A series of brief fictional freebies, generally associated with a holiday or other special occasion, and all tie-ins to Laconia novels. This special-features selection is an ongoing project.

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Wi I Like Halllloweeen
Spoilers: Halloween Romance

By Dianne Anghel
Grade 1!

My favrite holliday is hallowween. I rely dunt think monsters ar scarry I mene most peeple dunt think a bout how the monsters feeel. In Oz the wich just wants shoos and ok shees meen, but id be meen to if sumone droppt a hose on my sster. If I had a sisster. I dunt, actualy. But nyway they say Frank N Stein is scarry but my mommy says that's the name of the doctor and peeple are rong, and Mr. Stein's monster is just sad n lonely.

Vampires and werewolves arn't scarier than normal peeple. Some are good n some bad, just like normal peeple. Sometimes I pretend my daddy is a vampire and turns into a bat and plays with me but this is pretend my daddy is not reely a vampire of course not no such thing as vampires my daddy is normal, duh. But if my daddy was reely a vampire id like hallowwen becuz he could be himself for a day and stop faking and go outside and meeeet my friends. Somtimes when i play my game of preteding stuff that isn't troo I pretend mommy is a whearwolf caus if she was she culd curl up with me by the fire when I eat my candi and shee would be fuzzy and warm.

I relly like hallowwween becuz I get to drss up and eat candi and drink cider and have karmel aple. Christmas is nice cause I get presens but my daddy is sad on chrismtas cause he hasn't seen his mommy and daddy and sister for a while. So not as fun.

Also the movie with Jack Skeellington is a reely good movie you should see it I like sally best, and its about hallowwen so that's another reeson to like hallowween. OOWOwwooowOOwoooWooWoo.

(Dianne got an A- - marked down for the "duh" - and a gold star. However, her teacher ended up calling in Selene Anghel for a bemused parent-teacher conference, noting Dianne's "strange obsession" with pretending her parents were monsters that didn't seem quite healthy. Selene restrained her laughter until she was safely out of the building.)








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An Anghel (Plus One Silver) Thanksgiving
Spoilers: Bite Me

The first Thanksgiving after Mom was diagnosed looked to be a depressing affair. None of the extended relatives could make it (Grandma Molly refused to come visit, ever, because apparently Dad was an embarrassment and I was an abomination). Mom was adjusting to her first handfuls of medication and could barely stand up straight after a day's work. She was slowly tapering off her hours and was going to go on indefinite sick leave after Christmas.

"You know," I said Thanksgiving morning, finding her wrapped in a blanket and huddling over a cup of tea, "We could just eat raw turkey tonight."

She reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "We have to show we're not beaten."

"Show who?"

"'Whom', Dianne. And we have to show ourselves."

It was a shortcut meal. I did a lot of it: heated the prepared turkey breast, mixed together pie filling for a premade graham cracker crust, baked Pillsbury rolls. Mom threw together a salad and started mashing potato flakes but had to go lie down halfway through. I decided I didn't really want potatoes and discreetly threw them away. The men were fending for themselves, but Mom and I would wait for them to get up.

When I thought I was alone I started sniffling a little bit. A food-based holiday is especially melancholy when the one other person in the house who eats solid food is fading away. I was thankful for Matthew, who had promised to come over on Friday for some low-key companionship, and I was thankful that I was learning to control my powers, and I was thankful Nat was helping us financially. I would have been willing to never date until age twenty, have no powers whatsoever, and have to shop for all my clothes at Goodwill if that had meant Mom weren't sick, though.

I felt slender but strong hands on my shoulders. Dad was rubbing them to ease my tension. "You're up early," I said through my thin trickle.

He smoothed my hair, and when I turned around I saw he was wearing brown and muted orange rather than his usual colors. His sunglasses reflected my pinched face. "I wanted to spend some time with you."

"What about Mom?"

"I checked on her already. I thought...well..." he gestured at a small Nerf football he had put on the counter before comforting me. "Maybe we could toss that around in the backyard?"

He had never done that with me before. An ugly sentiment rose in my throat. "I'm not a dog, Dad." I came perilously close to crying in earnest.

