Short Story 10, Part 2

I was forced to ride shotgun.

And no one even gave me a gun.

The nameless driver had simply pulled up and told me to get in, beyond that he didn’t say a word. He was human, as far as I could tell, and was one of the Glut’s favorites – a henchman, plain and simple. I wasn’t sure if I qualified as a henchman at this point, but it was dawning on me that the glut had more of an idea about it than I did. I’d met the Glut dozens of times previously, but never in a hsate and never one on one. Thus my lack of sidearm.

She didn’t trust me yet.

The ride took us straight out of downtown, carrying along in silence. The radio dials looked like they had been last turned with a clawed hammer; I assumed the whole thing didn’t work. Even inf it did, the driver struck me as the kind of guy who still used cassette tapes. It was nothing in the way that he looked, it was just a sort of era and time that I felt he belonged to – late 1980s, hair bands and cocaine. These were the sort of things that got a guy into this line of work in the first place.

His appearance didn’t betray any of that, but it certainly said something else. His leather jacket was cracked and faded, but still whole with a working zipper. He picked me up wearing a Cleveland Indians baseball cap sporting a logo reminiscent of the franchise during their late 90s success – the days of Alomar, Ramirez and Vazquel. His salt and pepper scruff matched the hair peeking out beneath the cap and complimented his worn and splotched smoker’s skin.

At any moment I expected him to break the silence with the familiar crackle of a pack of smokes. His nails had that warm yellow tint at their edges and were gripping the wheel a little too tightly.

“Trying to quick smoking?” I adjusted my position in the sea, trying to get off the metal rails that were practically bursting through the cushions.

I could see his grip loosen on the wheel, but he said nothing.

“Yeah, I remember what that was like, no patch or anything. Cold turkey was cold. See, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to, damn doctors and their Hippocratic bullshit were making people like you and me suffer, because some whiney ne’er-do-wells wanted a cause for lung cancer. Let me tell you, all the “science” that was used to correlate smoking and cancer, you show that to Colonial Americans and see what those hard asses have to say”

I was beginning to wonder if any of my drivel was getting through, if I kept comparing him to me it was bound to get him irked, especially with me coming off as such a bitchy nut.

But it would prove much harder than that to draw some emotion out of my sulky chauffer of stone. The driver sat silent with his fingers working on the wheel.

“I bet you were a Malboro man back in the day, weren’t you? Beds too, I can see it. Those were the last of the flavor – real tobacco, real drag, filters that you can just snap off, fuck those things.”

We were rounding the corner into our industrial block, I was running out of time to work this guy. By the time I get out of the car I want to be expecting a blow to the face, but he’s keeping cool. Humans are so difficult sometimes.

“She’s expecting you.”

“Oh! There you are. Want a smoke?”

“Get out of the car.”

He stopped the sedan right infront of a loading dock, a produce packaging warehouse. The Glut kept eyes and hands on all sorts of businesses and produce was –strangely – one of them It was ironic in its own way, but n o one was going to laugh at it with the Glut around.

“Lets do this again sometime.” I hurry out of the car, leaving the guy red on the inside, I was sure. As soon as I cleared the doorframe he threw the car in reverse and tried to take me down. I don’t know what would have looked more foolish, allowing him to knock me down or what I actually did: throw myself onto the door and hang on like an exhausted beaver flailing down river.

I planted my feet and broke to the side, grinning as I made a dash for the loading dock. The driver turned his backward progress into a dirt-kicking turn and barely slowed as he cleared the small lot where he dropped me, letting the car’s momentum close the door. I would go on to see him quite frequently, whether during work or after and he picked up smoking again a few days after that meeting with the Glut.

It was important for me to get my laughs in when I could, short moments like that when I was not at risk of getting shot were rare. Car rides could not always be counted on to be low-stress. After that day I would throw men in trunks, car jack old women and be mopping up blood off of car mats – thankfully never my own.

Hopping onto the dock I made way into the dark warehouse. There was no regular business today, the packing machines and belts were all in stasis, the colored lights and sounds of industry were all absent, having gone home with the crew of twenty something.

The glut kept an office up a flight of stairs. Maybe “office’ is the wrong word. When I imagine an office it has a desk and chairs with maybe a filing cabinet or a table with a large print calendar. These are the offices for men. For humans. The Glut’s is something else.

