Excerpt: The World's Largest Ball of Twine (and other unexpected entries in the Adventurer's Atlas)

The living room was a disaster zone.

Granted, Boomer wasn’t the most tidy person under ordinary circumstances. His apartment was tiny, and he had a staggering amount of crap. Eleanor had once told him that he was part-magpie, for all that he loved collecting things that were shiny and interesting. Ever available surface of Boomer’s place was taken up by something, whether it was a sheaf of papers or a funky-smelling candle or some kind of power tool or a statue of a moose. The bookshelves were crammed full—so were the closets and the cupboards. Every time Dell had been over and remarked on the mess (which he’d given up on doing pretty quickly, when it became obvious that this was actually Boomer’s natural state) Boomer had always made some sort of flippant comment about knowing where everything was.

But this… this was bad. It looked like someone had let off an explosion in the living room. The curtains were torn, the bookcases were overturned, and there were bits and pieces of everything everywhere, a lot of it broken or even—Jesus—melted. Dell stared in horror at the moose statue, which was missing much of its head and upper torso, which had collected in a pool near its base. It looked like somebody had brainstormed as many different types of destruction as it was possible to do, and then set an army loose in Boomer’s living room to do all of them. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the whole place was completely spattered with incredibly tacky paint, like somebody’d let a two year-old loose.

“What the hell,” Dell said. It wasn’t really a question. “Where—is he?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Eleanor said. They spread out: the kitchen was equally trashed, the floor littered with broken plates and twisted cutlery, cabinets hanging off their hinges, splattered a rainbow of tacky colors: the bathroom door was closed, but it appeared largely untouched. Dell cautiously pushed the bedroom door open and swore.

There was no sign of Boomer. But Boomer’s bed had been set on fire, or something equally weird. It was a charred wreck—so was almost everything else in the room, and everything was covered in the same paint from the living room and the kitchen. Dell backed away, scared out of his fucking mind because, in all that wreckage, God, there was no way of knowing if Boomer was in there or not, shit—

“We need to call the cops,” Eleanor was saying. Oh, huh, she was standing next to him. When had that happened? “Dell, come on—I left my cell in the car, fuck, we need to call the cops. Boomer’s phone is probably fried or melted, fuck-”

Dell dug his phone out of his pocket with shaky hands. He opened it. He looked at Boomer’s closet, and his clothes, all of which were completely shredded into bits. Fuck.

He managed to fumble the phone into Eleanor’s hand, and then he was running for the bathroom.

---

The cops—cop—okay, Lenny, had no fucking clue. He didn’t actually come out and say that, but it was pretty much obvious, from the way he stood in Boomer’s wrecked living room with his notepad in his hands, and asked them if it was possible that this was Boomer’s idea of a prank.

“What?” demanded Dell. He was still looking a little bit green around the edges, but the anger was doing a wonderful job of sublimating the nausea.

Lenny took off his had. “Well, you know Boomer. He’s a bit of a rascal, that one. And after that little incident between you two last week… I’m just suggesting, maybe this is some sort of retaliation-”

“No way,” Eleanor interrupted, and Dell was so fucking grateful that he wanted to kiss her. She planted her hands on her hips and scowled. “A prank would be shaving Dell’s head while he slept—that’s way more Boomer’s style, anyway. Not destroying his house and all his stuff.” She was trying to keep her profanity under control, what with being in the presence of an officer of the law, but it was really fucking difficult.

Lenny held up his hands, placating. “Now, now, it was just a suggestion.” He scratched his chin and took a look around. “I’ll see who I can get in from Merryton—they have some crime lab guys, maybe we can take some samples…”

Lenny wandered into the bedroom, and his low piercing whistle kind of made Dell want to throw up again. Lenny had never been Boomer’s biggest fan in the first place—of fucking course he’d treat this like some kind of game. Eleanor followed him, making hissed comments about police work and where he could shove his crime labs.

Dell wanted to collapse in a heap, but the state of the floor prevented that. Because shit, shit. What if Boomer was—who the fuck would do this? Why? And fuck, the last time he’d seen Boomer he’d said some truly, truly shitty things, so of course Boomer would go and get himself… whatever, right after, even though Dell obviously would have cooled down and apologized, because when he’d said that he wanted Boomer gone he’d never, fuck, never meant it like this…

And, oh, huh, he was on the floor. At least he was only crouching, and not sprawled out like a cheap prom date. The paint would have been hell on his clothes, and he only really had two pairs of jeans to begin with, and maybe he should buy more. There was a sale on at one of the stores on Main, and he’d had his paycheck yesterday, and okay, yeah, he was freaking out. Fuck.

Dell shoved the heels of his hands into his closed eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he heard Officer Lenny saying something about, “A week, maybe two,” and realized that calming down was a total lost cause. He opened his eyes.

Huh. What was that blinking light?