Scrappy Scuttler
Koata and Felix hike up the stairway and pass from sight. They’ve been out of sight now for some time. A hand in a pineapple yellow and tan goat leather glove grips onto the edge of Church Apple. Their body’s obscured by the veiling of clouds. They haul themselves up over the golden shore and roll clumsily onto the three–inch hexagon tiles. The mysterious individual’s in a carrot orange nylon high–altitude climbing suit. The mini lilac tiles around the stranger appear etiolated in comparison to their arresting orange figure.
Clipped to a carob brown eleven pocket tool belt is an acid yellow gas mask with two cobalt blue Xs distinguished at the cheeks. One of its clear dual eye inserts is cracked in three. The single filter gas mask elongates the face of the wearer as though they’ve an aardvark’s snout.
Its late wearer’s head remains stuck inside. One of his brown eyes is eerily frozen in shock past the three–way broken frame whilst the other’s half seen. Its droopy eyelid’s pinned in a mid–wink. Blood gushes out in ropy doses from the underside of the gas mask, leaving a mounting crimson puddle to form aside the stranger’s waist on the ground.
The carrot orange individual unclips the stainless–steel carabiner from the gas mask as they stand up, letting it drop and roll three paces to the right. From a hall to the stranger’s far right, between two stone pillars decorated with two armed musclemen statues, comes a bipedal six–foot–tall dark pewter gray warthog. Its extensive tawny tattered cloak flows gracefully, covering its hands and feet as it ambles. The warthog creeps in on the stranger never letting its guard down.
“Is it you?” the warthog asks blithely in a girlish voice.
The orange–suited individual chokes on a deep breath. Their stomach gives a jolt before turning. The creature continues to daintily approach them as they analyze the creature looking fixedly at them. The stranger determines this warthog’s no stranger. They dramatically stomp their foot in its red neo rubber bandages like an insolent child.
“My god, I could’ve killed you!” a gent’s voice shouts maddeningly from within his orange suit’s inflated hood, passably low so that it occludes his gaze.
He tucks a throwing knife back into a pocket from his carob brown tool belt. He’d been so quick to snatch it, the warthog missed its glister as a majestic ray of light bounced from the silver bluffly making it gold.
“You’re uglier than I remember Hajibala,” the man says bluntly, spitting into the clouds out the chasmal outlet from which he rose.
“As are you, I’m sure,” the warthog responds crossly, sliding a tactfully placed katana back into the depth of its lengthy sleeve. “Where have you been?”
“I’m back from Paris. Hair’s a bit longer. I’m a little more rested,” he says breezily, raising an arm up to shoulder height and crossing it in against his chest. “If I’m honest, I’ve never been so eager to get back to work after a vacation,” he confesses. With his left arm, he pulls his right arm close to his chest and solidly holds it there, letting out a grumble expressing somewhat of an intense sentiment amid tension and allayment.
“Because of Koata I presume,” Hajibala says in a bored voice, at arm’s length to the man.
“That goes without saying. Where have you been? You look like you just burst through a pound of cocaine,” the man asks casually, fixing his eyes on Hajibala’s only screened body part.
Dark pewter gray bristles with a bad case of dandruff carpet her plump, screwy face. All the man visualizes the longer he stares is an oversized, abhorrently grimy toothbrush having just rammed through a salt mine. Her long and sparse rhino gray eyelashes have the same visual effect of chalky corn husks at the end of a broomstick, hedging her wideset black eyes. Dark brown, mighty moist nostrils flare between two large and curved off–white tusks, extending like midway cut curly fries; powdered enough to sate someone’s appetite for beignets. At the end of her elongated snout, inferior to her two larger tusks, two acute smaller tusks match the shape and luster of ice cream cones dipped in a cinnamon bun’s vanilla glaze.
“I was snacking on a cookie cake pie when I heard you blundering about the floor. I wiped my snout on my sleeve before coming out, but I expect some frosting’s still on my second pair of tusks since you won’t stop looking at them,” she says piqued, uncloaking a rosy pink and transparent human hand, the feigned consistency of strawberry mousse gelatin, from her sleeve. She grips onto the base of one horn and slides her hand out toward the edge, heaping up all the white frosting from it. “I’ve been hiding out in the white dunes with Luly,” she says, using the same frosted, pink glassy hand to swipe clean her other horn. She wipes the smooth sugary remnants on an already visibly whitened sleeve.
“You crazy bitch. Since when is Luly a domesticated house cat?” the man asks, astounded by what he’s cocksure is a pure lack of judgement. The man proceeds to do a shoulder stretch on his left side, balancing out the stretches.
“I’ve been observing and learning her behavior. Should I perpetuate this positive trend of her acclimating to my presence, I can be her keeper. She’s yet to attack me because she’s content. The jaguars have been maintaining Luly by feeding her their own. Particularly plebs. One every three months,” Hajibala conveys in a scandalous, almost childlike voice.
