NebulaDreams
Ace Trainer
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Hello there! This is a short story I wrote a few months ago - half written in response to a Reddit story prompt, half written as a tie-in to my upcoming novel For Want of a Shoe. This is set in the same world where humans and monsters co-exist in an Americana-inspired setting, but takes place a few years before Shoe does.
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I pulled up to the Little Girl restaurant for the fifth time in a row that week. As the name implied, the restaurant’s mascot was a girly statue – a shadow of its former glory with its melted paintwork and mismatched facial features. Fitting for the state of the diner itself, with its discoloured sign, its unpaved parking lot, and its dimly lit interiors with its puke-green booths. It looked like a pastiche of a 50s greasy spoon recreated by aliens.
Before my shift, I leaned against the headrest as I listened to the last song on the cassette tape. It was a set of Frerian chanson hits, the last one being a bossa nova song. None of the music over here could compare to that. I whispered those lyrics about the end of dreams, singing along as if it was my native tongue. I thought of the capital city there: the city of love, art, and gargoyles. I imagined myself sipping coffee at the outer tables of a bistro, enjoying my break from teaching Egalian with the Torsion Tower overlooking the view.
When the tape clicked out of the deck, I opened my eyes. I was back in the middle of nowhere preparing myself for another shift at the dilapidated greasy spoon. C’est la vie, I told myself. Besides, it was payday today. The first payday out of many to come.
As soon as I walked in, I got those familiar whiffs of fryer grease, freshly ground coffee and disinfectant. Amelia greeted me, her body latticed with one massive hair net.
“Howdy, Sue,” she said with a smile. Amelia was a bigfoot, by the way.
“Hey,” I said, forcing a smile back. Amelia stood by a dinky old jukebox, slamming her bare foot against the base to coax it back into commission.
“I really oughta get the mechanics out to fix this.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I’ll get to hear it from the kitchen anyway.”
“Still my jukebox. Got it from a mighty good deal. Nothing beats the oldies.”
Finally, she kicked it into gear. It played a blues number that crackled through the speakers.
“It sounds like it never left the great ordeal.”
“Well, you’re a great ordeal to be around.” She huffed and turned to face me. “Alright, so, Sue, you’ve done good this week, but I need ya to speed it up a little. It’s Friday, so expect a ton of customers, plus some regulars. You know the ones.”
“I know.” I ground my teeth, remembering The Ten Item Wonder. “I’m trying my best.”
“Then do better. Or betterer.”
“Well, maybe if we had more staff, I would.”
Amelia’s hard expression softened. “I know it’s tough. I wish those idiots sent more staff here, believe me, but my hands are tied.”
I leaned against one of the counters. “They can’t be struggling to hire people, they have, like, 150 different chains. They must get people applying all the time.”
“That’s what I thought, but from my experience, they’ll hire the bare minimum they need to keep somethin’ afloat – greedy bunch of fatcats.” Amelia huffed. “But, well, shift’s starting soon. Hang in there, and if ya need any help, just gimme a shout.”
I nodded and went to the kitchen, putting on my ratty apron and that cheap blue hat. Back to the rat race.
Slow burning tedium was the entrée on the menu as I did food prep: checking ingredients, shaping up the patties, peeling potatoes, along with everything else I needed to do so I wasn’t scrambling later.
Le plat principal, or in other words the main course, was fast-paced stress. Amelia shouted out the first few orders, and the evening blurred by from there. I was on my own with minimal training, and while the orders were simple enough, every second at the grill counted. As I cooked, distorted guitar strums drifted into the kitchen, muffled by the collective customer chatter.
The next order solidified how understaffed I was. The Ten Item Wonder, as we called it, ordered three double-stacked cheeseburgers and two chilli dogs, along with five portions of fries, all topped with melted cheese and bacon bits. This would’ve sent any ordinary man to the ER for a single bypass, but The Ten Item Wonder was no ordinary man, or even a human. Another bigfoot. I wondered how he even ate it all since I never usually stepped out of the kitchen during a shift.
This time, I had a system for all the food I cooked. I’d set aside the mozzarella to melt in a pot and fry the taters while I’d cook all of the patties at once along with the chopped bacon. Before, I did it all one at a time, but since I’d learned to multitask, it took a lot less time to cook this mountain of food.
I rang the bell and Amelia took it away. I sighed, leaning against the dish counter. I expected it would be another order where I never saw the result of my hard work unless it was for a complaint, but this time was different. Amelia called me out to the diner. I dusted off my apron, preparing for the worst. Past the screaming children and literal monsters, sometimes both at once, The Ten Item Wonder waved at me. He looked as big as his name implied, mostly because of his height, but he was surprisingly lean given his diet.
