“Hey, guy,” Huido said, jumping to his feet with his hands raised, “we’re just trying to make a livin’ here, yeah?”
“People like you make me ferociously angry,” Shrit said without acknowledging the Dark Halflings at all. “I hate it when I get mad.” The Orc walked over and punched one of the loose boards, snapping it in half.
Huido’s bluish skin began to turn rather white.
“Uh,” he said, pushing his mates backwards, “I think we’re going to go.” His eyes never left the brooding Orc as he added, “We’ll be in touch, Whirligig.”
“Thanks for stopping by,” Gappy said with a wave.
“Remember what we said, Gnome.”
“It’s just ridiculous!” Shrit yelled, causing Huido and his henchmen to run down the driveway to their truck.
“Thanks for that,” Gappy said angrily at the Orc. “I think you just scared them away with all of this boisterous behavior. What’s gotten into you, Shrit?”
“That’s Mr. Bagg to you,” Shrit said venomously.
“Seriously?”
“You heard me, Mr. Whirligig.”
“No, I mean your name is seriously Shrit Bagg?”
“You’d have known that if we had been real friends,” Shrit answered, clearly not seeing the problem.
“For the love of The Twelve, it was a Rent-A-Friend contract!”
“I know what it was,” Shrit answered with a stern look, “but it isn’t right.”
“Fine, then give back the money I paid you for being a friend.”
“Oh, now you’re trying to back out on a business deal with me, too?” Shrit laughed in a not-so-merry way. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
“What do you want from me?” Gappy squeaked in as loud a voice as his anatomy would allow. “Friendship? Here’s a newsflash for you, Shrit, friendship is not built on me paying you money to act like a friend.”
“Of course it’s not,” Shrit retorted.
“But that’s what happened.”
Shrit pointed at Gappy irritably for a moment, but then slowly lowered his finger.
“Dammit, you’re right.”
With a groan, the Orc reached into his pocket and pulled out the money that Gappy had given him and handed it back. The look on his face told that he was struggling mightily with doing this.
“What’s this?” Gappy said.
“Your money back for lunch and dinner,” Shrit said in a defeated tone. “You’re right. Friendship isn’t bought. It’s earned.”
Gappy gingerly took the money. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Shrit plopped onto the floor and leaned back against the side of the barn. “I’m sorry, Gappy. I’ve just been through so much over the last year, and you just seem like a guy that’s got it all together. I guess I just wanted to hang out with you in the hopes that some of your stability would rub off on me.”
“It’s okay,” Gappy said. He was not used to being considered an adult. “It’s not like I’ve been a very good friend to you, rental or not. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own business that I guess I just didn’t stop to think about how my actions were affecting others.”
“I suppose you’ve got a lot on your mind, too, Gappy.”
“Doesn’t excuse my behavior.” Gappy climbed up on the step stool and sat on the edge of the desk. “So what are you going to do, Shrit?”
“About what?”
“Your life, acting, a job, and so on?”
“I have no idea,” Shrit replied with a shrug. “I’m just not good at anything.”
The guy obviously needed someone’s help. And, truth be told, while Gappy did find Shrit to be a pain in the rump, he seemed to be an Orc with a good heart. He wondered what his father would do if he were in this situation, and that gave him the answer.
“You could work for me,” Gappy said with some effort.
“I could?”
“Can’t pay much. At least not yet. But I could use someone with muscle to help me with the bigger pieces, and it’s obvious that you have good ideas about how to get things done with these tools.” He paused. “I seriously need to send a note to the Engineering Guild in my town to tell them about that gas leak thing. I’m pretty sure that’s what killed my father.”
“Yeah, that’s too bad. Sorry, Gappy.”
“So what do you say, Shrit? Do you want to work for me?”
“What would it pay?”
“Twenty-five dollars a day.”
“That’s hardly anything,” Shrit said in protest.
“It’s all I’ve got to offer. I won’t be offended if you pass on the job, though.”
