Andi Newton

Note: Today’s 100 Words was inspired by the board game Castle Panic. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. Especially if you like cooperative games.

If you have played Castle Panic, this situation should seem very familiar. And you’ll probably be cursing the Troll King just as much as we do when he shows up!

A boulder bounced down the hill and smashed into a wall just east of Callum and Syrine, the fourth such attack the Troll King’s minions had lobbed at Ferrin Castle. Each stone had breached the castle’s walls, and each had been followed by a goblin brigade or a phalanx of orcs. Only the skill of Callum’s archers and the bravery of his knights had held the monsters at bay.

The stonemasons’ brick and mortar had long since run out, but men still scrambled to repair the breach with whatever rubble they could find.

Wasted effort, Callum thought. The advancing hordes would make short work of the repairs. The masons would do better to grab a sword or pike and ready themselves to defend the castle and those inside.

Two walls remained standing: the north tower wall, afforded the natural protection of Adalende Bay, and the wall on which Callum now stood, fortified against attack as soon as Callum heard of the Troll King’s march.

Neither would protect the castle long.

Jakub inherited everything from his father. His dark eyes and stubby fingers. The little house in Stare Mesto, with the front room that his father had turned into a restaurant. Even the recipes that kept the place popular enough that Jakub could hire another cook and a girl to wait tables.

He’d inherited the gold-filled fusee pocketwatch that his father had carried throughout Europe while he collected those recipes. And he’d inherited the curse that came with it.

Every fall, as the chill retreated in a welcome respite to all but him, Jakub hid in his rooms, lips cracked and torn by a thousand arachnid legs, screams muffled by a thousand swollen abdomens, jaws stretched wide to let them pass.

Babi Leto. Those weeks in September when the days were warmer than the calendar should have allowed. Those weeks when Jakub locked the watch in a steel-strapped trunk, and locked that trunk in the restaurant’s storeroom, and prayed it would help.

The weeks when spiders crawled out his mouth.

Bennett’s mother slapped his fingers away from the bandage. “Stop scratching.” Her eyes never left the road.

“It itches!” Bennett tugged his sleeve down, using the motion to disguise another quick scratch.

“Should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?” She steered through a turn with the palm of one hand, twisting the dial on the car radio through music and static with the other.

Bennett didn’t answer, but the truth was that he had thought of it. So had Scott. But when they got to the double-doors of McPherson’s Mill, boarded up nearly twenty years before but still a magnet for local kids, neither of the boys had cared. It had seemed worth the risk.

Even with his right arm bandaged from fingertips to elbow and Scott in the ICU for at least another week, Bennett was still convinced it was.

Jayce closed his eyes and breathed in deep. The air had the taste of commercial-grade cleaner and fresh Cinnabon. “Sorry,” he mumbled, then yanked the fire alarm lever down.

The first time, Jayce had been swept down the walkway in a crush of people scrambling toward the exits. The second time had been slower, and the one after that slower still. Now only a few people hurried toward the doors. Mothers clutching toddlers to their chests. Businessmen determined to get out before firetrucks clogged the parking lot.

Today was the eighteenth time in a month Jayce had pulled the alarm. Tomorrow he would do it again. And the day after that.

And then he’d do it for real.

Security guards waited for him as he walked around the corner, the one who looked like the guy from Hot Fuzz and the one-time linebacker who’d tackled Jayce into the landscape display the fourth time he’d tripped the alarm.

“You really wanna do this, guys?” Jayce asked. “You know it’s not gonna make any difference.”

Post-It notes decorated Allison’s apartment, two-inch by two-inch squares laminated and mounted to walls, mirrors, and appliances with cellophane tape that had been rubbed transparent with a thumbnail and trimmed square with an Exacto knife. A dry erase marker hung next to each, the plastic clip that held it in place squared against both the note and whatever it was mounted to.

Allison believed in precision.

As soon as she turned off the alarm clock each morning, Allison worked her way through the house wiping the laminated notes clean of the check marks she’d made the day before. The one on the bathroom mirror with its list to “Wash face — Moisturize — Brush teeth — Listerine”. The one by the stove with a line for all four burners, the oven, and the broiler. The one on the refrigerator marked “Breakfast — Lunch — Dinner” and four spots for water.

The check marks were so she couldn’t forget.