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*

People With Problems is a collection of stories I wrote, one a week, like scooping strange fish from the sea. All different sizes, textures, colors…

Then I asked talented artist friends to each choose a story to illustrate, and it was as if I had released my fish back into the ocean and saw them return with mates.

I put a lot of care into exploring the subjects of the stories, which range from absurd, to darkly comic, to heartbreaking. Kirkus Reviews was complimentary with regard to their breadth and depth:

A collection of 29 character-driven works of flash fiction … shows that a lot can be done with a very limited word count.

– Kirkus Reviews

I hope you enjoy meeting the book’s various People With Problems as much as I have.

It’s available as a paperback or ebook—both of which include the full-color illustrations—from these retailers.

If you sign up for my newsletter in the field below, you’ll immediately receive a copy of the ebook for free.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support!

I’m having triplets!

Let me clarify…

My wife is pregnant with a single human baby, and she’s begun the ninth month. We wave at him on the screen of the ultrasound machine. He waves back at us through the skin of my wife’s abdomen, like a tiny Freddy Krueger.

Now the caveat: my other two “babies” are books. Admittedly, less dramatic.

But the clock is ticking on my free time!

Near the end of last year, I aimed to keep the rhythm of posting a new short story every week. Then to make room for submitting to literary journals, assembling a book of the 2021 stories, and revising my novel, I dialed it down to a story a month.

…and wrote only one.

Listen, the feedback I got from beta readers of the novel had pulled me so deep into that headspace that when I sat down to write new stories, all I could think about was the massive literary tangle on my desk. All my fictional powers—conscious and unconscious—focused on that project.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that in my personal projects I’m a terrible creative multitasker.

The best visual aid I have is from an old Looney Tunes cartoon. Imagine that Cal the Chameleon is me, and each color is a different story I’m writing…

But my hands have not been idle.

The illustrated book of last year’s stories is almost DONE!

Subscribers to my newsletter get the ebook for free, so if you’re not already subscribed, sign up below.

The twenty-nine stories are all very different, but I found a common denominator (and title):

PEOPLE WITH PROBLEMS

I commissioned fourteen illustrations from talented artists I know. The rules were that the image had to be a certain size, and somehow inspired by their chosen story. That’s it.

The resulting art is as wildly diverse as the stories themselves.

Check some out for yourself.

More info soon. Thanks for your support.

This led to the second way in which she was now stuck: Her brilliant idea to use washers, yarn, and thumbtacks to build a 3D model of book fifteen’s outline in her studio apartment. It was a wall-to-wall, criss-crossed web of events, relationships, themes, and symbols, and it had her literally cornered.

The nodes hung in the air like the stars of her fictional galaxy, pulling at each other with visible threads of gravity. She worried if she cut something, the whole thing would come apart.

She had to keep the side romance between the pit mechanic best friend (the large washer hung over the TV) and the butcher of exotic meats (the medium-sized washer under the desk), because that was the only way to trigger the Le Mans banquet horse meat scandal at the climax (hung like wind chimes by the bathroom door), bringing Marguerite’s journey full circle.

But the other major thread blocking her way was the series of flashbacks when Marguerite’s brother Clifford teaches her to cheat at cards, which details her adolescence at the Jespers estate, and leads to the fateful poker game when she loses her prize stallion to an opposing card shark, gets chased by bookie thugs, and escapes in a stolen ’66 Mustang convertible—without which part three of the book can’t happen.

She decided to move the knife fight in part four, when the bookies catch up to Marguerite, from the café in Monaco to the romantic beach scene with the Algerian jockey, so as to open up a spot by the coffee table for her to slide under the scene when Marguerite first meets the pit mechanic, and get to the couch to rest for a moment.

This put the jockey in peril and pulled the slack out of their romance, which had always felt a little forced.

Satisfied, she sipped from the mug of coffee gone cold and saw from a new angle. There was a large open tunnel between Marguerite’s decision to throw the final race in Le Mans and a cluster of thumbtacks in the kitchen cupboard representing Marguerite’s lifelong desire for her parents’ approval.

