The Treasury of the Sphinx

An Egyptologist and her partner discover a vast store of riches, then become its guardians. Mature.

To my esteemed colleagues, Victoria began. It was the third draft of her letter asking for more time and funding, and she still sounded desperate. Cambridge wanted another Tutankhamun, but all that the workers had uncovered was sand and stone.

"Ma'am? One of the boys thinks he may have found something."

William stood under the tent flap, surrounded by the glare of the desert sun. Victoria squinted up at her fellow archaeologist like he was a mirage. Then her blue eyes widened.

Victoria slapped on her hat and stuffed her feet into her boots and was still twisting her hair back into a ponytail as she followed William across the camp.

The young Egyptian man still clung to his pickaxe. He beamed brightly, standing next to the apple-sized hole into some deeper darkness behind the rock. William lifted his lantern to the hole. There was a flash of something beyond, but the hole was too small to see through properly.

In her best Arabic, Victoria asked the young man for the pickaxe.

Striped Success

A TransCo subsidiary motel chain turns a young woman into a confident business-skunk. Explicit. A young woman staying at a hotel before a business conference turns into a confident, professional skunk-girl. Explicit.

It was the end of her New York-to-Chicago car drive. Tori just wanted to fall asleep, but every hotel near the conference center was booked up tight, and the closest hotel she'd been able to find on short notice was the one-star Come On Inn. Carrying her suit for the conference tomorrow and her backpack, she stepped into her room. It smelled like cigarette smoke. They didn't have any non-smoking; she'd asked.

'Welcome to the Come On Inn, a TransCo subsidiary!' a typo-laden note on the bedside stand began. Tori sat on the edge of the bed and read the note between groggy blinks. It offered her to 'Please make use of the complementary hair freshener.' She looked back at the stand, where a small, blank, white box sat. She popped it open, tore open the plastic wrap, and pulled out the cone-shaped air freshener.

It gave off a pleasantly clean scent, cool and almost floral. It was refreshing after the dry, tarry smell of cigarette smoke. She set the freshener down by the floor AC unit and turned the fan up to high. The fresh smell rolled through the air, starting to permeate the room. While the room freshened itself up, she grabbed the bag with her toothpaste and toothbrush from her pack.

Tori watched herself in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. She looked worn down and strung out from the car ride. Her face was bleary, eyes baggy, brown hair mussed from being pushed up against the headrest for hours on end. In her casual clothes, she looked even more young and scrawny than usual. And here she was, only a junior associate, about to represent her whole company tomorrow.

Something about her face didn't seem entirely right. Tori squinted into the mirror and pressed a finger to her nose. The skin on the tip was darkened and purple. The whole thing seemed oddly swollen, the tip broader and more bulbous. She sniffed, but didn't smell anything out of place. She tapped on the tip of her nose, then squeezed both fingers around it, trying to see if it was tender, but no. She tried rubbing at the bottom, but the color didn't come off. She twisted her mouth to one side, then the other. It looked kind of like a little snout.

Beach Buff Blues

A trio of police officers on break at the beach find a bottle of sunblock that causes growth, arousal, and aggression. Explicit.

Caitlyn plucked a warm bottle of suntan lotion from the sand and shook it. It glorped heartily back at her.

"Hey, Sarge!" she called out to Jefferson. He was a short distance away, laying out a blue towel in the shade of a beach umbrella.

"We're off duty, Caitlyn," he reminded her. Caitlyn and Jefferson, and Brianna, who was getting the cooler from the car, worked together at the precinct. Even despite Jefferson's natural small stature and mild nature, being a mouse, he was partnered up with the two girls to keep them in line. Today, though, they were just friends hanging out on the beach.

Caitlyn corrected herself. "Whoops, sorry. Hey, Jeffy, check it out!" She held up the bottle of suntan lotion and shook it in his direction. "Free sunscreen!"

Pink and Black

A cheerleader and a goth become exaggerated versions of each other through a weird Facebook quiz. Mature.

'Find out what your Friends think about You! Stephanie Madison took this Quiz!'

Amber didn't use Facebook much, but she had an account because everyone did. Her phone had pinged when she got the email notification, which had taken her to Facebook, where she saw the ad for some quiz app. Stephanie, huh?

