Just One Kiss

The day her brother tore his own head off and didn't die was the day Johanna first suspected that all was not right with the world. 

Charlie seemed to be experiencing some sort of inner struggle: muttering to himself and pacing in circles, stopping from time to time to cover his ears and shake his head vigorously. They were in the kitchen, and Johanna had just finished brewing a pot of coffee. Charlie reached toward the cupboard above, like he was going to take out a mug. Instead of opening the cupboard, he placed his hand on the back of his neck, then turned to face Johanna.

"Must feed," he said. He grabbed his head and pulled, bending his neck forward at an impossible angle. "Must... feeeed!" he grunted, twisting and pulling until Johanna swore his neck had stretched an extra six inches.

"Charlie! Stop that! What are you doing?"

"UNGH!" Charlie replied, and with a mighty tug, he pulled his head from his body. Instead of spurting blood the way a recently decapitated body should, his neck began to heal before her eyes, transforming from torn flesh into some kind of elongated sucking appendage. The 'lips' of the sucker smacked together toward Johanna as if blowing her a sloppy kiss, then it gurgled,

"Fleebb."

The Charlie-thing turned its head upside down. The sucker groped around, lips opening and closing until it found the severed end of the neck. The sucker attached itself to the neck and made a sound like a Shop-Vac cleaning up vomit as it slurped the contents out of the skull. Charlie's face sagged like a deflated balloon.

Johanna screamed.

The sucker detached from the withered head and reached toward the sound of Johanna's voice, smacking the empty air in front of it.

"Mup. Grackle. Pleebbb. Fleeg," the monster said, dropping the head on the floor and taking a step in Johanna's direction.

She stumbled backward, tripping over a chair. Charlie's body turned toward the sound, tentacle searching, lips opening and closing. Johanna fled out the front door and ran down the street without looking back.

When she finally stopped to catch her breath, she dared to look over her shoulder and saw with relief that nothing was chasing her. Panting, she leaned against a nearby fence.

Now what? Where to go?

Mom!

She needed to tell her mother what had happened. Salon La Vie, where her mother was a stylist, was about six blocks away. Johanna checked the time on her cell phone. It was 2:00. Mom was on shift for another two hours. There was plenty of time to get there and warn her, and then they could pick up her younger sister Zoe from school together. She had lost one sibling already; she intended to make sure the rest of her family was safe.

Johanna broke into a jog, grateful for the gym membership she had gotten as a Christmas gift. She covered the six blocks easily and before long she dashed through the glass doors of Salon La Vie. The neon lights, gleaming chrome and mirrors and pounding techno music – it was like entering an ammonia-scented nightclub.

Johanna looked down the long line of stylist's stations and did not see her mother.

"Can I help y'all?" the redhead behind the counter chirped. A nametag pinned to her overstuffed leopard print blouse identified her as Trixie.

"I'm Jillian Sykes' daughter. Is she here?"

"Oh, hi, honey! You're Jillie's girl! So nice to meet y'all." Trixie flashed Johanna a too-wide grin that made her look like a horse wearing purple lip-gloss. "I'm so sorry, sweetpea, but y'all missed your Mama. She left during her lunch hour."