A thread hung over her head.

She reached up to take it. But then stopped and sighed, watched the thread sway in her breath. If she ever wanted to escape this mess, she’d have to leave one or two loose ends.

The Reverend would recognize his chapel by the bell still rising out of the dunes. The rest of the town had disappeared when, in his words, the Lord shook the earth like a rug and turned the ground to quicksand.

He’d fled with them, sullen, carrying sacks of meager possessions in their carts and over their shoulders. But he carried only his Bible and stared solemnly at the horizon, as was his purpose, his final mission as Pastor of the doomed mining town sinking into the desert behind them, to act as a mirror for their sorrows that they might feel less alone in the Lord’s mystery.

He spoke strong words by their fires, shared their food, drank their water, until they reached the next town. Constant sandstorms pushed many onward. The Reverend stayed and preached to the few left of the inspiration to be found in Jesus Christ. People had no alms to give but were eager to listen, because they assumed he spoke of their Lord and Savior, who could be prayed to and asked to calm the storms and still the earth’s trembling.

But the Reverend’s devotion was for a different Jesus Christ—a statuette made of solid gold and meticulously hand-painted, which stood behind the pulpit in his chapel, now under several feet of sand.

*

The steeple’s white paint had chafed but its iron cross still stood. If his parishioners could’ve beheld it they would’ve given over their first-born sons as acolytes.

He rolled his shirtsleeves and took a sack from the horse cart. Clawed up the shifting sand to the steeple. Took the rope from the sack, tied it to a beam and dropped it in.

“Oh, praise the Lord!” a voice said in the dark below.

He looked down and saw a filthy face appear in the patch of light.

“Reverend Holcomb, is thatchoo? Reverend, it’s me, Kasper Baney!”

The Reverend swallowed a groan. Nineteen-year-old Kasper Baney. Slept in the front row of every sermon Kasper Baney. Picked his nose before dipping into the holy water Kasper Baney.

Kasper shouted, “Oh, you’re truly a real, true savior!”

“My child, have you been down there long?”

“Since the storms. I was milkin’ the cows when the ground started shakin’ and I got kicked. Woke up in the middle of a sandstorm with the barn collapsin’ around me.”

“My, that’s—”

“I figgered it might be the reckoning! Safest place for the reckonin’s the church.”

“Well, you—”

“I been down here for days, huntin’ rats to eat with this knittin’ needle I found!” He held up a bloody wooden rod.

The Reverend shouted, “Kasper, let’s get you outta there, how about? Climb on up the rope, son!”

“Okey!” Kasper tugged the rope and began to climb.

The Reverend leaned against the steeple and waited, watched his horse stand patient in a world of sand. He’d take the Jesus to the city, where no one knew who he was. Where someone with money could do anything.

Kasper’s head appeared. He wrapped his hands over the lip of the chute, grunting.

“My child, let me help you.” The Reverend offered a hand and pulled.

Kasper’s head knocked the bell, he slipped from the Reverend’s grasp back into the steeple and landed with a bang.

“Oooooh, sweet sweet Lord, my leg’s broke!”

The Reverend looked down and saw Kasper crumpled on the floorboards like a spider half-crushed. The patch of light cast perfectly on his red puckered face.

The Reverend sighed, pulled his pistol from his holster and pointed it down the hole.

Kasper whimpered and stared at the gun.

The Reverend pulled the hammer back.

“Ho, Reverend!” said a voice somewhere behind him.

He turned to see Mr. Baney riding up. Mr. Baney’s shape was unmistakeable, almost a perfect circle with arms. While his son snored through sermons, Mr. Baney wheezed. The Reverend had often wondered how someone with so little money could be so fat.

Kasper shouted from below, “Help! Help, please!”

“Ho, Mr. Baney!” the Reverend said, discreetly holstering his pistol. “Your timing couldn’t be better. I’m afraid your son’s in trouble.”

