Excerpt: Me Monty, You Amy

Leaves and branches whipped against his face, left stinging scratches all over him and tore at his clothes, but Monkey Fist didn’t even notice any of this. He was too busy glancing behind his shoulder and panting, his lungs burning with the desperate need for more air than he could give them. He didn’t look where he was going, so his running was more like stumbling along in panic and blindly seeking for safety.

Oh, no. Where was he? That rock looked awfully familiar. Had he been here before? Was he running in circles? What if he was darting straight into the arms of his horrible assailant?

“I have to get out of here,” he mumbled to himself and glanced around. Sweat was pouring down his face and his hair was falling into his eyes, making it difficult for him to see clearly. He dashed behind a large tree trunk to steady his breathing a little.

Easy now, he told himself. He was a ninja and master of Tai Shing Pek Kwar. He never panicked. He never fled in fear. He could handle this. If he just calmed down, he would find the solution to this rotten problem. Right, that was it. There was no need to act like he was a gazelle running away from a rabid cheetah.

“Honey bunny! Where are you hiding?”

Monkey Fist’s heart skipped a beat and for one terrible moment it felt like it had stopped in shock. All rational thoughts ceased to exist in his head as his legs decided that he had to get at least a thousand miles away from the source of the bubbly and high-pitched voice.

This had to have been the most dreadful day of his life. The past few weeks of hiding from a mysterious new villain who was a bit too interested in his doings had been stressful, yes, but he could have never expected that it would all culminate into this sad mess. At first he had been utterly humiliated in front of his enemies, then that… that excuse of a woman had turned out to be the mastermind behind the whole thing. The mere idea of what she desired of him made him want to throw up his lunch, but that wasn’t even the worst part.

What he hated the most was that no matter what he said or did, she didn’t seem to get it that he wasn’t interested. It made him feel like he was trying to get through a brick wall using only his head.

Now that she had turned herself into that gorilla monstrosity, it was even harder to keep his distance. She could run faster than him, she could now follow him into trees, and her strong arms made him feel like a nut forever frozen in time just before the moment the nutcracker finally achieves its goal. She had turned from a minor nuisance into a catastrophe.

The one good thing about her was that she had an abnormally loud voice. Even now he could hear her sugary confessions of love and promises of how they’d cuddle and be together forever and ever as soon as she found him. This made it easy to determine her location and keep moving away from her, but other than that Monkey Fist would have never said he liked to listen to her voice.