Windfall: An Otter-Body Experience

by Tempe O'Kun

  Justine, in an admirable effort, grabbed the husky’s wrist and kicked off the door frame with both powerful legs. While this maneuver would’ve thrown most people in town back, it only managed to rotate Kylie. The rabbit herself ended up on the floor with quiet grunt.

  Finding the path into the conference room clear, Kylie walked into the room. She tripped only a little as the rabbit clamped onto her ankle with a silent glare.

  Max covered his face with a webbed paw. “I’m really sorry about this…”

  Kylie marched into the conference room, a rabbit administrative professional wrapped around her leg. The space held a large oak table, around which three surprised middle-aged men sat. A flight of waterfowl paintings hung in formation on one wall, flanked by a globe split in half to reveal a small glass city of scotch bottles. Faded posters from town festivals, including a death worm in bell-bottoms inviting her to “Get your funk on!” gleamed inside expensive wooden frames.

  A frazzled squirrel clutched his coffee cup, as if the intruders had come to take it away from him. A ferret spun in his office chair to face them, crumbs on his muzzle. Unmoved, a cougar in a brown tweed suit watched with slitted eyes.

  For a moment, everybody in the room watched each other in silence.

  Leaning back in his leather chair, the big feline purred. “Your efforts are appreciated Justine, but the town’s favorite TV couple is welcome to crash our meeting.”

  Feeling the grip on her shin loosen, Kylie lifted her leg free of the admin. “Sorry about that.”

  The secretary picked herself up. After a few steps back, she glowered at them from the hallway, methodically straightening her skirt, ears, whiskers, headset, and bun. Within seconds, she’d reset perfectly to the state they’d first seen her in, foot tapping with impatience.

  “Well. Hello.” The squirrel spread his paws. “I’m Marv, the owner of UFO Safari. If we’d known you kids were so eager to talk, we’d have put you on the schedule.”

  “And brought more of my famous mini-cupcakes.” The ferret slid the plastic platter of pastries toward the newcomers, then picked the one he’d been chewing at off the table. “I’m Bob. I run Salad Days and Arkham Hors d’Oeuvres.”

  “So…” Trying to salvage the situation, Max straightened to his unremarkable height and surveyed the room’s occupants. “You’re the Chamber of Commerce?”

  “Some of it!” The ferret set down the mini-cupcake he’d been nibbling at.

  Without a wasted movement, the big cat steepled his fingers. “Gary, head of tourism for the city.”

  Taking his girlfriend’s arm, he tried to sound like an otter. “I’m Kylie and this is Max.”

  The cupcake-munching mustelid wobbled in his seat. “Oh, we know who you are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kylie’s massive paws tightened into fists. “You’ve been spying on us?”

  “Not exactly spying! Hard to miss when TV stars show up and start stirring up business.” Marv twirled and clicked a pen. “What’d ya say, Bob? A ten percent uptick in online merchandise just from them movin’ to town?”

  “Oh yeah. I’d say.” Bob bobbed his triangular head.

  The cougar glanced to them with an unreadable growl. “Why did you barge into our meeting?”

  Kylie straightened a few inches taller. “Look, we know you took Joe’s stuff. You’ve gotta let us have it back. You don’t know what you’re messing around with.”

  A smile shone on the big cat’s muzzle, not touching his eyes. “The situation is under control.”

  A dark woof launched from Kylie’s muzzle. “You mean now that you stole all the stuff in Joe’s shed.”

  “We detected some strange activity going on there.” Gary swept some crumbs off his portion of the table. “We removed some items in the interest of public safety.”

  “Public safety?” Kylie barked with derision.

  “Strange activity?” Max chittered with interest.

  “Once in a rare while, something dangerous will crop up in Windfall. We take steps to make sure it doesn’t interfere with business.” The middle-aged feline lifted his clawed hands. “Tourists like to feel brave, not actually be brave.”

  “We also don’t want anybody takin’ the good stuff!” The ferret gave a self-impressed laugh. “Selling it online—that’s our golden goose they’re cooking!”

  Kylie jabbed a finger at them. “So you admit supernatural stuff happens here?”