“Compliments to the chef!” he shouted, raising a fry-stuffed fork. “This is the best meal I’ve had here yet!”
“Not really.” I rubbed my palms. “It still took a while.”
“Aw, don’t sell yourself short, I know it’s a lot on your plate.” He pointed at his coma-inducing banquet. “Definitely a lot on mine.”
“Hamilton’s a competitive eater, aren’t ya?” Amelia chimed in.
“Yeah. Takes practise, believe it or not.” He patted his belly. “I’m in the big leagues, or the bigfoot leagues. I give a lot of humans a run for their money.”
“I’ll say,” I said. “Why here, of all places?”
“Mainly because of sassy right here.”
“You know there are other bigfoot joints out there,” Amelia said.
“Yours just has that extra touch, that, er… I dunno what you call it, some sort of Frerian saying.”
“Je ne sais quoi.” I cleared my throat. “I know not what.”
“Yeah, that. Nice company. Nice ladies.” He winked at both of us, though I tried to ignore him.
Amelia scowled. “Hit on me again and I’m charging you double.”
“Ah, okay. But other than that, you’re less fussy than those other diners. Some of the human-run ones make us wear shoes.” He scratched his foot against his fuzzy leg. “Such a hassle.”
I wondered what the health and safety regulations said about that, but I didn’t have a huge problem with it. It was a free country that just happened to have a lot of monsters roaming around.
“Hey!” A hoarse voice called from the corner of the diner. “Can I get sssome food here?”
This voice belonged to an iguana-looking lacertan. She had established herself in one of the booths with a guitar and a mini-amp. So that was where the music came from. A few of the neighbouring customers stared at her in annoyance.
“I better go,” I said. “Enjoy your meal. Or meals.”
“Will do!”
Amelia and I left him to it as he shovelled forks of loaded fries into his maw.
“How can I help you, miss?” Amelia asked the lacertan, only to get a hiss in return.
“What do you have other than thisss crap on the menu?”
Rude.
“Whaddya need?” Amelia said in a flat, customer facing tone.
“Sss there anything not covered in fat or greassse?”
“The salad. You lizards are vegetarians, aren’t you?”
“We’re not lizardsss, we’re lacertansss. And sssalad, what am I supposssed to do, munch on cabbage?”
“Alright, little miss rockstar, you’re kind of being a pain in the keister. If you don’t like anything in this place, then why come here?”
“None of your businesss. Hey, ponytail gal–” the lacertan clicked her claws–”don’t just ssstand there, what’ve you got?”
“Miss, don’t pick on my staff.” She stamped the linoleum floor. “I might hafta ask you to leave soon, especially with all that guitar playing.”
“Try me.”
“Fine then.”
“Do it.”
“I… haven’t kicked anyone out before. But you better believe your scaly behind that I’m gonna do it.”
“Then go ahead.”
They went back and forth for quite some time, long enough for me to notice the stuff on the table. There was only a half-empty glass of water and a cardboard sign that said ‘homeless, anythin helps’.
“Hey,” I mumbled, which got drowned out by the bickering. “Hey!”
They stopped arguing to look at her.
“Sorry, I know it’s not my place, but you’ve got nowhere else to go, right?”
The lacertan squeezed the neck of her guitar.
“What’sss it to you?”
“It’s nothing. I just wanna know what happened. I saw the sign.”
The lizard set her guitar to the side and softly flicked her pronged tongue.
“Folksss kicked me out. Didn’t like my musssic. I dunno where to go after thisss.”
Amelia’s shoulders slumped, though her face remained stern. “Why can’t you practise in the streets instead? I reckon people’ll pitch in a couple of bucks out there.”
“I… I can’t.” She traced her claw along the grooves of her scaly hands. “Nervesss. Sssilly, I know, but thisss place is louder, lesss disquieting.”
“So you’ve never played live before this?” I asked.
“No.”
She went silent, and Amelia no longer glared at the lacertan. I forgot I was supposed to be back in the kitchen since I got so wrapped up in her story.
It wasn’t my place to deal with customers. The one perk working in a kitchen brought was that I didn’t have to talk to screechy kids or rude idiots who complained about the food. Yet, here, I couldn’t help myself.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Cassssie.”
“Well, Cassie, what would you like, anyway?” I asked. “Even if it’s not on the menu, tell me and we’ll see if we’ve got it.”
“Bananasss. Just on itsss own. Didn’t see that on the menu.”
“We keep the bananas in the fridge. They’re usually served with the sundaes, but I suppose we can do them on their own, can’t we, boss?”
“I don’t see why not,” Amelia said. “And we buy ‘em in bulk, so it’s dirt cheap. Say about ten cents apiece?”
