The Future at the Beach:
*
Flint turned on the temporal watch. He, Chase, and Zill stood on the beach, wet sand sticking to their skin.
"Should I show you the time Grew-Ella was chained? Or maybe I'll show you what Zill did to Junior," Flint said.
"I wasn't involved with that." Chase covered his head with his hands as tears stung his eyes. "Stop showing us this. I know what we did, and I'm ashamed."
"But you forced her to wear a crown in the mock workhouse beauty contest," Flint said bitterly.
"Zill planned that." Chase turned and watched the ocean.
Sand, ivy, and wind formed into Ida's body. She turned into flesh.
"Ida, is that you?" Dot asked. "Quig, do you see Ida?"
"I've seen her before. She isn't dead, but transformed," he said.
"How is Cutter? How is Grew-Ella?" Dot asked.
"Cutter has ascended. He is happy with how you're raising his son, but Grew-Ella isn't supposed to be there with him. It isn't her time." Ida hugged her.
"How can I help her?" Dot asked.
Ida spoke to both Dot and Quig. "What if I told you it wasn't too late? Time hasn't locked, and while Flint can't save Cutter, he can help you save Grew-Ella. I brought him here. This is the future." She motioned to Colonel Ghoul Flint.
Others standing on the beach saw Flint, but they didn't notice Chase and Zill.
"Ida, I'd do anything to save Grew-Ella." Quig's crushed wing twitched, and he collapsed. The wet sand covered him.
His sister held him up.
Ida spoke to Ghoul Flint. "Give my brother your other temporal watch. If not him, then Dot or me."
Flint slipped a watch around Yoleta's wrist. "If Quig dies, his children won't have a father. And you don't want to know what'll happen to Snake Boy if Dot doesn't raise him."
"The time traveler has to be me," Yoleta said. "There are so many regrets I have over the Kill Home, and I used Junior's activism for my gain."
Flint looked at the temporal watch, and it glimmered. "The watch has chosen her."
"Could I save Lana or?" Yoleta asked.
Ida shook her head, 'no,' and light formed around her wings. "Their deaths are locked, but time fluctuates around Grew-Ella. Leave in an hour to catch Chase kissing Zill. Convince yourself to kick Zill out of the hospital without giving too much away. You'll possess incomplete memories."
The Future Past:
*
Zill and Chase found themselves fixated on their future forms in an alley by the teacher's apartment with a knife. "You won't find which workhouse your son is in!"
She grabbed herself by the hair and slapped herself in the face. "You're a selfish brat, not Grew-Ella."
Her doppelgänger slugged her.
Wounds and scratches formed on her mirror self's forehead.
"This is my fault." Zill felt herself shift again. "I fed into Chase because I wanted to hurt my sister for being born deformed. It wasn't her fault."
She and Chase spent days going back and forth between space and time, watching Grew-Ella in the workhouse, but each time they ended up on Colonel Ghoul Flint's spaceship.
They clutched the paperwork and signed it in Flint's office.
His walls were covered in posters of old-time musicals.
Flint placed a large bowl of multicolored candy buttons and spiced drops on his black desk.
Yoleta handed Chase his small daughter, and he wept, but the girl slept.
She guided them into a movie room.
A live feed of Grew-Ella and Quig appeared in Karen's dining room. Grew-Ella couldn't hide her expanding belly as two tiny boys developed within her.
Betsy and her new dragon cousin danced behind them, playing with cardboard swords.
"Flint said that it was now safe to talk to you, is it?" Quig asked.
"Who beat you?" Grew-Ella asked her sister.
"I fought my worst demons." Zill's wing wrapped around herself and Chase.
Special Thanks
Thanks to every reader who read, liked, or commented on my novel, Conform or Suffer.
You don't know how much your comments mean to me.
Janky Fluffy
Special Thanks
Andrea, James, Liza, Kathy, Zemi, Samantha, Vicky, Lois, Opal, Muse, Pixie, Emilia, Arabella, Candance, and thanks to my editor.
Dedication: For my family. If you recognize anyone in this fictionalized novel, you have a strange imagination.
Thanks to my Wattpad friends. Some friends might be double-listed.
@Aravis-Brightspell
@WendyyWolfe
@Creativemind703
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Conform or Suffer: The Darkness of Beauty
RomanceThis is the Wattpad version novel version. Each book is a stand-alone but also an alternative version of the book. They can all be read independently. Though The Darkness of Beauty and Conform or Suffer: A Romance will have the same opening chapter...
