FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

CONTENT WARNING: threatening behaviour, psychokinetic attack (burning), homophobia, foul language, T

STAVE THE SECOND

The stench was unbelievable. There was a big, display refrigerator full of slowly rotting, abandoned lunches and snacks. There was a row of microwave ovens, each with a crust of dehydrated God-knew-what in and around it. There was a sink piled high with dishes that hadn't been washed in ages set in a counter in the same condition. The only fresh smell in the room was cigarette smoke, possibly some cannabis smoke as well, and even that was joined by its staler cousins, contained in dirty dishes that had been shanghaied as ashtrays. Even the tables and chairs were coated in various messes and layers of dust and dirt, all contributing to the general, horrible, all-pervading stench.

All, that is, except for one table in the middle of the room which had been recently cleaned to its original colour and lack of scent and a strip of floor from the front door past this one table (and under it) to the back door. In the middle of the table stood a Christmas tree, its boughs trimmed with tinsel, ornaments and lights, all of them Forbidden Fuchsia even to the star on top. Two chairs as well had been made fit to sit in, positioned at the end of the table near the clean strip of floor.

In one of those chairs sat an old beaver. He wore thick glasses over his gray temples and a business suit that might have been fashionable when he was a young man, but was obviously comfortable now. (Beside him stood a thin-tailed rodent of some kind. But dressed as the other agents and wearing a gas mask, it was hard to tell just what she was.) The beaver looked around himself at the mess again, then noticed the wolves approaching with their Scrooge.

“Guy Lelland,” Jeremy admitted as he sat.

“Jeremy! What the hell is this… all this mess? How can you expect the crew to eat here?”

“Can't you guess old man?”

The wolf boy tapped Jeremy on the back of his head.

“Hey,” he said, “let's keep this civil.”

“Don't call Mr. Lelland old man,” the wolf girl added. “You're the same age as him.”

“Give or take a couple months,” Lelland’s rodent companion chirped in.

“And what if I don't want to?” Jeremy sneered.

The wolves grabbed his arms, turned to hold them with both hands. They stared at his chest. At first Jeremy glared at them, but then he looked down at his chest too, with growing concern. He started to pant. Then his tie caught fire.

“Hey!” Guy yelled. “Stop that, don't hurt him!”

The rodent put a cautionary paw on Guy’s shoulder.

“We know what we're doing, sir,” she said.

“Are you gonna behave?” the wolf boy said.

“Stop it!” Jeremy cried. “Put me out!”

“Are you going to behave?” the wolf girl demanded.

“Put me out and we'll talk… AHH! Put me out!”

Jeremy’s shirt and lapels caught fire. There was a hint in the smoke of scorched fur.

“I’ll behave! I’ll behave! Put me out!”

“What's the magic word?” the boy wolf said.

“Please! Please put me out!”

The flames had gone out by the time Jeremy had finished begging. The wolf girl rubbed the burned spot on his chest; frost formed where her hand touched.

“Now let that draw the excess heat out of your skin and the injury should be minimal.”

“We won't kill you,” the wolf boy said. “We'll try not to injure you.”

“But we are terrorists,” the wolf girl added, “with super powers.”

“Don't forget that,” the rodent added. “Now how about answering Mr. Lelland’s question.”

Jeremy hesitated. He looked around himself, sizing up the situation; his expression sank slowly in his vest. He scowled a moment in concentration. Then his thin lips curled up and he sneered at Guy.

“I don't owe you an explanation,” he said. “I bought you out, this is my company now and I’ll run it as I please. But I’ll explain anyway,” he added, holding up a hand to the wolves, “because this is my pride and joy!”

“Pride! This awful mess? It looks like nobody’s cleaned in here since I retired!”

“Not quite, but close. What you see and smell, Lelland, is an abject lesson in the nature of people.”

“I think you mean object lesson…” Guy took another sniff and winced. “No, you said what you meant. Go on.”

“You can't see it behind that pile of dishes, but there's a sign over the sink. Know what it says?”

“Obviously not.”