“Five of thossse, then.” Cassie emptied the contents of her wallet onto the table, which all seemed to be single or double cents. She only had enough to buy four, but Amelia gave the fifth banana on the house.
“Can you turn your music down a bit, then?” Amelia asked.
“Sssorry, I’ll ssstop.” Cassie unplugged her amp.
“Thank you.” Amelia sighed. “I don’t know how long you’re staying, and obviously, I can’t let you sleep here overnight, but if you wanna, you can hang around until closing time and play then.”
After the dust settled there, completing Cassie’s order was as easy as pie. Not that pie was easy to bake at all in my experience, especially not the latticed ones, but I digress. The rest of the shift kept me busy, not without its bumps in the road. One customer gave me an earful because I burnt their pancakes, even though it was only slightly brown. Whatever, the customer was always right, even if they were wrong.
Fortunately, after a while, I entered a flow state with zero distractions. The night passed with relative ease. Gradually, the noise from outside dwindled, save for Cassie’s guitar that filled in the dead air, so before I even knew it, the day was almost over. I headed outside to report back to Amelia so I could close the kitchen.
Then a lepidopteran popped in.
I’d seen my fair share of them before, and oftentimes, they flitted about the city, doing errands or gliding from place to place for fun. They often kept to themselves, but seeing one up close always gave me a shock. From their large compound eyes, their patterned wings, and the way they carefully walked as if one wrong move would break their brittle legs, there weren’t many human features for me to latch onto. They were more moth-like than anything else.
He shambled to a barstool and drummed his spindly fingers on the luncheonette. Amelia popped up, looking at him without so much as raising an eyebrow.
“Hello, Sir, what can I do for you?”
The lepidopteran signed with his hands, which I wasn’t trained to recognise.
“Okay, I suppose that’s free.” Amelia patted my shoulder. “Can you get this nice mothman some leftover hot dog water in a glass, please?”
Whatever, I didn’t have the brain power left to question it at this point. I emptied a ladle full of nasty meat juice in a cup and served it. He didn’t pick up the glass, he just sipped at it with his long tongue. Or proboscis, as it’s properly known.
“Is it… nice?” I asked.
The lepidopteran added a few dashes of salt to his glass, took another lick and muttered something, though it certainly wasn’t Egalian.
“Oh...okay, you’re welcome?” I couldn’t hide my bewilderment. “Um, Amelia, should I start closing down the kitchen now?”
“Actually,” she said, “are there any leftovers?”
“Just some cherry pie and some sandwiches, last time I checked.”
“Right, leave the hoagies for tomorrow, but...” Amelia smiled. “How’d you like to share a slice over some coffee?”
“Really?” I fiddled with the apron’s strap. “I mean, I’d love to, but the shift isn’t over yet, is it? And I don’t wanna hold you up while I clear out everything.”
“Don’t you worry about that today.” She untangled the net from her body, letting her hair flow freely like a mop. “My treat, anyway.”
“Well, okay, I can’t say no to free pie. Well, the one I baked anyway.”
“Exactly.” Before I left, she shouted: “Don’t forget the cream!”
I didn’t forget. We ended up sitting at Cassie’s table. Save for the mothman, the diner was empty, so I heard every note, chord and scale she played as she noodled on her guitar.
“Got any requestsss?” Cassie asked.
“Surprise me,” Amelia said. “I dunno if you want my dinosaur tunes.”
“Try me.”
“Okay, how about Blue Collar Blues?”
“Too basic – that only hasss four chordsss.”
“Le Responsable?” I asked.
“Excusssez moi? Nah, I’ll come up with sssomething myssself.” Cassie closed her eyes and mumbled a few words to herself. Then she took a deep breath and hit the first notes.
It definitely sounded different to anything I’d heard before. Maybe it was an original piece of hers. She didn’t have the best grasp on her guitar as her fingers occasionally drifted to the wrong notes, but when she found her groove, she really got into it. Her eyes shut as she got lost in her tune, and even without words, it took me on a journey, like roller skating down a slope.
Cassie in particular reminded me of some of the people that performed at my college’s open mic nights late at the cafeteria. Like those bands back there, it was unpolished but it had a lot of passion in it. As if that music would take them anywhere they wanted to in the future as long as they continued playing. As if there wasn’t a future full of mediocrity and disappointment awaiting them.
I washed that bitterness down with the bittersweetness of Amelia’s roast, then shovelled some pie in my pie hole to trap those feelings inside. Wow, my pie turned out quite nice this time. As I ate, I expected the song to stop each time it hit another high, but it kept going and going and getting more distorted over time to the point the plates rattled on my table.
