Count The Ways

Why if it isn’t Millie Fitzsimmons!” a deep, booming voice said. In the darkness, it was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from, but it felt like it was all around her. “Silly Millie, Chilly Millie, the ice-cold Goth girl who’s always dreaming of Death. Am I right?”

“Who are you?” Millie demanded. “Where are you?”

Above her, a large pair of terrifying blue eyes rolled backward, looking down into the chamber.
“I’m right here, Silly Millie. Or maybe I should say you’re right here. You’re right inside my belly. In the belly of the beast, I guess you could say.”

“So … you’re the bear?” Millie wondered if she had fallen asleep after
she climbed inside the old robot, if she was dreaming. This was all too weird.

“You can just think of me as a friend. Your friend till the end. We just
have to decide if the end is going to be slow or quick.” w

“I—I don’t understand.” The space was starting to feel claustrophobic.
She tried the door.

It wouldn’t budge.
“You’ll understand very soon, Chilly Millie. You Goth girls crack me
up … all dressed like professional mourners, so serious all the time.

Daydreaming about Death like he’s the lead singer of some boy band and
that when you meet him it’ll be love at first sight. Well, Merry Christmas,
Millie!

I’m going to make your dreams come true. It’s not a question of
‘if’ but ‘how.’ ”
What was happening? She was definitely awake. Had she lost her mind,
descended into madness like a character in an Edgar Allan Poe story?

“I—
I’d like to get out now,” she said. Her voice sounded small and shaky.
“Nonsense!” the voice said. “You’re going to stay in here, all nice and cozy, while we work out how you’re going to have your dream date with Death.

The choice is all yours, but it will be my pleasure to present you
with some options.”
“Options of how to die?” Millie felt the cold, metallic taste of fear in
the back of her throat. Fantasies about death were one thing, but this felt
like reality.

                                         * * *

Millie. What a stupid name. She was named after her great-grandmother
Millicent Fitzsimmons. But Millie wasn’t the kind of name you saddled a person with. A cat or a dog, maybe, but not an actual human.
Millie’s black cat was named Annabel Lee after the beautiful dead girl
in the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which meant that Millie’s cat officially had
a better name than she did.

But, Millie thought, it made sense that her parents would come up with
such a ridiculous name. She loved them, but they were ridiculous people in
a lot of ways, flighty and impractical, the kind of people who would never
think how hard elementary school would be for a little girl whose name
rhymed with silly.

Her parents flitted from job to job, from hobby to
hobby, and now, it seemed, from country to country.
Over the summer, Millie’s dad had been offered a one-year teaching job
in Saudi Arabia. Her mom and dad had given her a choice: She could go
with them (“It’ll be an adventure!” her mom kept saying) and be
homeschooled.

Or she could move in with her kooky grandpa for the year
and start at the local high school.
Talk about a lose-lose situation.
After lots of crying and raging and sulking, Millie had finally chosen
the Kooky Grandpa Option over being stranded in a foreign country with
her well-meaning but unreliable parents.

And so now Millie was here in her strange little room in Grandpa’s big,
strange Victorian house. She had to admit, the idea of living in an old,
sprawling 150-year-old house, where surely someone had to have died at
some point, suited her well enough. The only problem was that it was
filled to the brim with her grandparents’ junk.
Millie’s grandpa was a collector. Lots of people have collections, of
course—comic books or gaming cards or action figures.