by Simon Archer
Theo had brought a change of clothes for me that was sitting on the sink shelf. As soon as I was dry and dressed, she and Theo helped me out to the barn and up the loft ladder. Theo disappeared out the barn doors as I sat down on the bed. Kennedi undressed me and lifted my legs, turning me so I could lay down.
When I laid down on top of the bed, I suddenly felt all the pain. The wound on my ribs felt like spikes were shooting through it into my organs. My back, where the skin had been sanded off, burned like someone was holding a torch to it. I noticed a new pain in my lower back where my belt had been. Pushing against the edge as hard as I did had bruised me, and the tenderness had just shown up.
Somehow, Kennedi knew how much pain I was in. She expertly handled my limbs as she unfolded and untucked the comforter out from under me. The only time I had to do anything was when I let her pull me up slightly to get my shirt off. She was more efficient and careful than any medical professional I’d ever met, but she didn’t make me feel like a patient. I grew a deeper appreciation for her.
After I was settled, I watched as she stripped her clothes off and put on one of my new t-shirts. I was going to have to go get a few more of those if she’s going to keep stealing them. She climbed over the end of the bed and sat on her knees, looking at me.
“You want to lick me, don’t you?” I knew this was coming, but I still wasn’t comfortable with ‘medical licking’ as I’d come to think of it.
“I know it creeps you out a little, so how about I make you a deal?” she offered.
“What are the terms?” I asked, feigning seriousness.
“You go to sleep, then I lick you, and not a moment before,” she said cheerily.
“How is that a deal?” I was laughing painfully.
“The deal is that I wait,” she answered seriously. I would have to remember not to take her into any serious negotiations.
“That’s not a deal, Kennedi. That’s you getting what you want on a different timeline.” I reached for her hand, which I was just able to reach without moving my torso. “Come here.”
She laid down next to me and grinned. “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” she said.
“You are going to do it whether I say yes or no, aren’t you?” I guessed.
“No, I won’t do it either way because I won’t have to. You aren’t going to say no, so I’m only going to do it when you say yes,” she explained.
“You just made my head hurt,” I joked.
She didn’t get the joke because two seconds later, I felt her tongue, now rough and scratchy, licking my forehead.
“Kennedi! Stop!” I was laughing and trying to move my face away from her without moving any other part of my body.
“I didn’t mean to make your head hurt, but that should be enough to make it stop. You’ll sleep better without a headache. The rest I will wait until you are asleep to do,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“You didn’t really make my head hurt,” I was still chuckling. “It’s what people say when they hear something that is too complicated for them to process in their minds at the moment. It’s not literal pain,” I explained to her.
A smile slowly crept across her face, and soon she was laughing. “It’s kind of like the potatoes!” she exclaimed. I felt a sigh of relief exit my lungs as I saw that smile.
My last thought before I drifted to sleep was that I’d heard something about potatoes twice now. I’ll have to find out what that’s all about.
13
The next morning, I woke up with a start and sat up. The dream that caused the sudden exit from slumber quickly faded, and the pain in my side reminded me that I shouldn’t have sat up so quickly. The loft was still dark, so I laid back down.
Then I noticed something and propped myself up with my elbows. Then I laid back down. I was convinced that if I did that enough times, I’d feel the pain across my back like I had last night when I’d laid down. It never came, though. My back felt absolutely normal.
The loft ladder started to rattle. I expected Kennedi but saw Bev instead.
“You are awake, good,” she stated with a smile. She’d stopped her ascent when she saw I was awake. “I have Kennedi helping me with some things, so you’ll just have to get dressed on your own and get over to the house.”
“I’m good here, really,” I protested.
“Men and their arguing! No, you are not good. You have a sixteen-hour old dressing on your ribs that needs to be changed and a wound that needs disinfecting. That can’t be done here. Now I don’t care if you wear your pajamas this once, but you still have to come,” she ordered in a tone that would not allow for rebuttal.
Twenty minutes later, I was reclining in one of the living room loungers with a clean wound and a new dressing. The wound itself had already started to mend itself thanks to Kennedi’s healing tongue-bath. I showed Bev how my back had healed, and she was absolutely astonished.
“It’s like it was never chewed up at all!” she exclaimed with amazement.
Theo had stoked a fire in the living room fireplace because it had turned out to be one of those rare chilly days on the Nevada plains. I felt the warmth sinking into my skin and muscles and was nearly back to sleep when I heard someone sit on the couch opposite me. I opened my eyes to see Kennedi watching me.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
“Good morning.” She smiled as though amused. “Well, kind of. It’s eleven.”
“What does Bev have you doing?” I asked her.
“Catching horny toads,” was all she said.
I waited for further details, and when none were volunteered, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Why would you need to catch horny toads? And how many can there possibly be, really?”
“There are hundreds around here. They get into Bev’s gardens and leave ‘unsightly tracks’ everywhere they go,” Kennedi did her best mini impression of Bev. “How are you feeling?” she asked, changing the subject with lightning speed.
