Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
Its proper title was the Coryzan Town Residence For The Physically Eccentric. People called it the CTR to refer to it discreetly. A more lighthearted euphemism was the Happiness Hotel. And if you wanted to be completely tactless, The State Home For The Ugly was an unflattering, if entirely accurate, nickname.
It represented the dark side of Coryza's citywide beautification ethos. Aesthetics were not just a priority for buildings and manhole covers, but people. Not to say that everyone with imperfect looks were all rounded up and carried away in the night (although in earlier years, the program was... shall we say, less than voluntary). Phobiopolis was a land of unexpected and violent transformations. Most could be undone at a local hospital, or via a quick suicide. However some effects clung like a disease. Fursons would qualify for the Coryzan Town Residence if they were unfortunate enough to end up in a form so hideous it caused severe social disruption or significant disability. The city would pay for free room and board until a reversal could be found. Alternatively, you could stay there indefinitely if, for whatever reason, you liked having a face that would make an outhouse puke.
Unsurprisingly, the CTR was all the way across town, near the border wall. If the monsters ever got in, no one would particularly mind them eating up the reject bin first. Zinc did not mind the distance, as it gave him plenty of time to appreciate being back behind the wheel of his beloved Killcanoe.
Junella thought he drove like a maniac. She tried to look nonchalant, but her hands were very tightly pinned to her armrests. Zinc took stop signs as suggestions. Pedestrian right of way was not observed. Plus his mouth kept running the entire time, rhapsodizing all the features of his fine automobile.
"...and check out the pinball machine knobs down there on the right side of the dash! Those ain't just for show! I pull that back, it tightens up the suspension. Then when I let her go-" He made an aircraft takeoff noise. "Sail away! Off into the wild blue yonder! Only for short hops, you understand, but they come in handy! Now have you noticed what the brake pedals are upholstered in?..."
Junella's mind drifted. The mutt hadn't actually hit anything yet, so she let herself relax. She leaned back and draped an arm outside the cockpit.
A thought sprung to her mind, unbidden.
'This is why you don't have any friends.'
'WHAT!?' she shot back. 'The hell are you talking about, Me? I'm bein' nice.'
'Are you?' Her inner voice's tone was like a mother with a scolding, nagging finger. 'You yell at him. You order him around. You call him names. You steal his ideas.'
She hunched lower in her seat. 'I apologized for that.'
'You shot him in the goddamn foot!!'
'Well... He killed me first!' she countered. Then cringed, immediately regretting how childish that sounded.
'You're trying, I can see that. But it's not good enough. You're a rotten apple, Junella Brox, and the worms keep pokin' out. People see 'em. That's why you're alone.'
She sniffed defiantly. 'I'm alone because this outhouse of an afterlife is chock full of assholes.'
A dry laugh. 'Everyone but you, huh?'
Junella ground her teeth. 'What do you fuckin' want out of me!? You even said I was trying my best!'
'You're trying. It ain't your best.' The inner voice could not be bullshitted, like so many others. Because it wasn't some cop or clerk she could bluff with a painted-on smile. It was the best part of herself, speaking from behind bars, down into that black basement where the rest of her lived.
'I'm not even sure we have a best.'
The voice faded away, leaving Junella in silence. She hunkered down in the backseat. Zinc's voice and the traffic were a faraway murmur.
She had wondered for quite a long time if she was evil.
All memories of a beforelife were gone. A slate wiped clean, typical of most souls who ended up in Phobiopolis. After arrival, her earliest memories were of mutilating everything that came near her. The frenzy of a panicked animal, brought on by finding herself alone and lost in a nightmare land.
But how had such a capacity for barbarism come to reside in her heart in the first place?
Most people ran. But without hesitation, Junella Brox had stood her ground and bared her teeth.
What was her core?
She looked down at her lap, at the whorled black vinyl her body had become. She hadn't started like this. She'd been a normal skunk of fur and flesh. But Phobiopolis was a place of unexpected transformations. Junella was no exception. Though she happened to like hers. And sometimes she wondered why.