I couldn’t believe my ears. It was intense. My hands vibrated. It was totally out of my comfort zone. Yet, the music seemed to channel all of Cassie’s frustrations, even if I didn’t know what exactly she was going through. Both me and Amelia barely moved, my behind stuck to the sticky leathery booths.
Cassie’s riff would’ve lasted forever if the lepidopteran didn’t swoop in, gliding across the diner like a bat. He screeched and chittered at her, then threw the glass of sausage water in her face.
“Hey!” she screamed, pawing at her snout. “What the hell, dude?”
Amelia stood up and escorted him out of the diner, though he went willingly since he flew into the double doors, forcing them open. As Amelia signed to the lepidopteran, I tore out a few napkins for Cassie to dry her face and her guitar. When the chaos died down, she unplugged the amp and dropped her instrument on the table with a loud clang.
“Sssee?” she said. “Thisss is what I wasss ssscared of, playing outside.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” I said. “Well, it’s not outside, though, is it?”
“I know, but I thought it would be better. Maybe if thisss went well, I’d be ready to play out there.” She sighed. “Sssorry to bother you with my ssstupid music.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No really, I liked what I heard.” I smiled. “I liked it a lot, actually. I could tell you poured your heart and soul into that.”
“Meh, it’sss a work in progressss.” She peeled the last banana and chomped it all down in one bite. I expected her to say something else when she swallowed, but she didn’t. Cassie stared at the rest of the diner, then out the window where that lepidopteran embraced Amelia, then back to me.
“I don’t wanna be like you.”
I leaned back, mouth agape. “Well, sorry, have I upset you somehow?”
“No, nothing to do with that. And thanksss for getting your bossss to let me ssstay.”
“Well, I knew you were in a huge pickle, so I had to say something.”
“And I’m grateful. I jussst don’t want my daysss to be like thisss, working nine to five at a dead end job like thisss until I die. Jussst to have a bed to sssleep on. And giving up thisss.” She tuned the pegs of her guitar. “I kept thinking, if I played hard enough, I’d get out of thisss dump. Now look at me.”
I polished off my coffee and sighed. “You know, I used to think like that. I majored in Frerian, and I thought it would be smooth sailings from there, that moving out of my Mom’s was the best thing I did.”
“What can you do with a Frerian degree anyway?”
“Be a translator or an Egalian tutor. That’s what I wanted to go for. But progress has been slow.”
“How ssso?”
I traced my finger over the rim of the cup. “Some of it was family stuff. But other than that, you have to be lucky to find a programme, or stand out from the other teachers, though I don’t even have a certificate for that yet.” I sighed again. “And right now, I feel like I’m going nowhere.”
“And isss that what’sss waiting for me?”
I thought about my daydreams in the car. Sometimes during work. Sometimes at home. And truthfully, there were opportunities out there. I recalled a local ad for a Frerian tutor somewhere, so maybe that would be a way in. Until then, I needed some form of work, even if it was in this place.
“I think I’ve got a long future ahead. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think it will happen eventually. I just imagine where I want to be in a few years or so. That’s how I’ve dealt with it.”
“And where do you wanna be?”
“Sipping a glass of cabernet with a plate of gouda and crackers by my side.”
“Pfft, sssounds boring; you can do that anywhere.”
“I know. But it’s a start. What do you wanna do?”
Cassie wrung her claws around the guitar case. “Get to the big pear. Play in sssome clubsss. I don’t wanna sssniff coke until I die either like the really big acts, I just wanna be a part of sssomething with misfitsss like me.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad either.”
To think that days before, Amelia was the one that gave me the pep talks. Now I gave them to someone else, a complete stranger. Speaking of that bigfoot, Amelia popped in, yawning.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Lepidopterans get pretty antsy about certain noises.”
“He didn’t have to throw that crap at me,” Cassie hissed.
“He didn’t, and don’t worry, I gave him a slice of humble pie about that. Though he was dealing with his own stuff too. Wife left him, the poor thing.” Amelia took our empty plates. “But anyways, the pie went straight to my hips, Sue. You’re a good cook.”
Heat rushed to my face. “Er, anyone could do that.”
“Just take the compliment before I make it into a compliment sandwich.”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Alright.” Amelia drifted to the cash register and emptied a stack of bills into an envelope. I didn’t need to check it; I trusted her enough to give what was promised. “You’ve done well for your first week here, given the short straw you’ve been dealt.”
“Well, thanks, I hope to do even better next week.”
“I’m sure you will. And, well, I hope you keep at it, wherever it is you wanna go. I know this ain’t the Glitz.”
“Nah, it’s okay.” I smirked at Cassie. “Things will turn out just fine, I’m sure.”
