Monster - A. Lee Martinez [2]
She didn’t comment on his blueness. Like the inexplicable appearance of the yeti, it didn’t seem odd. Like encountering an elephant at the beach or meeting an Aborigine at the mall. She wouldn’t expect it, but she wouldn’t classify it as bizarre as much as unexpected. Her lack of a strong reaction struck her as stranger than anything else. But Judy made an art out of indifference, so she just chalked it up to not caring.
“Are you the guy?” she asked. “The guy the city sent?”
“I’m the guy. Are you the one who called?”
She nodded. “Let’s have a look, then.”
Judy stabbed out her cigarette. “I don’t think that baseball bat is going to do much against this thing.”
“Lady, I don’t recall asking you what you thought. How about I leave the delicate art of stacking canned goods in decorative pyramids to you, and you leave the yeti wrangling to me?” He snorted. “That is, if it even is a yeti.”
He gestured toward the door and smiled thinly. “After you.” Judy flicked her cig into the ash can and led him to the freezer.
The yeti was still there. It’d done away with most of the inventory and was content to just sit on its big hairy ass and digest its meal.
“Yup. Yeti,” said the guy.
“Told you.”
“Good for you.”
“How the hell did a yeti get in our freezer?” she asked. “Tibetans make a pretty penny selling the young ones as pets. Then they grow up, and the next thing you know, some asshole drives them to a strange part of town and unloads them.”
Judy frowned. “That stinks.”
“What are you going to do? People are shit.”
This was a philosophy that Judy shared, so she didn’t argue. It did stimulate some empathy for the yeti, though, looking very much like a big fluffy teddy bear except for the claws and teeth.
“You aren’t going to hurt it, are you?”
“I’m paid to bring them in alive.” He pinned the bat under his arm and pulled out a small book from his back pocket. He flipped through the pages, nodded to himself, and with a marker drew a few strange marks along the bat.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He glanced up with annoyance but didn’t explain. The blue-skinned guy went into the freezer. He wasn’t being sneaky. Just walked up to the yeti and smacked it on the back of its head with the bat. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it seemed to do the job. The yeti’s eyes fluttered and it fell over, unconscious.
The guy kissed his bat, took out his marker, and started drawing on the freezer floor. He drew a circle around the unconscious creature, and, after consulting with his pocket guidebook again, began drawing strange letters around its edges.
“What are you doing now?” she asked. “You wouldn’t understand it.”
“Try me.”
“Unless you’ve got a certified degree in runic studies with a minor in cryptobiology from the Greater New Jersey Community Collegius Arcanus, just leave me alone and let me take care of this.”
He moved around the circle, drawing strange symbols. It took three minutes, and when he finished, he stepped back as the yeti disappeared in a flash. When the spots cleared from Judy’s eyes, the yeti was gone. There was a small, fluffy rock in its place. The weird writing drifted off the floor and faded like smoke.
“What did you do to it?” she asked.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head.” He scooped the stone up and stuck it in his pocket. “Just transmogrified it for easy transport.”
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it. Now if you could just accompany me to my van and sign some paperwork, I’ll be on my way.”
They started back.