  “It gets a little crazy, yes.” Gary leaned forward, fangs glinting in another practiced smile. “But it’s never been something we couldn’t handle.”

  She blinked. Having someone admit they believed in that stuff, in a serious setting with serious plaques on the walls, threw off her expectations. She assumed she’d have to fight to make them admit it. “So you knew Joe was going home?”

  “So, what happens now?” Max crossed his arms across his breasts. “You cover this up and ignore it, like you covered up Joe’s house collapsing?”

  “What are you talking about?” The squirrel looked up from pouring another sugar in his coffee, scattering tiny white grains across the dark wood table. “We didn’t cover up anything. We may have…discouraged the papers from talking about it, but that’s only because we don’t want people getting spooked about the mines collapsing. What do you mean, ‘going home’?”

  “To his home planet, or dimension, or whatever.” She jabbed a thick finger at the ceiling. “He didn’t give us a lot of details.”

  Ferret, squirrel, cougar, and rabbit straightened in silence. Ears perked around the room.

  Bob raised a pink paw. “Whoa, whoa, hang on. Joe was an alien?”

  Marv twitched to face to his cougar companion. “Did we know about that?”

  “No.” Gary straightened his suit. “He didn’t exactly put it in the meeting minutes.”

  Justine watched from the hallway, her face unreadable, her opinions unasked for.

  Another moment stretched on in silence. Max and Kylie exchanged a glance of intrigue. Maybe these guys didn’t know everything after all.

  “Oh! I get it!” The ferret tittered a laugh and clapped his little paws together. “You’re spinning Joe’s disappearance into the town lore.” He drummed his hands on the table, his feet on the floor. “Man, Bevys really are an asset.”

  “No, really. Joe was an alien in a beaver suit. He tried to kill us to get something he needed to go home. Then he imploded his alien lair on the way out.” Kylie jabbed a thick finger in the direction of the vanished building. “That’s why his house collapsed into the ground.”

  “Really? Wow.” Marv scratched a tufted ear. “Guess that explains a few things.”

  The ferret bobbed his head rapidly. “Yeah, like why he never went out for drinks with us.”

  “Or why someone as private as Joe wanted to take our meeting notes. Must have been keeping tabs on us.” Gary’s sharp claws scratched through his chin fur. “How long had he been in town?”

  “Technically…” In the face of a slight squeak, Max cleared his unfamiliar throat. “He’d been around for centuries in one disguise or another. You could even say he founded the town. His first attempt at getting home blew up and exposed all those silver veins the first settlers were after.”

  The cougar studied Max carefully. “You think he’s coming back?”

  “Not if he can help it.” Kylie laughed. “Once he had what he needed, he couldn’t get out of our reality fast enough.”

  Marv fluffed his bushy tail. “Guess we can stop reserving his parking spot.”

  Bob nodded his whole body in agreement. “Dibs.”

  A soft clicking noise announced Justine making a note of it on her phone. Once done, she nodded to her bosses.

  “Don’t you guys care?” Kylie glared down the table at them. “We were this close to him blowing everybody up. His machine messed with those leyline things under the town. Who knows what else it did?”

  The ferret’s ears popped up, followed by
the rest of his long torso. “That was you?”

  “We always suspected you kids did that— What was it?” The red squirrel snapped his fingers. “That thing Martha from the Open Chakra was going on about… About the leylines being all jazzed up…”

  The ferret adjusted his long, slender necktie. “Psychic convergence?”

  “Yeah!” The squirrel sloshed his coffee. “She calls it psychic convergence.” He winked at the younger mammals. “I call it year-round tourist season.”

  “That thing is real?” The ferret blinked. “I thought she was crazy.”

  “Doesn’t mean she’s wrong.” Marv leaned on the conference table, which wobbled a little, then gave the intruders a thumbs up. “Anyway, you kids keep doing your thing. Great for business.”

  Kylie propped her fists on her hips and struck a statuesque pose. “Our thing is exposing the supernatural.”

  “That’s the spirit!” The ferret nodded. “And if you could maybe talk up the Cryptozoology Jamboree?”

