“I’m getting tired of fighting monsters,” Zella held back the beast with a spear-shaped stick that looked like a toothpick up against his teeth. She placed it diagonally across the beast’s mouth and used all her strength just to hold him back. His breath wafted over her like a sticky cloud of rotten pizza stench. Zella pushed harder, she hated rotten pizza, whatever that was.

  Zella’s hair fell straight like lasers down her back or straight up in the air when she was fighting monsters. Her skin was tanned with the mixture of all seven continents that she’d grown up on.

  "You can’t be tired of fighting monsters. This is the first one we’ve ever fought,” her slightly older brother Aaron was attempting to climb up the creature's back, for whatever reason, Zella didn’t want to know. He couldn’t wrap his twiggy arms around the tree trunk of a neck. Maybe he wanted to stab it in the eye.

  His hair never lay down on his head and only that made him look taller than Zella. He was awkward, lanky, and dressed like a bum. It drove Zella crazy that most every girl found him wildly attractive.

  Whatever he was planning right now would just make this monster angrier. Zella didn’t know how angry this otherworldly creature could get but figured it wouldn’t be good.

  It had four stumpy legs that ended in clawed feet. Now that it was flat on the ground, its belly hung down like a soggy balloon. The tail that poked out the other end started as wide as a barrel and ended in a tip like a pencil, about a mile away. The beast was about the size of an abnormally big house.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not already tired of fighting monsters. I never even liked cartoon monsters. Especially not the ones under my bed,” Zella answered still holding but losing a little more each minute.

  “There never were any monsters under your bed. That’s just a story I made up,” Aaron confessed his childhood sins.

  “Well, since we are confessing things, I might as well tell you. Do you remember that friend of mine, that I kept telling you she thought you were so cute? Well, I made that up,”

  Zella had reached her breaking point and couldn’t hold the creature back anymore. She dropped and rolled to the side as the monster slammed his head down into a muddy sinkhole just next to where she had stood. The marsh here was full of those mud pits. Zella wondered why she hadn’t fallen into it.

  “What!?” Aaron shouted as he went flying off of the creature after the impact. He landed up on the half of the monster’s head that was not buried in the mud.

  “You mean she never even thought I was cute? Not even a little bit? She was my dream girl. I was going to marry her,” he slid up a little further and grabbed a hold of two ears that flopped down either side like saddle bags.

  The monster fought back, trying to pull its head out of the clay and ears away from its torturous rider. Aaron held on to both ears in one hand and held up his other like he was in a rodeo.

  “You never even met her,” Zella regained some strength and brandished her spear-like stick that was really just a stick and not at all like a spear. She liked to think it was a spear, that made her feel a little braver.

  The monster pulled its long snout out of the mud pit. The head alone was the same size as all of Zella. Now the snout, teeth, and scales were all covered in mud. With a quick jerk and boom, it sneezed that mud all over Zella.

  “I think I saw her one time,” Aaron ignored the muddy anger that radiated from his sister. He tied the monster’s two ears together in a floppy knot. With both hands, he jerked back on them like a horse’s reigns. The creature raised his head and screamed in torture.

  “You never saw her. She never existed. I made her up completely,” Zella ran underneath the monster’s shadow where he thrashed.

  Aaron still held onto the ears while he rode his bucking monster. It wanted him off desperately but the boy had a fierce grip. Zella pointed her ‘not spear’ stick up and planted it on the ground.

  “Wait, you completely made her up? Like, not only did she not think I was devilishly handsome, she’s not even real?” Aaron’s voice oozed with disappointment but he always was a pretty good actor.

  He let go of his reins and slid back down the neck a little ways. The monster, finally free of its rider, slammed his head back down toward Zella, the only enemy he knew he could reach at the moment.

  “Yeah, I mean, you were kind of sad at the time and I thought the idea of having a secret admirer would cheer you up,” she shivered as the beast’s head came crashing down toward her but held her ground.

  “It actually really did cheer me up,” Aaron said as the monster slammed his head down on top of Zella’s spear. It pierced up through its head and out the the top of its skull.