Shrit sagged. “To be honest, it’s more than I’ve been making. Even that Rent-A-Friend place only paid out thirty dollars as my cut for yesterday. My agent took his cut out of that, which left me with six bucks.”
Gappy frowned and said, “I thought the agent was supposed to get twenty percent, not the actor.”
“No kidding? I knew that guy was a cheat!” Shrit shook his head and mumbled a few choice words before looking back at Gappy. “By the way, what did those little guys want that were here when I came back? They seemed to be in an awful hurry.”
“I’m honestly not sure. Have you heard of people paying for protection?”
“Yeah, it’s a scam.”
“A scam?”
“Just the local mob. They push people around and charge them money for protection. Basically, if you pay, they’ll leave you alone … mostly; if not, they’ll break up your stuff and …” Shrit looked up. “Hey, wait a second, is that what those Dark Halflings were here about?”
“Seems so,” Gappy replied with a concerned nod.
“That’s that Halfia, Gappy. You don’t want to mess with those guys. Especially not at your height.”
“I wasn’t messing with anyone,” Gappy replied in his own defense. “I didn’t know what they were talking about, is all.”
“Well, I would say to just steer clear of them. They’re bad news.”
The Dark Halflings had left in a big hurry when they saw Shrit in the barn. That was certainly another benefit of keeping the Orc around. Strength, height, some obvious smarts in the realm of construction, and the ability to keep the Halfia at bay were all pretty decent reasons to hire him. Also, Gappy had to admit that it would be nice to have someone to talk to. That had been the entire point of the Rent-A-Friend service, after all.
“So you want the job?” he asked.
“Depends,” Shrit said. “We gonna be friends?”
“I think we already are, Shrit.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
DO IT YOURSELF
The office was in full production mode as Tootz stood at the glass window that overlooked the main floor. Now and then she’d catch a glimpse of a Gnome slipping in for supplies. She would have preferred them to just use standard protocol whereby they put in an order and waited for it to be dropped down the hole that connected to their underground workshop, but they were ever impatient. To be fair, so was she.
“He didn’t go for the protection?” she said to the window, though her question was for Huido, who was sitting in one of the leather chairs with his feet up on her desk. The desk was small, since it was hers, which meant Huido’s boots covered half of it. “That’s odd, don’t you think?”
“Had an Orc with him,” Huido replied. “Big one, too.”
“Same one from the Barn Hunters show?”
“Hard to tell. They all look the same to me, but this one did have a stylish haircut, so I’m guessin’ it’s the same guy.”
“Did he threaten you?” she asked.
“Ain’t no Gnome going to threaten me, lady,” Huido replied darkly.
“I’m talking about the Orc.”
“Oh, right.” Huido softened. “He seemed pretty mad. Even got that look in his eye that Orcs sometimes get, ya know?”
“No,” she answered, turning away from the wi
ndow. “What look?”
“The one they get when they wanna break something.”
“Ah, right, that look.”
Huido pulled out a mostly used cigar and started smoking it. Tootz was not a fan of this particular activity, but she was less of a fan of being stuffed into a wastebasket, which is what had happened the last time she told the Halfia boss not to smoke in her office.
“We’ll convince him soon enough,” Huido said after blowing a smoke ring at Tootz. “Tonight, after it gets dark, Fingernails and Gumbles are planning to pay his workshop a little visit.”
“That should get his attention,” Tootz said with a sinister grin.
“Yeah, but we need your help.”
“Oh? What could I possibly do?”
“Give us some hammers,” Huido said, flicking an ash on the floor. “Big ones.”
“Happy to provide whatever is needed, of course,” she replied. “Just tell the foreman on the way out that I said to give you whatever you want.”
“Good,” he said, pulling his feet from the desk. He dropped the spent cigar on the floor and smashed it with his boot. “Good.”
Once she spotted him talking to the foreman on the main floor, she pressed the intercom button to signal Scrumptious of her need for him.
