Unfinished Muse

by R. L. Naquin

  I shrugged and zipped the bag. Fairyland—or wherever the hell I was going—had to have drugstores, right? Oh, gods. I truly hoped I didn’t get stuck working at a supernatural drugstore for the rest of my life.

  Once my suitcase was packed, I paused and looked around my room. With the exception of the snake habitat in the corner, the room looked more like a guestroom or a motel room. It was as if no one had ever lived there.

  In a way, I never really had.

  I pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose. “I’ll send for you, Daphne. I promise.”

  ~*~

  The bull guy had promised me housing. He hadn’t promised I’d have it to myself. Two giggling nymphs and a siren shared my dorm room with me. The nymphs were afraid of me and stayed clear whenever possible. The siren used up all the hot water while she sang entire operas in the shower.

  Other than that, though, she was pretty cool. Her name was Lizzy, and she helped ease me into my new life from the first day of my arrival.

  “One thing’s for sure, we need to get you some better clothes,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She flipped through the hangers in my closet, scowling at the sensible skirts and blouses. “Clothes are meant to decorate your body, honey, not hide it.” She took a sip from her wine goblet, one finger sticking out toward me. “And we need to get you some makeup. Seriously. Look at that gorgeous complexion. I’ve got some lavender lipstick that will totally pop against that lovely green.”

  I perched on the edge of my bed and watched her scurry around, humming softly to herself. She snagged a huge cosmetics case and dropped it on the bed next to me. Her face screwed up in concentration as she dragged a chair close to me.

  “Okay. First, I need you to take off those ridiculous sunglasses.” She reached toward me to take them away.

  I pulled away from her reach. Several head-snakes hissed and drew back. “What are you doing? I could turn you to stone.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise, and she stared at me. “What?”

  I pointed at me head. “Hello? I’m a gorgon!”

  Her lower lip quivered. “Honey.” She put her hand on my knee and pressed her lips together while she inhaled through her nose. “Oh, honey.”

  “What? Don’t you know anything about mythology?” I sat straighter, offended. She wasn’t laughing at me, exactly, but she was close. “I can’t take these off when people are around.” I paused as she pulled herself together. “Besides. The light hurts my eyes.”

  She nodded. “Okay, that one’s legit.” She waved her hand. “The stone thing? Totally bogus. That was specifically Medusa’s curse. Haven’t you ever met another gorgon before?”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “I only met me a week ago.”

  “Ah.” She patted my leg. “I see.” She tapped her finger on her thigh, thinking. “Okay. You need a makeover and a full tour. Have you met with your career counselor yet?”

  “I just got here. I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon.”

  She snapped open her makeup case. “Good. We’ve got a lot of work to do before I can take you out in public. Let’s get started.”

  ~*~

  I began my new job looking fabulous. The lavender lipstick was a great contrast to the green eye shadow Lizzie taught me to use as blush. We found some small, round shades that shut out enough light to protect my eyes without covering half my face. The slit in my pencil skirt showed off a whole lot of hot green leg. I learned to coax the snakes into a side part with a few of the smaller ones hanging seductively over one eye. Never in my life had I felt so confident.

  And it was all wasted on the shitty receptionist job they assigned me in the career center.

  I glared through my glasses at the skinny girl in front of me. “Yes?” I pressed my lips together as if she’d done something terribly wrong. The only thing she’d done wrong was have the bad luck to be there when I was there.

  One of my snakes hissed, and the girl twitched and slid paperwork toward me. “I think I filled it out right.” Her voice quivered and her hand shook.

  I felt sorry for her and glanced over the page. “It’ll do.”

  I regretted my grumpy tone and offered a small smile. “Follow the gold line on the floor to Athens. Orientation begins in ten minutes.” I stamped her paperwork with a flourish and dropped it in the outbox. “Next.”

  There wasn’t much to the job. I sat behind a desk and handed out maps of the building, registered newbies for orientation, took complaints, and answered general questions. Better than retail, I supposed. At least I got to sit down.

  But it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing with my life. I wanted to study reptiles and amphibians. I wanted to learn things. I wanted to go back to school. The moment I turned green and sprouted snakes from my head, my options became limited.

  It turned out, the job did not actually require me to be nice to people. That was at my own discretion.

  Within a month, I ruled the reception desk and all who stepped inside the brightly lit, domed atrium of the Mount Olympus Employment Agency. If someone wanted something done, they had to go through me to get the proper paperwork. If a new hire showed up, they couldn’t get to orientation until I stamped their application. How long it took to accomplish anything depended solely on my good will.

  If I couldn’t have the career I wanted, I’d take what I was stuck with and make it mine.

  “Next.” I always kept my voice low and cool, sometimes adding a little hiss where I could. It made people nervous.

  A human guy, kind of cute but nothing remarkable, stepped forward and placed a pile of paperwork on the chest-high counter. I gave him a long look until he squirmed, then picked up the papers, slowly tamping them on the counter.

  “I filled in what I could,” he said. His voice shook a little. “I didn’t know the answer to a lot of the questions.”