Mr. Baney dismounted his horse and tried to mount the dune. It was like watching a grapefruit try to climb stairs.

“He’s down there—still alive by the Lord’s good grace.” The Reverend crossed himself. “But his leg is broken. I’ll need your help pulling him to safety.”

Mr. Baney found a shallow slope and wobbled up it, kicking sand.

The chapel roof creaked.

Mr. Baney tried to look into the steeple. “Kasper?”

“Pop, my leg! My leg’s broke, and Reverend Holcomb was gonna shoot me!”

The Reverend tisked. “He mentioned a cow kicked him in the head during the quake. He’s delusional.”

“Kasper,” Mr. Baney shouted, “we’re gonna get you outta there! Hold tight!”

The Reverend said, “I’ll tie the rope around him if you can pull him up.”

“I’ll try,” Mr. Baney wheezed.

The Reverend lowered himself into the steeple, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw the Jesus statuette on the dais. “Give me strength,” he said.

Kasper stared. “You were gonna shoot me…”

The Reverend leaned in and whispered, “Down here, I’d be sure not to miss.”

He tied the rope around Kasper and shouted for Mr. Baney to pull.

Kasper screamed, Mr. Baney roared, and the boy rose toward the light.

Then Mr. Baney threw the rope back down. The Reverend tied it around the statuette and began to climb.

He saw Mr. Baney’s face appear above. The chapel groaned, and the roof crumpled. Sand shifted.

“Reverend!” father and son shouted. They both pulled the rope, felt slow progress through the sand and wreckage, and eventually saw Jesus rise from the mouth of the steeple.

The Reverend didn’t answer their calls.

Kasper sobbed and hugged the statuette on his lap in the cart. Mr. Baney led the way on his horse.

They left the endless dunes, where now only an iron cross jutted from the sand.

What would it feel like to crush them in my fist? Not in the living room, over the light yellow carpet. I could do it outside.

I could put them in a bowl with a spoon, and just before Rosalyn gets home I’ll add milk.

Milk would ruin them; it’s not worth the joke.

Plus, then she’ll know that’s what I’ve been doing instead of my résumé.

I take a mug from the cupboard and pour them in. They sound like balled-up saltwater taffy wrappers. There still aren’t enough to reach the brim. I take the mug to the basement, and after an hour of moving grime-grayed shelving, flowerpots, and broken patio furniture, I have enough to look straight across the lip of the mug and see legs like eyelashes, wings like nail clippings, red eyes like hardened drops of blood peeking over the edge.

I wish this were a real job. I’d get a van with a logo. I’d be the go-to.

It would be irresponsible not to count and photograph these. For posterity.

Two hundred and fifty-eight flies.

In slippers on the back patio, I carefully ball my hands around them.

No, at first I thought he meant he could only draw with his feet, because he didn’t have arms. But no, he said again, “I can’t draw anything else, only feet.”

I told him drawing hands was basically the same thing, just make the “toes” longer, but he literally couldn’t get it right. He held the pen with his toes and drew on a napkin I put on the barstool between us, and the person he drew was like a lump with the head and arms and legs all on top, like a fucking foot.

I was like, “You did that on purpose.”

And he goes, “No, I swear, this is all I can draw.”

Of course I did. I got another napkin and said, “Draw a bird.”

So he drew the round body part, but the legs were little stick things up on top, next to the head. So it was like a foot with three weird-ass toes. I just put my head down on the bar, and when I looked again it had wings—yeah, shaped like little feet!

And the bartender went, “See?” like that proved something.

And the guy was like, “Come home with me. I give the best foot massages.”

Of course I laughed. It was funny, he meant it that way. No, I didn’t want to be rude. He was kinda weird, but he had no arms, and it was clear this was like, his thing, so I went, “Okay, draw a tree.”

So he flipped the napkin over with his other foot and did two lines to the top—okay, so it’s like the tree’s growing past offscreen or whatever, fine. Then he puts the roots at the bottom, little stubby things in the ground. So it’s kind of like a leg, but with no ankle or knee. Just a foot!

