Why Me Coyote Part 1

The house was blue.  

Its paint was peeling, but that couldn’t quite take away from the cheeriness of the sky-like hue. And sure, the paint on the window frames was peeling, and the glass in them seemed a bit wobbly, but that was just part of its charm.  

The lawn was pretty shabby too, though, scruffy weeds poking up everywhere. Someone had obviously tried to put in a front garden at one time, because clumps of irises had staked claims along the front porch.  

All that barely mattered, though.  

The important thing about a house is what happens in it.  

“Can we get one of those fancy name plaques and just write `Gays` on it?” Shanisha asked, grinning. She tapped a finger against her chin.

Minh cackled, but hid it behind her immaculately polished, short nails. “I think we should.”

“What if our parents see it, though?” Reina wasn’t so sure about the idea. Her parents knew, but they didn’t know know. It might push them to do something weird, which could range anywhere on the scale of emotional conversations to full-scale disownment. It wasn’t a path she felt like going down over a name plaque.  

Minh hummed, ever confident. “You might be right. We’ll just erect a flag post, see what happens.”

That was probably worse? “How big of a flag?” Reina asked, confused.  

Ameera finally looked up from her phone. “I don’t know, how much money do we have?” She pretended to rifle around in her canvas bag, making horrible crackling sounds with some snack wrapper she’d left in there at some point. “I’d say our combined budget allows for a very special kind of flag.”

“Very special.” Shanisha agreed. “Invisible.”

Minh faux-huffed. “You have no vision.”

“That’s how we’ll know it’s there.” Reina piled on, finally feeling some of the moving-day nerves ease a bit. “Shouldn’t we get this over with? Ameera, you have the keys, right?”

“Yep.” Ameera popped the p as loudly as possible. She produced the treasured items from her bag of wonders. They jingled and caught the light in a way Reina wanted to pretend was auspicious. “The meeting with the landlord went well. He has our deposit and first months’ rent. He knows that my dog will be coming next month, so the pet deposit is paid, too. We need to make key copies, though.” She held the keys aloft, waiting. For...something. Maybe for someone to take a picture of her.

“Good to know.” Shanisha deftly swiped the keys from Ameera’s lax hand, and walked up to the door. For some reason, she peeked inside the peephole before she put the key in the lock.

“What are you expecting in there?” Minh called, sandals clacking on the warm pavement. She had, of course, dressed up more than everyone else. The fact that they were ostensibly going to be lifting heavy furniture had not prevented her from wearing something with a heel, even though it was noticeably shorter than her usual footwear.

Shanisha shrugged, and unlocked the door. “I don’t know, just curious, I guess. I hadn’t seen the inside other than the pictures you sent me.”

She pushed the door open and went inside, leaving it wide for the other girls.  

They followed in, taking in every detail. The worn sideboards and floors, scuffed with use. The bright white walls that were obviously freshly painted in anticipation of their arrival.  

“It’s ours.” Minh said, proudly. She gestured to the right. “The kitchen is right there, and there’s a pantry.” She turned and walked through the opposite doorway, tapping the doorframe as she passed.

“House is ooold, do they usually have pantries?”

“Good question. I don’t know!” Minh didn’t even break stride, and disappeared around the corner.  

“The living room, the bathroom, and a couple of closets over here,” Minh called from out of sight. They stumbled after her, trying to keep up.  

The group caught up with her at what had to be the most foreboding door in the continental United States. Everything about it screamed `doorway to murder`, including the mysteriously rusty hinges and what looked like a fracture from someone kicking the door. From the other side. It was not an outer door. That implied that someone had been locked inside it.

They gave it an appropriate berth.

“This is the basement.” Minh scrunched up her nose. “It smells weird, it’s only cement, and I don’t think we need to use it.”

“Should probably put a huge dresser in front of it.” Ameera snapped a picture, doubtlessly to share The Murder Door with her large follower count.  

“Blogger.” Shanisha said, not unkindly. “Remember it's not a good idea to post pictures of the inside of your house.”

Ameera just sniffed, and adjusted her hijab. It was a beautiful soft yellow today, with a pattern woven in that Reina couldn’t identify in this light.  

