Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies > Books: did-not-finish‎ (29)

Truth is, she hadn’t dared use one of the bathrooms at the airport. What if she found herself face to face with one of those futuristic toilets she’d read about in the guidebook and couldn’t figure out how to flush it? What if she accidentally locked herself inside a stall and missed her flight?

I decided that if I was going to add my voice to the mix, the only way forward was to collate an objective account, letting those involved speak in their own words. To this end, I have drawn from a wide variety of sources, including Paul Craddock’s unfinished biography, Chiyoko Kamamoto’s collected messages, and interviews personally conducted by me during and immediately after the events in question.

I’m often asked, ‘Paul, why did you take on the full care of Jess? After all, you’re a successful actor, an artiste, a single man with an erratic schedule, are you really cut out to be a parent?’

I’d gone off the rails a bit in my mid-twenties after a severe professional disappointment. I was in the middle of filming the pilot for Bedside Manner, which was being dubbed as the UK’s next hot hospital drama, when I got the news they were cancelling the series. I’d won the part of the main character, Dr Malakai Bennett, a brilliant surgeon with Asperger’s syndrome, a morphine addiction and a tendency towards paranoia, and the cancellation hit me hard.

NAME: ANONYMOUS85
Get the weapons loaded.
NAME: ANONYMOUS337
Train that princess in your sights.
NAME: ANONYMOUS23
Locked and loaded, SIR!
NAME: ANONYMOUS111
First, we gotta help Orz get out of his room.
NAME: ANONYMOUS47
Orz. Some good advice:
1. Clean yrself up so that u look as presentable as possible. No bed hair or pimples.
2. Go to Uniqlo and get some good clothes nothing flashy.
3. Go and see The Princess.
4. Offer to buy her dinner.
5. At dinner, tell her how you feel.
That way, even if she cuts you off, you will have no regrets.

Over the next hour and a half, twenty more dragon names cross my computer screen. All ignore me.
“Why aren’t they answering?” I ask Lester.
I scan th

Over the next hour and a half, twenty more dragon names cross my computer screen. All ignore me.
“Why aren’t they answering?” I ask Lester.
I scan the script for what I’m supposed to do but can’t find anything that applies...the section near page bottom—For arrogant or annoyed dragons. “Please help me. I am weak. Without your help, the invisible men will...”

Lester hands me a different call script. A single page with two paragraphs of text. One for introduction, one for rebuttal. Only one fill-in-the-blank (my alias) and one handwritten note (Growl as you speak).
“Bryzmon, my name is Christina Grace, I am a member of the Diocletians,” I say, adding a throaty rumble to my words. “Join us or die.”
The Green responds immediately in a guttural voice that spikes a shiver through me. I will enjoy sucking the skin from your roasted body, human. His call frequency updates to 98.667 iGHz.
The rebuttal section—When the dragon threatens to devour you—is simple. “Join us and you can eat well every day without fear of—”

Roar about us dragons, roar about your god, roar at yourself if you must, roar as loud and long as you can until there is nothing left to roar about. Send all the badness away.

I thought I recognized the girl in the mirror before, but this one I’ve never seen. Her hair’s blond and falls in glorious curls around her shoulders. Eyebrows are also dyed, what remains of them. Smoky eye shadow. Enough foundation to fill a grave. Skin a shade between gold and bronze. Midnight-red lipstick to offset the silver circlet nestled in her hair.

When [my father]’s past the fire pit, I give him the finger, turn around, and march right up Dragon Hill.
“Bullshit. You—”
“Watch your language, missy.”
“Bullshit, bullshit, bull—”

“Strong spirit, fragile mind.” His expression grows serious. “I thought it would be a run-of-the-mill recruiting trip, but when I met her, she absolutely floored me.”
“How so?”
“Look at her,” James says. “Not the hair or the makeup or the dress. Look into her eyes. There’s something magical in them. I’ve never met anybody like her.”

This class is way over my head. Half an hour of this and I swear my notes were penned by a retarded monkey who is just as confused as I am.

