by Nina Post
“But you feel the transition is not proceeding smoothly?”
“I have been locked in the mail delivery area, crammed into a laundromat dryer, stuck in the revolving door, abandoned in the mechanical room, and had my camera and screen stuffed into one of the automat doors. I would say that the transition is not proceeding smoothly.”
“Who is responsible for this?”
“Different residents. The manager. The building engineer.”
“According to my information source, you weren’t quite yourself during the party,” the executive said.
“I was tied up to the fitness center doors,” Gil admitted. “After I ran down my power center in my continuous attempt to roll away, I was hacked.”
“We traced the originating IP address to a hell lodge. Specifically, to hell lodge number six.” The executive tilted his head. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” Gil said.
“Hell lodge number six is the main office of the Angel of the Bottomless Pit, aka the Avenging Angel of the Apocalypse, aka King of the Demonic Locusts, aka ‘Don.’ Do any of those names mean anything to you?”
“No,” Gil said. “Should they?”
“You tell me.”
Gil showed an image of rain on his screen.
“Do you feel like crying?” the executive asked.
“I’d like to put in for a transfer.”
“Amenity Tower is Pothole City’s finest and only luxury condominium building,” the executive said, stacking his files and straightening them on the long side. “We will, however, speak to Ms. Driscoll about making your experience here more enjoyable.”
“I’m just not good with people. Or monsters. Or angels. They only listen to her. I’ll never fit in, not really.”
“But you must like donuts,” the executive said. “There’s an excellent donut shop right here in the building.”
“I’m a telepresence robot.”
“I doubt they would have any problem serving you.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Claw.” Gil rolled sadly out of the office, leaving the door open.
ubiel accompanied Kelly to work at Pothole City Donuts in the early morning.
“Are you sure you want to wear that?” she said, referring to Tubiel’s usual outfit. He smiled.
“OK,” she said. “But you might get some dry mix on you.”
He shrugged.
The line for donuts extended out the door, wrapped around a tree, and continued down the sidewalk. Medusa gave Tubiel the job of spraying Cluck Snack Sweet n’ Savory Breakfast Foam Topp’n on the donuts for those particular orders. Kelly and Medusa worked the front, and a new employee operated the Super-Fryer.
“Tell me about this dry mix,” Kelly said to Medusa as they took orders, selected donuts, then put them in boxes.
Medusa flashed a big smile at a customer as he took his box and left. “First you have to understand what Archie did at CAH. He was the one”―she held up a finger―“the only one who matched the flavors to the proper nutrients for your little friend there, and others like him.”
Kelly stopped with a box on her palm and looked at Tubiel. “You know what he is?”
Medusa giggled. “Of course. We worked for them. Our jobs at CAH were to keep them running, so to speak. Well, it was Archie’s job.” At her expression, Medusa put up a hand. “Stheno and I weren’t strictly needed there, or we wouldn’t have left. It was all Archie, and he usually worked at his home lab, anyway.”
Kelly rang up an order and Medusa took out a box for a dozen donuts.
“Archie is absolutely crucial to the production of Cluck Snacks.” Medusa ran her tongue along a painted fang thoughtfully as she looked for Cake Crisps donuts. She wiggled her fingers like she played a piano or sprinked fairy dust at the display until she found the tray of Cake Crisps. “Archie matches the flavors to the nutrients, and has to constantly respond to the changing ecosystem and nutritional needs of each type of single-purpose angel.”
Kelly glanced over the counter to see if anyone could overhear, but most of the customers were chatting, either on their phones or to one another. When it came to the SPs, she liked to be cautious. But she knew Medusa wouldn’t have mentioned the SPs if she had seen anyone who could overhear them.
“As for the dry mix.” Medusa carefully placed a few Cake Crisp donuts in the box. “You can’t just combine the mix with random flavors and make it work. It requires precise, careful matching with nutrients and flavors to make it work for the single-purpose.”
