Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$0.99				$0.84

eBook Category: Fantasy/Young Adult
eBook Description: Julian Evans was a teenager with very sloppy, absent-minded parents, and he was tired of cleaning up after them. So when he managed to attract a brownie to his home, he thought his problems were solved. But he didn't realize how his parents were going to react.

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Things That Go Bump in the Night, 1989
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2010

17 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [18 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [56 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [10 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [267 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [10 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [89 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [80 KB] , hiebook (KML) [76 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [68 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [8 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [11 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [67 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [19 KB]
Words: 3141
Reading time: 8-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Julian Evans let himself in through the back door, collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table, and dropped his schoolbooks on the chair next to him. After fifteen years of living with two highly successful, busy professionals for parents, he knew better than to put anything on the kitchen table unless he had just personally wiped off the table. (He still remembered vividly the look on his fifth grade teacher's face when Julian returned his report card with his mother's signature on the front and orange marmalade on the back.) Feeling thoroughly discouraged, he surveyed the mess around him. It made him feel tired just to look at it. He had skipped lunch, too, but the sight of his mother's kitchen was enough to take away his appetite, regardless of how hungry he'd been before walking in the door. Sighing, he started clearing things up.

He had the kitchen about halfway cleaned up when he heard his mother's car in the driveway. A few seconds later, she breezed in, dropped an armload of papers and magazines on the newly cleared table, and bent to kiss his cheek. "Hi, sweetheart. Did you have a nice day?" Without pause she continued, "Mine was so hectic - and your father and I are going out tonight." She pulled out the hairpins that held her long blond hair in a prim bun and dropped them on the table, shaking her hair loose as she did so. "I did tell you that, didn't I?" She picked up the tea kettle, shook it, took it to the sink to fill it, and put it on the burner.

"I think so," Julian said, "and, anyway, it's on the calendar - dinner with the Witkes and theatre."

"Good." She rummaged around for several minutes, apparently looking for the tea canister, which was on a shelf across the room. The kettle started screaming just as she found it, and she grabbed a mug out of the cupboard, made herself a cup of tea, brought it and a bag of cookies to the table, and buried her nose in a magazine.

Julian silently got up, turned off the burner, picked up the teabag from the stove where she had dropped it, put it in the garbage, put the lid on the canister, and closed the cupboards the mug and the cookies had come from. Then he flopped back into his chair, took a handful of cookies, and began munching moodily on them. His mother, engrossed in her magazine, ignored him. He wondered idly if he were a changeling; he certainly didn't seem to have much in common with his parents. It wasn't just that they were so sloppy and he was neat, but he didn't even look like them. Well, he did have blond hair, like his mother, but his father was dark-haired and both his parents were tall, while Julian was only five foot six. Oh, well, maybe he'd grow some more - assuming they really were his parents.

A few minutes later his father arrived home, set his briefcase and coat on top of Julian's books, and dropped the day's mail on top of the pile already on the table. "You can certainly tell Christmas is coming," he remarked, indicating the two inch pile of catalogs which comprised most of the mail. "How did we get on so many mailing lists, anyway?"

"Because I buy from them," his wife replied. "Where else can you do your shopping between three and four in the morning?"

"How much more stuff do we need - or, for that matter, how much more can we fit in this house?"

She ignored him. "Julian, dear, do you have any ideas as to what you'd like for Christmas?"

Julian, grimly surveying the chaos around him, replied promptly, "A brownie."

His mother looked confused. "One brownie? I think we've got a box of brownie mix around here somewhere-" She looked around vaguely.

"No, Mother," Julian said impatiently. "Not that kind of brownie - the kind that comes in at night and cleans up the place."

He father burst out laughing. "Son, if you can find a brownie willing to work in the mess, you can have it!"