Gingerbread 10; Cherry Vanilla 1
Author: Marina
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Gingerbread 10 (frog prince), Cherry Vanilla 1 (a dark and stormy night)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel
Word Count: 2,330
Rating: G
Summary: Chase catsits for Eva and Carrie, deals with an unexpected incident, and ends up liking Sketches just a little better.
Notes: Follows this. There’ll be at least one more, since, again, fitting everything I wanted to in this installment didn’t seem to work.
“Sketches! Naughty kitty!” Carrie swiftly caught up the squirt bottle sitting next to her foot and aimed it at the kitten, who mewed and hopped off the coffee table.
“Carrie!” Chase cried, staring at her in horror.
She raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“Why did you do that?”
“It’s called conditioning, Chasie. If Sketches is on a piece of furniture she’s not allowed to be, we just squirt her once and she gets right down. Sooner or later she’ll stop trying, because she’ll know if she does she’s going to get squirted.”
“But that’s terrible!”
“Please, it’s just a little water.” She squirted him, accidentally hitting him in the eye and causing him to yelp in pain. “Whoops! Sorry!”
“You should be,” Chase hissed, shooting her a dirty look. “How dare you.”
“I said I was sorry!”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but accepted the napkin she offered him. “You should be ashamed to do such a thing to your cat. That is a fate worse than death.”
Carrie started laughing. “It’s just a squirt bottle. It’s not like we dump her in the tub every time she goes somewhere she’s not supposed to.”
“You might as well be,” he said, in a dramatically low voice.
“What’s it to you, anyway? I thought you’d just laugh and say she got what she deserved.”
“No one deserves that. Not even a cat. Well, maybe if it’s a really, really evil cat.”
She beamed at him. “You don’t think Sketches is evil?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Not yet.”
“Yay!” She leaned over to give him a hug, and he had to smile even after she let go and went back to writing her list. “That reminds me, I should write down the places she’s not allowed to be so you know. Don’t let her into the bedrooms. She’ll be allowed when she’s older but we don’t want her in there while we’re still housebreaking her. You feed her in the kitchen, and her litter box is in the bathroom. She’s not allowed on the coffee table or the kitchen table, or the counters. Or the bookshelf. And don’t leave the cabinets open because she’ll hop in there if she gets the chance.”
“Not gonna remember that,” he said immediately. “Just write it down.”
“Right.”
As she finished the list, Eva walked into the room with a small bag in each hand. “Ready to go, babe?” she asked.
Carrie smiled up at her mother. “I think so. Is this everything?” She held up the paper for inspection.
Eva scanned it quickly and passed it back to her. “Just about. Good job.” She grinned at Chase. “Thanks for watching the house for us.”
“No problem,” he said politely, accepting the sheet from Carrie. “I hope you have fun in Solvang.”
“I’m sure we will. If something happens, just call us. We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”
“Okay. Bye!”
The two of them swept out the door, leaving Chase alone with Sketches. He glanced down at her, and she stared right back up at him. As usual, Chase was the first to break eye contact, choosing instead to scan the list. “Mmkay, you need food in…two hours, and until then you can play with your catnip toy and I can sit on the couch, read my comics, and try not to get clawed. Sound good?”
Sketches rubbed up against Chase’s leg and purred.
“You’re only doing that because you know you scare me,” he said, trying not to flinch. “I’m on to your tricks.”
Just then, a shadow passed through the room, and Chase glanced behind him to see that the sky had begun to grow dark. He went to the window and frowned at the swarming clouds. “Oh, that’s just great.”
***
By the time five o’clock rolled around, a full-blown thunderstorm raged outside. Chase glared at it as he scooped a small amount of wet food into Sketches’ dish. “It had to rain tonight,” he muttered, “as if I wasn’t already freaked out-AGH!” He turned his dark look on the kitten, who peered innocently up at him without removing her claws from his pant leg. “Ow! Don’t do that! I’m almost done, you can wait two more seconds, geez.” He set the little bowl down on the ground, and she eagerly scarfed up the food. “I guess you were hungry. But that’s still no excuse.”
