Thanks to Brenton Harper-Murray of Poor Brenton’s Almanac for this two-parter!

Cyril awoke to the clacking of gunfire and the thrum of a monstrous engine. Cyril was the first to the door. He stood on his toes and peeked through the little barred window and gasped. Bad men were running to and fro, scampering like ants, firing their rifles into the air. Suddenly, a rope ladder dropped into sight and a man with a flight cap and aviator goggles slid down, bristling with pistols like a gunpowder hedgehog. He let off shot after shot, the bad men falling about him like so many tasteless rugs, dropping a revolver when it was empty and pulling a fresh one from his bandoleer with a flash of blued steel and a mad grin.

“Ha! Ha! You shan’t mistreat these children any longer you scoundrels!” He shouted and turned, noticing Cyril in the window.

“Stand clear of the door lad!” He shouted and pointed one of the pepper box pistols in Cyril’s direction.

He dove away and the latch disappeared, the door swung open of its own accord.

“We’re free!” Cyril cheered, and turned to the other boys, expecting to see them jubilant, but they were all cowering in their bunks, gibberingly scared. The boy closest to him grabbed his shoulder.

“Don’t go, it’s dangerous!”

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Thanks to Brenton Harper-Murray of Poor Brenton’s Almanac for this two-parter!

For all of little Cyril’s eight long years, there had been one threat that had hung over his head like an overripe fruit ready to drop at the slightest provocation. He had never dreamed his father would go through with it.

“Cyril Credence Stokabbye! Clean your room or I’ll sell you to a banana plantation!” His father would bellow from his study in the east wing when the nearly geologic layers of filth in Cyril’s room fermented enough for the stench to wander far enough to interrupt his study of far eastern trade routes.

This oath rang as empty as a lending library’s coffers, to be sure. Cyril knew little of banana plantations, aside from the fact that his father held a substantial share in a shipping line that serviced one in the West Indies, and that they would scarcely be interested in an anemic little fellow that could hardly cut his kipper casserole without assistance from a servant. So, more and more, as years passed, he became more surly and and less quick to comply with his father’s ridiculous demands, until one day, he simply ignored them.

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I moved from Chicago to Rhode Island, asked Poor Brenton to write me a Moral for my trip, then butterfingered the ball straight to the weekend after I moved, leaving everyone adrift in a sea of immorality.

Especially Brent, because he supplied me with a great moral.

Don’t betray people who are doing you a favor, kids, or else one day they might summon a skeleton to sit outside of your bedroom window with a double-neck bass and lay down a super sweet bass line. All night. And then wail out a soulful solo sometime around 3am when you’re already staring at the shadows, praying for the Grim Reaper to come save you from the acoustic torment, but he’s down on the lawn with his skeleton buddy playing the xylophone accompaniment.

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“You’re engaged to a witch,” Hannah said.

“Hey, now, no need for name calling,” said her brother, Hiro. “You’ve never liked her but try to be civil. She makes me happy.”

“I’m not speaking in metaphors. She makes toads sad when she takes their croak for her spells! All those mice were using their bladders before she whisked them away into a foul concoction.”

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