Zella held on tight as she wrapped her legs around the monster’s neck. Well, she wrapped them as far as they would go. It wasn’t anything like riding a horse. She barely had any grip on the solid neck. This was more like riding a tanker truck.

  The monster knew she was up there and whipped his head around to try to get at her. It could’ve been a she, but no, Zella didn’t like to think that any female monsters would be that gross. Then again, all monsters are gross.

  Aaron was on the ground running zigzags. Why was he running zigzags? He wasn’t running away from an alligator. He found another kitchen knife before they took on this monster but it looked like he had already lost it again. The monster reared back its head to try to throw Zella off while it swung the other head down toward Aaron. This monster had three heads.

  “What I want to know is, which head gets to decide where the body goes? I mean, obviously, each head controls its own neck but one of them has got to decide for the body,” Aaron was cut off as the middle head swung down and knocked him right off his feet. So much for the zigzag.

  As he scrambled to get back to his feet, Zella got to work on what she climbed up for. She had found another broomstick. She tried what had worked on the last monster, jamming it into an ear like a giant Q-tip. That only made the monster mad. She jammed it again and then again.

  “Why won’t you disappear into a puff of black smoke?” She screamed as she jabbed one last time. Finally, the monster had enough and it threw her off. She flew up and then landed down a little further on the monster's neck. She gripped the scales with her knees and made her way back up toward the head.

  “I’m starting to hate monsters too,” Aaron said as the middle head picked him up and started to fling him into the air. It seemed to be just testing his weight at first. When it figured out he wasn’t very heavy, the middle head lifted and tossed Aaron high above him.

  “Yeah, I really hate monsters now.”

  “I didn’t think you ever liked monsters,” Zella said as she climbed back up on top of the monster’s first head. The second head was waiting open-mouthed to swallow Aaron as he fell back in. Zella took a flying leap and crashed into her brother knocking him off course and ruining the monster’s grape toss. They fell to the ground as he snapped his jaws closed on nothing.

  At first, the monster seemed to think that Aaron had just slipped down his throat without swallowing. The longer the monster stood there, contemplating, it finally figured out that nothing had gone down its throat. He started searching around on the ground for the kids.

  They were too stunned to move at first. Aaron lay there a little while longer even after Zella rolled off of him. Of course, he had to be the one to land first and soften the blow. He tried to move but the aches and his body told him it might be better to just get eaten by the monster.

  “Do you find it odd that this monster looks a lot like the last one?” Zella asked.

  “It has three heads,” Aaron groaned. “It looks nothing like the last one.”

  “Yeah, but if we stuck a couple more heads on the last monster we fought, it would be this one exactly.”

  “Oh no, that means the next one’s going to have like ten heads."

  “I’m not sure that works out right with any type of math but I’m not gonna argue with mister math competition champ over here. I really hate that you are so sure there are going to be more monsters.”

  A scream, followed by another scream, followed by another scream, came from the monster and his three mouths, in his three heads. If he was trying to scare the siblings, it worked. They both jumped and covered their ears. Then the monster dove all three heads toward them.

  Aaron rolled one way and Zella rolled the other way. She jumped up into a fighting stance and brandished her weapon. Aaron grabbed a rock. It was about the size of his hand balled up into a fist. Just the perfect size for throwing. He tossed it up and it bounced off one of the monster's ears.

  “I’ve already tried the ears. It may look like the other monster we fought but it doesn’t have the same weakness.”

  “Yeah, that would be a little too easy,” Aaron guessed. His rock bounced off and landed nearby so he dove forward again just as the monster dove toward him. Zella jumped up on top of the monster’s head and it swung back up. She grabbed onto his long floppy ears and held on like reigns.

  The creature looked a little less intimidating with big floppy ears but not much. The large fangs popping out of its snout made up for the fear factor. All in all, it did look almost identical to the last monster they had fought. Something like a big dinosaur or a dragon just without wings. This one had three heads but they all looked the same just like the one head on the monster they fought last time. Something about all that just felt very odd to Zella.

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  “Does something seem weird about this do you?” Zella asked as she rode the wild beast's head. The other two heads were focused on Aaron but he stood still and they hadn’t made a move for him yet.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. The old wizard-looking guy in the forest watching us is just really weird and kinda creepy,” Aaron said. As soon as he had said it, the monster’s heads turned and lunged straight for him. He rolled forward and ducked out of reach just in time but they came back snapping for him. It almost seemed as if they hadn’t known precisely where he was before.

  “What creepy old wizard in the forest?” Zella asked completely baffled by what she suspected was a joke or riddle at an inappropriate time. She peeked over toward the edge of the woods and there stood an elderly gentleman holding a cane. He looked nothing like a wizard except that his hair was white.

