Chapter One

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the first book in the Henry Rider series. If you haven't read the first book, I recommend you do so here: https://www.honeyfeed.fm/chapters/80364

Chapter One

“You find yourself in an abandoned circus midway. Games, food stalls, and sideshow stages sit empty on your left and right, making a corridor that leads into the misty distance. You get the feeling—”

“Are there any of those ‘knock down the milk bottle’ games?” I asked.

Ethan lowered his notes to give me an irritated look. “Sure, I guess.”

“Rhyen goes up to one and throws the ball!”

“Seriously?” he asked with a sigh. “Fine. Roll for luck.”

“Shouldn't it be a skill check?” Jade asked.

Ethan shook his head and pointed at the handbook. “It says here that carnival games are usually rigged, so it would be a luck check.”

“But this is a circus,” I reminded him. “Not a carnival.”

“Okay, fine!” Ethan snapped. “Roll for whatever you want. I don't care!”

“Come on,” I said, shaking the twenty sided die in my fist. “Mama needs a new pair of giant shoes!”

I rolled the die, crossing my fingers as it bounced across the cardboard box we were using as a table, until it came to a stop on…

“Seventeen!” I yelled, pumping my fist. “Does that do it?”

“Yeah, you knock down all the milk bottles,” Ethan said, rolling his eyes. “As you continue down the midway, you get the feeling—”

“Wait! What did I win?”

Ethan lowered the book again. “Henry, it's an abandoned circus. There's nothing to win!”

“Oh, come on! If they left the games set up, then there has to be some prizes left over too, right?”

“Sure, yeah, Ryan—”

“Rhyen.”

“That’s what I said!”

“You spelled it wrong.”

Ethan gripped the player sheets so tightly I thought he was going to rip them in half, and glared at me. “She wins a rotten, moldy teddy bear with a colony of maggots nesting in its stomach. Are you happy?”

“Heck yeah!” I jotted my treasure down on my character sheet. “Score!”

“Now, if you're done derailing the campaign…”

“I wouldn't need to derail it if you didn't railroad us so hard.”

“I am not railroading—” Ethan began, but he was cut off when a gust of wind blasted across the rooftop, whipping our notes up into the air.

“Jalapeno shortcake!” I yelled, springing to my feet and diving for Rhyen's character sheet. I managed to nab it, but four pages of Ethan's campaign flew past me before I could react. Ethan dashed after them, snatching three out of the air and then lunging after the last one—

“Ethan, be careful!” Jade yelled.

Ethan dug in his heels, barely managing to stop before he slid right over the side of the building. He teetered on the edge for a few seconds, his arms windmilling—and then began to fall forward.

No! I thought, dashing toward him. Even before I took one step, I could tell I wasn't going to be able to reach him in time.

But then Jade was there. Appearing almost out of nowhere, she grabbed Ethan's shirt with both hands. For a second it looked like he would drag her down with him, but then she heaved backwards as hard as she could. They both collapsed on of the roof, with Ethan landing on top of Jade.

I immediately felt my face turn blue with jealousy. How come I never got any quality tackle time with Ethan?

“H- Hey,” he said with a shy little smile that made my heart skip a beat even if it wasn't directed at me. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem,” Jade replied, her face turning red.

The two of them locked eyes, and to my horror their faces began to inch toward each other…

“Jade,” I snapped, grabbing Ethan by his collar and pulling him to his feet, “is not a mattress, so quit using her as one and get back to the game!”

For a second it looked like Ethan was about to bite my head off, but then he glanced back at Jade. With a cute little blush, he slapped my hand away and brought the notes back to the box we'd been sitting around a minute ago.

“Can you remind me,” he said, sitting down on the milk crate I'd picked out just for him, “why we're doing this again?”

“Why do you need a reason?” I asked. “Bigtops and Boogeymen is the best game ever made!”

“That's debatable, and also not what I was asking.” He gestured toward the ledge he'd almost fallen off of. “I meant, why are we playing on top of a skyscraper?”

“Because this is the best place for us to get a good view of the city.” I paused, then reached down and turned up the radio we had set up next to the box. “Speaking of which…”

“...at today's 74th Annual Lobstrodamus Parade,” the announcer cheerfully announced, “where we celebrate the day we began using live lobsters as our national currency!”

“I've been living with a family of klaons for almost a year now,” Ethan muttered with a shake of his head, “and this is still the weirdest holiday I've ever heard of.”

