A House With Good Bones

by T. Kingfisher

There was a doily on the chest of drawers. I eyed it warily. I have nothing against doilies, but they’re a slippery slope. You start with doilies, then pretty soon it’s crocheted table runners and then it’s a short step to antimacassars. As if doilies are some kind of larval form, and the table runners are an instar in their development. But then are the antimacassars the adult form, or just a later instar? Perhaps the adult form of the doily bears no resemblance to its juvenile stages.

My hair is a comb-eating monster that is technically “curly,” in the same way that a cassowary is technically a bird. It’s factual, but leaves out a lot of the kicking-a-man’s-bowels-out-through-his-spine bits. Not that my hair has ever done that. To my knowledge.

We can’t all be trained entomologists, I suppose. (Well, actually we could be, and in a perfect world we would be, which might provide just about enough manpower to finish The Project and maybe make some inroads on beetle taxonomy.)

I was determined to get a rosebud from every bush, dammit. I was a tool-using mammal. (A tool-using mammal who should have been wearing gloves.) I was not going to be outsmarted by shrubbery.

Hermes bounced up onto a stool and she gave him another chunk of something meaty. “Dead mouse,” she said at my glance. “Hang tight and I’ll get you something.” “Dead mice aren’t really my thing…”

Gail continued to study me. Her eyes looked much older than the rest of her, but that didn’t dull their gleam. Some knives stay sharp no matter how old they are.

I asked my phone if it was connected to the internet and it told me that it had a very close relationship with the internet. I attempted to pull up a web page and it informed me that it was not that kind of relationship.