  Aaron sprinted underneath the beast’s colossal body. Even standing up straight underneath, the belly was still about five feet over Aaron‘s head. The monster couldn’t get any of his heads underneath of his body so it reared up on the hind legs and tried to trample him.

  “That guy doesn’t look like a wizard. He looks like a retired investment banker,” Zella said. She lost her leg grip around the monster's neck and was now just flopping around holding onto the ears. She swung her feet forward and decided to try kicking the top of its head. That didn’t do any good but it didn’t seem to make the monster any more angry. She figured it probably couldn’t even feel it.

  “Of course, he’s a wizard. He’s got white hair,” Aaron said. He rolled the side just as the monster stomped down next to him. His shirt got caught under one of the claws. When the beast reared back up to trample him, Aaron came up with its front legs.

  “You’re going to have white hair someday when you’re old. Does that mean you’re going to be a wizard?” Zella had to flip around on her stomach now dangling between the monster’s eyes. She still held onto the ears with her arms crossed over her head and she was trying to kick the monster in the nose. Her feet couldn’t quite reach.

  “I hope that makes me a wizard,” Aaron shouted as he rode the front legs up into the air. “Only problem is, I’m never gonna be old.”

  “You’re already old to me and you’re only two years older than I am,” Zella lost her grip on the ears and slipped down the monster's snout. Now she was looking eye to eye with the beast’s first head. What she saw in those eyes frightened her so much it made her laugh a scared scream.

  The depth of nothingness and evil at the same time in his eyes went on forever. It sent a shiver down her spine just before the creature flung her off toward the woods. At the same time it flung Zella, the creature realized that Aaron had gotten stuck to his front paw and it flung him off as well. They both flew through the air about a hundred feet and crashed into the grass right at the edge of the woods.

  They didn’t land anywhere near where they had seen the old man standing but somehow, once they came to a stop, he was there. Before either of them had even thought about moving they heard his voice and whispered something that seemed to come only in their mind. “Be still,” he said or rather almost didn’t say.

  “Who are you?” Aaron started to say but was silenced by the old man before he could even open his mouth.

  “Be silent and watch,” he reprimanded like a grandfather. They both had ended up in the position halfway on the back and side facing the monster. It was searching around for them as it stomped and thrashed about wildly. Zella lay perfectly still watching when something occurred to her. The monster couldn’t find them.

  “He can’t see us,” she whispered ever so quietly. As she did the beast stopped and turned all three heads in their direction.

  “No, but he can hear us,” Aaron said out loud. The beast came trampling toward them. Zella saw her broomstick lying halfway in between her and the beast. She knew what she had to do. In a move so quick that Aaron barely even saw her stand up, she flipped over and sprinted toward the broomstick. She reached it long before the monster had, with a speed she never knew she had.

  She flipped up the broomstick with her foot, caught it in her hand, and planted it on the ground in front of her for a vault. As she flipped forward upward into the air she brought the broomstick up behind her, thrust it forward, and bent her head down. The monster opened its jaws to catch her inside and she released her grip on the broomstick.

  “No,” Aaron screamed, irritated at the old man’s uncaring silence as his sister fell into the open mouth of the monster. Just as she went inside its mouth, the broomstick plunged into the beast’s open eye. It sunk deep into where the eyeball should have been but by the time it had gotten that far, the beast’s first head and neck vanished into a puff of black smoke. Zella screamed as she continued falling forward now that the entire head and neck were gone.

  Aaron screamed a war cry and rushed forward toward the beast. Zella crashed onto the monster's back and held on to what she could. Since there was nothing to hold onto she started sliding down the monster's back. He must have felt her sliding and started snapping at her with one of his two remaining heads. It couldn’t quite reach back that far and Zella dropped to the ground.

  “Take that!“ Aaron screamed. He hurled his stone straight at the monster’s eye. It connected before the beast could blink and the third head vanished in a puff of smoke. That left only the middle head which had been searching for Zella. Now it snaps back and forth between where it saw Aaron running about in a zigzag again and where it thought Zella lay silent. Zella seized the opportunity and sprinted back toward the old man.

  She searched for her broomstick but it was nowhere to be found. The old man seemed to know what she was thinking and tossed her his cane as she approached. She caught it just as the monster swung his head over the top of her. Zella leaned back and caught the crook of his cane on the monster's jaw. She rode the swing as it brought her up and when the beast started to bring his head back down she felt that moment of weightlessness as the cane unhooked. She jabbed it into the open eye. As soon as it made contact the entire beast vanished into a puff of black smoke.

  She dropped the twenty feet back down to the ground and rolled at the last moment to soften her fall. The old man held out his hand for his cane which Zella hurled at him. He snatched it from the air before it hit him, just like a wizard would never do, and smiled. Zella frowned. Aaron did both, at the same time he did neither.