She ignored him, so he used the opportunity to escape to the living room with a large glass of milk in hand. Now that he felt comfortable reading superhero comics again, he had a large stack of X-Men issues to catch up on. He happily sprawled out on the couch, set his glass on the coffee table, and picked up the first.
The next couple of hours passed quickly as he devoured both the comics and the milk, forgetting all about his surroundings. An unfamiliar weight jolted him from his contented daze just as he reached for the last issue. He started, which in turn surprised Sketches, who had begun to climb to a perch just below his knees.
Chase, unsure what to do about this, simply stared at her for a moment. Sketches merely continued her journey, seemingly satisfied that he had no plans to jump like that again in the near future. He watched in disbelief as she found the spot she wanted and curled up there. “O-kay,” he said. “You do that. Just no claws.” He opened the next comic.
Then the room went black.
He screamed, scaring Sketches into jumping off his legs. A few seconds later, light flashed by the window, illuminating the room for the briefest of moments. The thunder followed immediately after, and he screamed again, suddenly filled with the kind of terror he had only known once before.
Silent darkness reigned in the room for a long moment. He looked around, blinking furiously to force his eyes to adjust. If he could see, nothing would happen to him, but horrible things lurked in the dark. Without the light-or Laura-to keep them away…
“Can’t just sit here,” he said abruptly. Forcing himself to take deeper, slower breaths, he reached over for the backpack he had brought with him. “Power’s just out cause of the storm. I’m okay. I prepared for this. Got a flashlight, rations, first-aid kit, and sleeping bag. Guess I’m just gonna have to set up camp and wait for the power to come back.”
He placed the first-aid kit on the coffee table, dumped the granola bars he had brought on top of it, then switched on his flashlight-lantern and set it next to the pile. “Now we can see. Good.” He looked around for Sketches, spotting her atop the cat tree. “Maybe you don’t need the light? I forget whether cats can see in the dark or not, but whatevs. I need the light. Now I know we’re safe.”
Sketches seemed unconcerned.
Chase unrolled his sleeping bag and changed into his pajamas. His initial panic over with, the situation felt almost comfortable. He remembered going on similar “camping trips” with Laura when he was younger; they liked to claim the den as their campground for the night and could lie awake talking for hours and hours. Sometimes, before it got too late, Laura played her guitar for him, and the rest of the time he told her stories about their adventures with Boo-boo.
He unwrapped one of the granola bars, smiling at the memories. Maybe Laura would want to do that again when I visit her at college, he thought.
As he began to eat his snack, Sketches hopped down from the cat tree and meandered over to him. Chase frowned and started to move, but she bypassed him in favor of the discarded wrapper. He understood why when she batted at it, creating a crackly sound. “I guess you like stuff that makes noise. Cats are so weird.” She ignored him once again, completely fascinated with her new toy.
The thunder sounded again, and Chase turned sharply toward the window, feeling the fear begin to creep up again. “Okay, no,” he said, squelching it down. “I’m okay. Nothing bad is going to happen. The power’s got to come back soon.”
He slid into his sleeping bag and pondered the ceiling. “You know something?” he said to the oblivious cat. “I’m gonna make this fun. I betcha I can make a story out of it. Like…maybe Carrie’s on a mission for King Boo-boo, one she couldn’t take you on, so she had to leave you with me. And then I had to go on a mission, but I couldn’t leave you because there was no one to watch you. And maybe we get stuck somehow and that’s how you prove yourself, so King Boo-boo lifts the ban on cats, because he knows they’re not all evil, like the ones from the Purple Barbarian Kingdom.” He smiled. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll tell it to Carrie when she comes home.”