Before I left, Cassie rose from her seat. “Sssay, broad?”
“That’s Amelia to you, miss rockstar.”
“Are you hiring?”
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Bonus art:
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I pulled up to the Little Girl restaurant for the fifth time in a row that week. As the name implied, the restaurant’s mascot was a girly statue – a shadow of its former glory with its melted paintwork and mismatched facial features. Fitting for the state of the diner itself, with its discoloured sign, its unpaved parking lot, and its dimly lit interiors with its puke-green booths. It looked like a pastiche of a 50s greasy spoon recreated by aliens.
Before my shift, I leaned against the headrest as I listened to the last song on the cassette tape. It was a set of Frerian chanson hits, the last one being a bossa nova song. None of the music over here could compare to that. I whispered those lyrics about the end of dreams, singing along as if it was my native tongue. I thought of the capital city there: the city of love, art, and gargoyles. I imagined myself sipping coffee at the outer tables of a bistro, enjoying my break from teaching Egalian with the Torsion Tower overlooking the view.
When the tape clicked out of the deck, I opened my eyes. I was back in the middle of nowhere preparing myself for another shift at the dilapidated greasy spoon. C’est la vie, I told myself. Besides, it was payday today. The first payday out of many to come.
As soon as I walked in, I got those familiar whiffs of fryer grease, freshly ground coffee and disinfectant. Amelia greeted me, her body latticed with one massive hair net.
“Howdy, Sue,” she said with a smile. Amelia was a bigfoot, by the way.
“Hey,” I said, forcing a smile back. Amelia stood by a dinky old jukebox, slamming her bare foot against the base to coax it back into commission.
“I really oughta get the mechanics out to fix this.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I’ll get to hear it from the kitchen anyway.”
“Still my jukebox. Got it from a mighty good deal. Nothing beats the oldies.”
Finally, she kicked it into gear. It played a blues number that crackled through the speakers.
“It sounds like it never left the great ordeal.”
“Well, you’re a great ordeal to be around.” She huffed and turned to face me. “Alright, so, Sue, you’ve done good this week, but I need ya to speed it up a little. It’s Friday, so expect a ton of customers, plus some regulars. You know the ones.”
“I know.” I ground my teeth, remembering The Ten Item Wonder. “I’m trying my best.”
“Then do better. Or betterer.”
“Well, maybe if we had more staff, I would.”
Amelia’s hard expression softened. “I know it’s tough. I wish those idiots sent more staff here, believe me, but my hands are tied.”
I leaned against one of the counters. “They can’t be struggling to hire people, they have, like, 150 different chains. They must get people applying all the time.”
“That’s what I thought, but from my experience, they’ll hire the bare minimum they need to keep somethin’ afloat – greedy bunch of fatcats.” Amelia huffed. “But, well, shift’s starting soon. Hang in there, and if ya need any help, just gimme a shout.”
I nodded and went to the kitchen, putting on my ratty apron and that cheap blue hat. Back to the rat race.
Slow burning tedium was the entrée on the menu as I did food prep: checking ingredients, shaping up the patties, peeling potatoes, along with everything else I needed to do so I wasn’t scrambling later.
Le plat principal, or in other words the main course, was fast-paced stress. Amelia shouted out the first few orders, and the evening blurred by from there. I was on my own with minimal training, and while the orders were simple enough, every second at the grill counted. As I cooked, distorted guitar strums drifted into the kitchen, muffled by the collective customer chatter.
The next order solidified how understaffed I was. The Ten Item Wonder, as we called it, ordered three double-stacked cheeseburgers and two chilli dogs, along with five portions of fries, all topped with melted cheese and bacon bits. This would’ve sent any ordinary man to the ER for a single bypass, but The Ten Item Wonder was no ordinary man, or even a human. Another bigfoot. I wondered how he even ate it all since I never usually stepped out of the kitchen during a shift.
This time, I had a system for all the food I cooked. I’d set aside the mozzarella to melt in a pot and fry the taters while I’d cook all of the patties at once along with the chopped bacon. Before, I did it all one at a time, but since I’d learned to multitask, it took a lot less time to cook this mountain of food.
I rang the bell and Amelia took it away. I sighed, leaning against the dish counter. I expected it would be another order where I never saw the result of my hard work unless it was for a complaint, but this time was different. Amelia called me out to the diner. I dusted off my apron, preparing for the worst. Past the screaming children and literal monsters, sometimes both at once, The Ten Item Wonder waved at me. He looked as big as his name implied, mostly because of his height, but he was surprisingly lean given his diet.
“Compliments to the chef!” he shouted, raising a fry-stuffed fork. “This is the best meal I’ve had here yet!”