No, I know, but I’m making it sound like a thing because it became a thing.

I go, “Draw a school bus.”

He draws a giant foot. With wheels.

“Draw scissors.”

Weirdest fucking scissors I’ve ever seen.

Yeah, I actually felt bad for mentioning the scissors, but he didn’t seem fazed. I wanted to ask him if he used special scissors, but I figured that was rude. He probably would’ve lied anyway, since he was already on a fuckin’ roll.

Of course he was lying! Nobody can “only draw feet,” that’s ridiculous. I kept going ’cause I thought I’d come up with one to stump him. But saying all these objects and only seeing feet made me feel claustrophobic. You know, like the old Tootsie Roll commercial where everything turns into Tootsie Rolls?

Yes, I know “tootsie” also means foot, thanks. As if this isn’t traumatic enough. You’ve seen that commercial? YouTube it, it’s exactly the issue I was having. I wasn’t hallucinating, but I looked around the bar and saw how everything’s like a step or two away from being a foot. All the bottles, the bartender’s face, the football players on the TV—they looked like little feet running around. Yes, football players, you see what I mean? Everything felt different.

No, I know my drink wasn’t drugged; the bartender sort of knows me, and my drink never left my hand. But even my hand looked like a weird monkey foot with toe rings!

I actually started having trouble breathing and I had to get outta there.

No, I tried to finish my drink, and the ice cubes were like gross cold dead toes touching my lips, I almost threw the glass, I swear. And I closed my tab while the guy got another napkin and started drawing something else I refused to look at. He was like, “No, stay, I wanna show you this,” and he tried to like grab my arm with his other foot, and I was like, “If you touch me, I will kick your ass so hard.”

I know I shouldn’t have said it, but I did.

And I went outside and got in my car. It was like sitting inside a big foot—it’s a real problem I have now, I’m fucking serious. And the people walking around on the sidewalk had creepy toenail faces, and I kept thinking, “This little piggy, this little piggy…”

Cody and Eric held one arm while I zipped up and buttoned—it was hard because of the cup, but I’m glad I wore it, because otherwise the jeans would’ve cut me right in half. I had a pad on my butt for chafing too. And I just sat there. That’s all I had to do, all night. Two hundred bucks.

*

They set up camp below me. Cody kept shouting “Time!” and I’d be like, “Nine-oh-nine and all’s well!”

The campfire smoke kept blowing in my face.

I could see the tops of the trees, like they were just staring at me.

*

I had to pee. But I had the cup on, so I couldn’t really do anything about it besides just let go. They heard the trickling and saw the jeans were wet, so they took a bunch of pictures. Eric told me the pee would dissolve the epoxy, and I believed him.

They had a bottle of Jack, and Cody came up and poured some in my mouth, but then it mostly got in my eyes, totally on purpose. I told him I’d break his nose when they pulled me back up.

He was like, “You could just stay up here.”

I said, “Fucker,” and laughed so he’d think I was less mad.

*

“Time!”

“Two forty-seven and all’s well!”

“It’s pretty late, I think we’ll sleep in tomorrow!”

*

My calf cramped up, and I couldn’t fix it because my legs were just straight. I yelled, and they came up to the cliff and said I was faking to get out of being there all night.

We argued for a while, but they wouldn’t pull me up, and they went back down and I still had this like rock in my calf. I stared at the moon and tried to think about how I’m up in the sky like the moon, and the moon doesn’t have legs that cramp up.

*

The trees watched me the whole time. They were all grouped up to stare at the human stuck to the rock. I kept feeling like one was gonna grab me.

*

Every time I started to drift off I felt like I was falling. And I’d wake up and feel the ground coming fast and the trees spinning, and I’d try to grab the rock behind me, and I felt like I still had to wake up to stop falling.

*

Sunrise was the warmest feeling. Everything was pink and red, and then too bright for me to stare directly at it, so I blocked the sun and looked at everything else.

The trees looked like they’d all turned around to watch the sunrise too.

