Quarter for Your Thoughts

by David

“Hey, there’s a message in this bottle.”

Kai looked up. Jenine held up her beer. Sure enough, a piece of paper floated near the bottom. There was some writing on it.

“Looks like a fortune. Drink up so we can read it.”

“Don’t be silly. It would stick to the inside of the bottle and we’d never get it out.” She drained her water glass, poured the beer into it, fished out the note, and laid it carefully on the table. She leaned forward to read the tiny letters that almost completely covered the paper.

“Where is that girl with our food?” Waiting for Jenine to puzzle out the note reminded Kai how hungry he was. “Carla! Can we have more chips and salsa? The hot kind. And more beer.”

Jenine frowned. “It’s hard to read. The font is weird. Anyway, it starts ‘Don’t tell anyone the contents of this note.'” Her voice trailed off.

“And then?! Is it like a chain letter? If you don’t do what it says your dog will be repossessed?” While Kai was talking, Jenine was reading. Then, she carefully folded the paper in half and tucked it in her pocket.

Now it was Kai’s turn to frown. He leaned forward and whispered loudly. “Your nipples are hard. Only two things do that and I don’t think you just read some beer-note sex. What’s going on?”

Jenine whispered back, so quietly he could barely hear her. “It’s a prediction. We should get out of here. Now.” She stood up.

“No! What? Why do you believe that stupid note? I’m staying right here till I get my chimichanga.”

“Wherever that note came from, they knew things. About me. I think it’s real.” She backed away from the table, motioning to Kai to get up.

He leaned back and folded his arms. “I want my lunch.”

The window exploded inward and a red Ford F150 plowed into the table and Kai. Jenine screamed and jumped.

She ran to the truck, but when she got there she could see that Kai’s entire chest was crushed. She stood up and turned around just as a police officer ran in. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His eyes were the color of the summer sky.

“Hello Officer Smith,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Have we met?”

“Not really.”

“You’re bleeding. Sit down, I’ll be right back.”

“I know,” she whispered.

The end

The Most Precious House

by AlexM

A long time ago, when I was a girl, I found a house made entirely of pearls. From afar it looked like a cloud. Closer, it looked like sugary sweets piled one atop the other.

I was a child. I was foolish.

I ran up the hill to it, I pulled one of the pearls from its side and had it in my mouth before I realised the house was collapsing and there was no sugar in my mouth at all.

Further along the hill was a village, and when the house fell down all the villagers ran out — pulling their hair, wailing, leaking tears from their eyes like a gutted pig loses blood. I spat out the pearl and waited to be told how terrible I was, how stupid.

They were tiresomely predictable.

All except one, a girl with bright yellow paint stains around the egdes of her fingernails, who climbed up to the window of the room I’d been given while the villagers decided what to do with me. “Pssst,” she said, like water falling on the hot plate of a stove. “Pssst.”

I pried open the window and we looked at each other in momentary silence, girl to girl.

“I’m building a house of yellow leaves,” she said. “I need someone to help me paint them.”

I climbed out of the window and we walked down the other side of the hill, through a vineyard and a patch of wild, tangled undergrowth and small trees, until we reached a clearing. Dug deep into the ground were the house’s foundations, yellow against the dirt. The girl told me that the finished house would only be ankle-high — only the roof poking above the ground, like a pile of regular leaves.

“There’ll be a house down here and it’ll be better than dumb pearls and they won’t see it, not at all.” She grinned possessively across her paint pots. Then, bending over to open a pot, she added in a practical tone, “Besides, the wind would blow it all away if it was above ground.”