the other. The shadow that was leaning was shorter, its head resting against its partner’s shoulder as though it were lost in deep sleep. The other shadow allowed its companion to pillow its head against it, though its own head drooped as well, bowing forward and then slowly turning to the side so that its head, too, leaned against the top of its partner’s in its turn. In the darkness, their slumbering silhouettes gave Nicola the impression that they were travelers who’d finally reached the end of their journey and were about to disembark.

He also wasn’t sure if it was nothing more than the effect of the music itself, with its moderate tempo and dreamlike melody, but something impressed upon him that those two shadows in the boat weren’t returning, that their journey was something that had been delayed for far too long. Maybe to a cruel extent, even. But whatever the nature of their journey across the quiet waters, it was meant to be their last.

Nicola was startled out of his state by the slight touch of a finger against his cheek, and he blinked. Pierrot was watching him, a slight frown marring his masked features now.

“Are you all right?”

“What -- me? I am, yes. I’m sorry, the music overcame me for a moment.” Nicola chuckled, feeling sheepish.

His partner continued to frown slightly, and he touched Nicola’s cheek again, this time raising his finger before Nicola to show moisture on it. It was only then when Nicola realized that he’d been crying, and he was shocked. That image of the tired couple in a boat struck him hard, something that his imagination had never done before. The strong sense of tragic inevitability rose from that image and helped engrave its sad shapes in Nicola’s mind. It was so odd, the way a simple romantic “daydream” would affect him so much and, indeed, feel so real.

He said nothing and simply shook his head, this time taking the initiative and changing their pace when the barcarolle ended, and a spirited waltz took its place. He barely even heard the distant tolling of a bell -- the same one that called out to him earlier -- fighting to be heard over the raucous activity in the ballroom. And as though to remind him, someone in the assembly cried out, “One o’clock! Two more hours!” A cheer rippled through the dancers, and as though in one mind, everyone hurled themselves into the waltz with renewed energy. It seemed like a race against time, with a normally empty ballroom filled with specters intent on devouring every possible second in their grasp till the three o’clock hour.

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