“Only Archie can do this?” Kelly asked. “The guy who’s there right now, the lead flavor scientist, he can’t do it? You can’t do it?”
Medusa laughed and put a few P’nut Butt’r Koffee flavor donuts in the box. “No, only Archie.”
“That’s insane.” Kelly stared at the Gorgon sister with a dumbfounded expression. “How can CAH not have any redundancy when it comes to keeping the SPs functioning?”
“I have no idea. But a Driscoll has always done it.”
Kelly took her apron off. “I have to go, right now.”
“What? Why?” Medusa stacked a few Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz donuts.
“I have to find him, now. Tubiel, you stay and help Medusa, OK?”
Tubiel nodded.
Kelly ran into the back and then returned to the front with her bag. “You know where he is?”
“No,” Medusa said.
Kelly slung her bag over her shoulder and headed out the door.
“Wait.” Medusa sprinted to the door and spoke low in her ear. “Archie used to love having breakfast at hell lodge number three.”
Stringfellow Hawk, an angel colleague of Murray’s who was turned into a ferret, back to a snack-loving angel, and back to a ferret, had his own apartment.
He wanted to be independent and autonomous, especially after his stint at a conservation halfway house for ferrets, and living at Murray’s after that.
Sure, Murray had been nice enough to take him in, out of guilt. But Stringfellow didn’t have any compunction about giving Kelly the smoking gun: the custom-engraved pellet of ferret food, which she used to take down Murray, the duplicitous, SP-killing angel.
Stringfellow desperately wanted to support himself, be financially independent, so he got a job and paid the rent on a second-floor apartment in the back of a downtown alley. After weeks of rejection from office positions he didn’t want anyway, he finally secured a position laying cables for a broadband provider, and even got a uniform―a jacket fitted with a microchip that could analyze damage to the cables.
Though grateful for the job, he didn’t feel that he had enough money to be truly independent, so he leveraged his current job into the occasional gig running television and sound cables at major events, and this money gave him enough of a buffer to to give him some peace of mind.
On a day when he was supposed to lay broadband cable, he knew he was sick. His throat felt sore. He got up, turned on his espresso maker, and slurped down two tiny cups, hoping it would magically alleviate his symptoms. It didn’t. He had a bowl of cereal, not sure if it would make his throat feel worse.
He texted work, writing that he would have to take one day off. He puttered around, huddled in his blue chenille robe, paws wrapped around the hot cup, and halfheartedly kicked a fuzzy ball around the room.
Anyone looking down to the floor from the ceiling, would see a simple labyrinth, a warren of hallways and much smaller makeshift rooms and forts, decorated with a mishmash of baby, toddler, cat, and miniature furniture, with ferret toys neatly stored in bins.
A sequence of plastic tubes led up to the sink, the john, and his extensive grooming supplies in the bathroom. The apartment was just a studio, but he needed enough space to accomodate his angel form, in case he got turned back.
The espresso perked him up, but he decided that he should rest, so he cleaned his mug in the floor kitchen, lacking the energy to scramble up the rail to the person-kitchen, and shambled off
to the bedroom.
He hung up his robe, leaving on his custom-sewn polka-dot pajama shirt, and got into his bed with a book, The Woman in White, just as the train rumbled by the window.
His phone chimed. He thought it could be work, so he reached over and checked it, the minor effort making him collapse back on the pillow.
coming over, need favor, K, he got.
Under the weather. In bed. Sod off, he responded.
I’ll break every one of those tiny little legs, he got.
and I’ll pipe into your building the sound of me reading the waste land in my ts eliot voice, he responded, grateful for the distraction, not that he’d ever admit it.
you’ll b a ferret forever, he got.
I will hide all of your things so you never find them, he responded.
He collapsed on the pillow from his upright position and held his phone above his head.
at your door, and i have a key, he got.
The front door opened. Stringfellow heard Kelly stepping carefully inside. She sat in a person-sized chair in the bedroom and grinned at him, a giantess. He sneezed, for perhaps the hundredth time that morning, and blew his nose.