“I,” She started proudly, “am a social media influencer. And I know that, thank you very much.”

“Same thing.” Minh waved her hand imperiously, banishing the disagreement. “We’re happy that you’re happy. May your follower count grow and grow, and pay your bills. Because I am not paying your share of the rent.”

“Does your internship even pay?” Reina asked, curious. She needed to get a job, ASAP. Her parents were helping her out for now, but every month they had to help her, meant a month longer until they could move their restaurant to a better location. That lease cost a lot of money.  

Minh shrugged. “Yeah, my mother insisted. She said it was a gross violation of human decency for a company to expect free labor. It took forever to find a company that would pay me, though.”

“Must be nice, having a lawyer for a mom.” Ameera sighed. “My internship doesn’t pay anything. It’s just the-” she raised her hands to make quotation marks- “opportunity to experience a real, working environment.”

“It’s a really cool company, though.” Shanisha reassured her, though she was also jobless. “It’ll probably look good on your resume, later.”

“If they’re so good, why don’t they pay me?” Ameera grumbled, before taking out her phone again to update a status, or comment on someone else’s post, or reply to a follower. Whatever she was doing, she was typing so fast it nearly gave Reina whiplash.  “The only money I get is from advertisers on my site. I deserve money. I’m really good at it.”

They sat in silence for a moment, ruminating on the inherent unfairness of unpaid internships and entering the labor market.  

“Maybe I’ll just go to school for forever.” Shanisha said, scrunching up her nose. “I want to go to law school anyway. Maybe I’ll just do that for 50 years, run for President, and die. Do Presidents have to pay off their school loans?”

They didn’t know.  

It was quiet. And that door was creeping her the hell out.  

“Can we see the upstairs?” Reina asked. “I want to pick out bedrooms.”

Minh snapped her fingers. “Ah, yes! I was so excited to show you. The rooms are pretty big, actually!”

That got them all up the stairs pretty fast. They picked rooms mostly by the sophisticated “dibbs” method. At least for the moment, everyone seemed pretty happy with the room that they had ended up with.

Reina managed to secure the room that was not directly next to the bathroom, because she knew from prior living experience that Minh would get up precisely 100,000 times a night to pee, and always turned all the lights on. It was a tactical decision worth giving up on a good window or the large closet. She knew she would not deal well with seeing the lights flicked on all night.

Surprise, Shanisha. But Shanisha had also won the prize of having a view into the backyard, which was, if a little scruffy at the moment, otherwise rather nice. It should be really nice later.

Minh had, of course, staked her claim immediately. It had the nicest windows with a windowseat, and an area that might have been useless to anyone without such a largesse of footwear.  

Ameera had chosen the biggest room, even though it had a view of the street. She was doubtlessly going to cover it in décor at any rate, so nobody was ever going to bother looking out the window.  

That settled, it was time to start moving in their piles and piles of stuff.  

They unloaded it car by car, starting with Minh’s father’s SUV.  

Trip after trip, boxes were unloaded, carried into the house, and placed in their proper rooms. After a few hours, Reina’s arms felt like pool noodles.  

“How do we have so much stuff?” She whined, knowing it was annoying.  

“Because we are great and beautiful people who deserve nice things in life, and some of those things are heavy.” Shanisha grunted from behind her, carrying a box of dishes into the kitchen. Minh’s parents had shelled out for actual sets of things, which was nice.  

Reina had the sneaking suspicion that nice plates were very breakable, though. She had a bad premonition about that.

“Make sure you’re putting them off to the side,” Ameera said from behind a stack of towels (lucky, lucky Ameera), “since we still have to move in the furniture.”

Minh entered the front door with a huge box, looking affronted. “Shouldn’t we have done that first? I don’t even have a bed to die on in here.”  

“Lunch?” Reina suggested. “I have 10 dollars to my name today, so I suggest pizza.”

“What kinds of toppings?” Minh asked, slowly placing the box on the ground off to the side of the stairs.  

“None of the meats, if we’re not making it ourselves.” Ameera wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I don’t trust any of it.”

“Haraam stuff, yeah.” Reina contemplated. “We could do a four-cheese, or some vegetarian one? Peppers and onions are delicious.”

