Pieridae Sims

This is a story done for a short story contest at TMH. I’m housing it here for posterity.

The rules:

Round 1

Your widowed mother announces that her boyfriend for the past 2 years is moving in with her.
He’s  always seemed to be a nice guy but after he moves in, you notice something odd about him.

- Start and finish the story, give us conclusion to the story
- Answer these question in the TEXT:  How’s the relationship with you mother and do you live with her? What is the odd thing about the boyfriend? What do you do? And if appropriate, how did you find out?
- Ca. 800 words + 5 pictures
- After the story, tell us what genre you want next, you can’t pick the same genre twice.
- Main character must wear a Nouk hairstyles, and only Nouk hairstyles through the story

category: Sci Fi

The Strangest Day

“Roger? Wake up! Mom wants you in the kitchen!”

Andie was seriously tempted to slap her mom’s boyfriend right in the face. Maybe then he would leave, and things would go back to normal.  The guy wasn’t right.  This staring off into space was just one of Roger’s many irritating habits…like the hours he spent in the tub, or the way he would look at you as if…ugh. She used to be able to talk to her mom about anything.  After her father had been killed in the Great War of the States, everything changed.  Then her mom met Roger and now, well, now they didn’t talk about anything.

“Roger is a Senator,” her mom would say, “Roger is a good man. ”  Andie used to like Roger too, before he’d moved in, before the weirdness began.  In a few months it won’t matter, she thought, then I can move out.  But Andie didn’t want to move out.  Under the newest laws of the Senate, young adults had to live at home to attend University, otherwise they were required to go to work with the State.  Andie didn’t want a boring state job.  She had to accept that fate. Or. Get. Rid. Of. Roger.  She wandered idly into the kitchen, where Roger and her mom stood discussing dinner.

“…don’t remember that,” her mom was saying.

“Are you all right, Mom?”

“I”m fine dear. I just seem to have forgotten about an important dinner.”

“I don’t remember a…”

“Beatrice, you need to go get ready,” Roger said, cutting Andie off.

“I need to go get ready,” replied Beatrice, turning to leave the kitchen.

Andie sat and half-heartedly contemplated eating an apple.  Something was not right.  She was still trying to sort out these doubts when her mother and Roger emerged, dressed for the evening.  Andie watched the two leave and decided there was only one thing to do. S he was going to follow her mother and find out who Roger was, once and for all.

The Senator’s Club was a massive building, well protected by streetlights and the State Guardians.  Andie knew her only chance was to slip in through an open window, which unfortunately was located several feet above her head.  Moving carefully through the shadows, she took a running start and launched herself into the air.  She hoisted herself through the tiny opening and immediately fell into a urinal.  Andie didn’t have time to be disgusted for long.  As the men’s room door opened, she scrambled to hide herself in an empty stall.

Peering through the stall’s opening, Andie realized the man was Roger.  He was being weird again, dunking his head under the running water.  As she watched, her wonder quickly changed to horror.  Roger’s eyes began to glow, and his skin shimmered green underneath the florescent lights.  Andie stifled a gasp.  Roger was some kind of mutant lizard!

Andie followed him out of the bathroom, determined to expose him to her mother, only to find the restaurant filled with Senators and their dates.  On every table sat a shining engagement ring.  The men’s eyes glowed with the same penatrating yellow Andie had just seen on Roger. Woman after woman took her ring, and began to morph before Andie’s eyes.  She desperately scanned the room.  There in the corner, sat her mother, reaching for the ring.  Andie didn’t think, she simply moved.  She sped through the dining room and grabbed her mother’s hand.  As the ring fell to the floor, Andie pulled her mother out of the club.

“Andie what are you doing?”  Beatrice pulled free of Andie’s grip.  As her mother turned to go back, she saw.  The men were coming out of the club in full form.

“Run!” Andie screamed.  She led and her mother, now unquestioning, followed.  Andie turned down an alleyway and ran full speed into the train depot.  She grabbed her mother’s purse and bought tickets for a boarding train.  As the two settled into their seats, and felt the train begin to pull out of the station, Andie breathed a sigh of relief.  On the seat next to her, her mother begin to cry herself to sleep.

Several hours later, Andie woke her mother as the train rolled to a halt.

“Where are we?” Beatrice asked.

“Alaska,” said Andie. S he looked at her mother’s quizzical expression.  “Well,” she continued.  ”It was the only place I could think of that lizards can’t survive.”

After a long and tense moment, laughter began to roll out of Beatrice.  She laughed so hard, and so long, Andie wondered if her mother had gone mad.  But when Beatrice stopped laughing, she took her daughter’s hand.

“Thank you, Andie. You saved me when I couldn’t save myself.”

Andie smiled, and the two walked arm-in-arm into the Alaskan sunrise.

NOTE: The sims were all made by me, with beautiful CC from various places and of course Nouk’s hair. The train depot in the last pic is an amazing community lot made by crocobura at MTS2.