Leap Year

Out of the darkness and onto the page, a behemoth let out it’s fiery breath. Hymning and hawing, and also racketeering against the Cordeline mansion windows, there was the crying of a passerby people. All of this was leading up to the front door, where the mansion door had been locked and the key had been swallowed whole.

At roughly nine-thirty at night, the Cordeline sons, Matthew and Shawn, are playing their own paper card game before they crawl into their beds and go to sleep.

“I killed the dragon.” said Matthew, the younger one.

“Yeah? Which one?” rooted Shawn. “And you haven’t defeated the manticore yet. I think he's on the table beside the television. If you don’t fight him now then maybe I will after this.”

The Cordeline brothers are both equally enthralled by action packed sword fights and things like archery and magic. Shawn has a good habit of finding pictures of mythological creatures on the internet and then drawing them with his new art set. Both Shawn and Matthew love to play their homemade paper card game; its the one that they had began calling 'Mythmen' by the age of thirteen.

Before the start of each game, Matthew and Shawn are both to choose from a pile of humanlike characters, that of which the Cordeline brother's call 'hero cards'. All of the hero cards are darkened by Shawn’s personal art style, and so are the monsters and the wicked spirits that they fight.

Shawn usually guesses which hero card Matthew will decide to use based upon the time that it took to do his artwork. After a few times of playing the game, Shawn figured out that Matthew has a certain friendship with the green-glowing Perseus card that he had shaded in with a dark and a lime green. It took Shawn a little bit of effort; sort of like most his heroes. On the front of the card, Perseus holds the severed head of Medusa and the blade that has the serpentine's blood dripping from it's tooth.

Shawn and Matthew may look the same, but the difference in their abilities is seemingly outweighed in the favor of Shawn. To say the least, Shawn is an artist and an inventor of his brother's mind. On a late evening in February, Shawn and Matthew were born to the city of Sherman Oaks, California.

Matthew was born with a head disease that has ever since handicapped him after following Shawn out of their mother's womb. According to their family doctor, Edman Floyd, Matthew's sickness is considered to be a unique form of a mental slip.

Here we might be able to enter into their life inside of their Californian home. The Cordeline family owns a mansion that has an inground swimming pool in the back, alongside a backyard grill that Keith often uses to make burgers and French fries. Keith is Shawn and Matthew's father, but he is often saluted by his fans at the race track, who like to call him by his nickname 'Keep-It-Brief'.

That's absolutely right; Keith Cordeline is a professional racecar driver that flaunts his company sponsor 'Cambell's' on the hood of his very own racecar. Together, him and his wife support a charity fund for children who are born with mental disabilities.

The Cordeline family lives in a mansion located in Sherman Oaks, California. It came with stained wooden floors that never scratch, and it also has a swimming pool in the backyard for barbeque Sundays. Sadie Cordeline likes to dress the place up with her favorite Swedish styled cloth-work. She garnishes the vases using the most beautiful flowers that her husband often takes to her.

Keith Cordeline is an audio slave, who loves automation. He zips around the track bearing the number thirty-five which sadly is the same age of his mother when she had died from a stomach disease. Now at the age of forty-two, he’s known throughout the country and various other parts of the globe as a philanthropist and a promotional face to all of the people who wish the world to be more forgiving.

“Its getting kind of late,” Sadie turned around on the couples’ mattress and fed herself a shot of whiskey. “I think I’m going to sleep after the nightly news. Why don’t you check on Shawn and Matthew and make sure that they're in their beds soon?”

“Alright, beautiful.” Keith hugged her with a big swoop.

Once he arrived in the recreational room, Shawn and Matthew were in the last stage of their game. Monster cards were piled up onto the ping-pong table except for the hero cards that Shawn and Matthew were currently using. Inside of this room, ‘Keep-It-Brief’ and his two sons made contact with creatures from another world.

“My Achilles did twenty damage on that roll.” Shawn said to his brother. “Looks like I’m going to win in one more turn as long as I roll a five or a six. Do you just want to forfeit?”

No, Matthew had the look of a hungry old man on his face before rolling the die. He shook it within his hand and then let it fly out of his palm and onto the floor of the recreational room. Looking at the number on the die, there were four dots facing the ceiling. His arm flung to his side in excitement, rather his arm flung to his side because of his impalement.

“You’re Perseus hit my Achilles.” Shawn told Matthew. “It’s not enough damage to kill him but you did do some harm. If I did the mathematics correctly then it looks like I’ll be done in a few more turns, but if I roll a five or a six, it’ll be bedtime.”

“Shawn, go easy on him.” Keith said to his son.

After picking up the die, Shawn gave it a blow and then dropped it onto the wooden floor of the recreational room. It bounced around for a few seconds, and then it spun into it’s final execution. The number on the die had been shown with dots upon it’s surface. There were six of them.

“I won!” Shawn exclaimed.

“It's time for bed.” Keith ordered the boys to the upstairs. “Go brush your teeth, and then I’ll be right there afterwards to tuck you in. Shawn make sure that Matthew uses toothpaste this time.”

“Alright, dad. I will.”