Monster - A. Lee Martinez [72]
He didn’t bother sitting up, just lay there in his boxers. He turned his head enough to see the food she’d brought: a peanut butter sandwich (the crusts were cut off), some oatmeal cookies, and a beer. He wasn’t very hungry, but the beer looked good.
It might as well have had a label on it saying Perfectly harmless!
“Now let’s see here,” said Lotus as she stared intently at her stone slab. “Judy tells me your name is Monster. Monster Dionysus. Is that correct?”
He grunted.
“Is Monster your given name?” she asked. “Or is it, as I presume, a nickname?”
He grunted again.
Her lips puckered into a slight frown. “I can understand your resentment, young man. I truly can. But this will be a lot easier if you drop the attitude.”
He looked her in the eye. He grunted but he did so with a smile this time.
“As you wish,” she said. “It’s no bother to me. You’re only making it harder on yourself. In any case, your nickname should work just fine. Whatever you’re known best as is usually the easiest cross-referencing tool.”
She hummed to herself while running her fingers along the stone. He didn’t know what she was doing, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. He could’ve jumped up and kicked her in the head before she knew it. Except he still had that painful reminder that Lotus was under some kind of protection. She wasn’t worried about him because there was nothing to be worried about.
She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “This is most puzzling. For some reason, you don’t seem to exist.”
Monster wasn’t interested in arguing with her, but he figured he was too annoyed to be imaginary.
“Most troublesome indeed,” she said. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve come across a flaw in the stone’s records. In fact, I’m fairly certain I never have.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about, and he didn’t care.
“Lady, I don’t know what you’re doing here, and I really don’t want to know. If you let me go, I promise to keep my mouth shut, go home, and never think about any of this again.”
Lotus shrugged. “I wish I could trust you. I really do. But everything is in far too delicate a state at the moment. I think it was twenty thousand years ago, give or take, that I decided the little details weren’t worth bothering with. Ended up being thrown in a volcano for my sloppiness. Let me tell you, Mr. Dionysus, there’s nothing like having to claw and scrape your way through a sea of molten lava to remind one to keep an eye on the details.”
Monster tried to figure out if she was being serious. If she was making a joke, she was very good at keeping a straight face.
“Are you a goddess or something?” he asked.
She chuckled. “Oh, heavens no. Since when do gods bother with mortal affairs? They gave up on this universe a long time ago, once they realized its affections weren’t anything worth fighting over. No, I’m just the keeper of the stone, doing what I must to maintain order.”
She held the slab toward him and waved it around a bit. Then smacked it several times, held it to her ear and shook it.
“Most puzzling, indeed,” she remarked as she left the room, locking the door behind her.
Monster decided Lotus was a nut. A nut with some powerful magic at her disposal, but a nut nonetheless. That only worried him more.
Judy glanced up with glazed eyes as Lotus entered the kitchen. “Hello.”
“Hello.” Lotus set the stone at its place by the kitchen sink. “How are you feeling, dear?”
“Peachy,” said Judy, and she meant it. “This tea is great! It’s really, really great!” She took a long drink and poured herself another. “I mean, wow! You should bottle this stuff and sell it. You’d make a fortune.”
“Thank you. You’re too kind.”
Lotus joined Judy at the table and had a cup herself. The pacifying effects of the tea wouldn’t affect her in the same way they did Judy, who even now had the mental capacity of a week-old turnip.
“Tell me