by M. R. Holman
and opened his newspaper once more, holding it high over his face and ignoring Sheila as hard as he could.
Sheila stood up straight and sighed, causing a great ball of fire to shoot through the air. It was quite an impressive display, but the cryptids below were far too consumed by their own boredom to even notice it.
The clock on the side of the courthouse reached 10 A. M. and a bell rang ten times in a row. When the bell finished ringing, the cryptids in line outside of the courthouse began to file inside. Sheila followed them, wracking her humongous brain in hopes of coming up with an idea that would get her out of jury duty.
The doors of the courthouse were extra wide and tall so as to facilitate gigantic creatures such as Sheila. She stepped inside. Her claws clicked and clacked against the marble floors as she and the other potential jurors were ushered to seats in a long hallway. The sasquatch had been right, it certainly was hot inside of the courthouse. Did the building not have air conditioning?
Sheila sat down upon the largest chair in the hall. Nearly every other creature in the hall had brought some kind of reading material to pass the time. She wondered if they knew how long they were likely going to be waiting to be selected. Some of the books they brought were very thick…
"Excuse me," Sheila said, leaning down to whisper to a centaur that was seated beside her. "Do you know how long this usually takes?"
"It just depends on when they call your name," the centaur said. It was clear that the centaur was only half awake by the glazed over look in her eyes. "Sometimes you only have to wait a few minutes, sometimes it’s all day, other times they don't even call your name at all and you just kind of leave..."
The centaur returned to reading her book. Her head drooped lower and lower as the seconds passed. Sheila sat up straight and groaned, causing streams of sparks to erupt from her nostrils accompanied by clouds of smoke. The other creatures began to hiss, shout, yelp, gurgle, and howl at Sheila for adding more heat to the already stifling room.
"Ellen Hoofenhoffer!" a voice called from the end of the hall. The centaur that was sitting beside Sheila woke with a start. She closed her book without marking the page she was on and got up and trotted down the hallway.
A few moments passed before another name was called. "Curtis Scruffenmeyer!" the voice called. The sasquatch that had been reading the newspaper rose from his seat and walked grumpily down the hall. A few minutes later, he exited the room even angrier. Apparently he had been selected as a juror again.
"Sheila Shortwing!"
Sheila sighed deeply, nearly setting the ceiling on fire in the process, and rose to her feet. She trudged down the hall past the lines of scowling cryptids who were angry at her for making the room warmer again. Her claws skidded across the smooth, cool marble floor beneath her feet.
She entered the room she had been summoned to and was instructed to sit down on a bench in front of a sasquatch, a sea monster of some sort that was in a tank full of water, and a centaur which were sitting behind a long wooden desk. Her long, dark green tail trailed out into the hallway.
"Good morning, Sheila," the sea monster gurgled.
"Good morning," Sheila said to the trio of judicial cryptids behind the desk as she inclined her horned head toward them. They all sat at least fifteen feet beneath the bottom of her scaly chin.
"I think she'll do just fine. Everyone agree?" the sasquatch said confidently, looking from Sheila to the other two creatures behind the desk. The sasquatch wore navy suit with thin white pinstripes upon it.
"Agreed," the other two creatures chorused.
"Wait, that's the selection process? It's that random?" Sheila asked confusedly.
"At this courthouse it is," the sea monster gurgled as its long black robes billowed through its tank.
"Go into the adjacent room and take a seat please," the centaur said, motioning toward a doorway to their left. "The trial will begin when we have filled out the jury. It should not take too long."
Sheila rose from her seat, making a conscious effort not to exhale in frustration so as not to set anything on fire. She entered the next room and sat at the rear of the juror area, behind the fuming sasquatch and beside the dozing centaur. Over the next fifteen minutes or so, nine other creatures filed into the juror area and sat with them. The courtroom itself began to fill with witnesses and even an audience. The centaur and sasquatch from the selection process turned out to be lawyers involved in the trial, and the sea monster in the tank was wheeled behind the judge's bench. When his tank was set in place behind the bench, all noise in the courtroom ceased.
"October 31, 2015," he gurgled into a microphone that had been lowered into his tank. "On this day, the Cryptid Court will hear the case of Grayblack Rancidfurr, a werewolf accused of the most heinous crime of supergluing every book in a library together, and scribbling cartoons of himself performing the act on every page of the stuck-together books."
