Episode Two: Look Back in Anger

by S. N. Graves

  “The child, Ferrah, is in a very bad situation. Parents died and the grandparents were killed about a year afterward, leaving the kid with people the parents never intended. People who are only keeping the child because of the money that comes with her. She’s not loved and only marginally cared for, but these people are her only blood kin. Fortunately, there was a friend of the family who now lives in the Southern territory who really wants to adopt the girl. Of course she can’t afford to pay the creeps that have her their ‘asking price,’ and so if I can’t win her in a custody battle, then I will front the money the bastards want to release her.”

  That was enough to have the rest of the table, even the waitress, who then tossed several packages of cream and sugar at Vincent, nodding in a “that’s good enough for me” fashion. Hell, where was the applause? He deserved it.

  “How’s it feel to be so gifted, Arles?” She dropped her gaze to her plate and fingered a bit of melon she found there. “Being able to say exactly what you need to get precisely what you want?”

  “A true burden, I assure you. Eat now.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know.” He’d stolen her amusement for his own, all but beaming at her with that self-assured grin.

  The rest of the meal went quietly, or at least as quiet as the horde could manage. Vincent got his coffee set straight, and Z was content to make smarmy quips at Arles’s expense while Arles was just happy to get through the meal. When they got up to leave, the waitress was given several large bills as tip for all three tables that Arles and crew had occupied. Arles also paid for everyone’s meal, and then the lot of them proceeded outside. It was, in fact, the most peculiar setting she’d ever had the privilege of witnessing.

  As put off by the group as he had seemed, once outside, Arles easily received hugs and jabs to the ribs by many of the men as they ushered him and her back to the car, promising that they’d see them both “later” once they got more info on the whole “kid thing.” Vincent even opened and held the car door for her with a polite tip of his hat.

  She couldn’t make up her mind what to think of them. It was a bit like being in one of those National Lampoon films she’d seen as a kid. The one where the hick family from who knew where showed up and hooked their trailer’s septic tank to the house and squatted in the front yard. They were loud, they dressed like something from another world, and they seemed to treat the well-dressed Arles like the prissy little brother who needing mucking up.

  It didn’t suit her image of him that he allowed it, and she had to wonder briefly if he was just scared of them. That didn’t wash, though, not with the fleeting shows of affection between them and the way he lingered against his open door to ask how so-and-so from such-and-such was getting along. The shift in perception simply left her disturbed and staring at him critically as he finally sank into his seat.

  He buckled his belt and intently watched the rest of them as they disappeared on bikes and into vans and trucks, all leaving the parking lot while he hadn’t even put the keys in the ignition yet. And then, once they were gone, his head hit the steering wheel with a dull thud and a barking chirp of the car horn.

  She allowed a moment of silence, waiting for him to move or speak, but he didn’t. It was too much to hope that he’d fallen over dead from a poisoned waffle, so she didn’t entertain the thought longer than it took to shake her head and snort in amusement. “That’s your family?”

  “Sort of?” He spoke into the steering wheel, slowly pulling away from it and jabbing the key into the ignition to start the hum of the engine.

  “Sort of?”

  “They claim me more than I claim them, but in a manner of speaking, yes. Yes, they are.”

  “Interesting.” She had questions and taunts rushing to the very edge of her tongue, but she held them in check by some mercy she couldn’t fathom, and resigned herself to the ride in silence.

  V

  Sam’s house was on the end of a nearly abandoned street. There was nothing designer or uniform about her neighborhood, unless crushing poverty counted as uniform. Some of her windows had been boarded up, the grass was dead, and the fenced-in yard was full of enough holes to give the impression that she’d adopted a giant, mutant gopher for a guard dog. It was impossible to guess her father was the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company, or that the man had headed the single most profitable planned community-housing project in the developed world.

  It was all Arles could do to keep the look of sheer disgust from his face. “Is it even safe to go inside?”

  “Shut up. It’s a roof and four walls. That’s all I need.”