“It says, it's the crew’s mess, let them clean it up.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I cancelled the maid service. The crew had to do their own cleaning. And I told the janitors, mop the floor, nothing more. Catchy slogan, eh?”

“Some of the crew would have obeyed the sign and cleaned up after themselves. Some slobs wouldn't. So what did you do about the slobs?”

“Turned a blind eye of course. I eat lunch in my office, it doesn't bother me.

“Naturally the slobs got mad when the good boys and girls only cleaned their own messes and not theirs, too. The slobs felt entitled to the service. So they started leaving the biggest messes they could make where the good boys and girls couldn't avoid them.”

“And the good kids started giving up.”

“You're finally catching on, Lelland. One by one the good boys and girls started eating at their desks until there were just a couple of good boys left. First the slobs then the whole crew were harassing them to clean up the fucking break room so they could use it again.”

“Harassed them into quitting.”

“Well well, got it in one, Lelland. Maybe you’re not as stupid as I took you for.”

“It was entirely foreseeable that this would happen as soon as you cancelled the maid service. That's why we got it in the first place! And the maid service wouldn't have cost as much if we’d equipped the break room with a couple of dishwashers, like I wanted!”

Jeremy laughed aloud. “Can't let go of those dishwashers, can you. Never gonna let them go.”

“They would’ve saved us money on maid service, paid for themselves decades ago.”

Jeremy laughed even harder.

“But you wanted the extra expense on the maid service for an excuse to cancel it.”

“You're so cute when you're angry.”

“It always worried me when you said that.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Why would a straight man notice if another man is cute?”

The wolf boy and the rodent gripped their charges’ shoulders.

“That's enough!” the wolf girl exclaimed. “Both of you, keep it civil!”

“I'm not the one calling me a fa…”

The wolf girl’s hand gripped Jeremy's muzzle. “Let me hear that f-word leave your mouth,” she said, “and they’ll be carrying you out in a block of ice! Guy, don't infer that Jeremy is gay.”

“Sorry,” the beaver replied. “So now the crew have to eat at their stations and only the smokers use the break room. And what, beyond an artistic statement, has that accomplished?”

“Guess.”

“No.”

Jeremy looked up at his captors. “Do I have to tell him?”

“Tell him!” they growled together.

“I guess I have to tell you. Since they eat at their desks, they have to keep working while they eat…”

“You did this to deny the crew their breaks?”

“Made you guess! Made you guess!”

Jeremy laughed aloud, pointing at Guy as he did. Guy didn't look, he rubbed his temples instead.

“Jeremy,” he said, “you promised me… it was in our contract that you’d take care of the crew, treat them decently, the way I did! How do you call this decent treatment? It's a breach of contract, Jeremy! You can't do this!”

“It's a breach of contract when the little guy, (that's you, Guy), doesn't do what he promised the big guy, (that's Lelland and Fellows Arts.) When the big guy doesn't do what he promised the little guy, that's too fucking bad! What are you really going to do, sue me? When I bought you out, LAFA was a tiny local studio worth less than fifty million annual profit. Without you weighing it down, we’ve grown north of a billion! We were in Forbes Top 500 last year. You think you can afford better lawyers than me?”

“And now this memo!” Guy picked up a stenographer’s pad from his lap. “To all artists and certain others,” he read.

“Where did you get that?”

“From Alice. She let me see it because the core promised to protect her.”

“Core? That's how they pronounce that k-word?”

“Yes,” the three agents replied.

“One,” Guy continued, “everyone who receives this memo is fired as of immediately. Your services are no longer required. Two, you are reminded that everything you did while working for the company that can be described as artistic and is work-for-hire, whether it was assigned to you by the company or done privately and it belongs to Lelland and Fellows Arts. You have until January first to turn everything in. Don't forget things like labels and birthday cards. Three… Jeremy, no, we don't try to steal work they do that isn't company related! That's not fair!”

“Not fair to who? Nothing could be fairer to me. Besides, it's in their contract. If they make it, we own it. The end.”

“It's not fair to them, Jeremy!”

