Don't forget to stop by Anne-girl's blog to learn more about the June Crusade!
To be blunt, Criminal, Like Jellybeans was spurred on just yesterday as I was browsing Pinterest. Nice site, that. Tons of inspiration. But I digress...
La inspiration:
Snippet first, just to make thing different.
“I'm sorry, 6-1-2,” was all
the guard said before he shut me in. “But this is justice.”
The door slammed, echoing
fiercely in the small, dark chamber. He hadn't bothered with the
lights, and I was in no mood to flick them on. The detaining room was
boring and cold, anyway; why would I want to view it? Most things
looked better in the dark, where a thick blackness swallowed lies and
secrets, hiding them away so that the day could never expose them. I
knew.
I moved to the low cot and sat,
pulling my knees up to my face. With my arms wrapped around my legs,
the hard world seemed that much farther away. I was the master of
myself, and as long as I knew that I was in control, everything would
be fine.
But I wasn't in control. No,
here at last, the master assassin, Agent 6-1-2, was done for; caught,
locked up, and waiting for a life sentence that was sure to come
within the next forty-eight hours. I'd been in jails and other
courtrooms before, but that had always been in disguise, me acting as
someone else, never myself. I'd always seen them from a different
viewpoint, and now here I was – stuck behind the bars I'd so often
gazed upon from the reverse side. After all those years of blood and
deceit, Agent 6-1-2 was put away for good.
That's
an optimistic attitude, I
grumbled to myself. Agent
6-1-2 has pulled through greater obstacles. This one setback won't
take her out forever... will it?
I
groaned. You're
talking about yourself in third person again, 6-1-2. Why can't you be
just like normal people? Normal people refer to themselves as I
and me.
With a sigh, I dropped my arms
and allowed myself to fall onto my back on the narrow cot. “Who am
I fooling?” If I'd landed in jail a few years ago, I'd have thrown
myself into the guards, pounded them for all I was worth, snatch as
many firearms as I could get my hands on, and do whatever it took to
get out of there. But now... no, now I was a nobody. An agent, sure,
but an agent no one cared about. One that was cheaper than a can of
tuna at the grocery store.
The thought forced a rough
laugh up my throat. The hardened criminal was now on the same level
as dead fish.
“Some criminal,” I
muttered.
“Like jellybeans?”
Blurb:
Agent
6-1-2 has spent her whole life running from her past, and now she's
so different no one would ever recognize her. She's made a name for
herself with her wits, her stealth, and her gun. No one would dare to
call her anything other than a master assassin, and she enjoys what
she'd call “little tasks” – assignments given by some of the
world's top villains. It's an exciting life... until the master
assassin gets caught. Agent 6-1-2 does not like jail. Nor does she
approve of her new cell mate – a six year old girl named Alice.
Alice has spent her whole
life locked behind the relentless iron bars. She doesn't know her
crime, and no one seems able to explain it to her. No one in the
world would stoop to befriend her, but Alice doesn't mind. Life could
be worse, and the Chief is kind enough; who else would let her watch
Disney movies, eat popcorn, and listen to musicals while in jail? At
least, he does when he remembers she's still there.
The last thing Agent 6-1-2
wants to do is spend her life sentence locked in the same cell as
Alice. And that's only before Alice shows her the portal to her
imagination – a place where people break out into random songs,
dragons plague the land, and candy is illegal. Agent 6-1-2 knew she
was a criminal, but she never knew she was criminal like jellybeans.
And yes, Alice was named for that iconic character who travels to Wonderland. In a sense, this story is kinda based on that, too.
God bless!