  “Four. Are you sure? Can you count that one there that’s leaning? I’m not so sure it’s attached.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she slapped his arm. “I thought you implied you’d been by my house before. Can’t be that much of a shock.”

  Arles lingered a moment as she left the car and headed up to the house. Yes, he’d seen it before, but he’d prettied up the memory to keep himself from having the dilapidated structure bulldozed. He locked the car up tight before he left it; he wasn’t remotely convinced it was safe to leave it unattended in this neighborhood. He spared it a single backward glance before meeting up with Sam on her front steps.

  As she worked her way through the series of locks on the door, the inside of the house came to life. It sounded like something was tearing the place apart. Insistent mews and excited barking made it impossible to understand what she was saying. She probably wasn’t speaking to him anyway.

  She opened the door a crack and shimmied herself past it, seeming to kick at the creatures beyond the door that were so anxious to see her they wouldn’t move back far enough to let her in. Arles was strongly considering staying on the steps.

  The smell that hit him as she cleared the door was unfathomable, and from the ruckus behind that door, he was certain she was being savaged. “How many of those things do you have, Sammy? Sam?” He waited for some sign that she was all right, but all he heard were the screeches and meows and trilling barks of some large dog.

  Peeking around the door, he found her slowly making her way through a sea of cats that swam about her legs. Some were practically crawling up her body, and others hissed and darted around like little billiard balls as the dog excitedly hopped and waggled his butt in the middle of them, no doubt stepping on tails and tiny paws alike.

  She paused in the middle of the living room, shoulders slumping as she surveyed the full extent of the damage. “Abandonment syndrome my ass, Zorg. I am so never leaving you inside while I am gone again.”

  Zorg rutted his head under her hand, and panted his approval at his handiwork. Sam catered to him with a ruffling scratch behind the ear—the only ear the animal had. “How many couches can one dog eat in a month? I mean seriously, Zorg.”

  She didn’t sound nearly as upset as Arles would have been. But then, from the looks of that couch, she’d liberated it off the side of the road and dragged it home, so it didn’t seem all that great a loss.

  The room was shredded, the walls were covered in claw marks, parts of the carpet were gone from where the dog had clearly tried to dig through the floor. And he was pretty sure that noxious smell was cat shit. This so wasn’t right. The house was falling apart around her ears, and there was hardly enough room in it for her, much less her herd of animals. The familiar ache to bash in Marx’s head came over him—how the man could let one of his daughters live this way, Sam especially, he’d never understand.

  He closed the door behind him and stepped inside, resisting the urge to cover his nose and mouth with his arm, but just barely. He felt like he should have been wearing a hazmat suit as he all but slunk along the wall.

  And then she smiled at him. “Kill, Zorg!”

  Arles froze, and he felt the blood drain away from his head as the dog worked its massive slobbery jaws to bellow at him and then charged. He was going to need a fresh change of pants, he was pretty sure of it. Zorg’s teeth di
dn’t sink into him, though. Rather, the animal slapped its heavy paws on his chest and slurped up the side of his face with its sopping tongue. Yeah, the dog had definitely been snacking in the cats’ waste pan.

  “Sam! Call him back.” He shoved at the animal, but it only pressed him more securely against the wall, its tongue swirling up around his ear. “Sammy! He stinks.”

  “Who’s a sweet puppy, huh? Zorgy’s a lovable puppy.” She gave the dog a pat on the back, and left Arles to fend for himself as she worked her way to the kitchen.

  “Wait till you get my cleaning bill, woman. Get this mutt off me.” He stepped away, but his back hit the door frame. He was cornered and trapped as Zorg’s huge, slimy tongue whipped up the center of his face.

  “Awww…give him lotsa lovin’, Zorg. He likes it.”

  Arles growled at her, then took the dog by the head, holding the animal back by its saggy jowls. Looking into its wide, overly adoring eyes, he bared his teeth. “You’re pathetic, you know that?”