  Zella watched the monster instantly freeze and collapse motionless onto the ground. Aaron jumped off as the monster crashed sideways and shook the earth like an tectonic plate. He stumbled and then tried to play it off as he walked over toward his sister.

  That seemed too easy. Zella felt bad.

  “Wow, I’m not sure I wanted to kill it. I just wanted to hurt it a little bit, you know. Just scare it and make it run away,” Zella started to tear up. They both stared at the horrendous monster as it lay still, like a dragon without wings.

  “We needed to kill it so it doesn’t hurt anybody else. This thing could probably eat a whole village before it gets full,” Aaron stood lost in thought for a moment and then turned back to his sister, still covered in mud from the monster’s sneeze. “What about Lisa? Did you make her up too?“

  “Lisa was your best friend in elementary school. How could I make her up? She gave you that scar on your neck when you tried to kiss her in fifth grade. Boys are nasty in fifth grade.”

  “Good point,” Aaron stared at the fallen monster too.

  It didn’t seem right. That was too easy. Not that they knew how to fight monsters. This was their first. They’d just always assumed that monster fighting would be more of a challenge since they were so big.

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  Zella thought she saw the dead monster wink but it must have just been the light. Aaron stepped back but didn’t say anything either.

  The only weapon he had was a kitchen knife. They hadn’t planned on fighting monsters this morning when cutting up some fruit for breakfast. He pulled the knife back out from where he had stuffed it dangerously in his belt.

  “Um, I don’t want to scare you but maybe we should have done a better job of killing the monster,” Aaron said as a gust of nasty, rotten, pizza breath drifted up under his nose. They both jumped back. Zella tried to brandish her stick spear but then she remembered it was jammed up through the monster's head.

  How could he survive a wound like that? It had to be stuck in his brain. Then a thought occurred to her, maybe it didn’t have a brain just like some of the boys she knew.

  The monster raised his head and swung it like a maniac, trying to get the stick out from where it was shoved from jaw to cranium. It finally forced its mouth open but the spear stick stayed jammed in between.

  When it jiggled its jaw back and forth the stick snapped in half. Zella had been surprised it didn’t snap in half when she jammed it up through his head. It wasn’t even a very strong stick. She had broken it off from the broom she was using earlier. It never worked out as a very good weapon but it was better than what she had now which was nothing.

  The monster let out a monstrous roar. Zella covered her girly ears and let out a girly scream. Aaron saw her mouth open and knew what she was trying to do. She did that to him so many times, but this time he couldn’t even hear her over the other noise.

  “Don’t count on that to scare him off,” Aaron commented after they had both finished their shouting contest. “We need a better plan.” The monster started climbing back up to his feet.

  “OK, how about running away?” Zeller, suggested.

  “Not a good plan with a monster this size. Look at the size of those legs and look at mine,” Aaron dropped and rolled to the side as the creature lunged to eat him.

  “You’ve got chicken legs?”

  “No, I have short legs. Okay, they are kind of chickeny, but mine are shorter than his. He can run faster.”

  “Every monster has a weakness, right?” Zella asked as she looked around for a weapon of any sort.

  “No, that’s just in stories,” Aaron shouted as he rolled in the opposite direction.

  The monster fixated on Aaron, now that it could get at him. He tried to zigzag but it caught him by the shirt. Aaron swore he would get back at whoever had told him to zigzag when running away from a alligator. It didn’t work with monsters, so it probably didn’t work with alligators either.

  One of its jagged teeth stabbed through the fabric of his shirt and when he reared his head back, Aaron flew up with him. He tried to wiggle out of his shirt but the monster held it tight against his torso.

  Zella watched her brother flop around like one of her old stuffed animals. She found it fitting that he had been the one to swing her toys around like that but this wasn’t justice. Aaron couldn’t hold up to much more of that just like her dolls hadn’t.

  The next time the beast swung his head down low enough, she jumped up and grabbed her broomstick that still stuck out through its jaw. Now she flopped around with the monster and her brother.

  “That’s exactly not what I would have recommended you to try. It’s not working out too well for me either,” Aaron said, still trying to swing himself around.

  “It’s not exactly what I meant to do,” Zella had expected the broomstick to ooze back out under her weight but it was lodged in there pretty well.

