Nobody Left Behind 21

There we are, back to the conclusion of this ridiculous story. Various scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, but there's one I might yet add back in. I'll have to do a read-through before I decide. Regardless, I think we're super close to having a completed draft! Woot!

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Siki shook her head. “No, Mom, I’m doing great,” she said into her strand. “I aced all my test preps.” She could hear a breath of relief on the other end of the line.

“And finals are next week?”

“Yeah,” said the chocolate-brown geroo. “I’m nervous, but I’m sure it’ll go okay.” She spotted some friends across the quad and waved.

“And then you’ll be back for the holidays?” asked Mom.

Siki rolled her eyes. “I said I was coming home. What’s—?”

“It’s your father.”

Siki skidded to a stop and took the strand from her cheek so she could see her mom’s face. “What’s wrong with Dad?”

“He’s obsessed,” Mom groaned. “That’s what’s wrong. He’s moved your mattress into the closet and now your entire bedroom is full of plants.”

Siki released the breath she’d been holding. Putting the communicator back to her cheek, she set off again toward class. “I think that’s great! Stupid garden lottery.”

It didn’t sound like Mom agreed. “But now, where are we going to put you when you come home?” she asked. “Your father loves you very much, but he won’t listen—!”

“It’s fine, Mom! I’ll sleep on the couch.” Her ears smiled wide as she walked. “It’s only a week or so. I just want to see you guys.”

“And we want to see you too. I just don’t want you to feel unloved.”

“Ha! Stop worrying.” The geroo’s next class was in the building at the end of the block, so she’d need to cut the call short, but she slowed when she noticed the scaffolding erected at the front of the visitor center. “And huh, that’s weird.”

Her mother asked, “What is, dear?”

Siki stopped and readjusted the pack on her shoulder. “There’s workmen at the Palani center,” she explained. “They’re covering up his name.”

A short pause on the strand. “Oh, yeah, I guess you wouldn’t have heard about that yet.”

She took the call from her cheek and looked at her mother’s lowered ears. “Heard about what?”

Mom looked uncomfortable. It looked like she was standing in one of the halls at work, but she took a moment to enter a conference room before explaining with a lowered voice, “Doctor Palani has got himself in some hot water. They say he embezzled a bunch of money from the center…”—Mom shrugged—“but he claims he got hacked.”

Siki covered her mouth with a paw in surprise. Palani didn’t seem the sort who would steal, but she didn’t really know him. Despite working for him all summer, they probably only spoke a dozen times. “Hacked?”

Mom snorted. “Right? Like why would hackers steal money and give it to him if he wasn’t involved.” She shook her head, lowering her voice once more, “No one is believing it. Anyhow, they’re taking his name off a lot of stuff until this gets sorted out, just in case.

“No one wants to be associated with a criminal.”

# # #

Qyxxlyq picked Headshots as his meeting place based entirely on the name. He thought it was a coldly ironic place to discuss a murder-for-hire but was immediately disappointed when he stepped inside. Unlike most bars on Ringeltec, it lacked a dance floor, dimly lit booths in the back corners, nor really any sort of place to talk privately.

Instead, Headshots was little more than a semicircle of a few dozen bar stools arranged around a circular wall of glass. There was a retro-styled jukebox in one corner, a darkened hologaming table in another, and some doors leading back—one labeled restroom and the other staff. Qyxxlyq glanced around for his contact, but he’d arrived early, so he wasn’t surprised that none of the half-dozen patrons looked likely to be his hired killer.

Unsure who was working the bar, he hopped up on the center stool in a run of five empties. Behind the glass, something yellow moved slowly about, but he ignored it, instead looking actively around for a bartender or waitress.

“Can I help you?” asked a deep voice behind him.