Sketches paid him no attention. Chase continued talking anyway. “It’s gotta be something scary, like the lights going out, and we’ll have to stay there the whole night and probably meet up with a ghost or a ninja. And we gotta do it by ourselves. Can’t call King Boo-boo for help. That’s okay though, because I came prepared and you…probably have awesome skills I don’t know about yet. Maybe. You can climb your tree pretty fast, and your claws are sharp. That’s gotta be good for something.”
She glanced at him then, and abandoned the wrapper a moment later. Chase watched as she meandered toward the cat tree, changed her mind, and came trotting back. “Well, do you have any ideas?” he asked.
She yawned.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, smiling a little. “That’s okay. I’ll figure it out. You can hear it when I tell it to Carrie and tell me if you think it’s good or not. If you care. You might not.”
Sketches considered him for a moment, then found the lump in the sleeping bag that corresponded to his knees and hopped back up to her previous perch. Chase flinched a little, but not enough to scare her. “Like I said, no claws,” he told her. When he received only a blink in response, he snorted. “I mean it. Carrie might let you get away with that stuff, but I won’t. Claws are for enemies. Not me.”
She blinked at him once more, and closed her eyes. Satisfied that she had understood, he let his head drop back and twined his fingers together over his chest. “Definitely ghosts,” he mused. “Haven’t had those in a story in forever. So now I have to figure out where we are, how they got there, and how they died and stuff. And I think maybe this time the place is close to home, not in the PBK. Carrie’s there, we aren’t.” His eyes fluttered shut. “Yeah.”
***
The power came back by the next morning. Chase fixed himself some cereal for breakfast and decided to watch a movie until Eva and Carrie returned.
It did not take him long to scan their collection of DVDs and pick two movies he especially wanted to see. He laid them out on the coffee table, prepared to do eenie meenie miney mo, but the ringing phone interrupted him. “Ooh, maybe it’s Carrie calling to say they’re on their way,” he said, hopping up immediately. He picked up the kitchen receiver and said, “Morales-Michaels residence,” just the way Eva had told him to do.
“Chasie, that you?”
“Laura!” he cried, delighted. “You’re just in time! What should I watch, The Emperor’s New Groove or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?”
His sister laughed. “Narnia. So you’re okay, then?”
“Yeah, course I am, why?”
“Mom called this morning to ask how the first day of classes went, and she mentioned that there was a power outage last night, so I just thought I’d check up on you since I knew you were alone at Carrie’s.”
Chase sobered a little. “Oh. Yeah, I’m okay. It was scary for a minute when the lights first went out, but I brought a flashlight with me, and Sketches turned out to be good company.” As he spoke, he ran a cursory scan of the room for the cat, but she had wandered off in search of foreign lands.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Laura said seriously. “Remember, I can come home any time you need me to.”
“I remember.”
“Good.” She chuckled a little. “I’m glad to hear the cat didn’t kill you, too.”
Chase snorted, tucking the phone between his ear so that he could set up the movie. “She’s actually an okay kitty, except that she woke me up this morning by trying to bite my nose off. They feed her at seven a.m., Laura. Who gets up that early?”
“You do. During the school year.”
“Yeah, but it’s summer, for another week, anyway. I sleep in, she can sleep in too.”
“That’s not how it works for cats, kiddo.”
“It should be,” he said petulantly. “That hurt. For such a little cat she’s got some sharp teeth-oh! I almost forgot. I made a story out of last night, and I’m gonna tell it to Carrie when she gets home and I’ll tell it to you too, if you want, when it’s done.”
“Oh, really? What’s it about?”
“Ghosts. Sketches and I have to battle them in order to close the vortex of eeeeeevil.”
Laura followed up a brief moment of silence with incredulous laughter. “You made up a story about Sketches?”
“Well, yeah,” Chase said, frowning at the receiver. “She has to prove herself to King Boo-boo somehow if she wants to stay with Carrie. Why’s that funny?”
“No reason.” Her chuckles slowly died away, but the amusement did not leave her voice. “Just forget about it.”