  Zorg responded with a lap of his tongue right to Arles’s mouth. He sputtered and spit and shoved the dog back, raking the sleeve of his jacket over his face in a futile attempt to get the slobber off.

  Zorg hunkered down where he landed, as if poised to lunge at him, determined to make the intruder into a new toy. When Arles just collapsed into himself in the corner, Zorg barked—a loud, high-pitched demand—and Arles nearly climbed the wall. He’d never been fond of dogs, and past experience had taught him the feeling was mutual. The fear and panic that consumed him then was beyond his control, and as the dog charged again, Arles growled.

  It wasn’t just some little Nancy growl from a cornered suit either. The roar might have shaken the windows, but Arles’s focus was solely on the dog, who went stiff midleap and fell to the floor. The thing finally looked as terrified as Arles felt, and it lowered its head and bent its one ear back as it trembled and thumped its tail against the floor.

  “What did you do to my dog, you asshole?”

  ARLES LOOKED SHOCKED, a bit offended, but Sam had to admit he also looked like he was barely holding himself together. He was pale, shivering, and…hiding in the corner.

  “I didn’t do anything. Just being mauled by that damn…mongrel of yours.”

  “Why did he make that noise?”

  Arles shrugged, his smirk seeming a bit forced.

  “He’s not a mongrel. He was top of the line when he was produced.”

  “Was that in the Stone Age?”

  Sam swatted him with the end of her towel and returned to the kitchen to finish feeding the cats. The quicker she got it done, the quicker she could get him out of her house. “I so hate you.”

  “Well, at least you’re consistent.” He peeked into the kitchen, but his gaze roamed all over her house. The look of disgust on his face was so strong it risked leaving permanent marks.

  Sam couldn’t help the creeping shame that slowly overtook her. “You can wait outside. No one invited you in anyway.”

  “Looks like you’ve been vandalized. May want to see if they took anything…though I can’t imagine anyone wanting anything you have. Do you always shop at the charity center or is it just somewhere you go for those very special purchases?”

  “I’m thrifty. Shush.”

  “I can see that. You get a discount on the mutt, being that he’s missing pieces and all?”

  “Don’t make fun of him. He has one good ear, you know. He can understand you perfectly well.” She emptied a box of dry cat food into a large serving dish on the floor and opened one can after another of the wet stuff. “He was set to be decommissioned, on account of his parts being impossible to find these days. He’s mostly an older Dane model, but he has some refurbished shepherd in there too.”

  The dog sat in the doorway, his long, overly fluffy tail wagging back and forth like a happy metronome.

  Arles stared at him, his brows knit into a scowl. “What’s that…ticking? Not going to explode, is he?”

  “Ahh, that’s the Labrador tail. I lubricate it every now and then and the sound goes away.”

  “You…lubricate your dog’s ass? And you think I am the sicko?”

  The man just couldn’t help himself, could he? Any opportunity to be an ass, and he jumped at it. “Look, he’s had a hard life. Not having his tail made him very self-conscious. I do what I have to to make him comfortable.”

  “A self-conscious toaster. Does any part of you understand how ridiculous that is?”

  “He’s not a toaster. He’s not just some…appliance. He’s a fully loaded companion model.”

  “A companion that eats your house.” He stepped away, disappearing down the hall. She could hear him as he toured the wreckage, and the thought of the disgust and disapproval on his face made her cringe. He prowled around as she continued opening cat food containers, nosing into the rooms he had no business in, judging everything from her choice of wallpaper to her cheap taste in furniture.

  It wasn’t like she enjoyed living this way. She’d tried to better their situation, to get a larger house that wasn’t falling apart. It was impossible on her wages, especially if she wanted a home that would allow her to keep the organics—few rentals were zoned for it, and those were ridiculously expensive. She was lucky to have this place; it was cheap, had few nosy neighbors, and the police stayed well away from it. No one would come knocking on her door asking to see the animals’ papers.