“My back feels as good as new. I still have pain from the wound, but it’s not nearly as severe,” I reported to her. I saw how intently she was listening to my progress, and a wave of gratitude flooded over me. “Thank you, Kennedi. I’d still be laid up in the loft, stuck on top of a comforter with my boots on if it wasn’t for you.”
“You’re welcome, Clark. You’ll never have to lay anywhere by yourself or hurt longer than absolutely necessary again,” she whispered.
The thought was shockingly comforting. That was a notion I hadn’t considered before... not being on my own anymore. I guess things like that slip your mind when you are rescuing a cat girl from a sleazy pawn-shop owner. Now though, the thought wasn’t unwelcome at all.
“I’m back to catching horny toads!” Kennedi bounced up off the couch excitedly. She stopped to stoke the fire. “There are blueberry scones, coffee, and sausage links waiting for you on the table. I tried to talk her into it, but Bev just wouldn’t budge on the ‘no eating in the living room’ rule.” She smiled at me, winked, and was out the door.
While Kennedi had made breakfast sound amazing, I was still exhausted. I closed my eyes for what I planned to be a minute or two and ended up falling asleep for three hours. By the time I got up to eat the breakfast laid out for me, it was two in the afternoon. The coffee was cold, but I managed to get a cup into the microwave. The sausage links were cold also but tasted fantastic. They had a smoky flavor that was borderline bacon-like but still had a spicy sausage ‘kick.’ The scones were homemade, and the blueberries in them were enormous. They tasted like blueberry compote had been mixed in the batter as well. I made a mental note to ask Bev to teach Kennedi how to duplicate those.
After eating, I walked to the front door and out to the porch. So far today I’d seen Bev and Kennedi, but no Theo. His truck was gone. I immediately got a chill out on the porch, so I retreated back to the living room where the fire was still blazing. I was staring into the flames, thinking about absolutely nothing when I fell asleep ye
t again.
The next time I woke, it was to the smell of pork chops frying and potatoes roasting. I was instantly hungry. I wondered how Theo wasn’t three-hundred-pounds with as good of a cook as his wife was.
I looked at the clock on the mantle. It was eight in the evening. I had slept another six hours. I stood up slowly and walked over to the dining room. Theo was tipped back in his chair, sharpening kitchen knives for Bev, who I could hear talking to Kennedi in the kitchen.
“There ya are!” he exclaimed happily. “I was wondering when you were coming back to the land of the living.”
“I don’t know if I’m quite living yet, but at least I’m back,” I joked. “How did your day turn out? You know, this one I missed.”
“All’s well on this side,” Theo assured me. “Did Kennedi tell you about the horny toads?”
“Yeah,” I said, half laughing.
“Did she tell you how she had half a mind to insist there couldn’t be any sort of toads around here due to the ‘lack of precipitation accumulation’ in the area?”
“Oh, you’re kidding! She told Bev that?” I was full-on laughing now.
“Yep!” Theo was laughing too.
The laughter made me keenly aware that the pain in my ribs had subsided considerably since the last time I had woken up. It was time to change the dressing again, so I decided to take a shower and put a clean bandage on before dinner.
By the time I was done, dinner was just coming off the stove. The four of us sat down to not only fried pork chops and roasted potatoes, but to piping hot grilled red pepper, jalapeno, and mushroom skewers served alongside a spring salad. Every bit of food on my plate smelled rich and was cooked to perfection, but I still didn’t have much of an appetite, and I was starting to wear down again.
Kennedi noticed my ever-decreasing energy level and cut dinner short. “Thank you so much for dinner, Bev,” she said. “I need to get Clark to bed.”
“Of course,” Bev replied caringly. “Do you need anything for the loft?”
Kennedi smiled at Bev sweetly. “No, thank you. We appreciate you,” she said.
Bev and Theo followed us to the door of the house and kept watch until Kennedi closed the barn doors behind us. Once again, she helped up the loft ladder and into bed. It took next to no time at all to fall asleep with her purring beside me.
14
Waking up after another full night’s sleep was like coming to life again. Kennedi had insisted on licking my wounds again, and when I sat up, the pain was gone. I lifted my shirt and looked at my side. The stitches were still visible, but they looked completely unnecessary because under them was just a thin pink line where the cut used to be.
I looked around the loft, but Kennedi was nowhere to be seen. I got up and pulled the curtain back, and the sun came streaming in. I had to blink to get my eyes to adjust to the brightness. After a moment, the view out the window came into focus. There was Kennedi, with a shovel, digging a huge hole in the ground beside the house. She was moving at about triple the speed a human could. Nearby, Theo stood watching her.
The scene piqued my curiosity, so I got dressed and climbed down the loft ladder to go see what the hole was for. As I strolled up to stand beside Theo, he just nodded to acknowledge my presence and went back to looking after Kennedi.
“What is she digging a hole for?” I asked.
“A firepit,” he started. “When she was rolling tortillas with Bev earlier, she heard me say I was going to do it and insisted that she do it herself. I was going to tell her no, but looking at how fast she moves, I’m glad I didn’t! That hole would’ve taken me two or three days to dig out.”
“Did you just wake up this morning thinking you needed a fire pit?” I joked with him.