“Or a margherita pizza.” Shanisha suggested, as she flopped down onto the floor. “Anything that doesn’t involve moving much.”

“Agreed.” Reina pulled out her phone from her sweatpants pocket, and pulled up a list of pizza places. “There’s two pretty close- one is outdoors”- Minh groaned- “and one that’s indoors. And has a dessert bar.”

There was an obvious winner, there, unless the indoor restaurant had broken air conditioning or was filled with wasps.  

“You drive,” Minh pointed to Shanisha. “Your car is in the driveway right now, and it’s basically cleaned out. We can just lock the house and go.”

The place turned out to be only about 5 minutes away, and that time included finding a good parking spot. Reina suspected that they would be ending up here at least once a month.

The restaurant was refreshingly cool, and relatively dark but for the line of arcade games in a section in the corner. The local public schools didn’t seem to have let out yet for the summer, which was fortunate. It was obviously meant to appeal to a younger demographic, so it was relatively deserted at 2pm on a weekday.  

The pizza was passable, and cheap, which was about all a quartet of college students could ask for. They spent two hours talking, refilling their drinks, and generally avoiding the outside. It was going to be death out there.  

“How much do we have left to do?” Shanisha, ever responsible, broke the manufactured illusion of four young women with no responsibilities or heavy boxes in their immediate future. “I think we can finish before 6 if we're efficient.”

Reina used her straw to blow a bubble of sadness in her soda, before detaching her lips. “My parents’ car. Then we have to drive back to get our beds and other furniture.”

“Split into teams, then?” Ameera said wearily, gulping down water as if it would give her strength.

That sounded like a good idea. Only two of them had large enough vehicles, anyway. Shanisha had been given the old family van to take to college, after her parents had upgraded to something with leather seats and no children in it.

“Right, Ameera, you’re with me.” Shanisha said, half-yawning at the ceiling. “We live pretty close.”

Minh had been uncharacteristically silent throughout the discussion, either relaxing or concentrating on something. Reina looked over at her, and made eye contact.  

“So I go with you, then?” She asked, admittedly kind of curious about whatever Minh was obviously thinking.

Minh nodded, before snapping out her hand for her water and chugging the whole thing down. “Let’s get this moving stuff finished.”

Shanisha and Ameera slid out of the booths after leaving their share of the cash on the table, and left Minh and Reina alone.  

They were gone, but Minh hadn’t moved.  

“Reina?”

She looked up. Minh was looking at something across the room. Reina turned her head to sheet a poster or something plastered on the wall, but couldn’t read it at this distance.  

“What’s up?” She asked, hoping Minh hadn’t suddenly lost her mind or something, due to heatstroke.  

Minh sniffed and leaned forward. “You need a job, right? This place says it’s hiring.”

Oh, that was all? Reina turned her head again and squinted. She could almost see the outlines of “HELP WANTED” in the relative dark.     

“If I work here, I’m going to have to develop sonar.” She quipped. “It’s not well-lit at all.”

“Strains your eyes less,” Minh said brightly. “The fluorescents at my work drive me up the wall. It’s like doing copywork on the surface of the sun.”

They fell silent. Minh looked smug.  

“Besides, it pays. And it's so close that you won't wasting your income on transportation.”

“Why do I even argue with you?” Reina fake-huffed. It wasn’t a bad idea. She needed the money. And this wasn’t so far that she couldn’t beg someone for a ride, or bike if it was nice out.  

Minh pulled her wallet out of her purse, and grabbed the cash on the table. “That wasn’t even an argument. You know much better than to get into an actual argument with me. You`d have no hope of winning.”

She strode up to the counter like a Greek hero of old in kitten heels.  

“We’d like to pay our bill,” Minh said, placing the cash on the counter, “and we’d also like one job application, please.”

Reina carefully folded and tucked the application into her schedulebook in her purse, where it wouldn’t be crushed. And would probably be safe from her tendency to spill coffee on everything.  

It sat there for three days, while Reina and her roommates hauled in every box, bit, bob, and piece of furniture they needed.  

After they’d moved every single piece of their second-hand furniture around into what they deemed a good arrangement, and filled the fridge, Reina thought it was time to pull out that application again.