“Not really.” I rubbed my palms. “It still took a while.”
“Aw, don’t sell yourself short, I know it’s a lot on your plate.” He pointed at his coma-inducing banquet. “Definitely a lot on mine.”
“Hamilton’s a competitive eater, aren’t ya?” Amelia chimed in.
“Yeah. Takes practise, believe it or not.” He patted his belly. “I’m in the big leagues, or the bigfoot leagues. I give a lot of humans a run for their money.”
“I’ll say,” I said. “Why here, of all places?”
“Mainly because of sassy right here.”
“You know there are other bigfoot joints out there,” Amelia said.
“Yours just has that extra touch, that, er… I dunno what you call it, some sort of Frerian saying.”
“Je ne sais quoi.” I cleared my throat. “I know not what.”
“Yeah, that. Nice company. Nice ladies.” He winked at both of us, though I tried to ignore him.
Amelia scowled. “Hit on me again and I’m charging you double.”
“Ah, okay. But other than that, you’re less fussy than those other diners. Some of the human-run ones make us wear shoes.” He scratched his foot against his fuzzy leg. “Such a hassle.”
I wondered what the health and safety regulations said about that, but I didn’t have a huge problem with it. It was a free country that just happened to have a lot of monsters roaming around.
“Hey!” A hoarse voice called from the corner of the diner. “Can I get sssome food here?”
This voice belonged to an iguana-looking lacertan. She had established herself in one of the booths with a guitar and a mini-amp. So that was where the music came from. A few of the neighbouring customers stared at her in annoyance.
“I better go,” I said. “Enjoy your meal. Or meals.”
“Will do!”
Amelia and I left him to it as he shovelled forks of loaded fries into his maw.
“How can I help you, miss?” Amelia asked the lacertan, only to get a hiss in return.
“What do you have other than thisss crap on the menu?”
Rude.
“Whaddya need?” Amelia said in a flat, customer facing tone.
“Sss there anything not covered in fat or greassse?”
“The salad. You lizards are vegetarians, aren’t you?”
“We’re not lizardsss, we’re lacertansss. And sssalad, what am I supposssed to do, munch on cabbage?”
“Alright, little miss rockstar, you’re kind of being a pain in the keister. If you don’t like anything in this place, then why come here?”
“None of your businesss. Hey, ponytail gal–” the lacertan clicked her claws–”don’t just ssstand there, what’ve you got?”
“Miss, don’t pick on my staff.” She stamped the linoleum floor. “I might hafta ask you to leave soon, especially with all that guitar playing.”
“Try me.”
“Fine then.”
“Do it.”
“I… haven’t kicked anyone out before. But you better believe your scaly behind that I’m gonna do it.”
“Then go ahead.”
They went back and forth for quite some time, long enough for me to notice the stuff on the table. There was only a half-empty glass of water and a cardboard sign that said ‘homeless, anythin helps’.
“Hey,” I mumbled, which got drowned out by the bickering. “Hey!”
They stopped arguing to look at her.
“Sorry, I know it’s not my place, but you’ve got nowhere else to go, right?”
The lacertan squeezed the neck of her guitar.
“What’sss it to you?”
“It’s nothing. I just wanna know what happened. I saw the sign.”
The lizard set her guitar to the side and softly flicked her pronged tongue.
“Folksss kicked me out. Didn’t like my musssic. I dunno where to go after thisss.”
Amelia’s shoulders slumped, though her face remained stern. “Why can’t you practise in the streets instead? I reckon people’ll pitch in a couple of bucks out there.”
“I… I can’t.” She traced her claw along the grooves of her scaly hands. “Nervesss. Sssilly, I know, but thisss place is louder, lesss disquieting.”
“So you’ve never played live before this?” I asked.
“No.”
She went silent, and Amelia no longer glared at the lacertan. I forgot I was supposed to be back in the kitchen since I got so wrapped up in her story.
It wasn’t my place to deal with customers. The one perk working in a kitchen brought was that I didn’t have to talk to screechy kids or rude idiots who complained about the food. Yet, here, I couldn’t help myself.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Cassssie.”
“Well, Cassie, what would you like, anyway?” I asked. “Even if it’s not on the menu, tell me and we’ll see if we’ve got it.”
“Bananasss. Just on itsss own. Didn’t see that on the menu.”
“We keep the bananas in the fridge. They’re usually served with the sundaes, but I suppose we can do them on their own, can’t we, boss?”
“I don’t see why not,” Amelia said. “And we buy ‘em in bulk, so it’s dirt cheap. Say about ten cents apiece?”
“Five of thossse, then.” Cassie emptied the contents of her wallet onto the table, which all seemed to be single or double cents. She only had enough to buy four, but Amelia gave the fifth banana on the house.