Sometimes she wondered if the ink-filled hollowness beneath her plastic skin was somehow what she'd always been.
"We're here."
Zinc was used to people tuning him out, but his employer had gotten noticeably quieter during the ride. Now they were parked, and not even the brake had gotten her attention. He swiveled his seat and saw that her record-label eyes were staring hard at empty air.
Zinc snapped his wrench-fingers (which sounded like a bullet hitting a frying pan) in front of her peepers. "Hey, hey! Pilot to control tower!"
She jolted and refocused. "Sorry! Cripes, that was loud... I just got lost in myself. Daydreamin'."
"Been there myself." A light smile. "So, take yerself a gander. We've reached our destination. You ever been inside?"
One glance confirmed this was a much chintzier neighborhood than the one they'd left. Across the street stood a tall brick rectangle, not unlike a cereal box. A pointy iron fence was a reminder of the CTR's prison-like origins. Though now the building was as merrily decorated as any other Coryzan apartment complex. Flowerboxes in the windows. Chalk murals. A woman who looked like an overturned bowl of oatmeal strumming a banjo on one of the balconies.
Junella winced. At street level, a resident with an actual paper bag over their greasy head was approaching the entrance and fishing out his keyring.
"Gruesome. And hell no, I ain't ever been in there! The stories are bad enough!"
He hopped out of the car and chuckled at her obvious willies. "Scoff all ya want. We're halfway to membership ourselves if you've forgotten."
"HEY!!" she hollered. She hooked a leg over the cockpit, tumbled out, and stuck a finger in his face. "I look GOOD like this!!"
He couldn't help grinning. "No doubt. But I was talkin' about that 'If looks could kill' scowl you got. You should slap a warning label on it."
In response to that, she slapped his face. Then turned towards the CTR and walked away.
Zinc rubbed his cheek. "Ow." Knowing he was prodding a landmine he added, "Ya know, you can't really sell yourself as Queen Satan, then get all fussy when someone agrees with you."
She whipped around at that.
As he expected. He backed up against the car, braced for an eardrum-bursting reply. But while there was a furnace of emotions on her face, it wasn't the outrage he'd predicted. To Zinc's complete shock, tears were flooding from Junella's eyes. Her features were clenched up in agonized sadness.
"Geez.. I'm sorry," he whispered.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SORRY FOR, YOU DUMB MUTT!?" she exploded.
He was entirely baffled now. "W-what?"
Junella violently wiped her eyes off on her arm. "I just hit you! I hit you! I didn't even think about it! Just hauled off and backhanded you, over a joke! What in the flaming plague-ridden hell is wrong with me!? I was just having a conversation with myself about this! Just a second ago! About how I'm trying not to treat you like garbage! And then I go and do something like THIS!!" Her fingers flew over her grooves like hummingbird wings. Her sheer volume made several passers-by detour out of the way with startled expressions.
Zinc had no clue how to handle this. He lifted his arms, not sure if she needed a hug or something. He couldn't think of anything to say but, "I'm sorry," again.
"Don't," she thundered. "Jesus God, I don't deserve your apology. I'm a natural disaster. I'm a hurricane. I blow in and make noise and knock everything over and make everyone's day worse." She clenched her fists in desperation, like she was drowning.
Zinc was dumbstruck. His jaw moved up and down soundlessly.
"There's no part of me that's good at bein' good to anyone else!!" Junella cried. She hid her face in her scarf and shook her head. "What the fuck is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with me?"
"Cripes, Juney..." Zinc was keenly aware of the reaction her little performance was getting. He wanted to comfort her, but he also wanted to quiet her down out of sheer self-preservation. Most people, when seeing a big scruffy guy next to a crying woman, tended to let their imaginations wander to bad places. "I don't mind. Really. You're just tense, dealing with this Sulilong guy and-"
"Don't make excuses for me," she begged.
Zinc threw up his hands. "Awright, you're a monster! Can we go inside now!? People are lookin' at us funny!"