  Kylie slammed her palms down onto the table so hard that one of the mini-cupcakes tipped over. “We’ll take you down if we have to.”

  “Oooh!” Bob patted his ferret paws together. “A ‘fight the power’ narrative. We can make it a theme next year.”

  “Yeah!” Clattering down his coffee onto the table, the squirrel punched a fist into his own palm. “Fighting the sinister authority. We could play the bad guys. You could search lead a search for the truth.”

  “Stop it!” She woofed with outrage. “That’s what we’ve been doing!”

  “And you’re being a big help!” Marv patted her on the shoulder. “We haven’t seen this kind of push since your uncle burned down that house.”

  Kylie shoved his hand away and bounced in place. “An alien monster was in that house.”

  “You heard that part, huh?” Bob nodded. “It did have some staying power.”

  “You’re playing with fire.” Kylie barked. “You’re going to get us all killed.”

  “That’s a good angle. Good passion too.” Bob oozed his long body forward onto the table and grasped another mini-cupcake. “I guess it really shows when you’re working with professionals.”

  “And now you kids did this leyline thing?” The squirrel poked a finger straight down against the table, then gave them a thumbs-up. “Keep it up!”

  She glared at him. “We will!”

  His bushy tail fluffed. “So how can we help you with this ‘fight the power’ act?

  “It’s not an act!” The otter bounced with outrage. “And you can’t!”

  Max straightened, hands behind his back. “By definition.”

  “Right! Right. But still? Oh, I know…” Marv rifled through his briefcase. “Here are some of our ‘close encounter’ upgrade coupons. If you kids could stash them in weird places around town, that would be just super.” He slapped a stack of paper tickets into Max’s paw.

  Max tilted his head at the offering. The coupons had a pith helmet emitting a tractor beam, with UFO Safari in Papyrus font. “Shouldn’t you laminate these? If they’re going to be outside…”

  “See, Bob?” The squirrel chattered a laugh. “This is just the sort of fresh thinking we need around here.”

  “No kidding, Marv.” The slender mustelid nodded his entire body in agreement.

  “Max!” With an urgent whisper, Kylie prodded him with an elbow. “Don’t help them.”

  As soon as he regained his balance, Max cast her a quick glare. Having a big otter tail made balancing difficult.

  The feline narrowed his eyes at them. With what might have been a purr or a growl, the cougar leaned back to unlock and reach into a drawer of the cabinet behind him, plucking out a tiny filigreed music box. After winding it, his clawed fingers clicked a little lever down. It began tinkling merrily. He set it onto the solid-oak table, letting it resonate through the sudden silence.

  The chatter between Marv and Bob ground to a halt. The squirrel blinked at it, then at them, oddly appraising. “So, uh, you kids get hit with some kinda psychic energy lately?”

  Kylie straightened. “No!”

  The bushy-tailed rodent jerked a thumb at the silver clockwork device plinking soft notes on a shelf. “Because that music box only works when there’s spooky brain stuff going on.”

  “Something you want to tell us?” The cougar steepled his paws. “Maybe we could help.”

  She crossed her muscular arms. “The only spooky brain stuff here is you trying to give us the run-around.”

  Max waved a paw between himself and his girlfriend. “We’re in each other’s bodies.”

  “Oh!” Bob chattered through a laugh, brandishing half a cupcake at them. “That lines up better with what we’d heard of the two of you.”

  “Hey!” She barked back at the businessmen. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You kids know how TV works, right?” The squirrel spread his paws on the table, then raised them with displeasure and scrubbed them clean of crumbs. “People can see what you do on it.”

  Max patted his girlfriend on the chest. “Please excuse her; she’s not herself right now.”

  A narrow-eyed look of incredulity dropped on him from his much-taller mate.

  The three of board members looked at each other. Little shrugs rippled around the table. Quiet agreement bounced between the trio.

  With the other two’s silent assent, Marv twirled a finger in the air. “Justine, could we get the urn in here? Thanks.” Ears flipped back suavely, he again leaned forward on the table, this time with a bucktoothed, snake-oil smile. “This usually works.”

