"Mom!" Sally yelled upstairs, "the hoover's kaput!"
"Again?" her mother asked as she joined her daughter. "That's the third time this month! Did you feed it?"
Sally rolled her eyes, "OMG, I'm so dumb, I completely, like, forgot!"
"There's no need to be sarcastic!”
Mother and daughter glared at the recalcitrant machine. The plastic casing had bubbled in a few places and a wisp of black smoke curled up from the containment bottle.
"Well, it's overheated. It's probably blocked," her mother observed.
"Way to state the obvious, Sherlock!"
"Sally!"
"Sorry, Mom."
"Since you're being so helpful, young lady, you can empty it."
"Mom!"
"No arguing! Get that thing to the altar!"
The girl continued to grumble as she manhandled the hoover out of the house, "Why do I get all the dirty jobs?"
Behind the garage, amid the family's overflowing trashcans, was her destination. Picking off some rotten salad leaves, and a discarded pizza box, Sally uncovered the waste disposal altar. She wrestled the hoover on top of the sacrificial disk.
"Don't forget to get the prayer the right way round!" her mother called from an upstairs window. "Remember Mrs Kaminsky!"
A flash lit the yard with sudden intensity.
"Sally?"
---
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Fantasy in the City
Short StoryWhat could modern life be like if the archetypes of fantasy stories lived along side us? Where does a Paladin go shopping? Why does the vacuum cleaner need feeding? What will you find at Beacon 666? Why does a barista need a double headed axe? Wh...