  Of course he didn’t. No one knew the answers to all of the questions on the intro-forms. Questions like “Which parent is the dominant deity?” and “What powers have you manifested?” weren’t meant to be answered by the majority of newcomers. Most of them had no idea what was going on. They’d hit rock bottom in their lives, which propelled them into Mount Olympus. They had no idea they had the blood of a god or hero in their ancestry. Like regular humans, they didn’t know any of this existed. The paperwork was meant to give them their first clues in order to ease them into their new reality.

  I grunted and pretended to examine his paperwork. Frankly, as long as his name, address, and social security number were on the form, that’s all that was required. Anything else was bonus.

  “I didn’t understand half of what’s on it,” he said. “What do my parents have to do with any of this?”

  I looked down at him through my glasses, and he shifted from foot to foot. “You’ll have to ask someone in personnel, sir.” I leaned forward. “Did you want me to give you the form to fill out for an appointment?” There was no form for that. But I made it sound so ominous, he’d never ask for it.

  He took a step back—they usually did that when they were afraid I’d take off my shades and turn them into stone with my stare. I loved that part.

  “No, no. That’s fine.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and pointed his gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  I grunted at him again, then slammed a stamp on the top page of his paperwork and dropped it in the outbox. “Follow the copper line to Thebes for orientation and further instruction. Next.”

  My favorite part was always the way the finality of my words fed the confusion and panic on their faces.

  After a moment of hesitation, he spotted the colored lines on the floor, chose the thick, copper one, and followed it out of the atrium down a hallway. Three more new hire humans stood in line behind him. I sighed and gave the next one an impatient signal to step forward.

  The morning dragged in what felt like an endless stream of newbies to be sent to orientation. By ten, though,
even the stragglers were checked in and on their way. Mondays always went that way—an influx of brand new humans bound for training for the first few hours, then everything went back to business as usual.

  I dropped a Be Right Back sign on my desk and took my ten-minute break without saying a word to the four people standing in line. I heard a centaur clomp one foot in agitation, but I ignored him. I couldn’t intimidate a Mythic with the threat of turning them to stone, since they knew I didn’t have that ability. But I still had all the power. I was the receptionist. If they wanted me to straighten out whatever their problem was, they’d have to suck it up.

  I might have liked the job more than I let on.

  After a quick trip to the ladies room, I refilled my coffee cup and took a few minutes to watch the other folks meandering in the Mythics cafeteria. Two satyrs sat hunched over a game of checkers, laughing at some joke or other. A minotaur in a jogging suit blew on a cup of ramen noodles, then tipped it back and drank it all in one gulp. The snuffling noises he made were…unlovely. I wrinkled my nose, a little grossed out. A stray noodle had squirmed from the side of his mouth and lay flat against his hairy cheek. I took a sip of coffee and looked away.

  A naiad and a dryad sat in a corner together, the naiad drinking water through her graceful blue fingertips, and the dryad with both green hands buried in buckets of soil. The naiad’s cerulean hair shimmered as if wet, and the dryad’s hair sprouted flowers as she ate.

  I tried to take another sip of my coffee, but it was gone. While I’d been otherwise occupied, my snakes had dipped their tiny faces into my cup and drained it.

  Fantastic. Now my hair’s all caffeinated and won’t stay in place.

  I poured a second cup of coffee and returned to my desk. It turned out, spazzy snake hair was far more disconcerting to the clients than when I gave them the stony stare. I’d have to consider saving up for an espresso machine.

  First in line when I came back was a cyclops with corrective lenses—lens. Really, it was a monocle. It was held in place around her head by a string of pink and yellow beads. She had her hair pulled into three pigtails, one on each side and one on top.

  I made no attempt to hide my smirk. “Next.”

  She slapped an employee ID card on the counter. “I need this changed.”

  The card had a picture of a similar cyclops, but with a little goatee and a black plastic frame around the monocle.

  I pushed the card toward her with two fingers. “You can’t make changes to another employee’s card. This person…” I bent closer to look at the name and my hairsnakes gave a warning hiss at everyone near enough to scare. “Charles Leech. Charles will have to come in himself if he wants a new ID card.”

  The cyclops’s single eye grew wide, and the single eyebrow rose. She slammed her fist on the counter, her voice rising with each word. “I was Charles Leech. You’re not listening. I’m Charlize Leech now, and I need the name changed and a new photo taken. I’ve been getting the runaround for weeks.” With each word, the pigtail on the top waggled and bobbed.

  The entire atrium had fallen silent. If I didn’t take back control of the conversation, every person who witnessed the situation would take advantage of me from then on. I blinked. “Ma’am, in order to process your request, I’ll need to see some photo identification.”

  Charlize groaned in frustration. “The only photo ID I have has the wrong information on it. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I see.” I reached under the counter and thumbed through a file. “Fill out these forms and follow the red line to Crete. Please make sure you answer all questions completely or they won’t be able to help you.” I slid the forms into a clipboard with a pen dangling from a string. On top, I added a yellow sticky note on which I wrote “Ask for Peg.” Peg would make the transition go smoothly, and the cyclops wouldn’t get the runaround.

  What? I did nice things for people all the time. I just didn’t make a habit of letting everyone know about it. I had a reputation to uphold.