“You think I give a rat's ass about a bunch of artists?”

“Hey! Watch it!” the rodent snapped.

“Artists are a dime a dozen Guy. You can't spit on a street corner without hitting a few. What you never got is the purpose of employees is to add to the value of the company, not take away from it again. These worthless hobe artists ought to be working for free! All employees should.”

“Well you just fired all your artists so now what’re you going to do?”

“Keep reading. Three.”

Guy looked back to Alice's steno pad.

“Three,” he read. “You may have heard that the company will from now on generate all of its art using AI?” For a moment Guy glanced at Jeremy in astonishment. “Any former employee who spreads this rumour will be guilty of libel and sued accordingly. As you may know, in Canada libel can be proven if damage might have been done by the spreading of news, notwithstanding whether it is true. Lelland and Fellows Arts has a current value of one point one billion dollars and we will sue the employee, their family and survivors for the full amount… I’m no lawyer and even I know that wouldn't fly in court!”

“It doesn't have to. It just has to be scary enough to make the suckers keep their traps shut until we make our own spin on it.”

“And what's your own spin? Pay us for something you can get online for free?”

“There's a consequence for getting it online for free, Guy. Maybe you didn't hear, but those free online art generators trained on art they scraped from the Internet with nobody's permission. The artists they stole it from are angry. They’re making a big, public stink about it.”

“And you're going to train your AI…” Guy’s mouth slowly sank open. “...on our back catalogue, which we own free and clear. That's why you're being so greedy with it!”

“My back catalogue. Guy, Guy, Guy. You're learning so late in life how to be a businessman.”

“And all on the backs of the crew. I never should have retired. I never should have taken you as a partner in the first place.”

“You never should have started a business in the first place. You're nothing but a dime-a-dozen artist, the kind I spit on at street corners.”

Guy shook his head sadly.

“Jeremy,” he said, “are you happy?”

“I won. Again.”

“You know that's not what I meant. Jeremy, I met a beautiful girl and married her. We had babies and raised them together. I watched them grow, watched them work out their problems, watched them move away and start families of their own. My wife is gone now, but I have so many beautiful memories of her, beautiful children, I’m still in touch with them. I have grandchildren, Jeremy!”

“I don't give a rat's ass about your fucking family.”

“I can promise you ain't gonna give this rat’s ass!” the rat grumbled.

“I watched you, too, Jeremy. I watched you deceive, connive and back-stab your way up in the business world. I watched you pass by a lot of cute rats and their cute asses, metaphorically speaking. But I watched you work hard to get close to women, whole groups of people, gain their trust, then spit in their faces and drive them away. Now you're spitting in the faces of your own loyal crew and throwing them away. Four, Merry Christmas.”

“Are you through?”

“You're not happy, Jeremy. You're alone. Why do you do this to yourself?

“Why, Jerry?”

Jeremy sat bolt upright and bared his teeth.

“Don't call me that!” he growled.

“Who was he, Jeremy? Who was Jerry?”

“Don't ever call me that!”

The wolves squeezed his shoulders. “Easy!” the boy warned.

“And without another word,” said the girl wolf, “Jacob Marley’s ghost backed through the window and into the night. Scrooge, because of the lateness of the hour or the stress of his unearthly visit, went straight to bed, but found himself too fitful to sleep.”

“Before you go, Mr Lelland,” the rat said, “there's a box under the tree with your name on it. It's The Korps’s way of thanking you for playing Marley’s Ghost for us. Um, maybe you should open it outside over a cup of hot cocoa, though. Scrooge looks really mad!”

Guy found the box. It wasn't very big, about the size of a coffee cup, and of course it was all Pantone #c74375 except for a snow white bow and his name in gold marker. The rat girl conducted him out with an arm around his waist.

“Maybe later,” she said, as they reached the rear door, “you’d like to give a rat's ass.”

“Oh no,” he replied, “my wife would…”

Guy paused as the door closed behind them.

(CONTINUED IN “STAVE THE THIRD”)

(NB. Copyright notices can be found at the end of the final chapter.)