Free On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming

something wet and rubbery twist around my ankle.
    A tentacle rose from behind me and coiled around my legs. The slimy flesh tightened, squeezed, tugged. I could feel its rows of suckers tearing my skin. I turned and saw the thing. It was like the others—fork-tailed and tentacled—but its body was different … yellow … rounder … like … 
a huge rubber duck!
I had time for one thought—DO NOT ADD ANY INGREDIENTS BUT OFFICIAL INSTA-PETS PRODUCTS TO YOUR PETS’ WATER—before it grabbed me. I screamed, lightning bolts of pain radiating out to my fingertips and down to my toes. It had me, and I was being eaten alive.
Eaten alive!
    Toni shrieked, hitting at the new monster with her bare fists.
    “The ray gun!” I screamed.
    She dropped to her knees, scrabbling through the debris of clothes and games and exploded stuffed animals.
    The second tentacle whipped around my head, covering my mouth.
    “Help me!” I tried to scream, but it came out a muffled moan.
    The suckers were doing a vicious dance on my neck and face now, feasting on my skin, dissolving my flesh. The room began to grow dark. My breath came in weak puffs. I felt myself being lifted, tilted. I could smell the creature’s putrid breath, could hear—even through the hammering of my own heart—the gnashing and grinding of its teeth.
    Dat-dat-dat-dat!
    I dropped to the floor, splashing hard into a sticky pile of goo.
    But I knew it was too late.
    Toni dropped to her knees beside me. Although she was nothing more than a dark blur, I could hear her voice and feel the touch of her hand in mine. I could feel her tears dripping onto my ravaged face, too.
    What was left of my mouth opened and closed like a dying goldfish. Strange, but I had always thought it would be a Russian A-bomb or a UFO that would get mein the end. Who would ever have imagined a comic-book novelty?
    “David, oh, David,” Toni sobbed.
    I squeezed her hand weakly to reassure her. My sister was safe, and that was all that really mattered. I let my fingers relax.

    “You must have cared deeply for your sister.” It was the girl in the long skirt. She was seated on an urn-shaped gravestone, and in the moonlight the tear slipping down her cheek glimmered like a tiny crystal.
    David, his expression stricken, nodded.
    “I had a sister, too,” the girl said. “Her name was Blanche. But I did not care for her.” She shook her head. “No, I did not care for her, not one little bit.… ”

A FIERCE CHICAGO WIND ROARED off the lake that day, rattling the white buildings of the World’s Fair with rude, jostling whooshes. For one moment it settled—ah, calm at last, I thought—before puckishly rising again, more tempestuous than before.
    I watched as fairgoers scampered along the winding pathways seeking refuge. According to the
Chicago Daily Tribune
, more than fourteen million visitors had already flocked here to experience the eye-catching wonders of the World’s Columbian Exposition—more commonly known as the Chicago World’s Fair. All across the country, Americans were mortgaging their farms and houses, borrowing money on their life insurance or trimming their Christmas budgets to save for the trip, convinced there would be nothing like it for at least another hundred years. And few, it seemed, regrettedtheir sacrifices. Just the other day I had read about an Iowa farmer who—after gazing openmouthed at Edison’s Tower of Light with its zigzagging, flashing bulbs—said to his wife, “Well, Susan, it paid, even if it did take all the burial money.”
    Today’s weather, however, was wreaking havoc with the fairgoers’ fun. Some ducked into the immense Illinois Building to catch their breaths. Others sought protection in Machinery Hall or girded themselves against the blustery gusts with a stein of beer at the German Village. But the wind always found them. Shoving. Pushing. Snatching off hats and blowing up skirts.
    Already this evening’s fireworks had been rescheduled,