by Alex A King
Lamp in one hand, phone in the other, I crept towards the closet.
Scuffle.
I froze.
“This reminds me of that witch movie, the one where the people are in the woods with their video camera,” Kyria Mela said.
“Mama!” Melas said.
“You keep saying that, but are you helping? No. You are the policeman and yet I am the one helping Katerina and giving her good advice.”
I wouldn’t call it good advice—chances were excellent I was marching to my doom at the hands of a machete-toting freak in a mask—but no way would I say that to her face, not even from thousands of miles away. The woman had powers. Probably she could shrivel me like a salted snail with one particularly venomous stink-eye.
“You do not have to do this, Katerina,” Melas said.
“But she told me to,” I said helplessly.
I reached the door. I lowered the lamp, then I raised it back up and lowered the phone. Then that came back up, too. I had one too few hands and no genetic mutation that would cause spontaneous extra hand growth. No bra to stuff the phone into. No pockets. Nowhere for the phone to go except between my teeth. Setting down the lamp was out of the question. The Walmart lamp might be all that stood between me and certain death.
“You have a donkey in the forest,” Kyria Mela said.
Christ in a cage, this woman. How Melas had grown into a normal human being was beyond me. Of course, like many Greek mothers she’d raised him to believe he was the second coming of any number of gods, mostly the important ones. Any boogers would have to wait. Odds were high they’d be a coroner’s problem soon. Maybe Gus’s—if Grandma and the whole gang showed up to transport my remains back to Greece.
“I’m going in,” I said through my teeth, distinctly not going in.
“What are you waiting for?” Kyria Mela said.
“Mama, leave her alone,” Melas said.
“What if she ends up being the mother of my grandchildren? They will need a strong mother, not a woman who was afraid of a wardrobe.”
My jaw fell open. My phone hit the floor. Whoever was in the closet, they quit moving. Lamp in hand, I stooped to pick up the phone. No damage. Thank goodness. Now that I’d put a crimp in the family umbilical cord I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to afford a replacement. Probably I wouldn’t need one living under that bridge anyway.
Melas stepped in to save the day. “I remember you being afraid of a spider. You called me to come over and shoot it.”
“Spiders are the devil. What else did you expect me to do?” his mother said. “Open the door, re.”
Fine. The door wasn’t going to open itself. At least I hoped not.
I reached out and touched the handle. “If you’re an axe murderer, I hope that thing isn’t sharp enough to take out a lamp.” The words came out mangled on account of my teeth and the phone stuck between them.
On that optimistic note I yanked the door open.
And stared.
Then I closed the door again and went back to bed, returning the lamp to its original position on the way. I pulled the covers over my head. I sighed.
“What was it?” Melas wanted to know.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Was it a serial killer?”
“All signs point to no.”
From half a world away, Melas and his mother stared at me.
“You cannot do this to us,” Kyria Mela said. She threw in a finger wag for good measure to let me know I was really in hot doo-doo now. “I do not like cliffhangers.”
“I have to go,” I said. “Work tomorrow.”
Grandma’s former nail-puller had a face like granite. That granite was now hardening in to lonsdaleite. Science says the world’s hardest material forms when a meteor containing graphite whacks Earth. Science didn’t know about Kyria Mela’s face. “If you do not tell me what was in that closet I will fly over there and make you eat wood myself.”
Eating wood sounds sexy but it’s the last thing you want when it’s coming out of an older Greek woman’s mouth. That pair of words means you’re about to get an ass whooping—and not in a good way.
Melas suppressed a grin.
“Goat,” I said
Kyria Mela blinked. “Goat?”
“Maa … maa! Goat.”
She stared at me so hard and long I thought the screen had frozen. Just as I was about to kill the app and start over she said, “I will see you later, Nikos.” The car door opened. She got out, taking her box of old shoes with her.
“What did I say? Was it the sound effects?” I asked him.
“Do you really have goats in your closet?”
“No …”
He relaxed.
“… Just the one.”
Laughing, he shook his head and tapped on the phone. I watched his gaze scroll across the screen. “Get some sleep, Katerina. I have to go fight crime.”
“What crime?”
“Hostage situation. A flock of geese won’t let a woman out of a tree unless their demands are met. I have to stop for a loaf of bread on the way.”
“Never negotiate with terrorists.”
“Whoever said that never met geese.”
When I was done talking to Melas I grabbed my goat and steered it down the stairs, to the garage, where it trotted over to the donkey for company. Poor animal. It was used to hanging out with the compound’s dogs and the donkey was a temperamental substitute. But it was the only way to keep my goat from gnawing on what was left of my shoe collection.
On the way back to my bedroom, I peeked into the spare room, where my bear was curled up in a corner on a pile of quilts. Her ears twitched. Her head unfolded itself from her body and her big eyes blinked. No big surprise bears were related to dogs. There was something still canine about them. Not the people-eating bit, but definitely their faces. Bear heaved herself off the ground, staggered over with a look in her eye that said she didn’t fancy spending the night alone.
“Me either,” I said. “Come on. But don’t hog the bed.”