“Yes, ma’am?” he said as he walked into her office.
She pointed at the cigar and ashes. “Clean that up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m planning to pay Mr. Whirligig a visit tomorrow morning, Scrumptious, so I’ll need you to drive me there. I want to formally … welcome him to town.”
“I thought you wanted him to leave town, ma’am?”
“Oh, I do,” she affirmed, “but he’s new to the area and that means that he doesn’t yet know what the rules and regulations are for starting a business.” She smiled as the foreman returned, handing out a couple of large hammers to Huido’s henchmen. “Once I start pointing out all of the things that Mr. Whirligig has to do, mixed with the damage that’s bound to happen tonight, I’m sure he’ll start to get excessively cold feet indeed.”
“Even in the middle of summer, ma’am?”
She rolled her eyes.
NO PLACE TO GO
Dusk settled on Gappy’s property just as he and Shrit had finished downing the pizzas that they had ordered earlier. Gappy’s was a tiny pizza with mushrooms and Shrit had gotten five Gargantuan Meat Devourers. The little Gnome felt glad that he hadn’t agreed to paying for the Orc’s food all the time.
There were still a few hours of work to do on the barn, but Gappy’d had enough for the night. Besides, he hadn’t activated the electricity in the barn yet so with the light waning, they’d soon be relegated to using gas lamps, flashlight, or just work in the dark. Gappy had goggles for this sort of thing, too, but his muscles needed rest.
“That was some good pizza, eh, Gappy?” Shrit said as he cleaned up the empty boxes.
“Better than the kind in Hubintegler, I must admit. Do you always eat that much?”
“It’s not easy being an Orc,” Shrit replied.
“Or paying for one,” noted Gappy.
“What’s that?”
“Just saying that it’s getting late,” Gappy stated, smiling. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning.”
“True.” Shrit looked around at the barn. “You know, it was kind of fun doing this stuff today. Never thought I’d miss working with my hands, but I clearly did.”
“I feel the same way. In my home of Hubintegler ...”
“The big city?”
“No, I lived in one of the smaller towns outside of the city. My father had land, a house, and nice barn that ...” He trailed off.
“Sorry, Gappy,” Shrit said while carefully patting the Gnome on the back. “I know it’s tough to lose a parent.”
“You lost yours, too?”
Shrit nodded and sighed. “Lose them all the time. They’re still alive, though, if that’s what you mean. They just keep moving and they never tell me where they’ve gone.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was just something that Humans did.”
“Probably,” agreed Gappy. “Humans are an odd bunch.”
“Yeah. Anyway, it’s a shame about your dad and the explosion and all.”
“Explosions happen every day where I come from. Sometimes multiple times a day.”
“Hopefully not anymore,” Shrit said proudly, “especially since you wrote to that Mr. Clodgoat guy or the Engineering Guild or whatever it was.”
“Cloogate,” Gappy corrected his Orcish friend. “His name is Mr. Cloogate, and I wrote to both him and the guild. I just hope they’ll listen. I’m still considered far too young to be working on anything, so it’s doubtful, but maybe someone will see the sense in what I communicated.”
“Better to listen to a kid than to catch fire, I would imagine.”
“Definitely.”
“How old are you anyway, Gappy?”
“Forty-two.”
“Forty-two?” Shrit said with a surprised look. “You don’t look a day over six. Guess that kind of comes with the territory of being a Gnome, though. Still, why would they think you’re too young to build stuff?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Actually, you haven’t,” Gappy stated. “Like I said, we have to get an early start if we’re going to finish everything on the barn. Loads to do.”
“Right.”
They headed out into the cool air and began padding over the grass to the tiny house. A sense of pride filled Gappy at knowing that it all belonged to him. It had come with a great cost, yes, but he had to believe that his mother and father would be proud of him at this moment.
He stopped at the front door and turned back to Shrit. “You’ll be here at eight tomorrow morning?”
“Uhh …” Shrit looked confused. “I sort of thought I’d be staying here.”