  “I lost my knife!” Aaron had just realized that he had misplaced his kitchen utensil at some point. “That was my favorite knife.” He swung his elbows backward trying to bump the monster in the nose but nothing seemed to hit.

  “This morning is the first time that you have ever used that knife in your entire life. I don’t think you’ve ever used any other knife before either.”

  “Therefore, it is my favorite knife. I love that knife,” Aaron choked on his last words but not because he was upset about the knife. The monster figured out a way to twist his head side to side, pulling Aaron‘s shirt tighter in the neck so that it strangled him.

  Zella tried jerking up and down on the stick but it had lodged itself firmly in the monster’s jaw. She still hung on as he flung his head around trying to get her off. Finally, in desperation, she flipped upside down and planted her feet up against the bottom of its jaw. Despite her upside-down position and the direction of the ground, she still pushed hard enough that the broomstick spear slid out and she tumbled to the ground headfirst.

  She never remembered learning a trick like it before but on the way down she flipped herself around. Zella pulled the ‘half stick’ sideways to her belly and curled around it. As she fell nearer to the ground she threw her weight forward and landed in a roll. Then she asked herself how and why she knew to do that.

  “If you had to take a wild guess about what his weakness might be, what would you say?” Zella asked after a couple of rolls.

  She bounced up to her feet and decided her questions about her questionable abilities would have to wait until they were not under attack. She brandished her now half-broomstick not-spear.

  Aaron choked out a response but she couldn’t understand it. The monster finally swung him so hard that Aaron flew out of his shirt and came crashing down into the mud pit that the monster had stuck his head in earlier.

  “His ears were awfully sensitive when I was messing with them earlier,” Aaron tried to wriggle himself free from the mud but only succeeded in sinking deeper. The monster seemed to know what he was talking about and whipped his head backward so no one could get at his ears. It let out another shriek that made both of the kids cover their ears. Aaron’s hands were already covered in muddy clay and now his ears were too.

  “The monster still focused his attention on Aaron. Somehow it didn’t realize that Zella had been the one to stab him through the jaw. He brought his head down to roar in Aaron‘s face again. After which, Zella assumed he would put her brother in his mouth. Zella seized her opportunity and ran up to her now half-sunken brother. She jumped up onto his shoulder and then launched off of the top of his head onto the monster's snout.

  “Hey,” Aaron shouted as he sank another few inches in the mud and clay. He was up to his chest now and couldn’t do anything to pull himself out.

  Zella made her way up the monster's head as it reared back up. It tossed its head around again but she grabbed a hold of the ears as she slid past.

  It was a long shot but what if her brother was right? As soon as she got into position she slammed the half broomstick into the exposed ear of the monster. It slid all the way in and then some. Without so much as a scream or a roar, the monster vanished into a puff of black smoke.

  Zella dropped the distance of a large house toward the ground. At the last moment, she seemed to know just exactly when to throw herself into a front flip. She rolled onto the muddy grass and came up on her feet. She was facing the other way but she immediately spun around and sprinted back toward her brother now up to his shoulders in the muddy clay mixture.

  “Wow, nice job,” Aaron said. His hands were still free from the mud and he reached up for his sister to help him out. Instead, she slapped him across the face.

  “I think you’ve got some explaining to do,” she huffed as she plopped down crisscross applesauce at the edge of the mud pit.

  “Um, maybe?” Aaron cocked an eyebrow but that didn’t feel quite right so he did the other one instead.

  “Why do I know how to fight giant monsters? Why are giant monsters attacking us? Why do giant monsters even exist? Why do I get the feeling that you know what is going on?”

  “Are you finished?” Aaron asked, still sinking a little more in the mud every second.

  “No, but you’ve got a pretty short working memory. I figured I'd just start with the basics.’

  “Right, what were the questions again?” Aaron tried to joke but then realized he probably wouldn’t get out of the mud if he didn’t hurry up. “OK so, this is actually a pretty long story. I might not have enough time before the mud gets over my mouth.”

  “Well then, you’d better hurry,” Zella put her hands back behind her head and leaned back for a good story.