You chose: truth
Sandy was incredibly dizzy, and her head throbbed. She couldn’t even think of a lie. So when she opened her mouth, the truth came tumbling out.
“I don’t want to cut my hair, but I knew you would be mad at me so I stopped in a saloon for a drink, except I ended up not drinking and instead going upstairs with a lizard woman who turned out to be loose in several ways, some less appealing than others, and we made love in hopes of getting kidnapped by lesbian pirates from outer space, and I accidentally stayed the night and was awoken by a giant alien with a laser gun and horrible skin who I tried to fight with a board but he hit me on the head.”
Her father’s nostril’s quivered, shaking his mustache, making his face look like a cat that had just caught a soup-scented mouse. “A lizard woman?!”
Sandy braced herself for the lecture she knew had been coming for years. Ever since her mother had caught her playing house a bit too realistically with the neighbor girl when she was eight, her parents were watching her like a hawk for any more deviant tendencies.
“You know how I feel about lizards,” her father said. Sandy blinked, and looked up at her father with his stern brow. She had forgotten how he had fought against the reptilian Garanoids in The War. But that was long before she was born, on a different planet, against a completely different race of lizard people. But she also knew that most of her father’s feelings towards lizards were guilt, and shame at what he had been forced to do in the army against some other folks forced to do the same thing against him.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Sandy said. “I didn’t know she was a lizard at the time.”
“You can tell by their pulse. They don’t have one because they don’t have hearts. That’s why they’re cold blooded. Cold blooded bastards.” Sandy was pretty sure she had felt a heartbeat pulsing against her chest when she was embracing her temporary girlfriend. In fact, she thought she had felt two, but her father didn’t seem interested in details right now.
“Yes, Father,” was all Sandy said. She tried to look properly sorry.
He took once last long look at his daughter, before putting his hands on his knees and standing up. “Don’t do it again,” he said. “And I’m sending in your grandmother to cut your hair!” He slammed the door behind him.
Sandy’s eyes watered at this suggestion. She glanced at the window, wondering if she could climb out of it, but her head was too dizzy and painful too move.
***
When she awoke, her grandmother was sitting beside her bed with her sewing bag in her lap. “Your father told me what you’ve been up to the past couple of days,” she said in her tiny, kitten-soft voice. “You get that from my side of the family.”
Sandy cocked her head, her mind tripped up at the idea of her small, elderly grandmother sleeping with a lizard woman and fighting off giant aliens.
“When I was your age, I was just getting out of reform school after setting my neighbor’s shed on fire. I loved reform school. Once you get the headmistress in bed, it’s smooth sailing from there. I got a job in a shipyard, welding the siding onto star cruisers. But that was boring, so I took to robbing banks instead.”
“Grandma!”
“Sitting inside canning pickles and mending shirts is no life for a young girl.” Sandy’s grandmother patted her on the hand. She reached into her bag, and instead of scissors, she pulled out twenty dollars. She pressed it into her hand. “There’s a beautiful six shooter, used, in the window at Yerg’s General Store. I want you to go buy it and carry on my legacy.”
“GRANDMA!” Sandy was scandalized. “I could never-”
“If you don’t, I’ll cut your hair and you can listen to my daughter’s awful husband the rest of your life.”
Sandy looked at the money in her hand. The money could get her a seat on the space train to the next nearest planet, and a typical month’s rent left in her pocket once she got there. But if she robbed a bank, which, she had to admit sounded like an exciting adventure, she could buy herself a house on a nice planet like Fraggle-5. But there was something else at the general store Sandy had her eye on: a psychic wavelength enhancer. That would be more than enough to boost whatever lesbian waves she was broadcasting, and the Lesbian Pirates, if they were indeed out there, couldn’t possibly ignore that.
What should Sandy spend her money on?