Padding up the metal stairs, I made no attempt to hide my arrival. The steps were extra deep and were a grid-like cast that allowed for excellent grip. No one would slip on those stairs, but plenty have fallen down them. They had a water-resistant finish applied on the surface, a maroon coating that reminded me of dried blood.

Safety standards for factories and most work environments had been written with average humans in mind. The impregnation of the contemporary work force by non-humans happened in the early 1980s, almost paralleling an international recession that the western workforce took right in the gut. Obviously, speculation about the inclusion of non-humans in labor positions and the timing related to the economic downturn was widespread and proliferated until investors and entrepreneurs demanded action. Legislators refused to acknowledge non-humans under equal opportunity standards and safety requirements and user access for establishments only had to accommodate those with hands, feet, two arms and two legs.  Of course each business could redesign their facilities to welcome the newly accepted abject, but this was a fantastic challenge for places such as restaurants and stores as the variety within the non-human and their possession of animal qualities often risked contamination and violation of existing health codes. Really, the arrival of the non-humans into everyday society was a global dilemma in civil rights and the question of autonomy. It put even international giants such as McDonalds at the brink of collapse, in their case it was something so simple as “do we serve burgers to people with cow bodies, even though they have cold hard cash?”

The Glut was very much involved in this socioeconomic battle. She had clout – to say the least – and kept in good relations with a few dozen congressmen (all of which were human). I had heard stories before I met her in person that she was involved in politics in the early 40s, keeping her hands entangled in pre-war policy. At the time – nearly eighty years ago – non-humans were not acknowledged as sentient or aware, a sentiment  only comparable to the attitude toward black slaves in the 1700s. I’m still not sure of the truth behind these claims, simply based on the timeline, but people were discovering more and more about non-humans every day.

I came to the double-door frame that lead to the Glut’s office and leaned against it, not passing the threshold, but letting the room come to me.

The office was only possessive of a small circle of couches, a coffee table and a large padded platform – almost a stage – that oversaw the ocean of upholstery. The platform was riddled with pillows like the lounge of an Eastern king. If the Glut put some hookah pipes around the room it would make a seamless transformation.

Riding on couch number one was a lone man. I had never seen him before, but that didn’t mean anything. He dressed like a farmer and had the build of a football player (it should be noted that the NFL refused to draft non-human players), but his fear was evident on his face. His big brown eyes darted around the room and barely noticed my arrival. The Glut wasn’t there yet, she loved to make people wait; always arriving fashionably late and making it clear that people came to her not the other way around. The middle-age quarterback was tensed like a spring, wringing his hat between his nervously working hands.

I simply waited and watched, knowing that this was something I was meant to see. The Glut undoubtedly timed this so her earlier meeting overlapped into ours. There were other doors into the room and I had expected her to enter through them, but she snuck up behind me. I was either too lost in thought or she was getting very good at being stealthy. She didn’t acknowledge me, she simply brushed past me as she navigated through the open door frame.

The Glut always filled me with mixed emotions. I could understand the fear the couch-rider felt, she was a sight. She stood a head taller than me and could straight up to an east seven feet. Most people describe two things after they first meet the Glut, one is her lower body, the other is her upper. I could never decide which attribute was more shocking. Below her waist was as if her bottom started where a chicken’s head ended. The white feathered mass blossomed at her hips and contained the breast, wings and legs of the classic feathered foowl. While it maintained a poultry-esque referent it was as if such a critter were enlarged to a three and a half foot tall hen with talons as long as a grown human’s hand. Above the gargantuan bird the Glut had a stunning female torso; a flat-bodied, ample-chested, ivory skinned monument to sexuality which was never covered in clothing. This is not what was unusual , though, at the shoulder the Glut sprouted six additional arms, all of which were toned and sculpted to match her muscular form. This almost arachnidan mutation allowed her to multi-task like a machine and gave her speech and personality a monstrous animation. Two of her arms were always occupied. I didn’t know if the Glut was even aware of it, but she constantly was groping her own breasts. When I looked upon her I was always terrified and aroused. Only the potential for her to end my life kept me from pitching a very awkward tent.

