"Brendon, turn that music down! I can't focus on what
I'm doing!" Rick yelled up the stairs at his 18-year-old
stepson. Rick, 39, was a chemistry professor who kept
a private lab in the basement of the house he shared
with his wife, Tabitha, and her troublesome son,
Brendon.
Rick's experiment was at a crucial stage. He was trying
to remember the exact combination of chemicals he'd
combined, but the blasting verses of Limp Bizkit's latest
hit were driving him mad. "Dammit!" he cursed,
pounding his fist on the lab table. The vibration toppled
two test tubes filled with experimental solutions.
"Fuck!"
Mixing, on the table, the chemicals began to evaporate
into a pink fog. Furious, Rick was able to clean up the
mess, but not before the entire room filled up with the
odd smoke. The chemist had to run around opening
the windows to clear the room, but the smoke was
oddly coherent and would not disperse easily.
Choking on the fumes, Rick thought that the one good
thing was that he had plenty of each of the solutions in
storage. It wasn't as if he had actually lost anything. But
Brendon's loud and lazy ways were driving him up a
wall. The kid had been a problem since Rick had
married his mother almost thirteen years before, and
Rick wasn't going to stand for it much longer . . . not in
his own house!