Weird Wendy

by Edd

Nora was unremarkable if you ignored the licorice horn sticking out of the middle of her forehead. Benjamin was entirely ordinary excepting the lightning that played about his tonsure. Their dog Falafel was totally commonplace apart from his tendency to memorize sports scores.

Their house could hardly have been less notable; few there were who said anything about the staircase to Heaven rising from the attic. Indeed, their neighborhood was quite the most mundane around, having rather a small moat. Nobody would have thought their city at all unusual, despite its larger than average population of ghosts.

That Tuesday was a usual sort of Tuesday, excepting that Benjamin quite suddenly became pregnant. The following day, a Friday, Nora gave birth to a daughter they named Wendy. The next day, the fourth Easter in a row, they examined her.

“I thought she might have wings or a tail,” said Nora. “But she doesn’t.”

“She doesn’t have a transparent skull, either,” said Benjamin. “And squirrels aren’t attracted to her.”

An angel passing by said, “She does not appear to cry tears of lemonade, nor does her soul smell of rosemary.”

Falafel sniffed at the new child and seemed vaguely concerned.

Wendy grew up to be the weirdest child in the world. She took all of twenty-one years to reach her twenty-first birthday, too.