The man becomes chafe at her way of relaying this info as if it were a juicy primary school rumor. He sifts through all possible reactions he may employ and curbs his feelings deciding it best to press on. “The plebs? Has anyone caught on to this?” the man asks dumbfounded.
“No. These jaguars are as blind as bats. They still think the raffle is fair. Every jaguar’s name is put in a white top hat and, without notice, someone’s taken to Luly the last day of every third month. These past nine months it’s been a pleb each time.”
“So, three plebs. That ain’t too bad,” the man says fairly, tugging on his hood a bit lower so that his snub nose vanishes behind it. The swollen orange veil induces Hajibala’s speculation about a potential new scar the man may be masking.
“The last time anyone from another class was chosen was twelve months ago. From the Governor class and that’s because that member refused to convict Koata for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“Reckless driving?” the man asks assumingly.
“No. Collusion with Tommy to overthrow Baba Azul,” Hajibala states in a waspish tone.
“How long’s it been since Koata found Neptune?” the man asks curiously.
“One year…I’ve been waiting for you since last Halloween,” Hajibala unfolds anxiously.
“Shit. An underestimation of time on my part. I never thought I’d be so long. Any progress on round one?” the man asks, frazzled by how long his journey had taken.
“The boy’s yet to start. He’s spent the year in prison,” Hajibala notifies, glancing past the man and over her shoulder thinking she’d heard a noise. Her spade–shaped ears rotate from their sides back to their forward facing, slightly slanted angle.
“First of all, he’s a man. Let’s get that straightened out.” The man draws a breath of exhaustion. “Guessing he was convicted for the crime after all.”
“I never discovered why he was locked up and he’s only seventeen. Is not seventeen still a teen?” Hajibala asks, becoming unglued, thinking she’d heard a sound again, flinching and hopping forward. “Sorry, thought I heard something. It’s been a long day.”
“We don’t determine men by age but by responsibility.”
“And by we, do you mean the wiped–out branch of your fellowship?” Hajibala asks, getting snarky.
Ignoring this, the man strolls away from the edge of Church Apple toward the armed musclemen pillars. “And his herald?” he questions, attempting to hide a patent snoopiness in his tone.
“A ginger named David Collins. He lives in Baba Azul’s pocket,” Hajibala says, haltingly turning towards the man behind her.
“That reminds me. I have something in my pocket,” the man says from under the spiked club and axe of the musclemen statues.
He withdraws a stainless–steel travel mug from his left most tool belt pocket. He snaps open the mug top and jiggles it upside down above his palm. A mahogany red Madagascan hissing cockroach plops right side up on his palm. It’s frozen till he brings forth a clear, cone–shaped vial of purple liquid from another tool belt pocket. He delicately tilts the vial to sprinkle the insect with a few drops of the substance. Its three sets of legs bustle about the man’s palm, tickling him and evoking a snicker from him. The cockroach begins break dancing upon his palm, rolling over and spinning clockwise on its back. Its back’s as smooth as polished wood. “Soak it up Gideo,” the man says placidly.
“What’s in Paris?” Hajibala splutters from behind.
“My grandfather,” the man responds gently, watching the cockroach’s convulsions intensely.
“Laslonto’s alive?!” Hajibala dashes to the man’s side, kicking the gas mask on the floor forward. The clatter of the gas mask rolling briefly steals the man’s attention. In the process of its movement, Hajibala notices the lone head inside it for the first time.
“Of course. He’s only thirty–three,” the man says shrewdly, bearing down upon the cockroach once more from inside his goodly hood.
“I wasn’t aware the elixir had worked,” Hajibala says robustly. “Was murder really necessary?” she asks in an undertone.
“Now you notice. Did you think all that blood where I lay was cranberry juice?” the man asks sardonically.
“Why though?!” Hajibala restates boldly.
“I did no such thing!” the man counters offensively.
“You expect me to believe you found a Prefect’s head lying around in the jaguars’ backyard?” Hajibala lowers her tone, grappling with anger.
“Could be an Aedile’s for all I know. And yes. It was most likely one of your kind. Savage beings you lot are. I found it at the scene of a far nastier crime than this head bespeaks.”
“Very well. I won’t push for more,” Hajibala abates knowing her kind is capable of such. “What’re we to do about the Califf man?”
“We’ll need a distraction to bail him out. Any bright ideas?”
“I’ve been steadily releasing warthogs and Komodo dragons from the zoo, into the wild. They still think they’re being brought here by other means. I could release other species,” Hajibala suggests.
“Release them all,” the man directs with a glittering smile as Gideo the cockroach’s spasms subside on his palm.