“Here?”
“I don’t have any place to go, Gappy,” Shrit said sadly. “My landlord kicked me out two weeks ago, my credit is terrible, my parents moved to somewhere in the Upperworld, and I haven’t been able to get a Green Card for travel, and while I appreciate the twenty-five dollars a day you’re paying, that’s not enough for a hotel. I’m sorry, Gappy. I know I’m just one pain in the rump after another.”
It was hard to argue with that, but Gappy couldn’t just leave the guy to sleep out in the woods.
“It’s okay, Shrit. Look, I wouldn’t mind you staying with me, but there’s no way you can fit into my house. If you stood up too quickly, you’d pop the roof right off the thing.”
“Good point.”
“You could sleep in the barn.” Shrit looked uneasy at that suggestion. “Something wrong with that, Shrit?”
“It’s just that it’s dark in the barn.”
“So?”
“I’m … uh … well, you know … the dark and all.”
“Are you telling me that you’re afraid of the dark, Shrit?”
“There are a lot of very scary things that happen in the dark in the Underworld,” Shrit said defensively.
“Like what?”
Shrit looked around and then whispered, “I don’t want to talk about them, that’ll make it even worse.”
“Okay, okay,” Gappy replied with his hands up, “but I don’t know what to tell you. You can’t fit in my house.”
“Not all of me,” Shrit agreed.
“What are you suggesting?”
Thirty minutes later Gappy was up in the little loft that housed his bed. He looked over the edge to see the entire upper body of his employee taking up the majority of the living room. The Orc’s legs ran through the foyer and his feet were sticking out of the door. Gappy had given Shrit a blanket, but it only covered up part of his arm.
“Good thing Mr. Cloogate decided on creating a double-wide door,” Gappy said with a laugh.
; “Sure is.” Shrit laughed too. “Thanks again, Gappy. I appreciate it.”
Gappy lay back in bed and looked out the skylight. His parents had been more interested in the concept of the afterlife than he was. They’d referenced The Twelve a lot anyway, especially when angry about something. Gappy didn’t know for sure what he believed, but was hopeful that if The Twelve did exist, his parents were together again now.
“Good night, Shrit,” he said finally.
“Good night, Gappy.”
Moments later the tiny house filled with what sounded like an industrial chainsaw attempting to slice through a sheet of reinforced steel, which was followed rhythmically by what could only be described as a train whistle.
“Great,” Gappy said with a groan. “The Orc snores.”
TRASHING THE PLACE
His dreams had tried to be of the pleasant sort, but the combination of all that had happened over the last few days, and the fact that there was an enormous Orc on the floor below snoring like an angry construction site, kept Gappy’s imagination disjointed at best.
A new sound entered the mix as the little Gnome’s mind struggled to pick a single topic to dream about. It was a ting-bang-crash sort of sound. Not rhythmic, but haphazard and, well, damaging. This sound was out of place and Gappy’s subconscious was becoming suspicious about its whereabouts.
Get up, his subconscious mind said to his conscious mind.
No, it replied.
But something is going on outside of your dreaming.
What dreaming?
You know what I mean.
No, I don’t, Conscious said, growing irritable. Can’t dream when you can’t sleep. Besides, isn’t it your job to feed all the dreams to me anyway?
I’ve been trying! Subconscious was not happy with the tone of voice that Conscious was using with him. It’s not easy when you’ve got all this noise about, you know.
Bah. Noise. I deal with that all day. You don’t hear me complaining about it, though, do you?
Don’t even try to compare yourself to me, Subconscious retorted. All you have to do is focus on the task at hand. I have to deal with heart rate, pain sensors, circulation, organ function, and a bunch of other stuff that would split you down the middle. And my ability to pay attention to all the things that you don’t pay attention to has flagged me to a new sound that’s entered the mix.
Comedic Fantasy Bundle #1: 4 Hilarious Adventures (Tales from the land of Ononokin) Page 59