Romeo Must Die: S.C.A.R.E. Team Vol. 1

ROMEO MUST DIE

Copyright © 2018 by Greg Stanina and Tom O'Brien

Graphic Design – Mark Bradley

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialogue, and situations in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of reprinted excerpts for the purpose of reviews.

From the journal of Mardones Hamm.

In the haze of a boredom induced reverie, I could hear the sound of a bizarre rhetoric reverberate around me. "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

This particular daydream was one I had often, wherein a bevy of various breeds of canines dressed in people clothes, the females wearing hula skirts, the males wearing swim trunks and leis, conga-lined around me to the incessant beating of a lone drum. I'm always inclined to join in the frolic, but dancing, even something as easy as a cha-cha-cha, was not my forte. Besides, I didn't exactly fit in with their ranks what with my lack of a dewclaw and all. So I merely observed, a huge grin spread across my face, because how often does a person get to witness such a spectacle?

The male baritone, which boomed from nowhere in particular, speaking in what I presumed to be some sort of medieval dialect, was new. "Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek." What in the world was he blabbering about? And who was Juliet? I could only assume that she was the object of this guy's affection and this was his attempt to woo her, enrapture her with his poetic charm.

A female voice began to speak, perhaps in response to whatever it was her romantic suitor had said, but was nearly drowned out by the vivacious barking of the dancing dogs.

Barking.

Bark.

I quickly glanced down and realized that my torso, my trunk, was literally that: The trunk of a tree. An oak tree. My skin, once delicate and soft from my pre-bedtime moisturizing routine (not that I would ever admit that out loud) was now rough and wooden like, well, like the bark of an oak tree.

I was a tree. My arms were branches. My feet, or the space below my trunk where my legs and feet should be, were roots. I tried to move, wriggling this way and that, to no avail. Because I was a tree.

What did this mean? The dancing dog troupe. The volleying rapport of two apparently star crossed lovers. Me, a tree. There had to be some sort of explanation.

I blinked my eyes and suddenly the dogs were gone, the barking silenced. In their place was a castle façade, though one made out of a sturdy cardboard rather than stone. A window was cut out at the top of one particular section of wall, behind which sat a young, blonde girl in a flowing white dress. Juliet?

At the foot of the castle wall, on bended knee, was a dapper young lad, gazing up at the young girl, his hands clasped over his heart. I was standing at the edge of the castle wall. I was a tree. Suddenly the realization hit me like a shovel to the face.

My name is Mardones "Marty" Hamm and I am one-half of the ghost-busting duo The S.C.A.R.E. Team. My brother, Tepper "Tep" Gibbons and I, are paranormal investigators. We even had a TV show that ran on the Night Terrors Network (check with your cable provider for channel and show times) where we would investigate scary goings-on, whether it be a haunted house or a spooky graveyard. Armed with an array of high-tech, paranormal investigating equipment we would embark on a 30-minute quest to determine the root of the supposed hauntings. More often than not, we simply discounted the existence of ghosts because the scary goings-on tended to be anything but otherworldly.