Zombie apocalypse time baby! So what’s the issue? Well you are a zombie and even sometimes you are kind of aware of that fact.

If I ignore the blood that had sprayed up the face when his head was cut from his body, and just look at his eyes, I’d guess this person is at the end of a long day.

But your long days are over, friend. Just a head now, you might not even reawaken as a zombie. Deep, eternal sleep for you.

I was not so lucky.

A void churns in me, compelling me to crack this grotesque nut on the tile and eat its contents. I hear a gurgling groan and think it’s coming from another zombie, but they’ve all moved further into the mall. I’m alone, sitting on the edge of the fountain surrounded by corpses in various degrees of wholeness. My stomach clenches. My grip on the head tightens.

Is there a word for simultaneous revulsion and hunger? I’m careful not to touch the slippery neck wound, and the ears and hair are sticky on my hands. Becoming a zombie doesn’t, as is commonly assumed, deaden sensory awareness.

But my attackers made such a mess of my nose and its inner workings that I can no longer smell nor taste anything. Does this make my innate desire to eat brains more palatable? Of course not. Who wants to eat something with the texture of a human brain?

Well, the answer is apparently: many of my cohorts. Some of them relish it. They scoop the stuff into their mouths with their broken hands, or pick at bits with exposed finger bones like chopsticks.

I assume their sense of taste is intact. Maybe it’s delicious.

Our “zombie groupthink,” as I term it, lets me hear the thoughts of others nearby, and I’ve noticed that when it comes to children’s brains there seems to be a universal initial disgust at the idea, followed by a line of reasoning that decides the child in question was probably the type to break things in stores or scream in airplanes, and therefore deserving of its fate.

Following this logic, police, politicians, and military personnel—corruptible authority figures of any kind, really—would make for Dionysian feasts.

None of my own interpersonal conflicts would drive me to do such a thing, not even the provost who denied my tenure and flippantly urged me to “try again next year.” Neither of us knew that in the meantime I would be granted a more macabre sort of tenure.

But I won’t seek her out to eat her brain.

Was this humankind’s destiny from the beginning? What was the point of striving, recording our triumphs, and filling our minds with knowledge only to have them gobbled up?

The edge of my vision glitters.

If the food court is empty, I could try to scavenge a slice of pizza or some chow mein—though chow mein might feel too “brainy”—or maybe some cookies or a pretzel.

I don’t know to which body this head belonged, so I find one without and carefully set the head down next to it. As if offended by my decision, the body jerks to life, struggles to its feet, and runs away.

I leave the head there bodiless.

Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him not at all.

*

I search the map for the food court.

I’d never visited this mall until today. I was first attacked by mechanics in the auto shop—they used a tool to remove my nose before I got away—and I ran across the street to the vast expanse of the mall parking lot, hoping to lose them in the rows of parked cars. But they were very fast. That is one thing movies eventually got right: as long as the necessary muscles are intact, zombies are strong and fast. The pain of their wounds only spurs them on.

Fingers clutched at my shirt all the way to the mall entrance, where the automatic door didn’t open in time and the thing behind me grabbed my wounded face and took a bite from my shoulder. I wrestled it off and entered the doors, dodged through awestruck shoppers and found refuge through an exit door into a dead-end concrete hallway.

Later, I emerged frightened, confused, and still in great pain. The mall was a chaos of shrieks, growls, and anatomy. I stepped carefully and hid when I could, but any zombies who saw me were uninterested, and then I realized why.

*

The food court is a mess, and deathly quiet.

I sit at a table of abandoned food, the first I see that’s still mostly clean. Before I get the burger into my mouth, my stomach pushes back.

But this is meat! Does it not qualify?

My children, zombies or not, would have no problem with this burger and fries. Oh, the children… And Cassandra. So far away, all visiting her mother for the weekend. I hope they are safe.

Perhaps after I’ve eaten I can try to call them, to warn them. I can explain my state and convince Cassandra that she needn’t worry, that I’m not a threat to them. Things don’t have to change. And we’ve no need for money now; the problem of my tenure is solved.

