Night

Gemma tries something different tonight.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Gemma wasn't quite sure why.

Dark and stormy was the result of an intact male goat. She had used a pheasant, which should've brought a slightly breezy but warm night.

The storm meant Ron would stay indoors, so there was no chance of her being able to confess her feelings for him; she had rejected him a week ago and had realized her mistake after a couple of days. Ron was an incredibly sweet and intelligent boy. Even if he wasn't the handsomest, he certainly had his own charm.

She looked through the book again. Her face flushed red when it occurred to her that the ingredients weren't as interchangeable as she had previously thought: one could either boil an intact goat's blood with rosemary or a pheasant's blood with oregano to create a stormy night, whereas a breezy night was created by boiling the intact goat's blood with oregano or the pheasant's blood with rosemary.

She quickly put the book back on her mother's shelf and surveyed her room. Avian organs were heaped atop a thick layer of newspaper. A crow had flown in through the open window to peck at the pheasant's nearly hollow corpse.

Gemma began formulating the best plan to clean it all up before her parents got back when she heard the car pull into the driveway.

"Today just isn't my day," she muttered under her breath.