She sobbed again. 'Wow. I literally can't stop messing his life up without even trying.' She at least got out of the middle of the road and blearily made it back to the side of the car, where she flumped against it. She flinched all over when she felt his wrench wrap around her. "Stop. Don't."
"Can't help it. Cryin' chicks freak me the hell out," he told her gently. "Now willya calm down already?"
She dried her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'll try. Look... first and foremost, I need to be the one apologizing to you."
He waved it away. "Water under the bridge."
"NO!" she insisted, lightly shoving him. "It's not! I've been like a tyrant to you! I've been treatin' you like a slave! I shot you in the goddamn foot!!"
His expression said, 'Yeah, okay, that was pretty atrocious.'
It was a good thing her scarf didn't muffle her voice, because she had her face completely hidden in it. "Just a moment ago, I made a decision in myself to stop bein' that way to you. And it wasn't enough. Do you understand? That's what brought on the waterworks. That I wanted to. And I forgot in an instant! Like, like... what does that say about me!? That I'm nothin' but poison and that's all I'll ever be!?"
Zinc thought a while, then shrugged. "Eh. I'm no saint either. And if it helps any, I know from hard experience that old habits don't die just because you wake up one day and don't want 'em anymore."
She nodded. His comforting words felt both desperately needed and abhorrent. How could he possibly think she deserved comfort? "And of course, you gotta go and make it all worse, ya damn scrufftail. Forgiving me for everything. Like a boxing dummy that just keeps coming back for more punches." She showed him a weak, sick smile to let him know she didn't really mean the insults. "If you'd just be an asshole back to me, I wouldn't feel so bad, y'understand? Instead you keep taking it... and taking it... I feel like I'm kicking a puppy."
He chuckled without emotion. "Yeah... All of that's pretty accurate. Though don't be thinkin' that's all on you. Plenty of it's me." He narrowed his eyes and gazed down at the rough concrete. "I done some bad work here and there. Had to put up with some shitty bosses. The things you'll do to get money... Let's just say I got a lot of practice buildin' up a high tolerance. Being a boxing dummy, like you said."
A slender black paw reached up to softly rest on his wrench. "You didn't deserve that."
A shrug. "I know. But life's one big toilet, eh? And the turds go round and round." He made a swirling gesture in the air.
Her shoulders hunched in a laugh. "Yeah. Lookit us. Just a coupla floatin' turds..."
He prodded her shoulder. "Seriously though. Maybe you don't gotta beat yourself up so much, huh? Other people seem to like ya well enough."
A grumble. "So long as I keep 'em at arm's length from the real me, yeah."
"Close enough. And, I swear on me mudder's Bible, you are not in the top five worst people I've ever worked for."
She lifted her head and gave him a flat look. "I'm six, ain't I?"
He hesitated for a moment. "...Seven, honestly."
She rolled her eyes. "Ugh."
Zinc smiled, noticing she wasn't crying anymore.
Junella looked at him. Looked at that damn imperturbable smile. "Weirdly enough, that actually does make me feel better."
"Eyyyyy!" He patted her on the back. "Great! Because I'm dogshit at this. I know all about fixin' engines. Not so much people. I just want you to get your head back on so we's can get back to work."
One last sniffle. "That is exactly the right attitude, comrade. We got shit to do. People are counting on us. And Tessie'll nail our asses to her office door if we don't get 'em in gear."
He barked a laugh and nudged her towards the apartments. "Highly probable outcome. Though, just to be sure..." When they reached the opposite sidewalk, he turned her towards him, face-to-face. "Are you really okay? Really double seriously? I'm not just tryna shut you up. I mean that."
She smiled bittersweetly. The thought occurred that maybe a softhearted lugnut like him would be the perfect practice for trying to become something better. "I'm not, Zinc. But that's fine. I will be 'ventually. Thank you for everything you said."
He nodded. "Awright. And thank you for being one of the few people to ever whap me 'n then apologize."
Junella laughed outright. "You're a funny motherfucker, mutt."
"A smart mouth is a gift and a curse," he replied poetically. "Starts as many fights as it ends. Let's head in."
~~*-*-*~~