Workforce - 6

WORKFORCE
By Sam Acheson

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In which we take a break from both exposition and character development; a tour of a new home, and a phone call with the folks.




Isabelle seemed determined to ignore me to death as we walked out into the darkening street. She kept her scarcely visible eyes pointed straight forward, emitting a series of scoffing sounds and little unfriendly grunts that indicated she was either arguing with me inside her head or attempting to summon a male porpoise for purposes of mating.

Goddamnit, it was cold. I shivered a little bit, reaching towards my magic and asking my geas if please, could I just conjure myself a bit of heat? Raise my body temperature just a scosh? Pleeeeeeease?

Keep shivering, pansy seemed to be its response.

Balls.

Isabelle's car was much like Isabelle herself; pockmarked, unpleasantly dysfunctional, plagued by odd and horrifying smells. I looked at the tiny thing with trepidation; while I'm familiar of course with the theory, trusting myself to a bauxite can powered by explosive dead lizard juice was a little more than I was prepared to deal with right then.

She asked the address by necessity, in the manner of someone asking a question of the wind. Specifically, a wind that made her want to die. I told her, and she shook her head.

"That's halfway across town," she groused, getting into the car and slamming the door. A few leprous flakes of rust fell drifting to the ground, like dandruff.

Eugh.

I got in, though, fastening myself to the seat as required by decree and trying not to touch any of the upholstery with my bare skin.

We drove on in silence. My home was across town, naturally, but it wasn't much of a town. It was getting on towards night so every shop and stall was lighting up their little squiggly tubes full of inert gas, spraying fluorescent pink and blue vomit everywhere.

"Nice town," I remarked conversationally.

"Fuck you."

That's how my every attempted gambit went as we drove.

"How's the weather?"

"Fuck you."

"Seen any good cinematics lately?"

"Fuck you."

"I must have you; drive to the shoulder so that I might ravish you with lustful abandon amongst the fish shacks, my wanton sex goddess."

"Fuck you."

Okay, so I didn't actually say that last one. Merely the thought of such congress made my much-abused and thoroughly disreputable equipment shrivel up and evaporate like water on a skillet.

"This is the place," she said, screeching to a half outside a huge and hideous house.

"Fuck you," she added, as an afterthought, in case I had thought our relationship had changed somewhat. I took my last gambit.

"Isabelle? If you're wondering, one of the things you see that nobody else does is movement through time," I said clinically, examining my nails. Good god above and all the bones of the saints, I needed an emery board, stat.

It was hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure her eyes went wide.

"Wha...?"

"See you tomorrow, dear girl," I said with a devastating smile as I reached out and patted her on one oily cheek in as insulting a manner as possible "at least, if you want to know more."

"But...?"

"Goodnight."

No matter what else, at least I succeeded in sending her from moderate fury to incandescent rage. Her sulfurous curses followed me up the stairs, and her car made an unholy racket as she ramped the curb at about forty miles per hour.

Savor the small victories.

There was certainly nothing to savor about the house. It was large and had probably been very nice once, but every window on the ground floor was barred and most of the ones on the third floor were plywood planks. Oh, thank you, father. I swear to you by the Deep Secrets and the blood of the World that if I catch fleas in this stinking pit I'm going to pop the Otherlands like a bubble and see how your precious plebs like breathing vacuum.

The man who answered the door was everything you'd expect of a frontman at this kind of place to be; I'll leave it at that. Frankly, I was tired of meeting people. Tired of being there.

"You got the shit kicked out of you, eh?" the gap-toothed yokel said as he handed me a key, thoughtfully attached to a piece of wood the size of a seasonal baguette"for the crapper," he explained.

"My thanks," I said vaguely.

My room was on the second floor, up a flight of ominously creaking stairs. I could hear various acts of immoral congress through the other rooms. Somebody had their stereo up, much too loud.