She couldn’t wait too long to start looking for a job. She’d been coasting on her scholarships, work study, and parents’ help, but after this year there would be no work study. Plus, her hours in the library definitely didn’t pay enough for rent. It paid almost enough to get her groceries for when the campus cafeteria was closed.  

At least it was easy- she only had the two prior work experiences to write down. They didn’t even ask for references, which she might suspect was sketchy, but for that they probably only hired students without any experience or professional references of any kind. It would be a waste of time to call all their moms, asking if their kid was a reliable worker.

It was almost disappointingly easy, actually. She’d put it off for days, and she probably should have filled it out at the counter.  

Reina sighed. Then she got up from her bed where she’d been writing, using an old textbook for a desk.  

“Minh? Shanisha? Ameera?” She called. “I need a ride, can one of you do it?”

A week later, she was a Tumbleweed Pizza Team Member.  

The name was horrendous- who thought a tumbleweed was appetizing?- but it paid. Not well, but it paid.  

‘Between this and my work study, I should be able to not die or burden my friends. That’s a good first step,’ she consoled herself, watching from the counter as a toddler shoved a handful of cheese up their nose.  

This job was gross.  

But it was also easy. The pizzas were almost pre-assembled. The crusts were frozen, and she just had to ladle on sauce, cover them with cheese, and provide the correct distribution of toppings.  

Well, she’d thought it was easy. Dave was never satisfied with the way she did it, and she was going to be continuing to do that ‘training’ with him until he was. There was always something little that kept him from leaving her alone: the ladle of sauce was always slightly too little or too much, the pepperoni had to be placed in concentric circles, or a never-ending list of stupid little requirements.  

But still. He could be a worse boss. He was a mildly sexist pain in the ass, but he hadn’t said anything racist or homophobic, so…

It was a job. It was definitely a job. That had been Shanisha’s take on the situation as well, and she'd asked Reina to pass along an application. So it was a job where she had a friend. Things could definitely be worse.

The clock struck nine, which was the end of her shift. She cleaned up her area the very instant she was allowed to. They were both on four-hour training shifts for the next week still, and after that she could request a number of hours that better fit her monetary needs.

Of course, working in a minimum-wage job guaranteed that she could spend every waking minute on the clock and not make enough money for an actual life, but who was counting?

Reina slipped into the back room to scramble out of her uniform shirt before a customer decided to ask her for something complicated, and sat down on the pile of boxes.  

God, it was hot.  

God, she hoped her parents didn’t know she said ‘God’ like that. They’d lose their minds.  

After a minute in the sweltering heat, she pulled her work shirt over her head and shoved it in her backpack. A regular shirt was lying in wait to assist her with her escape, so she pulled it on.  

“Good job today,” she congratulated herself. “Someday, your work will be your passion.”

It was a trite thing to say, but it made her feel a little better. Plus, she got to pick up her paycheck tomorrow, so there was that.

Shanisha snuck in a second later and performed the same switch as fast as lightning.  

“I’m so ready to get out of here.” She informed Reina. “I was cleaning up vomit for the last twenty minutes.” Shanisha dug in her purse for her keys. “By the way, Dave said that tomorrow we’d be getting a shipment, and it’s your job to stock it.”

“Trying to keep me out of the kitchen?” Reina asked dryly.

Shanisha shrugged, making her keys jangle loudly. “Does it matter? Let’s go! I want a shower and a pile of cheeseburgers.”

When she had been told to unload a shipment, she had been emotionally prepared for cans of tomato sauce. Not.. whatever it was. Reina took a step back, frowning uncertainly.

The creepy thing just sat there in a pile of paper detritus.  

Well, sat was probably the wrong word. It implied that it was capable of doing anything else.  

Reina really, really hoped it wasn’t able to move on its own. The heap of metal with pinprick-light eyes was simultaneously the scariest and the saddest thing she’d ever seen.

The freaking head company hadn’t made sure the animatronic had skin, for Christ’s sake. They couldn’t put it out there and traumatize an entire restaurant of happy families eating pizza.

She sat back from the box at as much of a distance as she could manage in the tiny storage room and just stared at it.  