A collective gasp of nearly every living being in the courtroom was audible when the judge had finished reading the crime of the accused werewolf.
"I ask you all to remain level-headed and civil, and to objectively consider the evidence presented in the case. Do not to dwell on the horrendous nature of a crime such as this. Listen to the cases," the sea monster judge bubbled into the microphone. Sheila looked around at the creatures shaking their heads in disgust and wondered if anyone in the courtroom would be capable of retaining an objective outlook on the cases that would be presented. Then Sheila began to wonder... would she?
The doors of the courtroom opened and everyone turned around. The bailiff, a minotaur wearing a policeman's uniform with a cap perched jauntily between his horns, accompanied a terrified werewolf wearing an orange jumpsuit with the number two-hundred and eleven stitched onto the front of it.
"The honorable Judge Slipenscayl presiding," the bailiff said as he deposited the werewolf at the table which the centaur lawyer was sitting. The sasquatch lawyer peered at the werewolf in outright contempt. It seemed that there was already some bad blood between them...
"I'd like to call Grayblack Rancidfurr to the stand, your honor," the sasquatch said, standing up and straightening his tie. The werewolf seemed to be on the verge of panic.
"I'll allow that, but keep this civil! You're still on thin ice after that last stunt you pulled, Mr. Squetchly..."
"I heard that Squetchly called in the entire cryptid community in the country of Chile as a witness during the last trial he was in..." the centaur beside Sheila whispered upward at her.
Sheila watched the sasquatch lawyer, Mr. Squetchly, approach the stand on which the werewolf now sat. He appeared to be exceedingly confident. Sheila could not be certain if the glare emanating from his hands was caused by the shiny golden watch or the number of gem studded rings the sasquatch wore on his fingers.
"Mr. Rancidfurr," Mr. Squetchly began, turning to face the courtroom at large and speaking in a deep booming voice that rang throughout the room. "Could you please enlighten us all to your whereabouts on the night of October 15, 2015 between 2 A. M. and 3 A. M.?"
"I was - I was," the werewolf stammered and stuttered, glancing wildly about the courtroom. "I was running through the forest aimlessly as werewolves are wont to do from time to time..."
"Can anyone vouch for your story, Mr. Rancidfurr? Did anyone witness you running aimlessly through the forest on the night of October 15?" Mr. Squetchly asked, rocking back and forth on his highly polished black loafers.
"Not that I'm aware of..." the werewolf said with a nervous gulp as drool dripped down its whiskers and into its chest fur.
"Well that's peculiar. Do you know why I find this peculiar, Mr. Rancidfurr?" the sasquatch asked, turning to face the werewolf once more.
"W-why?"
"Because an eyewitness saw you leaving the library at the aforementioned times, an eyewitness that is currently in this very room..."
"It wasn't me! I'm being set up! I'm being framed!" the werewolf yelped.
; "It was I who saw you! I'm sure that you thought that the library was deserted, but you were wrong... I was the last to leave that night, and I saw you sneaking through the parking lot with a bag of superglue in your hands as you muttered maniacally how much you wanted to glue all of the books together..." Mr. Squetchly said triumphantly.
The jury gasped and the courtroom broke into frenzy of muttering. Judge Slipenscayl banged his gavel slowly through the water in his tank. "Order! ORDER! I will not have my courtroom devolve into a free-for-all... Mr. Rancidfurr, can you refute these claims?"
"Well, like I said, I was in the forest running aimlessly and howling at the moon, but - "
"But you have no witnesses to confirm this?" the sasquatch asked with a malevolent grin.
"N-no... I don't," Grayblack Rancidfurr said, hanging his head in utter defeat. However, his centaur lawyer cleared her throat and stood up.
"Your honor, there may not be a witness that can account for my client's whereabouts on the night of the fifteenth, but there is a witness that was inside of that library, unbeknownst to the perpetrator of the heinous act that occurred..."
Sheila thought that for just an instant, Mr. Squetchly the sasquatch appeared greatly concerned. He hid it quickly though.
"Ms. Manetooth, could you produce said eyewitness?" the judge said, speaking to the centaur lawyer.
"I can," she said victoriously. "Bailiff, would you open