My room...no. "This" room. Father be damned, I wasn't going to stay here for six weeks. Six weeks under the bridge in the company of an amorous troll would be vastly preferable. The room was empty except for a cot, my dragonskin valise, and an incongruously elegant mahogany bedstand on which stood a glossy black rotary telephone of such high polish that I was immediately suspicious. I could tell, in fact, that nobody could see this phone but me.

One guess who could call me on that thing. Go on, guess.

I sorted through the clothes in my bag; it was more stuff like the stuff I was wearing. That is to say it was awful.

I was in the process of trying to convince my geas that I would surely, surely die if I didn't immediately have a glass of Chateau d'Yquem 1737 Sauternes (the geas was sadly unconvinced) when the telephone rang.

I braced for the inevitable, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

My first thought is that it was a prank call from a baine sidhe. The receiver emmitted a high, piercing shriek in the upper registers. Bats in the nearby foothills probably took flight in a spasm of fear.

The shriek continued for some impossible length of time during which I seriously considered flinging the telephone from my window (impractical, seeing as a second inspection proved I didn't have one) before it trailed off into a series of hiccuping sobs.

Oh, fuck me sideways with something spined and wriggling.

"Hello Mother," I said wearily into the phone, sitting gingerly on the cot.

"O!" the voice was gradually emerging from the telephone. Soon it was like she was sitting next to me, hollering in my ear "O! Your most cruel father! O, most cruel fate!"

"It's...I'm fine, Mother," I lied, massaging my aching head. I asked my geas if I could please, please have that glass of wine now, or failing that a set of earplugs. Or, please, a knife with which to slit my own throat from ear to aching ear.


Tough it out, you pussy.

"O!"

So I told her some lies. About how wonderful things were here in Stinking Mortal Monkey Land.

"I've met some people," I said. That was true enough "they're very nice," I continued, which might be a bit of a stretch.

"O my Precious Darling, Angel of my Heart," she wept "I shall beg your Most Cruel Father to let you come home to me soon!"

Care to place any bets on that, mother dearest?

"O!" she wailed anew "No, I must speak to him further!"

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

"Your Father-"

When my Mother spoke, her voice was there beside me. When my Father spoke, he was there around me.

I was floating, a speck of meat and salt and chaining sugars and fats in a vast and celestial maelstrom.

It was a little like floating in the womb, if your mother were an exploding star.

I slowly perceived that some of the terrifying noise and fulsome blasts of color and song that were bursting around me like overripe fruit were the echoing booms of his laughter.

OH MY SON, my Father chortled THIS IS BETTER THAN EVER I DREAMT.

"You...fucking...BASTARD!" I screamed and thrashed, flinging my fists and feet outwards, desperate for him to catch a blow in the spectral beanbag.

SOMETHING THE MATTER, MY SON?

"IS SOMETHING THE FUCKING MATTER?" I howled "how about you stranded me in this goddamn stinking shitpit with all these goddamn stinking proles!"

YES I DID, he said conversationally PLOTTING TO KILL ME YET?

"Yes," I snarled "yes, I am, Father. You'd better get the Palace seamstresses together to weave a fucking tapestry about how I kicked your ass across the cosmos! Tell them to buy extra red thread, because it's going to be bloody! You'll be frothing ectoplasm from every orifice! I'm going to-"

THE SAD THING IS, my father said with an avuncular chuckle THIS IS ACTUALLY AN IMPROVEMENT.

My father had no head, but I could sense him shaking it at me in a thoroughly condescending manner.

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE SEEN YOU WANT SOMETHING, he said, I think, a little sadly.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" I mean, really. I wanted things. I wanted everything, actually. Mostly what I wanted right then was to tear his nonexistent throat out with my teeth while the superheated plasma that pumped through his non-existent veins sprayed across the whole of Created Things.

YOU'RE SO EMPTY, SON and now his voice was definately sad TO SEE YOU CARE GIVES ME HOPE.

"Fuck you!"

GOODBYE. I'LL BE IN TOUCH.

And with that, he was gone, I was flat on my ass on the dingy wooden floor, and someone was pounding on my door.