  The secretary vanished, ducked into an office, and returned a couple seconds later with a polished gold burial urn. She popped the lid off, dumped a collection of loose candy wrappers into the trash, and offered it to the intruders.

  Kylie cast a sidelong look at the container. “Does this…belong to somebody?”

  “Yeah: me.” The ferret jerked a thumb at himself. “Hopefully, I won’t need it for a while, but I want it back.”

  Max narrowed his gaze at the trio of businessmen. “Why would you help us?”

  The cougar interlaced his fingers, flexing claws in and out. “We haven’t helped you yet.”

  “But what’s the catch?” Kylie eyed the three business mammals.

  The ferret wiggled. “We keep Joe’s stuff.”

  “No deal!” She slapped hand down on the heavy wooden table. The whole thing tilted down a few degrees, then rattled back onto the floor. “We need it to prove aliens exist.”

  The squirrel snapped his fingers at them. “And we want you to do a radio ad.”

  “No radio ad. And we get the cherry wood cabinet doors.” Max crossed his arms over his breasts. “We’ll sign ten Strangeville t-shirts.”

  Rapidly tapping his fingertips together, Marv stared down the apparent otter negotiating with him. “Fifty.”

  Max nodded with a confidence cool enough for Hollywood producer. “Done.”

  The ferret sputtered into a whisper. “You shoulda asked for a hundred.”

  Marv patted his shoulder. “A hundred’s not a limited edition in a town this small.”

  “Seriously?” Kylie dropped a glum look on her boyfriend. “The cabinet doors?”

  “What?” Flipping a webbed paw toward the door, he wiggled his whiskers up at her. “They’re bought and paid for. And they’re still shrink-wrapped. They’re perfectly fine.”

  Rolling her eyes, she examined the urn. She turned it over in her heavy white paws. The still-strange reflection gleamed back at her. She glanced back to the squabbling Chamber members. “Do we have to do, like, an incantation?”

  “What? No.” The squirrel snapped his head toward them. “It’s not magic.”

  “Blocks the signal.” Quick pink tongue flashing over pointy teeth, the ferret licked crumbs off his fingers. “We don’t know what the signal is, but gold blocks it.”

  A growl rose from Kylie, rumbling through the r
oom. “Don’t you want to know how any of this stuff works?”

  “Hey now!” Marv laughed and jerked a thumb at the tiny device. “We don’t know who built this music box or why. All we know is it plays around strong psychic energy. If we took it apart, it might not do that. So we don’t take it apart. That’s how the town works.”

  Bob poked a finger in the air. “Except the town makes us money.”

  The cougar looked up from his claws. “And we take steps to ensure its stability. Especially from disruptive outside influence.”

  Max watched her glower down at the seated cougar. Before the situation could take a turn for the worse, he deposited the urn in her gigantic hands, then stepped toward the trio. “So you guys aren’t going to try to stop us from studying the town?”

  “Why would we?” Gary cleaned some invisible speck of dirt off one claw with another. “Supernatural tourism has been paying our bills for half a century.”

  “Yeah, go nuts.” Marv waved a paw. “We’ve seen you run around town. You obviously know what you’re doing. But I guess we shouldn’t expect anything different considering your mom made a TV show about us.”

  Reaching for another mini-cupcake, Bob nodded. “Best thing that ever happened to this place.” He grinned as he unwrapped the pastry. “How else do you think I’d be able to afford a gold urn?”

  The cougar steepled sharpened claws. He lifted his chin toward the container. “What’re you waiting for?”

  Max glanced to his girlfriend. Borrowed hazel eyes suggested the door with a fleeting glance.

  She waggled the urn, fluorescent light shimmering off its polished surface. As she backed out of the room, she flashed the Chamber of Commerce a toothy canine smile. “We’ll take it to go.”

  Bob popped up. “Remember I need that back!”

  “Cripes, Bob.” The squirrel rolled his eyes. “They live in the most famous house in town.”

  “Yes.” The cougar purred, his gaze locked on the couple as they exited. “We can always go knock on their door.”

  Clutching the urn, Kylie cast him a stern look, even as Max pushed her down the hallway, toward the front door and out onto the street.