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Gingerbread 10 (frog prince), Cherry Vanilla 1 (a dark and stormy night)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel
Word Count: 2,330
Rating: G
Summary: Chase catsits for Eva and Carrie, deals with an unexpected incident, and ends up liking Sketches just a little better.
Notes: Follows this. There’ll be at least one more, since, again, fitting everything I wanted to in this installment didn’t seem to work.
“Sketches! Naughty kitty!” Carrie swiftly caught up the squirt bottle sitting next to her foot and aimed it at the kitten, who mewed and hopped off the coffee table.
“Carrie!” Chase cried, staring at her in horror.
She raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“Why did you do that?”
“It’s called conditioning, Chasie. If Sketches is on a piece of furniture she’s not allowed to be, we just squirt her once and she gets right down. Sooner or later she’ll stop trying, because she’ll know if she does she’s going to get squirted.”
“But that’s terrible!”
“Please, it’s just a little water.” She squirted him, accidentally hitting him in the eye and causing him to yelp in pain. “Whoops! Sorry!”
“You should be,” Chase hissed, shooting her a dirty look. “How dare you.”
“I said I was sorry!”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but accepted the napkin she offered him. “You should be ashamed to do such a thing to your cat. That is a fate worse than death.”
Carrie started laughing. “It’s just a squirt bottle. It’s not like we dump her in the tub every time she goes somewhere she’s not supposed to.”
“You might as well be,” he said, in a dramatically low voice.
“What’s it to you, anyway? I thought you’d just laugh and say she got what she deserved.”
“No one deserves that. Not even a cat. Well, maybe if it’s a really, really evil cat.”
She beamed at him. “You don’t think Sketches is evil?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Not yet.”
“Yay!” She leaned over to give him a hug, and he had to smile even after she let go and went back to writing her list. “That reminds me, I should write down the places she’s not allowed to be so you know. Don’t let her into the bedrooms. She’ll be allowed when she’s older but we don’t want her in there while we’re still housebreaking her. You feed her in the kitchen, and her litter box is in the bathroom. She’s not allowed on the coffee table or the kitchen table, or the counters. Or the bookshelf. And don’t leave the cabinets open because she’ll hop in there if she gets the chance.”
“Not gonna remember that,” he said immediately. “Just write it down.”
“Right.”
As she finished the list, Eva walked into the room with a small bag in each hand. “Ready to go, babe?” she asked.
Carrie smiled up at her mother. “I think so. Is this everything?” She held up the paper for inspection.
Eva scanned it quickly and passed it back to her. “Just about. Good job.” She grinned at Chase. “Thanks for watching the house for us.”
“No problem,” he said politely, accepting the sheet from Carrie. “I hope you have fun in Solvang.”
“I’m sure we will. If something happens, just call us. We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”
“Okay. Bye!”
The two of them swept out the door, leaving Chase alone with Sketches. He glanced down at her, and she stared right back up at him. As usual, Chase was the first to break eye contact, choosing instead to scan the list. “Mmkay, you need food in…two hours, and until then you can play with your catnip toy and I can sit on the couch, read my comics, and try not to get clawed. Sound good?”
Sketches rubbed up against Chase’s leg and purred.
“You’re only doing that because you know you scare me,” he said, trying not to flinch. “I’m on to your tricks.”
Just then, a shadow passed through the room, and Chase glanced behind him to see that the sky had begun to grow dark. He went to the window and frowned at the swarming clouds. “Oh, that’s just great.”
***
By the time five o’clock rolled around, a full-blown thunderstorm raged outside. Chase glared at it as he scooped a small amount of wet food into Sketches’ dish. “It had to rain tonight,” he muttered, “as if I wasn’t already freaked out-AGH!” He turned his dark look on the kitten, who peered innocently up at him without removing her claws from his pant leg. “Ow! Don’t do that! I’m almost done, you can wait two more seconds, geez.” He set the little bowl down on the ground, and she eagerly scarfed up the food. “I guess you were hungry. But that’s still no excuse.”