She supposed that it was meant to be cute and somehow endearing, though what kind of animal it was actually meant to be was entirely lost in translation. The company didn’t actually have a mascot, per se, so someone in a marketing office somewhere must have decided this was worth the money- more so than however many tv advertisements it cost.  

The hardware, however, was obviously very high quality. Those parts would last for a while. But how had they put it together…? She examined the joints, frame, and individual components.  

One thing was for sure, she could have done a better job.  

Still, Reina had no idea what to do with it – other than sneak into her school’s lab for some tools and parts- with some modifications, it would be a pretty cool project. But that probably wasn’t why the company had bought it.  

She doubted Dave knew why, either, but this was definitely a manager problem.  

The backroom was stifling, and she wanted to leave. The air didn’t circulate back here due to boxes blocking vents and the fact that management obviously didn’t care about making a room tolerable if they didn’t have to go in it.  

She stood up, loathe to go out to a world full of shrieking children and marinara sauce spills, but ready to leave the suffocating stillness of a storage room. Somehow she felt guilty for leaving the animatronic back here- maybe the sympathetic uselessness of the skinless animatronic made her anthropomorphize it somehow. She’d already had similar issues with her projects throughout her childhood and degree- she loved the things she built. They were half of what was in her room.

Reina lingered at the door, the smell of cheap cheese wafting through the crack and making her nauseous. After working here, she wasn’t going to be able to eat pizza for at least a year.  

The guilt prickled at the back of her mind, which was stupid. But no one was here anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to just humor her well-ingrained sense of politeness.  

“Don’t worry.” She said quietly enough that no one walking by the storage room would hear her talking to a freaking robot, much less one that was turned off at the moment. “I’m sure we’ll get you some fur and out of here soon.”

Dave was hunched over the desk, staring into the security camera feeds. Reina’s eyes flicked over the screens, temporarily terrified that somehow he had seen her weird little interaction and impromptu break in the storage room.

But no, there was no camera in there. That was why they all ran back there to check their phones and hide from Dave’s incessant lectures. It was just her guilty mind checking whether she needed to cover her ass.

“Hey, Dave. About the shipment from corporate today. There’s a…” well. Um. “Thing?” Yeah, that was descriptive. It wasn’t like he thought she was competent anyway. “It looks expensive, but also terrifying. I don't think we're meant to use it as it is now.”

Dave had slowly swiveled his head around to look at her, one eyebrow raised in what he probably thought was patient amusement.  

“…Yes?” He prompted.

“I think it’s missing something. Would you look at it? I feel confused.” Yep, she was just gonna go with what worked. He needed to feel needed, and as much as she would prefer to not work, sitting in a dark, stuffy storeroom with a creepy robot just didn’t appeal to her today. Maybe on Saturday during the lunch rush, but not right now.  

He stretched leisurely, looking smug. “Well, let’s go take a look at this thing, and see.”

Oh. We? Why was she needed for this? He wasn't going to need her help to recognize the animatronic. It was going to be the thing in the back room that was not a cardboard box or rickity desk. Ugh. Reina followed him back to the storeroom, already bored.

Dave leaned down and looked the thing right in the… well, the creepy bulbs that were meant to be its eyes. Who had approved that?

“It’s the animatronic I designed.” He said proudly, circling it to take it all in.  

She did not snort, but it took some effort.

Dave was all puffed up on his accomplishment. “It’s a kind of robot that performs specific actions, and lots of restaurants use them.”

She hummed, because he would get cranky if he thought she wasn't paying attention. He even knew her major. He just liked to hear himself talk. Reina knew this dance well, and if she just made it through this conversation then Dave would doubtless liberate her from responsibility.

“It’s missing a suit or something, isn’t it?” She softballed. “And we don’t have a mascot, so I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. Should we call the marketing department?”

“Nah.” Dave stared at it. “I designed it, I know what it should look like. We just need some fabric. It’ll be easy.”

Had she ever seen Dave demonstrate handiness or discernment? Reina took a breath and thought about that for a second. It spelled nothing but disaster.

“Yeah, yeah. Just need the suit to put on it.”