“Can you turn your music down a bit, then?” Amelia asked.
“Sssorry, I’ll ssstop.” Cassie unplugged her amp.
“Thank you.” Amelia sighed. “I don’t know how long you’re staying, and obviously, I can’t let you sleep here overnight, but if you wanna, you can hang around until closing time and play then.”
After the dust settled there, completing Cassie’s order was as easy as pie. Not that pie was easy to bake at all in my experience, especially not the latticed ones, but I digress. The rest of the shift kept me busy, not without its bumps in the road. One customer gave me an earful because I burnt their pancakes, even though it was only slightly brown. Whatever, the customer was always right, even if they were wrong.
Fortunately, after a while, I entered a flow state with zero distractions. The night passed with relative ease. Gradually, the noise from outside dwindled, save for Cassie’s guitar that filled in the dead air, so before I even knew it, the day was almost over. I headed outside to report back to Amelia so I could close the kitchen.
Then a lepidopteran popped in.
I’d seen my fair share of them before, and oftentimes, they flitted about the city, doing errands or gliding from place to place for fun. They often kept to themselves, but seeing one up close always gave me a shock. From their large compound eyes, their patterned wings, and the way they carefully walked as if one wrong move would break their brittle legs, there weren’t many human features for me to latch onto. They were more moth-like than anything else.
He shambled to a barstool and drummed his spindly fingers on the luncheonette. Amelia popped up, looking at him without so much as raising an eyebrow.
“Hello, Sir, what can I do for you?”
The lepidopteran signed with his hands, which I wasn’t trained to recognise.
“Okay, I suppose that’s free.” Amelia patted my shoulder. “Can you get this nice mothman some leftover hot dog water in a glass, please?”
Whatever, I didn’t have the brain power left to question it at this point. I emptied a ladle full of nasty meat juice in a cup and served it. He didn’t pick up the glass, he just sipped at it with his long tongue. Or proboscis, as it’s properly known.
“Is it… nice?” I asked.
The lepidopteran added a few dashes of salt to his glass, took another lick and muttered something, though it certainly wasn’t Egalian.
“Oh...okay, you’re welcome?” I couldn’t hide my bewilderment. “Um, Amelia, should I start closing down the kitchen now?”
“Actually,” she said, “are there any leftovers?”
“Just some cherry pie and some sandwiches, last time I checked.”
“Right, leave the hoagies for tomorrow, but...” Amelia smiled. “How’d you like to share a slice over some coffee?”
“Really?” I fiddled with the apron’s strap. “I mean, I’d love to, but the shift isn’t over yet, is it? And I don’t wanna hold you up while I clear out everything.”
“Don’t you worry about that today.” She untangled the net from her body, letting her hair flow freely like a mop. “My treat, anyway.”
“Well, okay, I can’t say no to free pie. Well, the one I baked anyway.”
“Exactly.” Before I left, she shouted: “Don’t forget the cream!”
I didn’t forget. We ended up sitting at Cassie’s table. Save for the mothman, the diner was empty, so I heard every note, chord and scale she played as she noodled on her guitar.
“Got any requestsss?” Cassie asked.
“Surprise me,” Amelia said. “I dunno if you want my dinosaur tunes.”
“Try me.”
“Okay, how about Blue Collar Blues?”
“Too basic – that only hasss four chordsss.”
“Le Responsable?” I asked.
“Excusssez moi? Nah, I’ll come up with sssomething myssself.” Cassie closed her eyes and mumbled a few words to herself. Then she took a deep breath and hit the first notes.
It definitely sounded different to anything I’d heard before. Maybe it was an original piece of hers. She didn’t have the best grasp on her guitar as her fingers occasionally drifted to the wrong notes, but when she found her groove, she really got into it. Her eyes shut as she got lost in her tune, and even without words, it took me on a journey, like roller skating down a slope.
Cassie in particular reminded me of some of the people that performed at my college’s open mic nights late at the cafeteria. Like those bands back there, it was unpolished but it had a lot of passion in it. As if that music would take them anywhere they wanted to in the future as long as they continued playing. As if there wasn’t a future full of mediocrity and disappointment awaiting them.
I washed that bitterness down with the bittersweetness of Amelia’s roast, then shovelled some pie in my pie hole to trap those feelings inside. Wow, my pie turned out quite nice this time. As I ate, I expected the song to stop each time it hit another high, but it kept going and going and getting more distorted over time to the point the plates rattled on my table.
I couldn’t believe my ears. It was intense. My hands vibrated. It was totally out of my comfort zone. Yet, the music seemed to channel all of Cassie’s frustrations, even if I didn’t know what exactly she was going through. Both me and Amelia barely moved, my behind stuck to the sticky leathery booths.