Relieved that he’d finally found someone—well, that the bartender had found him—he grabbed the wooden bar with one paw and pulled to spin his seat back around. But instead of finding a ringel—or even a geroo, those big clods—standing behind the bar, he faced only a wall of glass. His eyes refocused, and seeing beyond the surface for the first time, he spied the head of a mustard-colored krakun like some sort of gigantic fish floating in a tank.

The head was huge! The gigantic lizard’s chin was roughly even with the bar’s floor, and that put his lower lip just above the top of the bar.

Qyxxlyq leapt backwards from his stool, nearly colliding with the bar’s far wall. The other patrons erupted into laughter, but they settled down quickly, returning attention to their own conversations. So, Qyxxlyq suspected that this was a common reaction amongst first-time customers.

Behind the glass, the krakun smiled patiently. Qyxxlyq returned cautiously to his seat. “Whoa,” he whispered, his racing heart finally beginning to slow. Then, he stood up on his seat and leaned over the bar so he could peek down inside the glass. “Are you sitting in the basement, sticking your head up through some kinda sunroof or something?”

“I wish,” sighed the krakun. “No, what you see before you is more-or-less all that remains of Sarsuk the Traitor.”

“Sarsuk the … what?” burbled Qyxxlyq.

Sarsuk smiled. “Originally, the bar was going to be Traitors or maybe Traitor’s Roost or some such crap. But this was sixty years back, and the trendy thing at the time was establishments with puns in their name. So, Headshots it is.”

“Headshots?” laughed the ringel, his fuzzy ears sticking straight out from his cream and turquoise head. “Like your head is in a great big shot glass?”

“You got it in one,” said the krakun. “Kind of a dumb name, but all puns are fairly silly. Anyhow, what can I get you?”

“How… How… How can you mix drinks if you’re just a head floating in a jar?”

Sarsuk smiled. “You tell me what you’d like, I’ll tell my staff in the back, and they’ll send it out on that conveyor that runs along the back edge of the bar. Just grab it when it comes your way.”

“Oh, huh, weird,” muttered the ringel. “There’s no … private booths? No rooms in the back? I was planning on meeting someone here and wanted to discuss something … personal.”

“Afraid not,” said the traitor. “My disability limits my motion, so the entire bar is based around what I can access.”

“Your … disability?”

“Yeah, when my body was amputated.” Qyxxlyq started to ask more questions, but the krakun interrupted with, “So, a drink?”

“Oh, a … a finjizz?”

“Coming right up!” said Sarsuk, then with a well-practiced motion, the krakun began sucking in jar fluid through one side of his muzzle only to spit it back out the other. This didn’t provide the disembodied head much propulsion, but as he floated weightlessly in whatever it was he was submerged in, this was clearly enough.

Seven other patrons placed orders as the krakun’s face drifted by the glass opposite of their seats, and Sarsuk interacted with each in a brief and courteous manner—asking if they wanted their drink on the rocks or with a sidecar. He continued to turn about until he faced the back of the bar, then Qyxxlyq could hear him relay the drink orders in three different languages, splitting up the requests to different species of workers all operating out of sight.

The ringel went back to looking about the bar for his guy, and soon the rotating belt between the bar and the glass rumbled, different glasses clinking by until a finjizz stopped even with Qyxxlyq’s seat. He grabbed the glass and gulped at the cold beverage.

Sarsuk rotated back by some five minutes later to check in. “How’s that finjizz?” he asked.

“Strong, tasty, but a little thin, perhaps?” said Qyxxlyq.

“Sorry about that,” apologized what remained of the krakun. “Traditionally, one serves the drink ‘as thick as semen’. I know that, but the back of the house staff aren’t ringel, and apparently that sort of thing varies a lot from species to species. I’ve asked them to compensate—”

“It’s fine, really,” said Qyxxlyq with a smile. “Not a big deal. Just thought I’d point it out.”

“Most appreciated,” said the bartender.

“This is quite strange for me,” the ringel said with a wink, “usually when I go to a bar, I end up going home with the bartender.”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, you have,” said Sarsuk with a smirk. “This is my home now.”