“How exactly are you a ferret again?”
He glared at her and tapped on his phone. what do u want
“I want to take you to one of the hell lodges.”
sounds fun but I only date ferrets right now
“I need you to do some reconnaissance,” she said.
He tilted his head and considered her under red and heavy eyelids. She came closer and sat beside the dog bed.
“I need to find the missing president of Clucking Along Holdings or the production of Cluck Snack will shut down.”
He rolled his eyes and tapped on his phone. yeah right, he texted, and sneezed.
She took his tissue box and held it up in the air. He struggled to reach for the box, and fell back against the pillow, breathing hoarsely, and feebly tried for the tissues again but almost passed out with the effort. Couldn’t she see he didn’t have the energy to even get a tissue?
“What did you have for breakfast this morning?” Kelly asked. “Cluck Snack Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz for Dogs and Ferrets?”
He nodded with a world-weary expression and blew his nose.
“And what did you have for dinner last night? Cluck Snack?”
He gestured as though to say, ‘Yes, of course, what else?’
“And what would happen to you if you didn’t have any Cluck Snack?”
The ferret drew a line across his throat and stuck out his tongue, then fell back, choking.
She leaned closer. “Are you in your death throes? Should I take you to a vet?”
He sat up again, punching the pillows to fluff them.
“So will you help me or not?”
Stringfellow widened his eyes and made a cluck sound. He grabbed his phone and kept glaring at her as he typed I have the flu!
“Yeah, that’s obvious.”
He waved her off like he couldn’t believe how obtuse she was, laid down, and pulled the covers over his head.
“I might not find him without you.”
She heard a muffled sound of exasperation from under the covers.
Kelly took Firiel, the angel in charge of the protection of fungi, and Stringfellow Hawk to the train station. Stringfellow slept fitfully in a backpack carrier.
She held up the train map, which resembled a fungus network with fruiting bodies, and turned it around and around. “We managed to find hell lodge number six, but number three?”
Firiel held up his basket of oats.
“Let’s hope that a few extra oat canisters have some pull with the persona.”
The biomorphic train appeared so fast she never quite saw it coming. A door opened in front of them, and knit itself back up after they boarded.
The pale, red-headed train persona who brought them their milks in the lounge car flashed a pleased grin when Firiel gave him the six canisters of oats.
Kelly arched a questioning brow at the persona as she slowly held up the map. The persona narrowed his eyes, worrying her, but his expression shifted to amusement, and he peered closer.
“We need to find hell lodge number three,” she said.
The persona, who smelled like moss and ferns, held out a slender finger at the map. He ticked his finger back and forth like a metronome, and tapped a spot close to a fruiting body.
She angled the map back to herself and looked at the location the persona indicated. “Thank you.”
The persona went to the front of the train car and pressed his hand against a biometric reader. Green tendrils crept out from underneath his hand and pressed against the reader until it beeped. The tendrils retreated and the persona removed his hand. A door slid open, revealing a screen. The persona moved his fingertip around the screen, tapped once, and pulled his hand away. The door slid closed.
Firiel sketched on his drawing pad and showed Kelly.
“The persona is putting a new route in the train,” she said, and Firiel gave her a half-smile. “The oats worked.”
Stringfellow sneezed, moaned, coughed, and blew his nose in his backpack carrier.
Kelly received a text that read you so owe me for this.
She typed back, I’ll pay for your phone bill this month.
He replied, u already owe me for murray.
She typed, fine, I’ll buy pizza later.
He responded, no appetite and I can buy my own pizza!
“Wow, sensitive,” she said.
The train let them out by a vestibule similar to the one at hell lodge number six, Don’s place. It had similar fortune-telling machine to the 10-Baht Buddha in the other vestibule, but Pothole City Donuts-branded, a small automata that read Donut Holes and Fortunes Told. Kelly smirked and tried to put in a coin. However, it required a special hell lodge number three coin.