"Never said you were - Dianne, look at me. Look at me." He turned the lights down a little and took off his shades so I could see his eyes. "You are my beautiful, brilliant daughter, who could use some practice refining her talent, and who has a very shortsighted father who needed a family catastrophe to realize how brief and precious her youth is."

"Really?"

"Really." And he pulled me in for a hug.

Then the front door slammed open. "Happy Thanksgiving to the Anghels!" Nat cried.

I stepped out to the living room to shush him. "Mom's resting."

"Sorry!" he stage-whispered. He was waving a paper-bag-shrouded bottle in each hand, though one was glass and one was plastic. "Is Supernatural Superserious about?"

Dad put his sunglasses back on and resumed the lights with an exaggerated sigh. "Yes, Century-Old Toddler?"

"It took getting up at three PM and quite a lot of driving to pick up, but what we have here is a bottle of rum," he gesticulated with the glass bottle, "and a good gallon of turkey blood. They're great mixed together."

"I don't even want to know what combinations you went through before you discovered that," Dad muttered, but he took one of the bottles and gave Nat a hug anyway.

Mom appeared at the top of the stairs. "Nat, you are disgusting."

"I love you too, Selene. Ooh, and results got back from the lab. I have the report here somewhere..." He swept into the dining room. "We need some candles here or something stat. I'm a vampire and I find this too gloomy!"

That was how a scant forty minutes later, by candlelight, Mom and I raised champagne flutes full of sparkling cider, and Dad and Nat their odd concoction, in a toast.

"To unexpected family," Nat said, a catch in his voice I wasn't used to.

"To rethinking priorities," Dad said, his glass shaking a little.

"To decent white blood cell counts," Mom said, with a wry smile.

"To the absolutely amazing, wonderful weirdness of us all." And I drank.




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Nat and Christmas
Spoilers: Bite Me

Dear Journal,

I got this notebook from Taylor, and besides being made of 100% post-consumer content - and raising funds to protect endangered species - it has black wolves on the cover. She’s been helping around the house since Mom has started to ail (good word, isn’t it?) and I think she’s figured some things out. I never can find the right moment to ask.

Anyway, it’s a nice notebook and lots of psychologists say keeping a diary is good for you, no matter how half-hearted. So I’m going to start with a description of this Christmas, the first Christmas with Nat living at our house.

On the last day of school before the vacation Matthew gave me a pair of shark mittens, and when I say this I mean that the mittens convert your hands into sharks: the thumbs are the lower jaws, your palms are lined with teeth and gaping red maw, and there is a fin on the back of each hand. I kissed him immediately and enthusiastically for that. Apparently his cousin in Michigan sells crazy-awesome knitted things and he commissioned the pair for $20. “Now you can pretend your hand is biting my hand when we hold hands.” When he unwrapped his (used but only mildly frayed) copy of American Gods I had stood in line for three hours at a book fair to get signed, he whooped and spun me around.

On the day itself Dad and Nat promised to stay up until 7 AM so Mom and I could join them for unwrapping. We woke to the buttery aromas of popcorn, peppermint hot chocolate, and Pillsbury rolls with jam; ultimately selfless acts of cookery from a pair of vampires.

“Why popcorn?” I asked as Mom – who has lost 10 pounds without meaning to in the past three months – carefully made her way down the stairs and kissed Dad.

Nat, who was for some reason wearing outrageously plaid red flannel pajamas and a sombrero, stuck the bowl in my hand with a gesture not to be refused. Dad explained, “I thought we should stick to easy and nearly-foolproof foods. Besides, popcorn feels festive, and it smells good even to us.”

“Why the sombrero?” Mom asked Nat.

“There’s no point in being cool if you can’t wear a sombrero, as a noted philosopher once said. Besides, it’s getting kind of sunny in here.”

