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“Stop with your bitching, sissy. Jamey Jay is a guy I’m tutoring, not my fucking dealer. And he ain’t don’t do no drugs. He’s just a metalhead. I shared some edibles with him once, and he nearly cried.”

“You’re with a new boy again, aren’t you? Do you remember what happens when they meet me?”

Now Lily has enough. Her bitch-ass sister sure has a knack for changing subjects.

And Lily sure can erupt like a molten lava-spouting volcano when she needs to.

“You horrid, boyfriend-stealing bitch. First, Chad ‘the third’ Chadwick, my baseball player boyfriend, then Bradley Kaden Kennel, and now Every the Tall? You’ve gotta be kidding me, big sis.”

The woman at the other end of the phone cackles. “Sorry, not sorry, Lily purple-flower. I didn’t purposely fucking steal them. They just decided that you were a boring little shit and left you for me.”

“Nah, girl, you might have stolen those worthless motherfucking bitches of mine with ease, but I ain’t letting you steal my Every-boy too. He’s my Everest mountain of cash, my endlessly supplied ATM.” Lily yells with all her heart.

Wow, things sure are turning emotional really quickly.

The said young man, who is eavesdropping on the conversation from under the cracked bed (cracked from the previous guests’ activities, most likely), smiles at the little confession of his girlfriend that at least he means something to her, and is worthy to her, even if it’s just a little. For extra bonus brownie points, she even seems a little jealous, like a protective mother hen, trying to keep him safe from the sharp talon-claws of her sister.

And he’s even compared to an ATM, one of his favorite things in life. That gorgeous thing sure as shit just shoots out wads of bills with the press of a button.

Forgetting his screaming spinal disks, he rolls out from below the bed and grabs the phone from his girl, ending the call with a press on the cracked, battered, shattered screen. That thing needed changing since at least a decade ago.

“Now, now,” he says like some shrink talking to a tantrum-throwing kid, “we don’t let other bad bitches ruin our bright, shiny day.” He grabs her hand, taking her back along the wormy corridors to the pretty lady from yesterday.

They go to a banquet hall this time, and Every opens the door right into yesterday’s lady’s smiling face, dressed in another shimmering rainbow shift. “Shit, woman, you scared me.”

“I suppose you already said that yesterday. And the last time you visited me too, but alright. Hola, Every, my man, as they say in Italy. Or is it France?” The lady smiles at them, flashing her pearly white teeth, and leads them to a table laden with all the sweets of the world.

Lily-girl’s stomach rumbles.

“This gotta be some serious nutcracker type shit,” she mutters under her breath as she takes a seat beside her man on a soft, plush marshmallow chair that bounces dramatically under her ass, opposite the mysterious purple-eyed person.

“Hello, girl, and—Gilly, quick, tell me what I’m supposed to say next—oh, my name is Queeny, Queeny Darling, and I’m a sugar plum fairy, not really the queen. Just the queen regent, for now. You, huh, you’re the queen, aren’t you? You can call me the sugar plum fairy, since Queeny is reserved for only Every and his folks and my bodyguard, Glycogen, Gilly-boy right here.”

The sugar plum fairy gestures to the guard from yesterday who escorted Lily and her man to their respective room. Today, he’s wearing the normal tweed and satin nutcracker uniform, but with bright pink neon tights and no shoes, looking even more pissed than yesterday. Probably from being made to wear that stupid uniform, if you ask Lily. He stands a short distance behind her, hovering like a shadow of some meanie creeping around a playground in search of the small kid to bully.

What a bummer.

“You are the sugar plum fairy, like from the nutcracker?” Lily asks, awed.

“Yep,” the fairy blinks, batting her long eyelashes.

“And if you’re the sugar plum fairy, where are the other fairies? Like the dancing coffee, candy cane, and tea ones.”

“My subordinates are on vacation to Disneyland at the moment ’cause they kept pissing me off with their dancing and twirling, so it’s only me. Too bad, bitch. Oh, and there’s Every here, the nutcracker prince, first knight of the land of sweets”

“Like the one in the classic Clara story?”

“That was actually his great uncle, Nutty the Natty.”

“Oh.” Lily nods, her main character chin so sharp it could cut glass.

“Here, try some of my favorite pot brownies,” Queeny tells her, pushing a porcelain plate of funny brownies in front of Lily.

But Lily knows better than to get high in front of Queeny Darling, who might be a potential threat, so she settles for some transparent pink blancmange bouncing on a china-bone plate. The curved mound jiggles, wiggling its full jelly.

“You know, the Russian-American writer, Nabokov, once described a random woman’s tits as blancmange,” informs Every, the know-it-all, pointing a long finger at the jelly.

At that, Lily winces, her mouth twisting into a terrible grimace.