Fear the Barfitron by M. D. Payne

saw me out of the corner of his eye.
    “What are you doing?” he growled.
    “What are
you
doing?” I replied. “The Director said the kitchen was closed!”
    Before I could even peek into the fridge, he rushed over, whipped open the door, grabbed me with both hands, shoved me back out into the hallway, and grunted, “Don’t tell the Director!”
    With that, he slammed the door shut, and a lock clicked into place.
    There was a good chance that my lebensplasm was in the kitchen, but there was no way I could get in there now. I ran halfway down the hall to search other rooms, but stopped when I heard a booing from the Great Room.
    The record was skipping!
    I had to keep the music going. But I’d be so busy changing records all night, I’d never get a chance to search all of Raven Hill. I wished I could just throw on a playlist.
    I rushed past the booing monsters, ripped a handful of records out of the crate, and began pulling them out one by one to find a really long track. Finally, I found a record that had one long track on side A: “Tarantella Transylvanese.” I threw it down on the second turntable and pressed Start.
    It started up fast, and at first the monsters were unsure of what to do.
Oh no!
I thought,
I chose the wrong song!
The monsters that were slow-dancing slowly shuffled off the dance floor, but luckily a few morecame on. The song bounced along with accordions and tambourines, hoots and shouts—it sounded like it was recorded at a Gypsy camp somewhere in Europe, and the Gypsies were partying hard.
    Soon most of the monsters were on the dance floor. I jumped off of the platform, and made my way back toward the door.
    That’s when the old witch that had collected the spider legs the day before grabbed me. Her long fingernails dug into my skin. The rest of the monsters began hooting and hollering as she dragged me to the center of the dance floor.
    All the monsters formed a circle with the witch and me in the center. Their bodies flailed about wildly. They licked their lips. Drool dripped onto the dance floor.
    I was trapped!
    Above the music, I could hear the witch scream, “You’re so precious, I could just EAT you!”
    She started dancing wildly in front of me and motioned for me to follow along. I was terrified, but what could I do? I started dancing along. I looked around at the other monsters, and they looked energized. Had my lebensplasm allowed them to dance like this?
    Monster legs kicked high in the air. An old werewolf howled along to the rhythm of the tambourines. An old banshee screamed with the accordions. The vampires flung their heads back—enjoying every second of thesong that had come from their homeland.
    The circle was slowly closing in!
    Next to the witch, a zombie tried its best to dance. It slapped its knee a few times, and then its leg fell off. It kept hopping on one leg as another zombie bent over and started eating the leg, chomping in time with the music. A few of the other old monsters looked hungrily at the leg, slowed down their dancing, and headed toward the meaty treat. The three Nurses once again moved in to take care of the situation.
    Now was my chance.

I danced my way out of the circle and toward the open door. Nobody noticed—they were either fighting over the leg or dancing like crazy.
    I ran down the hallway and ducked into each room as I went. I opened drawers. I looked under furniture. I peeked in fireplaces. The rooms on the bottom floor didn’t have much furniture, and there wasn’t really anywhere they could have hidden my lebensplasm.
    I went upstairs and into the first dark, mold-smelling room. There was a Crock-Pot with some sort of black ooze bubbling in it. All sorts of ingredients were lined up in front of it. EYE OF NEWT read one bottle; WING OF BAT read another. I recognized the contents of the third bottle—the hairy baby spider legs from bingonight. I went through all of the bottles. Not one of them was my lebensplasm.
    Heading back into the