With fresh optimism I bite into the burger, and immediately push forth a spray of bright green bile.

I toss the burger to the floor. The fries are ruined as well.

A body in the seat next to me has its cranium cracked open, but somehow the brain is untouched. It sits in the skull like a Jell-O mold. I take a spoon from a cup of soupy ice cream on the next table, and I scoop. Pretend it’s ice cream. Or Jell-O. Or Cassandra’s favorite, panna cotta with raspberry coulis.

With my eyes closed, I can almost taste it. My stomach groans with satisfaction.

Nothing has to change. If my family accepts, I can ensure their safety. A little nibble here, a little nibble there, and we can stay together.

Panna cotta for everyone.

When the Woods told the Beast Prince his new bride had arrived, he had expected to meet some foreign princess curious about his monstrous features, or maybe a witch seeking access to the Woods’ magic. He didn’t expect a very determined-looking miller’s daughter.

She poked and jiggled the straw between her teeth and examined a bit of mutton skewered on the tip, then flicked the straw away. “Look, it’s a win-win. You marry me, and we take this show on the road.”

“This show,” said the Beast Prince, scratching his cheek with a claw. “You mean me.”

“Yes, I mean you! But you’re not the only one, I got a whole stable of performers chompin’ at the bit to get out there and wow the kingdom at large.”

He wrinkled his snout. “Stable? It’s some kind of animal show?”

She waved her hand as if at a fly. “No, stable is biz talk, ignore it, it’s how I talk and who I am, sue me, can’t help it, I grew up in the biz, you know.”

“Didn’t you say you were the miller’s daughter?”

“Well, Beastie, now I think it’s my turn to be offended! Sure, dad crushes grass into dust for a living. And so did his dad before him, and his dad before him.” She pulled a pipe and pouch from the pocket of her worn cloak. “And you know somethin’? I’ll betcha a hundred gold pieces my brother’s gonna wind up cranking that stone just like the rest of ’em.” She sprinkled shredded tobacco from the pouch into the pipe. “And that’s fine, people gotta make a livin’! Times are tough. Just the other day I heard a story ’bout a foundryman, on his way to deliver a stack of ingots? Listen to this…” She plucked a candle from a sconce on the wall and used it to light her pipe. “This guy, his cart gets stuck in the mud, he jumps down to help the horses pull it out, slips in the mud, and crack!” She slapped her hands together. “Horse steps on his hand—like a bunch o’ grapes. His right hand, y’see, the good one, not the ‘satanic’ one. Well, now his good hand’s a mess, so he’s gotta learn to do everything with the devil’s hand, see, which means now nobody trusts him, and he can’t hold more than a damn walking stick.”

The Beast Prince stared. His back had started to ache. He didn’t normally spend so much time in the sitting rooms of this castle, and the chairs didn’t conform to his body’s quadrupedal shape; he only sat like that to put this guest at ease.

It was his first sit-in guest since his exile. Visitors usually shouted curses from their wagons, or stood at the bottom of the front steps just long enough to get a good look before running back into the woods.

But this young woman was in the door before he had pulled it completely open, swinging her hands and saying, “Beastie, you don’t know me, but you’ll be happy I came! Have I got a proposition for you!”

She’d stepped into the middle of the grand foyer, lit by a yellow spotlight of setting sun that shone through the grime of broken windows, and she turned to him and lowered the hood of her cloak. The Beast Prince raised his paws to block the blow of the electric bolt or whipping wind that might blast from her sleeves.

But none came.

There was nothing evil in the young woman’s face. She smiled through crooked teeth, but there was something in that smile, and something in her pale green eyes, that was disarming. She had the look of a merchant counting money at the end of a good day.

Now those green eyes held his in the flickering light of the cobwebbed sitting room. The candles crackled as the layers of dust burned away from their tips.

“Just tragic,” she said. “Needless to say, the guy’s foundry business, well, foundered. His production slowed, he’s got no sons to take over, and being a lefty now his wife’s too scared of him to try for a son! So, what does his story have in common with yours?”