“Weirder than Black Friday?” I asked, shuffling my character sheets back into order. “Where people trample each other for new toys less than a day after they get done celebrating being thankful for what they have?”

Ethan opened his mouth to snap at me, then closed it. “Okay, fair enough. Anyway, aren't we supposed to be watching for a maiam?”

“That's exactly what we're doing,” I answered.

“By playing BnB on top of a skyscraper, listening to someone talk about a parade we're not watching?”

I shrugged. “Lobstropolis is a huge place. If you want to try searching all of it, go right ahead. But ninety percent of the city is gathered right here. If the maiam is going to strike, it'll be somewhere nearby. We just have to wait for it to make its move.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “And you wonder why McGus calls you irresponsible.”

“Actually, I'm wondering why you're talking about that old cabbage fart instead of playing the game.” I snapped my fingers under his nose. “Chop chop, ringmaster!”

“Fine, fine,” Ethan grumbled, slapping my hand away again. “You're making your way down the midway when…”

Only half listening, I glanced over the side of the building, to where a stream of giant balloons were making their way down the street seventy stories below. Most were from shows that only aired here in the Lobstropolis dimension, but I recognized a couple of them, like Jeremy Jeroff, star of the hit cartoon Oops, I Married a Giraffe, and Justin Flinchley, Santa’s Flying Mutant Cervine from the absolutely terrible show I Applied For a Delivery Job and Got Turned Into a Flying Reindeer?!, which somehow kept getting approved for new seasons despite having a rating of negative two hundred.

I hated that show.

“And here comes my personal favorite,” the radio announcer said as a fifty foot lobster wearing a crown and a long white wizard beard drifted past, “Rich Pinch, the World's Richest Lobster! Have you folks ever wondered how that works? Like, is he using his own kids to buy groceries? Or are they…oh, I'm being advised by my producer that I should stop talking now.”

“Henry!”

I looked up at Ethan, whose face told me he was one wrong word away from throwing the entire game off the building, and me along with it.

“What do you do?” he demanded.

“I don't do anything,” I said smoothly, desperately trying to remember what he had just said. I liked BnB, I really did, but you try paying attention when there's a floating lobster kaiju passing underneath you. “Rhyen, however…”

Ethan raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“She…”

Gizzard flavored frozen yogurt, why couldn't I pay attention for more than…was it just me, or was there a pigeon nesting in Rich Pinch’s armpit?

“She, uh, pulls out her trusty warhammer, Splartacus, and attacks the…thing,” I said in as proud a declaration as I could hesitantly declare. Taking the die, I gave it another roll, then uppercut the air in front of me. “Natural twenty! What do you think of that, mothercrumpets?”

Ethan and Jade both gave me a flat look.

“Henry, it was your idea to play this while we waited,” said Jade. “If you're not going to pay attention—”

“I'm totally paying attention!” I shot back.

“Really?” Ethan asked.

“Yes, really!”

“Then would you care to explain why you just killed Yin?”

I blinked. “Say what?”

“I found a flaming seltzer bottle,” Jade said, rolling her eyes. “I was trying to give it to you, and you killed me for it.”

“Ah…right…” I said slowly, my little blue brain doing its best to come up with a valid fictional excuse. Yin was the name of Jade's character (was being the key word here) and I was playing a Hobo named Rhyen. “Clearly I was trying to…”

Luckily, I was spared from having to do any more of the dreaded thinking by Mr. Radio Announcer.

“Hey, that looks like a new balloon, ladies and gentlemen! Funny, I don't see it in any of my notes. Does anybody know what it's from? Well, whoever he is, he sure is ugly! I bet more than a few kids are going to be seeing that in their nightmares tonight.”

I perked up, darting to look over the side of the building just as a big black and white thing came floating around the corner.

“Wait a minute,” the announcer said. “Is anyone controlling that balloon?”

I drew the ping pong paddle from my belt and extended her into warhammer form. “Time to get to work, guys!”

Ethan and Jade were beside me a second later. Screams were beginning to echo up to us from the street.

“How are we going to get down there?” Ethan asked.

I hooked my arm around his. “Tally…”

He looked at me in confusion, and then his eyes widened. “No, no, no, n—”

I jumped over the edge, taking him with me.

“HOOOOOOOOO!”

NEXT CHAPTER 7/16/25