Dad looked kind of sleepy but he smiled in the gentle way he doesn’t do enough. He put in an instrumental Christmas album and we ate/slurped blood/opened gifts. Since we were trying to save money the rule was each person got one present from each other person, and no one was to exceed $25 per gift. So this was my haul:

Dad gave me a subscription for Popular Science magazine, which came with a free glow-in-the-dark alarm clock. I’m going to share my issues with Matthew. From Mom I received gilded branch-and-leaves bobby pins so that my hair doesn’t always look like a neglected Pekinese, along with a pack of bison jerky that tastes good in either form. Nat handed me a red envelope with $25 cash.

“What? I hate shopping, teens like money.” He gave Mom a Barnes & Noble gift card and Dad an Amazon.com gift card. All for $25 exactly.

He was really testy this morning. Mom and Dad were talking about their Christmas traditions when they were young. I asked Nat what his family did, interested in hearing a first-person account from way back when, and he didn’t seem to hear me. I asked him again and he said he didn’t remember.

It occurred to all of us that we barely knew anything of Nat’s past.

“How old are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Where were you born?”

“Don’t remember.”

At this point Mom mumbled, “Leave him alone, Andy.”

“How many siblings did you have?”

“They’re dead by now, so I don’t see the point.”

Mom said, “Dianne, don’t…” (He was shaking.)

“What’s your favorite Christmas carol?” I asked in what I hoped was a joking, soothing tone, but he jumped up. He spoke with a strain we had never heard in him before.

“Okay. I’m sorry if I’m ruining your celebration, but I need to make an exit. Now. Have fun.” And he stalked to his room.

We let him calm down as Mom and I finished our food and all three of us soberly threw away and recycled the wrapping paper. Dad went to sleep. Mom got on the phone with various members of her family, along with some old friends. I wrote Thank You cards to Uncle Ben, Aunt Cassi, and Grandparents Davidson for their savings bonds I could cash in when I entered college – not the most entertaining of presents, but ones I very much needed.

Some time after lunch I heard the song “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid” by The Offspring through the wall. Then it played again. And again. And again. And again. Nat’s room is next to mine. I knocked on the door.

“I’ll stop the music,” he said quickly.

I opened it. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

He was still in the pajamas. His blinds were down. The sombrero rested atop his coffin, nearly lost among the clothes and books. He was huddled around an ancient CD player. It was dark enough in there that he didn’t need sunglasses. Not only were his irises red; the whites were marred with meandering arteries. “I’m sorry for the snit. You guys doing okay?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry for the pestering. Are you okay?” I shut the door behind me and sat against the wall.

The right side of his mouth tugged itself upward in something I would not call a smile, but not a grimace either. “I’m not good at Christmas. I haven’t been good at it since I was human. I haven’t even celebrated it since…” he obviously had to calculate, “before U.S. troops pulled out of Vietnam.”

“Did, um, did you get turned on Christmas?”

He laughed. “Oh, no. That would be way too Lifetime-movie. If Lifetime made movies about obnoxious vampires who go to medical school over and over under assumed identities so they feel like they’re doing something with the decades.”

“I would watch that.”

He sighed and was silent for a while. I waited. Eventually, staring into space, he said, “I feel like you three are a candle in the darkness, and I’m a damp tissue trying to get warm without putting you out.”

“As poetic as that is, I would like to point out that you are the most cheerful person here, and possibly the entire neighborhood, and we’d be pretty much sunk without your help. And, you know what? I’m sure you’ve done some bad things. You’re old enough to have made lots of mistakes. We want to know about you not because we want you to prove something…we want you to feel like we care.” I paused. “All right, maybe we’re a little curious too.”

“I…I…” he swallowed. “I do have a favorite Christmas carol. I actually heard it after I stopped celebrating Christmas. On the stereo of someone who was…they were good to me.”

“What is it?”

He smoothed out his hair and stood, crossing his arms behind his back, shutting his eyes, and facing the wall. I had not heard him sing before. His singing voice is deeper than Dad’s, which is kind of funny because Dad’s several inches taller than him.

I found the song on iTunes later. It’s called “Star of Wonder”. When he finished, I only said, “I can see why you like it.”

We hugged. He yawned and said he should get ready for coffin. I found a $10 bill slipped under my door in the morning.