  Her fingers shook a little as his footsteps returned from the hall, and he stepped cautiously into the kitchen. He was going to say something shitty; she didn’t have to look at him to know it. She just felt it wafting off him in waves of smug self-righteousness.

  “You have a rabid zoo.”

  “They wouldn’t be so ravenous if you had let me come home last night.”

  “One more day and they might have eaten you before you made it to the kitchen.” He began to skirt the cats—ten in all, including the little ones—sliding his hand along the countertop like it was some kind of guardrail in a fun house. “Sammy? You’ve become the crazy cat lady.”

  “Shut up.” Even the hint of real concern she thought she heard there didn’t stop her from flinging some kibble at him from the cat’s bowl before she set it down on the floor.

  “You truly have. This is…upsetting.” He gaped at the horde as they devoured the scraps of the dry food that were left, then back at her with something like pity in his eyes. “You are a reclusive…cat lady.”

  “Really, it’s none of your business.”

  He sighed and wandered past the herd, allowing his foot to slip left to bump one of the cats on the rear. The animal issued an annoyed nomming growl that brought the smirk back to Arles’s lips as he settled against the cabinet beside her. “Which ones are SynthPets?”

  “The ones only sniffing the food. It’s kind of obvious.”

  He canted his head, then pointed into the crowd of pussycats. “Is that a peg leg? It is. One of your cats has a peg leg.”

  “You know it’s rude to point out someone’s handicaps.”

  “It’s a cat, not a someone.”

  “As if that makes any difference to you.” She gathered up the empty food containers and tossed them into the waste bin, which…really should have been taken out already. “By your way of thinking, we’re all ants under a magnifying glass. You’re just a vindictive little boy ruining everyone’s sunny day.”

  “My, aren’t we the insult poet.” With a long exhale, Arles slid in behind her, snuggling up to her back and pinning her lightly against the countertop.

  Sam froze. He pressed into her more, her belly brushing the edge of the counter as his pelvis ground against her backside. Why did the butcher knife block have to be so far away? Her fingertips bit into the hard surface beneath them, bracing against his pressure, longing to curl about one of those secondhand blades just out of her reach. Oh, how offended he would be if she ruined his million-dollar smirk with a three-dollar meat cleaver.

  Sam
wasn’t sure what was more disturbing—how easily her mind turned to violence with him so near, or how quickly her knees turned to jelly when he nuzzled the back of her neck.

  “So you have a one-eared patchwork dog, a peg-legged cat…and absolutely no room in that big ol’ animal-loving heart for me?” He asked.

  He should have at least allowed her to wash her hands before molesting her in her own home. She reached back and smeared the fishy cat food slime over his face and into his hair as she patted his head. “That answer your question?”

  He stiffened, then jerked away from her, wiping at the stinking ooze with the back of his hand as if the fish juice burned him. Sam barely had the chance to get out of his way as he launched himself from the kitchen, stumbling over cats and stepping on tails the whole way. She arched a brow when he took off down her hall, the sound of doors slamming open reaching her over Zorg’s excited barking as the dog gave chase.

  If he thought the cats and the mess of the living area were distasteful, she couldn’t wait to see his reaction to the bathroom and—

  Arles screamed, his terror so sharp she winced as she called after him. “Charley’s friendly. Just stay away from the tub.”

  * * * *

  After Arles’s run-in with Charley, he’d practically fled to the outdoors. For a moment there Sam thought he was leaving when he got in his car, but once there, he stayed put. She peeked out the window at him, sitting all disgruntled in the driver’s seat, arguing vehemently with the steering wheel. He was probably debating with himself, trying to work out just how worthwhile it was to continue to torment her and her father when it came with so much baggage…and teeth.

  Closing the curtain, she stepped away to tiptoe through the herd of critters still swarming her ankles, and entered her bedroom. She lingered by that door a bit longer than necessary, listening for footsteps, for any sign that he’d returned. She heard the cats and Zorg hopping onto the shredded couch, and she was satisfied Arles wasn’t coming back in.