She winced. Oh, no. That boded ill.

He was just talking to himself though, sizing the metal monstrosity up. “I already have something that would be fine. No need to pay anything else- I ordered it this way because their designs looked awful.”

He was trying to cut corners on decorating the animatronic. That was even worse. Reina had to intervene. For the robot, for the children, for her own sake.

“We should at least ask the owner, right?” She said it hopefully. Maybe the reminder that he had to answer to someone would snap Dave out of it. The mysterious franchise owner no one here had ever seen, observable only in certain wavelengths by those with salaries.

Dave was unimpressed with her logic, and unshaken in his self-confidence. “No, she doesn’t care about stuff like this. I can just take care of it.”

“I thought the marketing department was supposed to be in charge of these kinds of things.” She knew for a fact that had to be true, why was he doing this? This was quickly spiraling out of control.  

He shrugged. “I took a few art classes in high school, it’s not that hard. You know, you can do anything you put your mind to, Reina. You should remember that. You know what I always say, right?”

“If it can’t be fixed with duct tape, it isn’t worth fixing?” She asked warily, knowing that he was either oblivious to or entirely ignoring her tone. This was just like the many, many sauce-ladling lectures. This wasn’t actually a conversation, she was just a stand-in. She probably could say anything, at this point. Why was she bothering to play along? There weren’t even any customers to witness it.  

“If it can’t be fixed with duct tape, it ain’t worth fixing.” He chuckled, pleased with himself.  

As she glanced at the heap of shiny metal, Reina couldn’t help but feel even worse for it. It was creepy, but it deserved better than Dave. ...But at least now it was out of her hands.

Electricity jolted the thing to life, the jaw snapping open and shut and hydraulic arms jerking back and forth. The grinding sound of the metal was unpleasant. But where was the speaker?

Ah. He pressed the button on the remote.  

“Hi! I’m Buddy the coyote! Welcome to Tumbleweed Pizza! My favorite pizza is pup-peroni, what’s yo-”

Dave held his thumb over the MUTE button on the remote.  

“Yeah, the coyote was a good choice. It’s easy. I think there’s some gray carpet over here somewhere, or was it old curtains…”

He went to rummage through the boxes in the storeroom, and dropped the remote down on top of a plastic tub.  

After a second thought, he came back and flicked the ON/OFF switch on the base. He couldn’t afford that kind of electricity bill.  

It didn't actually take that long to put the fur on. It was amazing that the design company had wanted hundreds of dollars for this part. What for? It was just like wrapping lump christmas presents. Drape the fabric, cut it if it's too loose, tape (or staple) things down, and cut out a patch of fabric for any bald spots that got left. It was not that hard.

Dave stood back to admire his work.  

Ha. $450, just to put the fur on. Ridiculous. And they'd been so insistent, too, calling him two times to check that he was certain. After all that, it had been overly easy. He’d found that all that old fuzzy fabric that had used to line the benches in the entryway from storage and some scraps of other things, and made it presentable. With some careful cutting and haphazard attachment, it was done.

It looked like his design. Well, not perfectly. But it was more than good enough for other people.

And he hadn’t had to pay anything else for it, or contact people in the corporate office to call someone else to call someone else to buy him the actual suit thing, or to get yelled at for buying it. And his looked better, all that foreign-made crap was always cheap-looking anyway. His had variations in texture and shade from the different fabric types, that added visual interest. In the end, they were going to thank him. His character was going to bring in big profits. Kids loved mascots.

“Always satisfying to work with your hands.” He put the offending hands on his hips and surveyed his work in detail. It had eyes, and eyebrows, and long ears. “Just one last thing to check.”

He leaned forward, grabbed the remote, and flicked the switch to ON. He hit the MUTE button again and waited.  

“Thank you for coming to Tumbleweed Pizza, please tumble on by again!” The coyote’s speaker rumbled, jaw opening and closing. Nothing tore.  

So it was a good job, then. Dave was kind of proud of himself. It had been touch and go on some of those hydraulic joints, but the thing was decently covered and still working.  

He clapped his creation on the back, wincing slightly at the hard steel. That was probably stupid, he could have gotten caught in a moving part.  