She clicked past me, touching the door frame and letting her last-most hand brush my cheek. The multitude of limbs was always moving, touching whatever was in reach – cracking knuckles, fondling breasts…something. She let a small smile touch her lips, but what she was smiling at was hard to tell. The Glut kept a strange cap about her eyes and head. It may have been an additional segment of her anatomy, but regardless it was clearly identifiable as a Lily of the Valley, a pale white flower that crowned her head.

“Good afternoon, gentleman. Thank you for waiting, Bill.” So I learned the man’s name was bill.

Bill came to his feet, nearly tripping on his own shoes, “’Afternoon, what’s this all about, Glut?”

“In time, Bill. I want to show you something first.” She glided on her claws to the stage and smoothly hopped onto its raised surface. From somewhere unseen she drew two ears of husked and cleaned yellow corn, juggling them amongst her many grasps. “These were both taken from your many acres of land, Bill. Do you know what the difference between these two is? No? Of course not. It isn’t something so visible. However, it is a vital difference. One difference that brings us to the purpose of our meeting. Any guess? Still no?

“Well I’ll tell you. This one is yours. And this one is mine.”

Bill’s mouth stammered along silently, unable to make the words that we were both thinking: What?

“This ear,” in one of her right hands, “is from seed you’ve gathered through seven generations of your family. Corn whose diversity is natural and derived through careful hoarding of raw materials. This other,” dancing in her left set, “is a genetically modified ear, scientifically perfect and resistant to disease and most insect life. What has happened is that somehow – some unfortunate accident I’m sure – you’ve collected a sampling of my seeds and unfortunately let them grow alongside your own. So one has to wonder: how much of that crop is your seed and how much is mine?

“See, Bill, you’ve stolen this corn – “

“Whoa now! I have done no such thing!”

“- and consequently infringed on a copyright and patents I have on this produce. My attorney tells me I can bring suit against you and force you to stop harvest for years during litigation. Now, tell me Bill, How much did you net last year?”

Bill was stuttering and pressing his palms into his temples, struggling to wrap his mind around this turn of events.

“Bill.”

Nothing.

“Bill!” The Glut’s arms tensed and cocked as if going to throw the corn.

“Se-seven-seventy.”

“Okay, Bill, that’s not bad. You’ve carved out a decent living there and I’m sure with your wife’s wages you clear one-twenty on a decent year. So, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. If we should pursue the proper legal course here you make nothing per year and most of your wife’s income would go into lawyer’s fees and I don’t want to do that to you.”

The relief on Bill’s face was like the sun coming out of the clouds and just as bright.

“What I think we can do is compromise. I think, since you’re such a gentleman, that you can go on using my seeds and – for now – I won’t lose a feather over it. In exchange for my niceties – essentially y allowing your farm to limp on – I’ll be expecting to receive 40% of your profits. Annually.”

The crashing disappointment hammered Bill’s face again, “That’s almost half of my income! How can I….How…”

I continued to stand by, unmoving.

“Bill, Bill, think about how much of your money you would lose if you had no harvest per year.”

The Glut had just added nearly thirty thousand dollars to her annual salary.

The farmer known as Bill weighted his losses and potential disasters and signed on with the Glut. He walked out and forgot his hat.

She and I stood in silence for a few moments after his departure.

Eventually she broken the silence, “Have a seat.”

I did.

“How long have you been under my employ?”

“Thirteen months.”

“I’m sorry I missed our anniversary.” She slowly got off the platform and came to stand before me, “Has it been as good for you as it has for me?” She gently ran a single hand along my knee.

“It’s been a thrill,” I don’t want to betray my discomfort,” Honestly, I’m surprised you called me here.”

 She sighed and took her hand off of me.

“I had heard you were fun, you don’t seem fun.”

“I’m a walking thrill ride after a few shots.”

“We’ll have to test that out some time.”

“Name the time and place.”

“One day. In the meantime, I brought you here to tell you who your new partner is. It’s been a few weeks since we lost Gene and we need to get you back in the swing of things. When you get your next job, you’ll be working with Levi.”

“Oh, no, come on, Glut”

“Don’t whine. Levi is an excellent partner, you’ll learn to love her. Trust me, Atticus.”