Mimi's Demons

Chapter 98: Evil Goes on Vacation

Winter passed. Mimi got a lot of praise for her strange, grotesque drawings from Mrs. Bloomfield and drew more with demons looking out from the snow, or the snow turning into monsters that were all icicle teeth and claws and drippy, melting skin.

Duke took one look at them and said "You don't like winter, do you?" Mimi couldn't say no, so he drove her to a private airplane and flew her to some beach that should have had more people other than Omen, Kavya, and the Cromwell dorks, but didn't. It took Mimi a full day to register that she'd just been on a plane, had been forced to leave her precious kitty behind, touched sand that wasn't in a box, and seen the ocean for the first time in her life in which she just sat in the sun and stared.

Juli did a good enough job luring her back to life by throwing seaweed at her head. Before he could be killed by Duke, Mimi had already dragged his gangly fourteen-year-old body back into the surf and dunked him. Both Omen and Duke were ridiculously proud. She'd taken to her strength training well.

Juli's dad just laughed.

Kavya kept her well slathered in designer sunblock so she didn't sunburn. Juli, however, crisped like a crab, and Mimi had a few choice words for his dad while Juli moaned in a cool, aloe vera bath. Travis Cromwell let her, even going so far as to kneel on the floor with his head bowed.

"He's fourteen, kitten, it's Juli's fault for not thinking of sunblock," Duke said at length when Mimi's guilt trip trailed into dinner.

"Juli's skin medicine makes him extra prone to sunburn, and he's a white cracker dork that might as well be ginger! He could have at least reminded him!"

Duke flinched. "Cracker—where did you learn to talk like that?"

Mimi gave him her now trademarked flat look. "You picked me up off the street, Papa."

Travis Cromwell had giggled like a girl. Omen had snorted, just to be elbowed by his wife.

Once she was done with Cromwell, Mimi kept passing by the bathroom door where Juli withered, no matter what anyone said, until Duke kicked Cromwell in there with the order to slather his son in enough aloe vera and burn cream to preserve a corpse. Juli's moans of pain turned to shrieking protests ("I'm fourteen fucking years old, dad! This is sexual harassment!" "Welp, shouldn't have whined like a baby, then, you've gotten the boss involved.").

And that ended that episode. Mimi lost her beach playmate and had to entertain herself with all the tide pools and sea life she could see through the crystal blue waters, as well as the tropical life edging the shore. This worked pretty well. Well enough that she figured her dad being a boring beached whale with the other adults should join in for their mental health.

Duke didn't take well to learning Omen could throw her farther than him. He was punished with having to check up on the languishing Juli back at the beach house—which, in Mimi's opinion, couldn't be called a beach house. It was more like a beach beast with five master rooms, each paired with their own bathroom suite and a kitchen fancy and big enough to feed a horde of royalty. Thankfully, their mansion back home gave her some immunity to being blinded by wealth.

And seafood. Mimi had never tried seafood in her life. It had always been way to expensive. The closest she'd gotten was tuna.

She liked it. She liked it a lot. It was way better than the weird lemon fish they'd had back home or the occasional shrimp. This was fresh caught crab boiled in sea water, clams dug out of the beach with Omen in the morning, seaweed wrapped kimchi, and various lifeforms she forgot the names of but happily baked alive on a grill and ate with BBQ sauce. And apparently sushi with raw fish was really, really good.

"I'm gonna die of parasites, aren't I?" she said above her forth piece of sashimi.

"No," said Duke, worn out for some reason. This was a vacation, shouldn't adults be the most energetic of them all?

She gave him the squinty eye and asked, "Do you have any idea how many parasites are in uncooked fish?"

"Haven't died yet," he said.

"Food poisoning from raw fish is a special kind of monster."

Travis Cromwell groaned from across the table. "Miss, dear, not all of us are as brave as you. Please let me enjoy my meal."

Just because he said that. "Cromwell's gonna die first."

Duke snorted while Omen and Kavya chuckled.

Juli, still blistered and red, just poked sadly at his well cooked teriyaki salmon at the end of the table. His bright skin clashed with his white-blond hair and made his gray blue eyes pop.

Mimi loved it. It was a dream that put the giant Voltron, her own play surgery room, and her exotic kitten on the back seat. She decided the beach was now her favorite place and not even seeing flickers of Omen's demon slipping out of sight could take that away.

But, adults had work, so the escape from the cold eventually ended. By the time they loaded back on the plane Juli was starting to brown and peel and Papa had gotten a nice light tan.

"How did you do that?" she asked the moment they sat down in their seats and she could see their arms next to each other.

Duke, who was wearing a simple white button up shirt rather than the color monstrosity Cromwell was, smiled.

The engines revved up.

"I've got Mediterranean genes. We brown easily. I also used tanning oil instead of sunblock."

She pouted. "Dummy, making yourself sound cool first when it was just oil."

"A useful skill of presentation, kitten. You're also twelve. You don't need to tan. It's outside of your beauty plans to do so anyway."

Mimi didn't like anyone outside of Kavya mentioning her beauty regime and glared to hide how her cheeks warmed.

Duke just put a sleeping mask over his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

"Didn't you sleep enough on this trip?" If he wasn't playing with her and getting jealous of Omen, he was in some beach chair or hammock, eyes closed.

"Who said I sleep?" he said. "Even if I do, the sleep debt is never satisfied."

She pulled out her phone and Googled sleep debt before the pilot told them to turn off their phones for take off.

"That doesn't exist."

But he was seemingly already asleep as he didn't answer.

For the first time, Mimi found herself glad to be a kid if just existing as an adult was that tiring.

On the other hand, her minion's skin was cracking up so nicely.

"Juli, come here, you're nose is peeling."

"No! Way! Haven't you picked at me enough?"

"Nah, I wanna see you bleed."

"Sicko! Dad! Do something!"

"You volunteered for this."

"What?! Bastard!"

"Language," gruffed Duke.

Ah, so perhaps he didn't sleep after all.

"Boss, my kid called me bastard! Comfort me!"

"Grow up."

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Ha ha ha. Vacation? What is that?