  “Did you say the red line?” Charlize asked.

  “Yes, I said red.” I handed her the clipboard and dismissed her. “Next.”

  She hesitated—they all did when I wanted them to leave—and I ignored her. She glanced at the clipboard, then found the red line and stomped off.

  She’d be fine. But seriously, how often do you get such a perfect opportunity to roll out the red tape? She was lucky I didn’t draw out the situation.

  I should have drawn it out. The rest of the day droned on forever with nothing quite so interesting as a transgender cyclops in a beaded monocle. Plumbing complaints, transfer requests, lost time cards—it all had to go through me before I funneled it through to the correct department.

  I glanced at the giant clock embedded in one of the enormous pillars across from my desk. Ten more minutes and I could bug out of there. All the clients had been taken care of, and with a little luck, no one else would come in. Five minutes later I bent over to grab my purse from a built-in shelf. Maybe I could cut out early. Who would care?

  My headsnakes hissed, alerting me to the presence of another person at the desk. I sighed, bracing myself, and sat up. “Yes?”

  A small woman with nervous eyes clutched her bag against her chest. “I need an exterminator.”

  I frowned. “Pardon me?”

  “An exterminator. You’re new.” She glanced past me, standing on her toes. “Is there someone else here? Where’s the man who was here last month?”

  “Samuel?” I gave her a polite smile. “He was reassigned. What sort of exterminator do you need?”

  She gulped. “I have a basilisk living under my porch. The exterminator came out to take care of it, but there must’ve been more than one. All the grass around the house is dead, and I’m afraid to let my cat out.”

  “Uh huh.” I reached for a form in a cubbyhole under the desk, only half listening. I stopped and blinked. “Wait, basilisk?”

  “Yes. Apparently, there were two.”

  My heart pounded in excitement. “What happened to the other one?”

  “The exterminator took care of it”

  I frowned. “Took care of it?”

  She nodded. “Chopped its head off right in my yard. I doubt anything will grow there now. Might as well pour cement and make a patio in that spot.”

  My pulse pounded in my ears. Basilisks were small, peaceful creatures. I’d read about them—roosters with poisonous spurs on their heels and the long tails of snakes. Snakes. I couldn’t let another one be harmed. I had to do something.

  I pushed the paperwork into a clipboard with an attached pen. “Fill this out for me, please. I’ll see to it the basilisk is removed and does no further harm to your property.”

  “Thank you.” She sighed with relief and went to sit in a chair while she wrote down her information.

  Five o’clock came and went, and I watched people from other departments brush through the atrium and out one of the two doors, off to wherever they lived in either the human world or in Mount Olympus.

  As the last of the stragglers exited the building, my client returned to the desk with her completed paperwork. “You’re sure they’ll take care of it this time?” The skin under her left eye twitched. “I’m so afraid it’s going to come out and bite me or turn me to stone.”

  I glanced at the paper she’d given me. She lived in New Mexico. It figured. Basilisks liked warm, dry places. “I’ll see to it myself,” I said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  ~*~

  A lot of logistical problems stood between me and saving my first real, live basilisk. The first being location.

  Mount Olympus was in a separate dimension from the human world. The front door led to wherever a person came from. I’d originally arrived from downtown Philadelphia. The building I’d entered looked, on the outside, like an abandoned department store. Once I walked through the door, I was in the atrium where I worked. All major cities had an access building that looked abandoned
but led to Mount Olympus. If I walked out that door, I’d be in Philly, not New Mexico.

  Now, of course, I didn’t leave through that door. I didn’t live in the human world. I left through the other door on the other side of the atrium. It led to other parts of Mount Olympus, like the residential and shopping districts.

  The only ways to go to a different human location were to apply for a transfer, go with someone as a guest, or work in the courier department.

  Since transfers took weeks and I couldn’t let anyone see me, that only left one option. I’d have to become an unofficial member of the messenger branch.

  After hours, the building was dark and echoed with every footstep I took. The ding of the elevator and the sound of its doors opening bounced around the atrium and made me cringe. My hand shook as I pressed the button inside, and I held my breath when the doors opened for me on the seventh floor. Nobody stood waiting to catch me.

  I stuck my head out and peered both ways, then stepped into the tiled hallway. A directory on the wall across from the elevator advised me to turn left, and I followed the arrow until I reached the correct door. Gold letters on frosted glass read Courier and Travel. Beneath that was a picture of a pair of gold, winged sandals.

  The problem with breaking into a god’s office is you can’t whisper a prayer before trying the doorknob to see if it’s unlocked.

  To my surprise, the knob turned and the door swung open. I ducked inside and closed the door behind me. A bead of nervous sweat trickled from my temple, and my headsnakes shifted and coiled tightly against my head.

  The room’s overhead lights had been turned off, but all along the far wall pockets of ambient light kept the room from total darkness. I crept over to inspect the light’s source and found a row of glowing sneakers hung on pegs by their laces.

  Perfect.

  Every department had specific tools its employees used to do their jobs. Cupids had their wings and arrows to encourage love, muses had their bottles of thought-bubbles to offer inspiration, and messengers had their sneakers for travel.