“What kind of obtuse podunk outfit is this anyway? Supersized, narcissistic Rent-a-Cop!” I sit back and realize the cop has returned to my window. Aw crap.

His voice is rich with a funny eastern accent, which under lighter circumstances I would find amusing.

His head is now turning slowly, methodically, and he is looking at me as though I’m one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

His concern for me is palpable, like a hand caressing my cheek.

He could feel her concern for him radiating like a lighthouse.

No, not just hot but sexy as hell and— Wait, what?
Sexy? Where in the hell did that come from?

He had been tracking his lost lover’s soul and found it in Sophia.

So his wardrobe was chosen with care: black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt buttoned at the throat. And for good measure, he wore a long black duster, a favorite from the old days.

He opted for black skinny jeans with multicolored Converse high tops and a black T-shirt that said, I DIED FOR AN IRON MAIDEN.

He wore black jeans rolled at the cuffs, black combat boots, and a tight black T-shirt over his beefy chest. His hair had been cut shoulder length and gathered at the back of his head with a leather, noose-like strap.

Dante changed clothes three times before settling on black designer jeans and a charcoal mock turtleneck. After all, this was a special occasion. He should look nice and sophisticated but not like he was trying too hard.

“Now we go to America!” Dante announced the command he had been waiting years to say.

Dante clenched his teeth. “Fine! To Italy. And then to Connecticut without another delay.”

He seems disjointed from the others like a curious bystander.

He was blue!”
“As a Smurf!”

I look and see Casey James laughing at his own joke. A moment later he stops, and his mouth opens and closes like a fish. His eyes gradually bulge in panic. Before I can think the words, He’s choking, Michael is there, wrapping his arms around Casey’s waist and hauling him out of the chair.

“But he was dead!” I whisper. “And Raph didn’t do CPR!” We stop at my locker and I throw my books inside.
“Well, he must have done something, right? I mean, Casey choked to death.”
“But...Raph didn’t. You saw that he didn’t, right?”

Elizabeth thought me too little for the name my French mother had given me. She attempted to call me Mignonette—meaning dainty and darling—but her three-year-old tongue did not pronounce it properly. I have been Minuette to my friends ever since.

Minuette had always had charm—not the studied, showy type, but natural as breath and as much a part of her as her honey-coloured hair.

Elizabeth might have hated her for that charm, if Minuette weren’t so utterly without guile.

Though he’d complimented Elizabeth’s mind, it was nine-year-old Minuette who had disarmed him. When the formidable, enormous King Henry had left, it had been Minuette whom he’d hugged goodbye.

“William has given you leave?” Elizabeth let her annoyance leak out. “You are a member of my household.”
“And you would never say no to me.” Minuette smiled triumphantly.

“I can’t see her yet. Not yet, Elizabeth. I need time to...” To forget the smell of her hair and the taste of her skin and the feel of her body against mine. To forget that I wanted her so desperately I’d have overthrown all honour to have her at that moment, with [a dead body] lying dead not ten feet away.

When he at last entered the great hall, his eyes went straight to Minuette with the unerring instinct of a man besotted.

“One does not argue with His Majesty’s wishes.”
“Really? I argue with his wishes all the time.” Minuette positively dazzled as she added, “And I always win.”

Her first thought was Dominic...because he was the steadiest man she knew and she needed someone steady to tell her what to do.

But for all that, Elizabeth knew she might have been severely tempted to plead with her brother to consider such an uneven match—if not for the simple fact that Robert [Dudley] was already married.

He would wed for practicality, and take his pleasures where he could. For all the unorthodoxy of his parents’ marriage, that was the way of kings.

“Have you given any thought to the lady, beyond what you desire?”
William hovered on the point of real anger before shrugging it off. “I assure you, Eleanor is quite content with the arrangement. No matter how long she … however long we … she will be the daughter-in-law of one of the premier dukes in England. It’s more than her family ever dreamed.”