No teethmarks. All limbs accounted for. Sleeping next to this particular bear turned out to be more successful than the news led me to believe.
I rolled over, away from the bear breath, to check my phone.
Text messages from Melas. Photos. A vicious crime scene. Dozens of geese clustered around a tree, murder on their homicidal minds. Above their heads: dangling legs, stockings rolled up to fleshy knees, black slip-ons.
I fired off a text message.
Did you arrest the geese?
Pappas left them in his car.
Left them, or too scared to let them loose?
Yes.
Thinking about the barrel-shaped sergeant with a carful of feathered passengers he couldn’t offload made me grin. I like Pappas—and his adorable, cherubic wife Irini—but c’mon … geese. Who wouldn’t find that hilarious? Besides Pappas, I meant.
Why Grandma didn’t invest in geese was beyond me. Nobody did security like a flock of the white birds. Maybe I should acquire a couple myself. Not that it was necessary now with all the no-crime in my life.
With a strange feeling in my chest that I couldn’t adequately describe, but that definitely wasn’t an imminent heart attack, I slid out of bed and into a hot shower that made me suspect I could tackle the day. Provided I didn’t have to wear a stick-on mustache and sell poison-free food to salami-scarfing exes.
“You have to wear the mustache,” Whyatt said when I dropped the sticky strip of shame into his hand.
“No way, Jose.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a beanie. Everyone in Oregon owns a beanie. It’s what we use instead of umbrellas. “Ta-da!”
My new boss relaxed. “Acceptable. Head to the storage room and unfold the new shipment of newspapers. Break down the boxes and take them to the recycling dumpster out back when you’re done. Gonna be a busy day today.”
“Aye-aye, captain.” I got to work unpacking and smoothing out newspapers so that custom
ers could read the funny pages after they’d wasted time constructing their own burgers. Then I broke down the boxes and hauled them out back to the recycling. From here, I had a view of nothing much except the backs of the other businesses in this shopping center and the waist-high cinderblock wall that formed a C around the dumpsters.
Whyatt stuck his head out the door and whistled. “There’s a package here for you.”
“A package? You mean … a box?”
“Better than those plastic bags. Do you know how long it takes those to break down in a landfill?”
I ignored the science lesson. A package? That couldn’t be right. Nobody knew I worked here except Marika.
Wrong-o. If Marika knew, the whole family knew—and probably half of Greece by now. Baboulas’s one and only granddaughter slinging burgers for cash was worthy of least a headline or two. But why would anyone send a package here instead of home? The math didn’t work, unless someone in the family was a Time Lord. Not as crazy as it sounded. Grandma had her fingers in all the pies. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them was time travel.
Logic stepped in to casually mention that time travel wasn’t a thing yet—at least as far as I knew, so odds were good the package wasn’t from Grandma or anyone else in the family.
Maybe Whyatt had reading issues. The poor guy couldn’t spell his own name.
“For me?”
He nodded once. “Got your name on it and everything. Want me to open it for you?”
“Pretty sure that’s a federal offense here, Whyatt.”
“Not if USPS didn’t deliver. Some random guy dropped this one off.”
“What guy? What did he look like?”
Shrug. “I don’t know. But next time get your shame packages delivered to your home, okay? I got all excited because I thought it was our new menus. The old ones had a typo.”
“Shame package? What’s a shame package?”
The door widened. Whyatt vanished and Tabitha took his place. She was hauling more boxes. I held the door for her.
“Shame packages are packages you don’t want your partner to know about, so you get them delivered to work or a pick-up locker. That way you can hide them, or make them blend in with the rest of your surroundings before your partner gets home and discovers you’ve been shopping again.”
“I don’t have one of those partner things.” What I did have were complicated contenders. Had. Past tense. Sure, Melas and I talked every day, but where was Xander? We hadn’t spoken once since I flitted back home. If I was honest with myself—and I try to be unless it’s something like telling myself I’ll only eat one chunk of baklava—I was miffed that he hadn’t so much as sent me a text message featuring his slow-rotating, tanned, and muscular finger. “Or any money to do any shame shopping.”
“Then maybe someone sent you a present. It is almost Christmas.” Tabitha flashed a big grin before vanishing inside again.
A mystery gift. Great. Maybe it was from Dad. No one else gave me Christmas gifts. But why send it here?
I called him.
“Did you send me a package?”
“What is this? No ‘Hello, Dad, how are you? I made a big mistake coming back to Portland with its rain, rain, rain.’ I am good, but Dina will not leave me alone. I am thinking about faking my own death to get away from her. Wait—what package?”
“The one that just arrived for me at work.”
“You found a job? That is great news! Your mother would be proud if she was not busy being dead.”
The little voice in my head said he’d be less impressed if he knew about Hipster Burger. Dad had feelings and opinions about hipsters and burgers, and combing the two might make his head explode.
“Weird,” I said.
“Someone sent you a package at your new job?” Dad said.
Tabitha reemerged—without garbage this time. “You better get in here. Whyatt is this close to opening your mail. The curiosity is gonna kill him.”
