Adventure Time Trouble In Lumpy Space Novels & Stories

I opened my eyes to a dark, windowless room. Overhead, a voice crackled from the speakers. “Welcome to The Judgment Room. Each player will state the crime they committed. Do not lie. After all six of you speak, you will vote. The one with the most votes will be eliminated. “The game starts now.” In this deadly game, whose sins weighed the least?

In the fifth year of being exiled to a deserted island in the international waters by Chelsea Herrera, I finally learn how to stay extremely humble. When Chelsea brings Derrick Carpenter, a university student she keeps, and a Doberman to the island just to pick me up, I get down on my knees as though it's the most natural thing to do in the world. Then, I wipe the sand off Derrick's shoes with my sleeve before bending over to use my back as their stepstool. "From now on, you're in charge of taking care of Ricky. He and Dobey are your family now." I nod with a small smile. After Chelsea has usurped my family's businesses and forced my parents to jump off a building, she chooses to abandon me on a deserted island so that I can learn to obey her commands. She has succeeded in everything she's done. By the time I finally get to return to the familiar villa, everything there has already changed. I wake up at 4:00 am every morning in order to prepare a nice breakfast for Dobey the Doberman. After that, I groom it properly. At 9:00 am, I've prepared the outfit Derrick will be wearing for the day. Then, I'll travel to a boxing gym so that I can serve as his human punching bag. At night, I prepare some alcohol and snacks while listening to Derrick and his friends laughing at me. They then proceed to discuss how to tame me, the formerly arrogant scion hailing from the ex-richest family in the elite society.

After I started working at the zoo, I was added to a group chat called “A Hundred Ways to Kill a Human.” Every member had an animal as their profile picture. At first, I thought it was some quirky staff group. I even found it kind of cute. That was, until I realized they were discussing how to eat me. Pedro the Parrot: [The new human has beautiful eyes. I can’t wait till Christmas. I want to peck them out right now!] George the Gorilla: [Relax. There’ll be many visitors during Christmas. We’ll have more eyeballs than we can eat! Also, I’m calling dibs on her thigh.] Thor the Tiger: [Nobody’s taking her head, right? That’s mine.] Tucker the Elephant: [I’m a vegetarian, but I can crush her bones to dust.]

It was only after my boyfriend, Julian Mercer, received his HIV diagnosis that he finally understood what his childhood friend, Luna Sullivan, truly meant by "life and death together". In my previous life, after Julian collapsed from anemia, Luna insisted on donating blood to him. I fought with everything I had to stop it. I told him that Luna had already contracted HIV. If she donated blood to him, he would be infected as well. He refused to believe me. Luna cried and swore that she had never even had a boyfriend. To prove her innocence, she climbed onto the rooftop and pretended she was going to jump to her death. However, she slipped. She missed her footing and fell to her death from the building. To avenge her, Julian conspired with our classmates to kidnap me. He strangled me with his own hands. I still remember his furious roar. "This is all because of your slander! You killed Luna! I will make you pay for her life!" When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the blood transfusion. I watched as Julian lay there, already receiving blood from his beloved Luna. I smiled faintly. HIV? Fine.

Seavora City, Carmoria. Nathan Ziegler's side chick, Sophie, was melting down—again. He shoved the divorce papers at me. "Just sign. It's for show. Gotta keep her calm." I clutched my dress, gave a small nod, and signed. No fuss. No scene. As I turned to leave, one of his buddies snorted, "Joelle's way too obedient. Bet she'd fetch the divorce decree if you asked." Nathan lit a cigarette, smirking. "Wanna bet?" To them, I was still the silent pushover. The girl who'd cry in court but still do what she's told. Trade one paper for another—marriage for divorce. I stared at my phone. The message I'd received earlier: [Why don't you just marry me?] I typed back: [Okay.]

There's a saying that circulates among anglers: "If a dead fish still takes the bait… reel in and leave." The day I went fishing with my dad, we ran into exactly that. What unsettled me was not the fish. It was the look on my dad's face: an excitement that felt completely wrong. Then a message flashed across my livestream, and a chill ran down my spine. [Get out. Now. Your dad is about to trade your life for the one who died in this river a year ago.]

I sell handmade fortune cookies in the park. Each one costs $10,000, yet every day, people fight to buy them. That’s because what I sell are fertility fortune cookies. Eat one, and you can get pregnant instantly. You can even choose what kind of child you want. Slip in a double-yolk charm, and you’ll have twins. Seal in a perfect test paper, and your child will be a genius. A spayed female dog ate one and ended up pregnant with six puppies. Someone buried a fortune cookie beneath a withered tree, and by the next day, it had burst into full bloom. I sell fortune cookies to both women and men—anyone who wants to get pregnant. I turn no one away. Even animals, if they so much as make a sound, I’ll feed them. Until one day, a young woman, Mara Kessler, who had been standing in line from dawn until dusk, finally stepped forward and timidly said she wanted to buy a fortune cookie. I only took one look at her, then staggered back in terror. "I can’t sell to you. Leave. Now."

My daughter, Elise Dolton, got sick, so I rushed over to take care of her. The moment I stepped inside, a rotten stench hit me right in the face, so I offered to help clean the place up. Her roommates' faces dropped right away. "What smell, Mrs. Dolton? The place is fine." "If you think it's such a dump, then have Elise move out. Don't come in here acting like you're better than all of us. We're not putting up with that!" Even Elise shoved me impatiently. "If you’re here to visit, then just act like it. Stop making a scene and embarrassing me, okay?” They were all college roommates, splitting rent on a run-down unit in an old complex. When I went in, I noticed them gathered around a pot of spicy stew. The room was thick with steam and smoke, but it still couldn't cover that awful stench. Strangely, none of them seemed to notice it. Had something gone wrong with my sense of smell? That night, the smell was so overwhelming that I couldn't fall asleep. In the end, I realized the odor was coming from Elise herself. I hurried her into the bathroom and scrubbed her down over and over, but the smell didn't fade at all. It stayed just as strong. With no other option, I called a cleaner, planning to disinfect the entire place inside and out. But Elise's roommates felt offended and started arguing with me. In the chaos, someone shoved me. My temple slammed into the sharp corner of the coffee table, and I died on the spot. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the moment I first walked through the door. The stench rushed at me all over again...

While we were eating, Tristan Shaw suddenly set down his fork and looked at me. “Who is Fatcat Cook?” The fork in my hand froze midair. My heart skipped a beat. Fatcat Cook. That name was someone Lena Moore and I made up on a drunken night. We had agreed that if anything ever went wrong and we couldn’t reach each other, we would use “Fatcat Cook” as a code. No one else knew that name existed. Only the two of us. And Lena had been missing for a full month. She said she was going to Valoria for a trip. Then she never came back. I looked at Tristan’s calm, almost indifferent face, and felt my heart sink. How did he know that name?

Divorced and finally freed from all strings that were attached to her ex-husband, Robyn takes on the adventure of moving on from her past and learning to love all over again just to be brought right back into the dark space she's been trying to avoid.