At Lang’s Cleaner, Mrs. Lang stood behind her counter. She was tallying up receipts while idling working a crossword puzzle. She became dimly aware of someone approaching the front door of her business. She shuffled her paperwork together, jotting down a figure on the notepad beside them and looked up. A young woman was struggling with the door, shuffling sideways to swing it wide open hampered by an enormous bundle of clothing gripped against her. She wedged the door open enough to scoot herself in backwards with a grunt of effort and swung around to face the counter, red faced from the exertion. Considering the bundle of clothing she

Charlie sprung from bed, ready for the day. No work, no family around and no obligations, she was ready to have a day to herself. She threw on a loose shirt and shorts. “Hopefully not for long,” she thought as she tucked her black wool cap into her back pocket, and headed for downstairs. A quick breakfast and she’d be on her way to whatever adventure the day held for her. With ideas swimming in her head as to what to do, she opened the door to her room only to notice a folded note taped to the outside of her door. She pulled the note free, unfolding to read it. “Charlie, I need you to do a couple errands for me…

As Doctor had promised, the medication and eating of numerous small snacks during the days had helped her out greatly with the dreaded episodes of morning sickness. Now into her second trimester she had encountered her second surprise. "So it's suppose to be all bulgy like that?" She prodded at her middle that had gone from a small curious swell to a prominent bump on her middle that rose beneath her navel. "Yes Natalie, for the 127th time. And it will get larger." Peter commented as he measured the dimensions of her growing uterus using a sonic probe. "The two fetuses will continue to grow, along with increases with placental mass, amnioti

Unit 667AB3110afa, otherwise identified as 'Abbie' unofficially as denoted by the stenciled black lettering its yellow plasteel chassis patiently double checked its broadcast antennas status and broadcast his message again. "Unit 667AB3110afa - Contact operations HQ. Zone 1AA completed. Awaiting new instructions." The ready light, there purely for the purposes of human observers of whom there were none, flashed twice and Abbie confirmed that the message was sent. As the previous 27 sent that day, there was no response to request number 28. Abbie's blockish six wheeled form lay in the midst of a clearing that had been cut for lumber the prev

Derrick considered the question carefully, “a maternity store of some sort?” Keeping her attention to driving Charlie shook her head slightly. She smugly grinned, “No, you’d think they would be a good place to go, but usually not.” “Alright, I give up?” he shrugged. “Guess!” Charlie insisted. “I did, I got it wrong.” Derrick smiled helplessly at Charlie. “You only took one guess! Alright, a clue,” Charlie narrowed her eyes conspiratorially, “it’s ironically named.” Derrick stared blankly back at Charlie in the driving seat. “Ironically

Jon turned his Camaro down the street that his house was on with a squeal of tires. He smirked at the sound, undoubtedly imagining how cool he looked. Derrick couldn’t really say anything about Jon’s beater of a car since he didn’t have one and was reliant on the older boy for rides. Summer vacation was here and he didn’t want to get stuck bumming rides from his parents or sister so he just nodded with a smile when Jon looked over to him. Jon seemed satisfied by the wordless exchange and then broke into conversation mid sentence, “It’s going to be a good summer man. I got some work with a construction comp

Charlie huffed blowing a strand of hair from her face and slouched with an elbow on the counter. The stool pinched her butt randomly where it was cracked when she shifted in a certain as yet undefined way. The kiosk was smelled heavily of pretzels which she initially found pleasant but now haunted her dreams. It was cramped with the appliances to produce and bake them, giving her barely enough room to squeeze around them under ideal conditions. It was the end of week two of her summer internment at the  ‘Pretzelmaniacal’ booth at the local mall. Week one consisted of her brief training and was the longest period of time she had s

Charlie squirmed to the side. There was a pain right beneath the left side of her ribcage where something was poking. Someone. She stopped walking and grimaced for the third time, pressing her fingers against a distorted swell on the left side of her gravid middle. Rubbing the offending spot she balanced herself by holding on to a bike rack. "Ow, quit it." She lifted the hem of her shirt over her swollen middle and looked at it critically. It was annoyingly lopsided. Everything had been going fine up until a few minutes ago when she happened upon someone to join the original guest she had snagged earlier that morning. The second one seemed t