“You’re ready for anything, now!”  

It was not certain that the world was ready for it, however.

“Dear God in Heaven, what is that?”

“I…. don’t know.”

Shanisha waited, but Reina didn’t want to walk past it first, either.  

Its matted, ratty fur had obvious pizza stains already on it- and angry eyebrows made of something even worse.

“There is no way that thing isn’t haunted.” Shanisha said flatly. “It and I cannot occupy the same space. I’m calling out, and I’ll see you once that thing is safely in hell where it belongs.” She pointed a stern finger at it. “Better be gone soon.”

“Please don’t leave me. You’re my ride.”  

“Ugh.” Shanisha slumped her shoulders and edged forward past the fuzzy heap, giving it a very wide berth.  

“It’s even worse up close,” Reina observed. She winced. “Poor thing. It didn’t deserve whatever Dave did to it. Is that tape? Oh wow, he actually used tape.”

“That’s the thing from yesterday? You said it was creepy, not that it was horrifying beyond belief.” Shanisha shot her a disgruntled look.

“I guess so? It’s hard to tell what it is. But it’s about the right size, and he said he was going to cover it. I just never expected that it be so much worse than I thought.”

Once safely behind the counter, Shanisha softened a bit. “It looks sad from this angle, actually. I feel a little bad for it.”
 

It did, really. The eye lights seemed dimmer than before. Maybe it was something about a deactivated robot that was inherently sad- the hydraulics and gears all slumped and not in use.   

“The kids still might like it.” Shanisha said, as if she was somehow feeling guilty. “I remember I used to be obsessed with this one bear character- it freaked my mom out but we had every birthday with it anyway.”

What bear character? “Like a robot or a dude in a suit?” Reina asked, vaguely interested in this new information.  

Shanisha shrugged. “Either, but Mom never wanted to hire them to come to our house. Said it would give her nightmares. We went to the restaurant or a park every time.”

Oh, that bear. Gotcha. Reina looked up and tried to remember what it looked like. Objectively, pretty ugly. “You think kids will like this thing anyway?” Her voice lilted up hopefully.

Safely behind it and its creepy-sad stare, Shanisha looked a bit more assured. “Yeah, kids like all sorts of stuff. And it is definitely an… animal? That’s probably good enough.”

The curiosity was eating at her, though. The moldy filthy carpet and terrifying angry brows aside, this was an expensive piece of hardware. It would be interesting to get a peek at…

“Reina, Shanisha,” Dave called from the bowels of the office. “Don’t you think you should clock in? You’ve been standing there for two minutes.”

Annoying, but true. They liked getting paid.

“I still want to bust every camera in that room.” Reina said quietly, because Dave was a freaking gremlin with super hearing. “Someday, I’m gonna do it.”

“Yeah, and when you get caught, who’s going to pay for it.” Shanisha eyed the office door, which was thankfully mostly closed. It was harder to make accidental eye contact that way. “Let’s just clock in and get this shift over with.”

Actually, her assessment may have been premature. Before the end of the day, she was really warming up to The Thing. It went where she preferred not to tread.

Reina placed the tray of hot pizza onto the animatronic’s waiting pedestal hand thing, and punched in the table number. “Off you go, be good, I love you.” She told it, only half joking. It was much slower than she was, but it meant no shrieking, sticky children would puncture her eardrums. It also cut back significantly on overly-demanding parental interactions. Reina patted her buddy/pet project on the head before it jerkily pulled into motion. Only then, she suddenly remembered that that would mean she should really wash her hands again. Why didn’t Dave at least wash that old fabric before stapling it on? What a tool. It was being used to serve food. Come on, man.

A tear in the fabric caught her eye- one of the gears was sticking out. Dave was lucky he hadn’t been maimed in doing that work. And he was definitely not qualified- artistically, mechanically, or… She couldn’t even think of anything else. Dave made her tired.  

She frowned, leaning in just a bit to see the problem. Oh. Some kid had shoved a spoon or something in the gear, it was bent and stuck in there. No wonder the arm had stopped raising and lowering.  

“After work, I’m gonna fix that.” She said quietly, watching the animatronic clack along its predetermined rails towards its destination.