Cassie’s riff would’ve lasted forever if the lepidopteran didn’t swoop in, gliding across the diner like a bat. He screeched and chittered at her, then threw the glass of sausage water in her face.
“Hey!” she screamed, pawing at her snout. “What the hell, dude?”
Amelia stood up and escorted him out of the diner, though he went willingly since he flew into the double doors, forcing them open. As Amelia signed to the lepidopteran, I tore out a few napkins for Cassie to dry her face and her guitar. When the chaos died down, she unplugged the amp and dropped her instrument on the table with a loud clang.
“Sssee?” she said. “Thisss is what I wasss ssscared of, playing outside.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” I said. “Well, it’s not outside, though, is it?”
“I know, but I thought it would be better. Maybe if thisss went well, I’d be ready to play out there.” She sighed. “Sssorry to bother you with my ssstupid music.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No really, I liked what I heard.” I smiled. “I liked it a lot, actually. I could tell you poured your heart and soul into that.”
“Meh, it’sss a work in progressss.” She peeled the last banana and chomped it all down in one bite. I expected her to say something else when she swallowed, but she didn’t. Cassie stared at the rest of the diner, then out the window where that lepidopteran embraced Amelia, then back to me.
“I don’t wanna be like you.”
I leaned back, mouth agape. “Well, sorry, have I upset you somehow?”
“No, nothing to do with that. And thanksss for getting your bossss to let me ssstay.”
“Well, I knew you were in a huge pickle, so I had to say something.”
“And I’m grateful. I jussst don’t want my daysss to be like thisss, working nine to five at a dead end job like thisss until I die. Jussst to have a bed to sssleep on. And giving up thisss.” She tuned the pegs of her guitar. “I kept thinking, if I played hard enough, I’d get out of thisss dump. Now look at me.”
I polished off my coffee and sighed. “You know, I used to think like that. I majored in Frerian, and I thought it would be smooth sailings from there, that moving out of my Mom’s was the best thing I did.”
“What can you do with a Frerian degree anyway?”
“Be a translator or an Egalian tutor. That’s what I wanted to go for. But progress has been slow.”
“How ssso?”
I traced my finger over the rim of the cup. “Some of it was family stuff. But other than that, you have to be lucky to find a programme, or stand out from the other teachers, though I don’t even have a certificate for that yet.” I sighed again. “And right now, I feel like I’m going nowhere.”
“And isss that what’sss waiting for me?”
I thought about my daydreams in the car. Sometimes during work. Sometimes at home. And truthfully, there were opportunities out there. I recalled a local ad for a Frerian tutor somewhere, so maybe that would be a way in. Until then, I needed some form of work, even if it was in this place.
“I think I’ve got a long future ahead. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think it will happen eventually. I just imagine where I want to be in a few years or so. That’s how I’ve dealt with it.”
“And where do you wanna be?”
“Sipping a glass of cabernet with a plate of gouda and crackers by my side.”
“Pfft, sssounds boring; you can do that anywhere.”
“I know. But it’s a start. What do you wanna do?”
Cassie wrung her claws around the guitar case. “Get to the big pear. Play in sssome clubsss. I don’t wanna sssniff coke until I die either like the really big acts, I just wanna be a part of sssomething with misfitsss like me.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad either.”
To think that days before, Amelia was the one that gave me the pep talks. Now I gave them to someone else, a complete stranger. Speaking of that bigfoot, Amelia popped in, yawning.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Lepidopterans get pretty antsy about certain noises.”
“He didn’t have to throw that crap at me,” Cassie hissed.
“He didn’t, and don’t worry, I gave him a slice of humble pie about that. Though he was dealing with his own stuff too. Wife left him, the poor thing.” Amelia took our empty plates. “But anyways, the pie went straight to my hips, Sue. You’re a good cook.”
Heat rushed to my face. “Er, anyone could do that.”
“Just take the compliment before I make it into a compliment sandwich.”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Alright.” Amelia drifted to the cash register and emptied a stack of bills into an envelope. I didn’t need to check it; I trusted her enough to give what was promised. “You’ve done well for your first week here, given the short straw you’ve been dealt.”
“Well, thanks, I hope to do even better next week.”
“I’m sure you will. And, well, I hope you keep at it, wherever it is you wanna go. I know this ain’t the Glitz.”
“Nah, it’s okay.” I smirked at Cassie. “Things will turn out just fine, I’m sure.”
Before I left, Cassie rose from her seat. “Sssay, broad?”
“That’s Amelia to you, miss rockstar.”
“Are you hiring?”
--
Bonus art: