Monster - A. Lee Martinez [12]
“Why can’t she pick up her own stupid dry cleaning?”
The alarm doll only offered a sympathetic shrug.
Monster rose, took his shower, and ate some cold spaghetti for breakfast. He found his color code book and looked up purple. There wasn’t an entry. He’d never been purple. He hated new colors. At least with the old ones, he knew what to expect.
Since he was up already, Monster decided to drop off his scores. In addition to the yetis, he had eight other transmogrified cryptos that he hadn’t cashed in yet. He stopped by the Animal Control offices, gathered the stones in a sack, and carried them inside.
He didn’t use the front door. That only led to the cats and dogs section. He went around the side and down the alley into a small back door bearing the Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services logo, a muzzled dragon skull. The CCRS lobby was a drab gray room without furniture or decoration. The only door in or out was the one he’d used. There was a small plastic window where the payout clerk sat.
She wasn’t sitting there now.
Monster pressed the buzzer beside the window, then paced the empty room a few times. The cameras mounted in the four corners of the ceiling followed him.
Monster pressed the buzzer again. He held the button down until the grinding hum of the device exhausted itself and sputtered to a halt.
The payout clerk appeared in a flash. It wasn’t much of a flash. More of a pop, like a lightbulb burning out, accompanied by the smell of ozone, cigarette smoke, and too much cheap perfume.
“All right already,” she said. “Jeezus—what do you want?” Charlene was a fallen goddess, and the only remnants of her divine nature were her omnipresence and her third eye, accentuated by too much bright blue mascara and adorned with the cheapest false eyelashes available to woman or goddess.
“What took you so long?” he asked. “Coffee break,” she said. “Union rules.”
Charlene’s union was only her, but there was a lot of her to go around. She was the sole employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles, half the city’s health inspectors, and had positions in several other departments. Monster was also pretty sure he’d heard her voice on the other end of a phone sex line one time, but he preferred not to dwell on that.
“What do you have?” she asked.
He emptied the sack and laid his collection in a row on the desk. She appraised the specimens, checked her computer, and prepared an offer. In the background, he heard the distant, ever-present sound of barking dogs and the screech of a green cockatrice. Something howled as if in terrible agony.
“Wraith,” said Charlene. “Damn thing hasn’t shut up since it was brought in.”
“Isn’t that a Spirit Supervision job?” asked Monster. “Yeah, well, they’re full up so they had to transfer it over here. Like we have the room for it.”
She cut a check and handed it to him through the slot. “What about that dead yeti I turned in for alchemical processing last night?” he asked.
“It’s in there,” she said. “By the way, you’re also getting three demerits on your license for that.”
“What? But it wasn’t my fault.”
She fixed him with a vague stare that clearly indicated she couldn’t care less.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he grumbled as he pocketed the check.
The loudspeaker in the corner near the ceiling blared with shrill static.
“Monster, we’ve got a call for you. If you want it.”
It was Charlene’s voice. One of her other selves was probably sitting in some office right now, staring at him on a grainy monitor. He glanced at the Charlene sitting at the payout window. She sucked on a cigarette, running a file across her nails and looking supremely bored.
“I don’t work days,” he said.
He glanced at Charlene to see if her lips moved as the loudspeaker voice replied, “One of my best day guys had a run-in with a gorgon. Until they de-petrify him, I’m shorthanded.”
Monster hesitated. He still felt half-asleep, but he was here already. He might as well take the call, grab a few extra bucks.
“Sure.”
“Great.