Amber wiggled her black-nailed thumb over the link, thinking about whether to do it. It couldn't hurt, and to be honest, she was interested in finding out what Stephanie thought of her these days. Back in middle school, they had been tighter friends, but it seemed so much easier to be friends when they were young. They had hung out, played in the yard, done sleepovers; typical little kid friend stuff.

Once they'd gotten to high school, Amber had followed her interests into alternative music, cheesy vampire novels, and finding the darkest clothes her mom would buy her. Stephanie had gone off and gotten all athletic, and by now, in her senior year, she was on the cheerleading team. So it made sense that they didn't hang out a whole lot, but they had been good friends before, so...

Ah, what the hell. Might as well give it a shot.

---

'Find out what your Friends think about You! Amber Lee Knowles took this Quiz!'

Stephanie had assumed the ring from her phone was another update from one of her group chats, but instead it was a message from Amber. Amber? Wow, she had barely even talked to her in years. Maybe she wanted to reconnect during their last year of school together?

The mirror on Stephanie's closet door caught her reflection as she glanced up and fixed her hair, then leaned on her elbows and took a look at Amber's profile. Stephanie herself was pretty close to your standard-issue, small-town cheerleader, with a figure she kept slim through daily gymnastics and cardio, and naturally wheat-blonde hair. There on the screen was Amber's profile photo, trying to look dark and mysterious, with heavy eyeliner, and her straight black hair draped over one eye. Amber's hair was natural, too—she was half-Korean on her mother's side.

Sure, they did look different, but Stephanie did her best to not let looks influence who she was friends with. She and Amber hadn't talked much, but she wasn't going to shun an old friend just cause she was a bit goth now.

Stephanie hit the button and started answering the questions the quiz asked about Amber.

Mer-Made

Poor spellcasting turns both Stella and her boyfriend into mermaids. Explicit.

Michael opened the door to his Santa Monica apartment and found candles strewn across the counters and tables. Curled runes written on sheets of printer paper were stuck to the wall with masking tape.

'Not again,' he thought.

"Stella? Are you casting a spell?" he called. He dropped his messenger bag next to the door and took a few steps toward the hall. Stella stepped out of her studio, with two more sheets of paper in her hands and a roll of masking tape around her wrist.

"It's almost ready," she said, flashing her boyfriend a smile as she passed by. With a creak of tape, she tore off enough to stick up the last two runes on either side of their TV. Stella took a seat on the sofa, then looked up at Michael expectantly.

Michael walked up behind the couch and leaned on its back. "I thought you said after the vacuum cleaner nonsense you weren't going to cast spells."

She rolled her head back, so that she was looking at him upside-down. "I've been practicing. Just small stuff, but I haven't messed up again. This isn't even a dangerous spell, it's not going to go...'vacuum cleaner'." She gave him an upside-down smile and reached up to scratch his neatly-trimmed blonde beard. "Besides, this is a spell for you."

Tales of the Strange presents: You Are What You Eat

Some bat investigates an abandoned candy factory and falls victim to its horrors. Guest starring Agouti-Rex's (murrypurry.com) characters.

Rule one of investigating the abandoned candy factory was that no one should know why Mercedes was there. Mrs. McGolly was really insistent on that point. If anyone asked, she was doing a project for school, and had never heard of Mrs. McGolly or her candy corporation. She certainly wasn't getting paid fifty dollars to take pictures of a rival company's abandoned factory.

Rule two was easy, take lots of pictures. Mercedes had a camera, done.

Rule three was weird. "While you're in there," McGolly said, poking a hoof right into Mercedes' face, "don't say 'candy'."

"Uh, why?" Mercedes asked.

"Don't worry about it, just don't say 'candy'. It's my business, not yours." McGolly slapped a ten-dollar bill into Mercedes's hand and swept the bat right out of her office. "Remember—you weren't here," she said, and then ended the conversation by closing the door.

Later that day, Mercedes stood outside the run-down factory, with a camera in one hand and nothing else. She'd been trying to think of alibis for taking pictures, and she had hit on a good one by accident: She was doing a paper on, like, why McGolly's company had opened a brand-new candy factory, when Failtown already had an abandoned candy factory just sitting around.

Actually asking McGolly a question like that would lose her that fifty bucks, though.