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Author’s Note: I did not include the lyrics of this song in the body of the story, since I may like to publish it someday and obtaining the rights could be necessary and difficult. But since this is currently a free promotional piece, here are the words as Nat sang them, which I do not own:

Star of wonder in the heavens
Wonder what you want of me?
Should I follow you tonight?
Star of wonder,
Star of wonder,




My Neighbor's Enigmatic Easter
Spoilers: Bite Me

“I can’t believe I’m getting paid ten dollars to look after you this weekend. You’re older than me.”

My friend and neighbor Taylor Calvin was sprawled on her family’s old and creaky couch reading back issues of Consumer Reports. She wore pajamas covered in elephants and fairies (I never understood the connection) and a striped, multicolored poncho. I was in sweatpants, a roomy t-shirt that said “Self-Rescuing Princess”, and a flannel checkered robe I had stolen from Nat and was still waiting to see if he noticed. It wasn’t like I could make fun of her for her reading choice; I was going through her father’s stack of The Economist.

“Combination of factors, Di. This may be Grandma’s last Easter before she’s confined to a hospice, so it was really important for them to visit, but I had the SAT’s this morning and couldn’t reschedule.”

I unwrapped another Slim Jim. “Also your parents keep looking for ways to give us Anghels money and food and stuff without hurting our pride.”

“I think the bigger issue is that my parents don’t trust me alone for a weekend ever since those three days I spent at the mental hospital, even though I wasn’t a danger to anyone and it was primarily to get my anti-anxiety medications stabilized.”

“I wasn’t going to say it.” To tell the truth, I was glad to spend some time away from the house, which I felt guilty even thinking. Mom had become so thin and quiet, and the sores weren’t going away, and she could hardly keep any food down, and though Nat was giving her top-notch attention there was only so much he could do.

“That’s why I said it,” Taylor reassured me. Then she gazed into my eyes for a few seconds and reached out to stroke my hair. “It must be beyond awful seeing your mother deteriorate and not be able to send her to stay in the hospital.”

The tactile sensation was soothing but her words made me tense. “Nat said she’d be vulnerable to picking up infections there…”

“…And the full moon would cause a very awkward situation, to say the least.”

“How did you…?”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone. Just telling most people what I’ve really been dealing with this past year makes them want to send me back to the Psych Ward, much less claiming that my neighbors are vampires and werewolves.”

“What have you been dealing with? I heard rumors, but people always talk crap about me, so I didn’t listen.” Though surprised, I was pleased that I now had another confidante my age. Nat was endlessly supportive but busy; and we came from immensely different cultural contexts. Had I wished to be cruel I would have called Dad Mopey McMope-Mope to his face, but instead that was his codename in my diary. I wondered if he would ever believe that what happened to Mom was not his fault.

Taylor took a sip of water and tangled her fingers through her wavy brown hair. “If you’ll forgive me, Dianne, I don’t think I’m ready to tell you yet. Know, however, that you do not have the market cornered on weirdness.”

 Of course I respected her wish, but I did feel intense curiosity about one thing. “Is it true that you’re…well…that you have a phobia of…knives?”

 “I was going to tell you in the morning, but I think we’re going to be awake for a while. I hid a bunch of candy-filled plastic Easter Eggs around the house as a treat for you. Wolf-nose is cheating.”

Ah, she was like Nat then when it came to questions she didn’t want to answer. “Do you want any of the candy?”

“No thank you. I gained twenty pounds this past semester from stress, and I’m trying to get rid of them.”

“You don’t look like you gained twenty pounds.”

“I wear them well, Miss Built-Like-a-Greyhound.” She stuck her tongue out at me and went back to reading.

Taylor was pretty fiendish with the hiding places. I found one at the very back of the coat closet with the aid of wolf-eyes - game to exploit a loophole wherever I could - one being chilled in the vegetable crisper inside the fridge, another inside a mug put away in the dishes cupboard (which made me examine all the other crockery fruitlessly), one inside a tissue box, one in the washing machine, and finally an avalanche of about twenty when I opened a high cupboard in her room. I heard her laughter at my stricken cry.

When I returned, Taylor was lying back with her eyes shut. “What does Easter mean to you?”

