Because You Love to Hate Me(7)
Home remedy to try: If animal-stroking is essential to your thinking process, switch to puppies. If you’re allergic, try rubbing the head of a friend who cares about your health.
?YOU LIE COMPULSIVELY.
Tiny lies are generally okay: No, I didn’t accidentally break your super-cool Anthropology mug. Yes, I did watch that documentary about snails you recommended. But it’s a slippery slope and lying can quickly get out of hand: No, I didn’t accidentally destroy your original copy of Deathly Hallows. No, I didn’t secretly murder your cousin. Yes, I floss every day. Too far.
Home remedy to try: Never speak.
?YOUR LAUGH IS SCARILY LOUD.
Loud laughter is a clear sign of treachery.
Home remedy to try: Laugh silently or seek help from a life coach.
?YOU’VE ADDED LORD TO YOUR NAME.
The fact of the matter is you’re not allowed to make yourself a lord unless you’re the queen of England. And I don’t know why you would do that because you’re already the queen. Know that if you make yourself a lord, I will be suspicious and I will call a life coach to save you.
Home remedy to try: Community service.
?YOU HAVE URGES TO KILL PEOPLE.
You’re never supposed to kill people. Maybe you’re unaware, but it’s actually against the law. Don’t do it. Instead, get a life coach. Do not kill said life coach.
Home remedy to try: Channel these urges into something productive, like basket-weaving. Why get jail time when you can get a basket!
?YOU USE PENNIES TO PAY FOR THINGS.
Pennies are irrelevant and they should die. Smother this habit now before you become a threat to humanity.
Home remedy to try: Hot tea with honey.
?YOU’D REALLY LIKE TO ATTAIN TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION.
Really, what are you going to do with that? Why? Whatever you said in response is wrong.
Home remedy to try: Work toward acquiring total leadership over your local zumba classes, a real challenge for your mind and body, without all the hassle of war and politics.
?YOU DON’T LIKE THE BEATLES.
Why don’t you like the Beatles? You’re wrong. Try listening again. Listen until you like them.
Home remedy to try: Why don’t you like them? You like them. If you still disagree, refer to bullet four.
Happy not being evil! You’re welcome! Be vigilant and get vaccinated! Please note the evil vaccine is 53 percent effective and may cause loss of your nose and/or the ability to frown.
Love,
Real, Almost Life Coach Christine Riccio,
aka PolandbananasBOOKS
JACK
BY AMERIIE
The thing is getting them to trust you. The animals.
Dad swears they taste different when they die fearful. Sharp, acidic. He insists that the butcher soothe them before bringing down the ax, though I’m not sure it makes a difference—to Dad’s taste buds or to the animals. But then, my motto is “I don’t eat anything with a face.” I don’t care that it’s cliché—and it is, just as much up here as it is down there—because after hearing enough bleats and squawks and screams and last words, it’s easy to stick to the vegetarian side of things.
I think about where these animals come from, the world far beneath the clouds, and how I’ll never see it. How if the magick holding this stretch of cloud winked out and I fell into the vastness below, I’d explode into nothing—all nineteen feet four inches of me—and since I probably won’t ever do anything great, it’d be like I was never here, was never even born.
I think about stuff like this all the time when I’m in the basement of our castle and I’m staining and stamping leather, doing everything I can to memorialize a life that ended on my parents’ plates. Mom thinks I’m being dramatic and that it’s the animations, westerns, and romances I watch on our flat-screen (magicked for size and reception, of course), and Dad thinks I’m fighting my nature and going through some teenaged rebellious phase, but I can’t help thinking about the animals’ last moments. My theory is, at the end, they smell their own blood before it’s spilled no matter how you try to lull them. And I’m talking loads of animals. Do you know how much livestock have to die to feed even one family of giants? Seems to me there’s something sacrilegious about taking a life and leaving nothing behind except for what comes out of your . . . well, behind.
There was a time, ages ago, when humans looked to the sky and just knew there was something powerful up here. Dad likes to talk about the glory days—how our royal line was up to our ears in gold and how things were When Giants Roamed the Earth—not that he’s ever going to do anything about it. And this isn’t a judgment; when he dies about a hundred years from now and I’m Empress of the Northern Hemisphere, I won’t do anything about it, either.
I know humans like to think they’re special, but it’s galling that they’ve forgotten about us. There are rumors, but all are chalked up to fairy tales, myths, and fables. Still, people are curious, which I was counting on when I dropped the beans.
I hurled two tiny satchels of magicked beans over the edge of our cloud (careful to stand far enough away from the cloudline, of course) and knew they’d find their way to the right people, because magickal things have a way of being found when they want to be. Turns out one satchel ended up burrowing itself in the beach before it was picked up and the other tossed itself into the undercarriage of a delivery truck, eventually dropping onto someone’s feet. (I know this because I see the sense in paying extra for the little tracking slip that magickally appears upon delivery, otherwise who knows where your packages end up?)