She ignored him, so he used the opportunity to escape to the living room with a large glass of milk in hand. Now that he felt comfortable reading superhero comics again, he had a large stack of X-Men issues to catch up on. He happily sprawled out on the couch, set his glass on the coffee table, and picked up the first.
The next couple of hours passed quickly as he devoured both the comics and the milk, forgetting all about his surroundings. An unfamiliar weight jolted him from his contented daze just as he reached for the last issue. He started, which in turn surprised Sketches, who had begun to climb to a perch just below his knees.
Chase, unsure what to do about this, simply stared at her for a moment. Sketches merely continued her journey, seemingly satisfied that he had no plans to jump like that again in the near future. He watched in disbelief as she found the spot she wanted and curled up there. “O-kay,” he said. “You do that. Just no claws.” He opened the next comic.
Then the room went black.
He screamed, scaring Sketches into jumping off his legs. A few seconds later, light flashed by the window, illuminating the room for the briefest of moments. The thunder followed immediately after, and he screamed again, suddenly filled with the kind of terror he had only known once before.
Silent darkness reigned in the room for a long moment. He looked around, blinking furiously to force his eyes to adjust. If he could see, nothing would happen to him, but horrible things lurked in the dark. Without the light-or Laura-to keep them away…
“Can’t just sit here,” he said abruptly. Forcing himself to take deeper, slower breaths, he reached over for the backpack he had brought with him. “Power’s just out cause of the storm. I’m okay. I prepared for this. Got a flashlight, rations, first-aid kit, and sleeping bag. Guess I’m just gonna have to set up camp and wait for the power to come back.”
He placed the first-aid kit on the coffee table, dumped the granola bars he had brought on top of it, then switched on his flashlight-lantern and set it next to the pile. “Now we can see. Good.” He looked around for Sketches, spotting her atop the cat tree. “Maybe you don’t need the light? I forget whether cats can see in the dark or not, but whatevs. I need the light. Now I know we’re safe.”
Sketches seemed unconcerned.
Chase unrolled his sleeping bag and changed into his pajamas. His initial panic over with, the situation felt almost comfortable. He remembered going on similar “camping trips” with Laura when he was younger; they liked to claim the den as their campground for the night and could lie awake talking for hours and hours. Sometimes, before it got too late, Laura played her guitar for him, and the rest of the time he told her stories about their adventures with Boo-boo.
He unwrapped one of the granola bars, smiling at the memories. Maybe Laura would want to do that again when I visit her at college, he thought.
As he began to eat his snack, Sketches hopped down from the cat tree and meandered over to him. Chase frowned and started to move, but she bypassed him in favor of the discarded wrapper. He understood why when she batted at it, creating a crackly sound. “I guess you like stuff that makes noise. Cats are so weird.” She ignored him once again, completely fascinated with her new toy.
The thunder sounded again, and Chase turned sharply toward the window, feeling the fear begin to creep up again. “Okay, no,” he said, squelching it down. “I’m okay. Nothing bad is going to happen. The power’s got to come back soon.”
He slid into his sleeping bag and pondered the ceiling. “You know something?” he said to the oblivious cat. “I’m gonna make this fun. I betcha I can make a story out of it. Like…maybe Carrie’s on a mission for King Boo-boo, one she couldn’t take you on, so she had to leave you with me. And then I had to go on a mission, but I couldn’t leave you because there was no one to watch you. And maybe we get stuck somehow and that’s how you prove yourself, so King Boo-boo lifts the ban on cats, because he knows they’re not all evil, like the ones from the Purple Barbarian Kingdom.” He smiled. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll tell it to Carrie when she comes home.”