The Beast Prince thought. “People are scared of me?”

“Sure, absolutely, and that’s a real shame. My heart goes out to you. Touched by the devil and all that.”

“It was a witch.”

“Beastie, I gotta tell ya, to all the pointy-headed boil lancers in that village, and even the villages beyond—hell, this whole damn kingdom—a witch and the devil are the same thing. And you wanna know the real tragedy of it?”

He rubbed his back with a paw. “Would you mind if I sat on the floor?”

“Make yourself comfortable, this is your place! And I promise I’ll be outta your hair in a minute. But first, tell me, do you wanna know the real tragedy?”

“What?” The Beast Prince settled onto his stomach on the stone floor, and felt his spine realign itself. “I mean, yes, I do. What is it?”

“The real tragedy is that they lump you in with those monsters, too. Witch, devil, and Beastie, all the same to those foot lickers. But I know you’re not evil. Hell, I’m not even convinced witches are all that evil; I agree with some of their stances on women’s rights—but don’t tell the villagers I said that.” She winked and puffed her pipe again, but it had gone out, so she took the candle to light it again.

The Beast Prince watched a drop of wax fall and solidify on the cold floor. “But what do the foundryman and I have in common?”

“Ah, see? You don’t miss a trick. That attention to detail will take you far! Puts you one-up on the rest of those leather sniffers.” She held her hands as if presenting a painting. “What you have in common with the left-handed foundryman is: a lack of insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“Think about it. No sons, basically no wife, and no business. What’s he got to fall back on? Alone in the world, and nowhere to reach for support. Fell flat on his face.”

“So you propose we marry so I have… support?”

“Don’t think of it as support so much as representation. We tour the land with a group of other hand-picked young talent, and show you off to all the apple-heads who’ll pay—and let me tell you, they’ll all pay—and they’ll learn you’re not such a scary guy. They’ll like you. You might even get another shot at princedom!”

“But… why do we have to be married?”

“Legitimacy! If they see the big, dangerous Beastie’s got a wife, they’ll think, well, he must be doin’ something right! We have a big ceremony at whatever church’ll have us—don’t worry, there isn’t a church in the world that’ll turn down a bribe. We make a big deal of the whole thing, get all the town criers screamin’ scandal about it to everyone.”

“We can’t do that, they’ll trap us in the church and set it ablaze!”

“Ah, no, we’d get ’em on a legal technicality—you are still royalty, after all, are you not?”

“I don’t think so. My parents were the ones who put me in exile here.”

She tisked and picked a bit of tobacco from her lip. “Backstabbers to save their own royal faces. I know the type—the biz is full of ’em. But you were just caught in the crossfire! The witch who turned you only did it to get at the King. And it worked! The King—your own dad—flipped his crown and sent you away to clean the supposed stain,” she made bunny ears with her fingers, “on his reputation. Disgusting.”

His head rose, showing teeth. “You can’t speak that way about my father!”

“Sure I can. And you should too, Beastie. For the first time since your little accident, someone has come to help you.” She made a fist and grinned. “Are you gonna answer the call?”

The Beast Prince lowered his heavy head onto the stone and billowed dust with a sigh from his snout.

She held the pipe in her teeth and watched his eyes.

Finally he shrugged. “Okay, what do I need to do?”

“Fantastic! You won’t regret this! First, I’ll need a down payment on my services to get things rolling with the church.”

“If we’re getting married, isn’t it you who pays me the dowry?”

“Wow, I propose marriage and a successful life in showbiz to a damn werewolf, and now he wants to get conventional on me?”

“Okay, okay,” he pushed himself to his feet and stretched his back. “Wait here, I’ll fetch it.”

“Take your time.” She listened to his claws scrape down the corridor.

A “tsst” came from across the foyer. She saw the man’s face in a broken windowpane. She scowled and shooed him away.

He gave a thumbs-up with a mangled right hand and ducked back out of view.