“I have to go, Dad.”
“Katerina,” Dad said. “Wait, don’t—”
My finger pressed the End Call dot.
“Uh oh,” Tabitha said. “Whyatt is approaching your box with a huge-ass knife. He’s gonna cut it. Is it just me or does this guy have issues—”
I opened my mouth to protest, and then the planet exploded—or maybe just Hipster Burger.
Chapter 4
Windows blew out of their frames, spraying epic mouthfuls of glass into the air. The metal door flew off and sailed over our heads, where its life ended mashed against the low cinderblock wall. I threw Tabitha to the ground. This wasn’t my first ride on the bomb pony.
“Ohmygod!” she screeched. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! I told Sandy not to smoke near the gas grills!”
My nervous system told me to run away—fast. My brain and my sense of human decency said I should go in and save anyone who could be saved. They wrestled for control of my body for a moment while I peeled Tabitha off the ground and told her to call the fire department.
Her eyes were wild. “I don’t know what to say!”
“Tell them the truth: Hipster Burger blew up.”
She fumbled with her phone. “Okay. Okay. I can do this. Shit—I just called my mom. I’m fine, Mom. Work blew up, that’s all. Hang on.”
My brain won the battle. Skin freezing cold despite the heat radiating in waves from the brick building, I tiptoed across the ocean of jagged glass to the back door. Smoke poured out, thick and reeking of a toxic chemical spill. Tears ran to my eyes’ defense. Today was one of Portland’s few dry winter days, just my luck. I felt around for my sunglasses but they were inside, along with the rest of my things. I had to go in. There were people in there. Well, probably pieces of people. But some of them might be whole and alive, and I was determined to save their skins.
Going in the back door was impossible.
Weird for a Greek, considering they’d invented entering back doors.
I stifled a giggle.
What was wrong with me? Now was not the time for butt sex jokes. Stress and fear did crazy things to my mind.
“Where are you going?” Tabitha called out.
“Around the front. Can’t go in the back.”
“Wait for me.”
I heard the telltale crunch of Tabitha creeping over and between glass shards formerly known as windows, until she was right behind me.
Hipster Burger’s road-facing windows were still intact. We hadn’t opened for the day yet so there were no screaming, crying customers pouring out, thank goodness. Sandy and some of the others—I didn’t know their names yet—were outside, staring at the burning building, dazed. I left Tabitha with them and the others who were racing out of their stores to check out the potentially viral disaster.
“You can’t go in,” someone said. Maybe it was me. I didn’t listen—not even to myself.
Hipster Burger was dark and dense with smoke. No electricity.
“Whyatt?”
I used the plaid shirt I’d borrowed from my probably dead boss as a filter for my face. My phone’s flashlight cut back and forth across the smoky gloom, hunting for survivors.
My phone rang.
Marika.
I put her on speakerphone.
“What are you doing?” she asked me.
“Oh, you know. Searching for survivors in post-explosion debris.”
There was a pause. Then: “I cannot believe you are having adventures without me. How is work?”
“Safe to say I don’t think I’ll be working tomorrow.”
I stepped around the counter, into the kitchen area. My foot touched something. A pair of overly surprised eyes looked up at me. Below them sat a familiar mustache and beard.
“Whyatt?” I nudged him with my boot. “Whyatt?”
Something in the kitchen fell with a metallic clank. Whyatt’s head rolled toward me without bringing the rest of his body for backup. Bile lurched up my throat. I leaped back, but the head was on a collision course with
my foot.
“Ohmygod! It’s coming right for me!” I said. I leaped backwards and up onto a table. Whyatt’s head kept on going until it struck the wall with a dull thud.
Marika’s shrieks filled the burning husk of the Hipster Burger. Then she stopped. “Wait—what is coming right for you?”
“My boss’s head.”
“And his body?”
“I don’t know! The head just touched my foot.”
“I guess you will not be getting a paycheck then. That is too bad. Now you will have to find another job.”
Finding a new job was maybe fifth on the list of my current worries. First, I had to comb Hipster Burger for survivors.
“Marika, can you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t tell anyone in the family that my workplace blew up.”
“I will do my best,” she said.
Marika’s promise didn’t reassure me. I’d seen her best. Its resemblance to her worst was uncanny.
I ended the call and managed a circuit of the restaurant before emerging empty handed. Although I managed to save my cross-body bag before it went up in flames.
I burst outside into the thin winter light. Fresh air triggered a coughing fit.
“Is everyone here?” I croaked.
“We don’t know,” Sandy said. “We all just started. Whyatt’s not here, I know that much.”
“And Sandy didn’t die in a fire, which totally sucks,” Tabitha said.
“Whyatt …” I struggled to think of a nice way to tell them Whyatt’s body and head had parted ways. “Whyatt is no longer with us. Or with himself, in a manner of speaking. Unless we have a necromancer in the house, Whyatt is gone for good.”
One of the other Hipster Burger employees, a noodle in a plaid shirt and skinny jeans raised his hand. “I’m a Paragon level 1000 necromancer in Diablo III.”