House of Conchita

Salade

Quietly creeping out of the kitchen's back door, I silently pray that no one sees me as I step outside into the gardens of the mansion. It's a good thing I won't have to serve the lady's next dish; it means I can be gone for a while without anyone noticing. For the salad course, she normally just grazes on withered shrubs. I'll just have to be extra careful that if she comes outside earlier than usual for her leafy nibbles, I'm ready to duck and hide.

My heart pounding, I realise I'm almost at the place the whimpering came from. What could it have been? A person? A dying animal? The ghost of poison past? But that's just a legend...

At the most inconvenient moment, I turn a corner and bump into someone. I topple to the ground dramatically, my arms flailing; my life flashes before my eyes. I sure have eaten a lot of pop tarts.

"Hey, watch where you're going." I hear an annoyed, manly voice say as I rise.

Uh oh. I've only gone and crossed paths with the mansion's resident bad boy.

"Oh, sorry, my mistake." I stand up and extend my arm out to help the guy. He ignores my hand and picks himself up without my assistance. Rude, actually.

He grunts a grunty grunt. "Do you know who I am?" he grunts.

"Yes."

"I'm Brett Bretterson, the mansion's resident bad boy. I'm the cocky and devilishly handsome son of a multibillionaire, so you'd better not disgruntle me again."

He does a swagger walk and shoulder barges me as he walks by. What an interesting experience.

In sort of a trance, I suddenly trip over something warm as I walk along. Oh, that's right! The thing I was looking for! I was too busy thinking about the mansion's resident bad boy to pay attention to where I was going, so I didn't notice the dying girl on the floor until it was too late.

I sit up, rubbing my ankle, which seems to have developed a nasty paper cut. From the ground. I turn around and see the wounded girl lying on the floor, crying.

"What's wrong?" I ask her sympathetically. She looks me in the eye.

"I am dying on the floor," she says. "My body is broken and I don't feel complete."

"No wonder you don't feel complete," I tell her. "Your fingers are gone."

"I had noticed, actually," she says. She extends a nub out to greet me. "My name is Anatola."

Of course, she's the one Penny was looking for. I remember her now. I shake what's left of her hand and introduce myself. "I'm Roy. Where did your fingers go?"

"They got nibbled," she says. "Presumably by some beast. It's too dark out here for me to see anything, but when I was attacked, I saw a mysterious creature swooping around like a bat with a neurological disorder."

"Sorry I wasn't here to help you sooner," I tell Ana. "I had a run-in with Brett Bretterson."

"No way!" she exclaims with a gasp. "You did not have an encounter with the mansion's resident bad boy!"

"Yes way!" I say. "He kind of sucks."

She flips her hair. "Tell me everything!"

Over the next fifteen minutes, I recount all the fine details of my fifty second encounter with Brett Bretterson. However, I am interrupted by a strange sound.

Ana and I look up to the open window above us. We hear terrible screaming... and then silence.

"You have to go and find out who that was!" Ana tells me. "Don't worry about me. I don't mind dying since my job is literally the worst anyway. One time Lady Conchita asked me to recreate the human centipede with babies."

"Alright, well, bye." I bid Ana farewell and hope she passes into hell peacefully. I run back inside the mansion, wondering what new disasters will be in store.