“I guess so!” laughed the ringel. He shook his head. “You must not get out much.”

“Yeah, literally and figuratively,” agreed Sarsuk.

The bartender checked in on his customers and took a few more orders. Qyxxlyq’s meeting time came and passed. Eventually, his communicator buzzed with a message, “Meeting place no good.”

The ringel acknowledged the message with a vulgar emoticon and tossed the device on the counter in frustration. “Problem with your personal meeting?” asked the bartender while he drifted by.

“Yeah, canceled on me,” grumped the small mammal.

“Sorry to hear that,” said the krakun, “but you should hang out. We get a nice turnout from the neighborhood. Lots of locals to meet and … get personal with.”

Qyxxlyq winked and put his empty glass back on the conveyor. “I might just do that.”

“Another finjizz?”

He shook his head. “Beer is fine. Whatever’s on tap.”

When the beer came out, the ringel gestured with a raised palm. “So, I gotta ask … and I apologize,” he said. “You must get this question all the time, but how did you end up in a jar?”

Sarsuk grinned, and his eyes opened wide. As if he were advertising a horror movie, the reptile announced, “Mad scientists on Liotec!” He sighed. “They experimented on me for forty-three years. I’m lucky my head made it out in one piece. I could be in a million sample jars by now.”

Qyxxlyq covered his mouth in horror. “How awful!” he whispered. But with a sly grin, he added, “Did you hitch a ride to Ringeltec? Because I can’t imagine you sticking out your thumb.”

The bartender laughed at his joke. “Good one! No, the research station got hacked, and the hackers drained all their accounts. Shut them down overnight.”

Qyxxlyq tilted his head. “But you made it out…?”

“The hackers dumped the money into a moving company, and the moving company packed me up and brought me here.”

The ringel’s ears pulled back. With obvious doubt, he said, “That sounds … really improbable.”

Sarsuk kept a straight face. “I know. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t lived through it.”

Qyxxlyq chugged some of his beer and set it down hard, spilling a little. With palms on the wooden tabletop, he leaned closer. “So, you moved to Ringeltec and bought a bar?”

The krakun rolled his eyes. “I don’t own Headshots. I just work here every day,” he explained. “Boss loves that I can’t skip work.”

The ringel blinked. “Oh wow, you don’t ever get a day off?”

“I get a few, but since I never go anywhere, it doesn’t much matter when I take them,” said Sarsuk. “I plan them far in advance on days we expect to be slow, then my boyfriend and I watch TV together.”

Qyxxlyq nearly spit his beer. “Your … boyfriend?” he gasped. Then, looking the head up and down, he added, “He must be very understanding.”

“He is,” said Sarsuk. “We both have our physical limitations, so an occasional day off to binge TV is quite the treat. All I want, honestly.”

Feeling a little self-conscious that the bartender couldn’t wipe up the beer that had sloshed from his glass, Qyxxlyq scooted the napkin that had been under his glass so it soaked up some of the mess.

“I guess if you’re the only bartender,” he said, “you must work a lot of overtime.”

“Yeah, I do, but like most disabled people, my medical bills are high too.” The bartender winked. “You could say I struggle to keep my head above water.”

“Good one!”

Sarsuk’s eyes turned up, and he stared as far upward as he was able. “Besides, I’m still paying off the lid to my jar.”

Qyxxlyq tilted his head back so he could see the heavy and decorative glass lid that sat atop the krakun’s jar. “Well, that sure is fancy!”

“It is!” said the yellow lizard with obvious pride. “Nearly beyond what I could afford, but worth every single gold.”

Sarsuk continued to stare up at the lid, and he sighed. “Oh, the things ringel patrons would do in my juice back before I owned a lid… It was awful.” The ends of his mouth turned down in a frown. “I can still taste it.”

The End

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tt2DFnKUv4pBawJJlXHzfOWJugtiYZNM9HHlshDlvhk/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?