Sketches paid him no attention. Chase continued talking anyway. “It’s gotta be something scary, like the lights going out, and we’ll have to stay there the whole night and probably meet up with a ghost or a ninja. And we gotta do it by ourselves. Can’t call King Boo-boo for help. That’s okay though, because I came prepared and you…probably have awesome skills I don’t know about yet. Maybe. You can climb your tree pretty fast, and your claws are sharp. That’s gotta be good for something.”
She glanced at him then, and abandoned the wrapper a moment later. Chase watched as she meandered toward the cat tree, changed her mind, and came trotting back. “Well, do you have any ideas?” he asked.
She yawned.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, smiling a little. “That’s okay. I’ll figure it out. You can hear it when I tell it to Carrie and tell me if you think it’s good or not. If you care. You might not.”
Sketches considered him for a moment, then found the lump in the sleeping bag that corresponded to his knees and hopped back up to her previous perch. Chase flinched a little, but not enough to scare her. “Like I said, no claws,” he told her. When he received only a blink in response, he snorted. “I mean it. Carrie might let you get away with that stuff, but I won’t. Claws are for enemies. Not me.”
She blinked at him once more, and closed her eyes. Satisfied that she had understood, he let his head drop back and twined his fingers together over his chest. “Definitely ghosts,” he mused. “Haven’t had those in a story in forever. So now I have to figure out where we are, how they got there, and how they died and stuff. And I think maybe this time the place is close to home, not in the PBK. Carrie’s there, we aren’t.” His eyes fluttered shut. “Yeah.”
***
The power came back by the next morning. Chase fixed himself some cereal for breakfast and decided to watch a movie until Eva and Carrie returned.
It did not take him long to scan their collection of DVDs and pick two movies he especially wanted to see. He laid them out on the coffee table, prepared to do eenie meenie miney mo, but the ringing phone interrupted him. “Ooh, maybe it’s Carrie calling to say they’re on their way,” he said, hopping up immediately. He picked up the kitchen receiver and said, “Morales-Michaels residence,” just the way Eva had told him to do.
“Chasie, that you?”
“Laura!” he cried, delighted. “You’re just in time! What should I watch, The Emperor’s New Groove or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?”
His sister laughed. “Narnia. So you’re okay, then?”
“Yeah, course I am, why?”
“Mom called this morning to ask how the first day of classes went, and she mentioned that there was a power outage last night, so I just thought I’d check up on you since I knew you were alone at Carrie’s.”
Chase sobered a little. “Oh. Yeah, I’m okay. It was scary for a minute when the lights first went out, but I brought a flashlight with me, and Sketches turned out to be good company.” As he spoke, he ran a cursory scan of the room for the cat, but she had wandered off in search of foreign lands.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Laura said seriously. “Remember, I can come home any time you need me to.”
“I remember.”
“Good.” She chuckled a little. “I’m glad to hear the cat didn’t kill you, too.”
Chase snorted, tucking the phone between his ear so that he could set up the movie. “She’s actually an okay kitty, except that she woke me up this morning by trying to bite my nose off. They feed her at seven a.m., Laura. Who gets up that early?”
“You do. During the school year.”
“Yeah, but it’s summer, for another week, anyway. I sleep in, she can sleep in too.”
“That’s not how it works for cats, kiddo.”
“It should be,” he said petulantly. “That hurt. For such a little cat she’s got some sharp teeth-oh! I almost forgot. I made a story out of last night, and I’m gonna tell it to Carrie when she gets home and I’ll tell it to you too, if you want, when it’s done.”
“Oh, really? What’s it about?”
“Ghosts. Sketches and I have to battle them in order to close the vortex of eeeeeevil.”
Laura followed up a brief moment of silence with incredulous laughter. “You made up a story about Sketches?”
“Well, yeah,” Chase said, frowning at the receiver. “She has to prove herself to King Boo-boo somehow if she wants to stay with Carrie. Why’s that funny?”
“No reason.” Her chuckles slowly died away, but the amusement did not leave her voice. “Just forget about it.”