“I’d like to say no, but that is pretty much how it was,” Theo laughed. “The evenings are still nice enough to be outside, but they are getting a little cool. There’s plenty of room back here, so I thought, ‘Why not?’”
“You just took something funny and put a whole ton of logic behind it, my friend,” I told Theo as I slapped him on the shoulder and headed for the house. Kennedi was still digging, and I wasn’t sure she had even noticed my presence.
Inside the house, I was greeted by the scent of fresh strawberry blintzes and coffee. I found Bev in the kitchen, packaging her freshly cooked tortillas.
“Blintzes are on the table. If you want some bacon, it’s on the counter over there,” she said and nodded her head to the counter across the room.
“Bev, are you sure you don’t want to open your own restaurant? Your kitchen abilities are beyond amazing,” I told her on my way to the dining room.
I grabbed a plate off the table, scooped a couple of blintzes onto it, and walked back in the kitchen. I added some bacon to my plate and set it on the island. After I grabbed a cup of coffee, I sat down and tried the blintzes. They were drizzled with a slightly bitter strawberry sauce, which offset the sweetness of the strawberries-and-cream filling. I’d never tasted anything more perfect from a breakfast plate.
“How are they?” Bev looked over at me and grinned.
“Mmm-hmm,” was all I could get say with a mouth full of food, so I nodded as well.
“Funny that you mention a restaurant. I’ve considered it, but we’d have to move to the city for a few years until it got off the ground, and we just aren’t all about that life.”
I thought I heard a twinge of disappointment in her voice as I swallowed. “What about around here? The only restaurant I’ve seen is that Sagebrush place Kennedi and I went to.”
“For a place to run all three meals, you need more people to keep it afloat than we have around here. I just don’t see the point in running a whole place to only offer breakfast or just dinner. Besides, Theo will eat anything I cook, so I have fun right here in my own kitchen,” she said with a smile.
I took a drink of my coffee and looked at her. She had her back to me and was busily working at the counter like she had made homemade tortillas a hundred times. Hell, it was possible that she had. All I knew is that if anyone deserved their own restaurant, it was her.
I savored the rest of my blintzes and coffee in silence and rinsed my plate. I refilled my coffee cup and was stacking my plate in the dishwasher as Theo and a very dirt-covered Kennedi walked in.
“Hole is finished,” he called to Bev.
“I can’t believe you let that tiny girl dig a hole that big,” Bev scolded Theo jokingly.
“Why can’t you believe it?” Kennedy asked her. “If you need proof, I’m happy to walk with you to show you,” she offered very seriously.
The whole room broke out in laughter as Kennedi looked from one to the other of us.
“Darling, I was teasing Theo. Of course, I believe it,” Bev assured her.
“Oh! Another expression! There are just so many of them!” Kennedi exclaimed as she joined in the laughter.
Ten minutes later, Theo, Bev, and I were lounging in the living room, sipping coffee. Kennedi had gone to take a shower after Bev explained to her that a shower would be a much faster way to get that amount of dirt off her body than licking it off would.
“Clark, I wanted to wait until you felt better to chat with you about something. It looks like you are doing good, so now is as good a time as any,” Theo started. “I overheard Alan speaking to another man after we walked out of the skybox the other night.” He waited for my reaction.
“There wasn’t another man in the skybox. How could you have overheard anything?” I asked, prying my memory to see if I had missed a whole person in the room.
“There didn’t appear to be when all of us were in there, but after we walked out, Alan was most certainly talking to someone,” Theo said. “That someone talked back too.”
I thought for a moment before I said, “Well, the first time I was there with you, I hadn’t noticed the bathroom door. Maybe someone was in there. How odd that they’d stay in there for that long, though.”
“I’
m not sure where he came from, but he was awful interested in how you responded to being asked to ‘craft your match’ were the words he used,” Theo said. “Alan told him, basically, to relax, that he would find a way to make you happy and then started talking about Kennedi having a defect and something about you spending your money on a cat girl.”
Kennedi’s unexpected voice sounded defeated as she entered the room and said, “So, he knows about my defect.”
“I don’t care if he knows,” I spat out, overly angry at Alan suddenly. “I wouldn’t care if you had three tails, and he didn’t like it. It’s none of his damn business.”
“Before you get mad, Clark… What kind of defect are we talking, if you don’t mind my asking?” Theo asked.
Kennedi crossed the room, and I could smell the honey-lavender shampoo she’d used. She sat down next to me and looked at Theo.
“I am unable to update via wifi like other cat girls,” Kennedi explained. “I have the version of programming that I was released with. One of the programs is a learning center, so I can learn things very quickly, but other cat girls can just download endless information and use it in a matter of seconds. I have to be manually plugged in to update, and that can only occur at Omnicorp’s Maid to Order stores. Nobody wants to take their CG to the store every week for the latest updates.”
“So what if you can’t download a bunch of useless stuff in an instant? You learn it so damn fast it’s hard to believe there’d be a quicker way as it is,” Bev said, waving her hand as if to brush off ‘those people’ who thought Kennedi needed to update.
“Another issue with having a CG that can’t update is that the link is designed to work both ways. I would link into their system to update, and they link into mine for monitoring. They can’t link into me.”