Cupcakes vs. Brownies by Scott King

Author:Scott King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Majestic Arts

Chapter 11

Karim smacked into a hefty sand pile and bounced off it. He tumbled down its side, rolling, and at its base, slammed into a decrepit column. He lay there, unmoving, waiting for a sharp pain in his shoulder to subside.

Gumdrops, scattered like fungus, grew on the column beside him and emitted a faint green phosphorescent light. The room had high ceilings and a rectangular shape. Dotted throughout it were rows of cookie columns covered in the gumdrop fungus. He figured the room must have been a great hall or maybe even a church. The wall nearest to him had sunken in, allowing the yellow sands of the desert to spill in.

Karim walked the length of the room and discovered that a pool of milk filled a third of it. Following a trickling sound, he pinpointed a tiny spot on the far wall where the milk dripped one drop at a time.

Returning to where he fell, Karim scanned the rubble. Bus-sized blocks of cookies had crumbled and splintered everywhere. He circled the pile, and on his second lap he spotted a tendril of hardened gum. Getting on his hands and knees, he cleared away the sand and uncovered the rest of the gum. Still trapped in its coils was the bottle.

He peeled the gum off the bottle, getting most of it. A sliver of gum stayed stuck to the rotting cork, which he dared not remove for fear of breaking it. Satisfied with the job, he stuck the bottle into the center pocket of his hoodie and zipped it shut.

Up until that moment, Karim had felt as if something heavy had been sitting on his chest, making it hard for him to breathe, but now it was gone. He took a deep gulp of the musty air, savoring it. He had the bottle. There was still a chance that he could stop Zimmah and fix everything.

A breeze stirred the cookie sands at the base of the rubble pile and pelted the back of Karim’s jeans. He watched as the billowing sands shifted, forming an ankle-high dune. The dune cracked, and a beam of sand shot into the air. More sand floated from the ground, forming a tornado.

The outer bands of the tornado tore into a gumdrop-covered column, grinding it down to a nub. It then shifted, eating into the rubble pile. The more the tornado devoured, the larger it grew. Soon it pecked at the high, arching ceiling.

Abruptly, the sands stopped whirling and fell like rocks. Behind them stood a monster. The beast had a bulky body, like that of a rhinoceros, but its legs were gangly like those of a grasshopper. It stood on four legs, and its ridged back reached seven feet tall. Its flesh was a doughy white, but its stomach glowed a fiery orange, like a marshmallow that had been too close to a hot coal. Dashed across its body were patches of graham crackers. A chocolate exoskeleton held the monstrosity together.

The monster lowered its head to look at Karim.

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