“I rhike ya…” Off Taylor’s look, I swallowed my chocolate before starting over. “I like you a lot, but you know I can’t stand religious speeches.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at me. “I wouldn’t presume to share doctrines I am finding inadequate to explain my own life.”

I curled up in an easy chair with the Tupperware I had commissioned to hold the plastic eggs in my lap. “Wait, so you’re quitting the Mormons? I never expected that from you.”

“Oh no, that would make my parents really freak out, and ever since they’ve started loosening up on various social issues I have no strong objections to the dogma. But I’m like…have you read Flatland?”

“You mean the two-dimensional world where everyone’s a shape? My geometry teacher assigned it for extra credit.” Ooh, popcorn flavored jelly beans. How had she known they were my favorite?

“I’m psychic,” Taylor murmured.

“Hah!” But as she continued looking at me very perceptively, I started getting nervous. “So what was the analogy you were making?”

“Right. I’m like Arthur Square having met the Cube but unable to explain to the flatlanders what three dimensions is like in a way they can accept. That doesn’t mean I’m going to strike out into the third dimension and leave my kind behind.” She furtively reached into my Tupperware and took a sour gummy worm.

“I guess your faith can be for you what religious holidays are for me, like you were asking.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Go on.”

“I have mixed feelings about the ‘real’ point of Christmas and Easter – ignoring all the stuff borrowed from pagan traditions…

“Hail Mithras, God of the Noontide!”

I grinned. “Hail Eostre, the Goddess of…like…life or something.”

“I see you’ve been reading your Neil Gaiman. I’m glad Mom’s never figured out how much sex there is in his short stories sometimes.”

“Great stuff. Anyway, the whole structured-religion thing makes me uncomfortable because it smacks of a worldview that says my loved ones are ‘bad’ because of who they are. But I realize that’s only one layer of meaning. Easter is also a beautiful story of a universe that cares about us, of permanence and second chances that we need to function. And it’s candy and dinner with relatives and face-painting and, like, childhood. You know?”

Taylor’s expression was one of profound peace. “I know.”

“What is Easter for you, now?”

“What you said. What I hope. And my own little tale of rebirth that I promise I will tell you someday.”

 

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 Another Kind of Freedom

Spoilers: Bite Me, Waking Echoes

Taylor couldn’t sleep. She’d been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately, but these were some of the worst circumstances she had ever attempted slumber in. It was her first night in a psychiatric ward, her roommate - they were on Floor Two, for the temporary-overnight-nonviolent adolescents, who did not require isolation but were deprived of their shoes and any remotely dangerous objects – was snoring, and she could hear fireworks outside. When you can’t see fireworks they’re just noise.

Because of her good behavior and the relatively mild issue that brought her here, Taylor had permission to go to the common room even after lights-out. As long as she was quiet, anyway. She scooted along the linoleum in socked feet, clutching a stuffed animal she’d brought in with her. The hallways were perpetually lit but specific rooms were darkened.

She flicked on the light for the common room, where she could find solace in a small selection of battered paperbacks and some paper and crayons, only to hear a near-ultrasonic shriek and a flapping of cards being scattered.

This turned out to be a youngish-looking adult with red hair and brown suit, whose attempt at solitaire lay strewn about him as he quickly put on a pair of sunglasses. He stared at her with an open mouth for a few seconds, and then swallowed and said, “Ah, Miss Calvin, you don’t need to be worried about still having mild hallucinations; the Seroquel probably isn’t totally out of your system yet.”

Taylor snorted, put Fiver (the stuffed animal) on the table, and knelt to pick up the cards. “Doctor, it’s extremely unethical of you to attribute your obvious vampirism to symptoms of a patient’s mental illness.”

He sighed deeply and knelt with her to pick up the remnants of the deck. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Would you believe me if I said I was trying to protect you from a revelation I thought would further damage your calm?”

“A little bit, but it would have mostly been self-preservation, and as you can see it’s something I’m prepared to know."

She handed the neat stack to him and he shuffled a new hand. They took seats across from each other. “What made you prepared to know?”