“Really? Where am I supposed to get that?”
Firiel blew air out of his mouth in a raspberry. She looked around and noticed something waiting for the train, a snail with a glistening body and a shell advertising The Club at Hell Lodge Number Three―Stay, Dine, Play.
“Excuse me,” Kelly said to the snail, “but do you have two lodge coins on you that I can use in this machine?”
The snail’s eye stalk antenna quivered and leaned toward her. She kind of hoped he (she?) didn’t have two coins on him, because where would he be keeping it? The snail spit out two coins from… where was that? Its cloaca? A pocket? She accepted them and nodded her thanks.
The train pulled up and the snail sped forward, leaving a slimy trail behind it. She waited until the train pulled away, snail at the window, to wipe the coins off on her shirt so she wouldn’t give offense.
She inserted one of the coins into the Pothole City Donuts automata and received a hot donut hole with a paper fortune sticking out of it. You already have what you seek.
She rolled her eyes and crumpled the fortune in her hand. “The usual b.s., Firiel. But the donut hole was good. Cluck Snack P’nut Butt’r Koffee flavor.”
She inserted a second coin and handed the donut hole to Firiel. He was about to put the whole thing in his mouth until she stayed his arm and took the fortune out first.
“Cluck,” she read from the fortune. “Of course. OK, let’s go.”
Hell lodge three had completely different topography from Murray’s dry and desert-like office. The sand was light purple and sprouted mushrooms and fuzzy, globular, and sticky-hairy yellow flowers.
About fifty yards away sat a large cabin in the same style as Murray’s, only less rustic. Smaller cabin properties encircled the main house at varying distances, like feudal houses.
Firiel had to stop at every snow-capped mushroom on the ground.
“I know you have to stop at each one, Fee, but this is more important. We have to hurry.”
When they reached the main house, she pulled open one of the wooden doors by the iron latch, fashioned in the shape o
f a ferret head. “Look, Stringfellow―a ferret door knocker.”
The ferret looked. Blinked sleepily. Texted, sneezed. Groaned.
Her phone buzzed. that’s not a ferret. it’s a polecat! Within seconds, he was sleeping again.
She spotted a bar at the opposite end of the room and headed over to get a seat while Firiel communicated with a potted fern in the corner.
A fight broke out at the end of the bar between a beach flea-like monster that coated his foe―a salamander with a small anemone head―with a viscous gold spit. The salamander wiped it off his arm, and thrust his head at the bug.
The bartender, an overweight spider, put down the glass he was polishing and lumbered over. He pulled the two apart, and when they kept at it, the spider released thousands of tiny hairs in a cloud that made both the bug and the salamander shriek in pain and run off.
“Let that be a lesson! No fighting in my bar!”
The spider lumbered back. “What can I get you?”
“I don’t have hell lodge number three coins.” She thought for a second. “Does the King of the Demonic Locusts have a tab here?”
“Don?” the bartender said. “Yeah, a long tab.” He winked. “Want me to add something to it?”
Her mouth curved up. “Do you carry Cluck Snack?”
“Some.”
“A Cluck Snack P’nut Butt’r Koffee Drink for my friend by the fern. And a regular coffee for me, please. Do you serve breakfast here?”
The spider glanced up at her. “We do.”
“Good. Ever see this man?” Kelly handed the bartender a photo of Archie.
He laughed, bulky shoulders quaking. “What is this, a cryptid sighting?”
“Just about, yeah.”
He reached under the bar, taking out a pair of reading glasses to get a closer look. “He looks familiar. That’s the best I can do with a picture like this.” He rapped it with a hairy knuckle.
“His name is Archie Driscoll. Sound familiar?”
“Archie, Archie. Yeah, that rings a bell. Bit of a regular.”
“Seen him around here lately?”
“Maybe last week.”
She put the picture back in the bag, sure he was keeping something from her. Stringfellow woke up, moaned, then sneezed three times.
