Annie LXX: Service Industry

(Chronological index: New World Order #14)

Denise completed her shift and staggered through the kitchen. Her fear of giants was long gone, as was her deeply buried idea that there was something 'better' about being bigger.

Those mouth-breathing, open-chewing, food-dangling, garlic-breathed forces of chaos and frustration were just great big babies that needed constant care and a light touch. Telling them straight up that they were wrong, and how wrong, and in what direction, that was just a great big bitchfest waiting to happen.

"Babies," she muttered. She'd also lost any regrets for not being able to have had any Children with Ray.

She tossed her spit-spotted apron into the chute and started to unbutton her uniform shirt.

Dark fingers appeared next to her, pausing just outside of (her) arms' reach to either side.

"Denise?" Deliah asked. The sylph raised her arms and nodded. As she was carefully picked up into the air, she had to admit that she was getting off her feet.

Not into a bath, but off. That was good.

Deliah carried her into the office just down the hall from the kitchen's staff door. Denise hadn't been there often because Deliah wasn't there too often.

Now she was settled onto a small doll-sofa beside the blotter. Of course, in the Center, 'doll' referred only to scale. The overstuffed cushions swallowed her ass like a warm and fluffy quicksand pit.

Deliah, no stranger to the demands on her waitstaff, waited patiently until her guest stopped purring as she sank down. When the sylph opened her eyes there was an icewater drink on the arm.

She sipped happily. "Oh, that's perfect." And finally she was ready to talk.

"So? How's the family?" Deliah asked.

"Ray and Pet are godparents to the first gnome baby ever born," Denise replied proudly. "Pictures of Pet holding a giant infant on her lap are in your inbox."

"Awwww."

"Aw is right," Denise nodded. She sipped some more. Deliah didn't try to refill the cup on the arm, she just swapped it out with another one. Less mess that way.

"Um...Annie's with Mia. They're trying to figure out if there's anything they can do." Deliah nodded. The entire Sylph Center was watching the Undine situation.

There had been a tapering-off of undine's being created during a youthing ceremony. Then ceremonies without undines had not produced the 'fountain of youth' results.

Now even with full undines in attendance, no magic was happening. No one got younger, no lights glowed, now fountains spurted.

Everyone was sure someone had done something wrong. Fingers were pointed all over the place. Denise knew that Mia took it very personally.

Annie was in Florida, trying to cheer Mia up or run a séance to identify the problem. "I promised I'd be there if she thought they needed me, so-"

"Yeah, yeah," Deliah agreed. "Take the time you need." Denise knew the offer was sincere. The Sanc Dembuka waitresses were quickly mastering the menu, the language and the floor, so there was no shortage of bodies.

They could use a few more that didn't approach the customers as gods that needed propitiation, but that would come with time.

"And I'm here," she finished. "I miss everyone, but sometimes it's nice to be in the same place for more than three days in a row." Deliah smiled and nodded.

"I can see that." She looked thoughtful. "Of course, Amelia says you didn't like being 'protected' by Pet in the field. Any more than Sam would enjoy being protected by her."

"Well, Amelia never had to watch a loved one get between her and a vile felon ugly waste of sperm, so what does she know?"

Deliah laughed. "So, you don't want people horning in on your adventures?"

"Pretty much," Denise nodded. "I get the home life for most of the time, and a little adventure out there in the World. It works for me. Now," she set her drink down. "What did you want?"

"Look, Denise, I need your help." Denise finished off another cup of water and looked up expectantly.

Was she getting promoted to hostess? With Annie rotating on trips with Ray, there was probably an opening...

"You took business courses, right?"

"Yeah," Denise said slowly. "I was, uh, a Purchasing Agent for two hospitals."

"Think you could do my books?"

-----------

The office space had been designed for a sylph but with an idea of paper rather than computer receipts. Half the room was an in-box, the other half an out-box.

The architect had evidently imagined some worker-bee sylph wrestling paper across the floor and clipping it to a wooden dowel. Then working a pulley system to lift the dowel like sails on a wind-powered ship until it was vertical.

Rows of seats like a surgical theatre would have allowed her to sit across from any line on the page. She'd have to carry HER paperwork with her to any level, but that was the least of it.

If anything, logic would have dictated her 'out-box' be a slot in the floor. Simply unclip the sheet and let it fall. But no, she was supposed to wrestle it down and drag it to the third room in her suite-like office.

Some human secretary would have taken the output and filed it.

As it turned out, there was the rare paper receipt, but Portion Control, and the Sylph Center as a whole, tended to do business with companies that were as electronic as possible.

Paperless offices were very sylph-friendly. Denise sat comfortably at her computer desk in a 'cubicle' that reminded her of the cathedral wedding scene in Sound of Music.

Right now one sheet of paper reflected flowers purchased for a hostess' anniversary. Denise was tempted to cover that with her own credit card, just to simplify the paperwork.

She stretched and decided she'd think about it after dinner.

Just as she stood to go out and find sustenance, there was a sound. A scratching sound somewhere behind the wall.

Denise tapped her way along the side of the office, calling out to see if anyone was there. She tried to remember what was beyond this office. Supply room? Pantry?

Was some poor gopher of a sylph lost in a side room?

"Stay there!" she called. "I'll find someone! We'll get you!" She headed for the outer office and the sylph they called the duty officer. She glanced at the watch on the wall as she went, then stopped.

Whoops.

She'd missed dinner. She'd missed most of the evening. Portion Control and the other restaurants were closed.

Everyone had gone home, replaced by the Night Staff. Denise thought, tapping her chin.

Even in a place like the Center, where tortured and neglected sylphs were collected and treated like people, the Night Staff of the kitchens were special cases.

These were the sylphs that had been abused beyond horrible abuse. They were so traumatized that they were afraid of Deliah and not terribly comfortable around Samantha. Denise would have thought that was hyperbole until she'd met them.

Cruiser hadn't been this skittish in any story Tammy told about him.

They were good workers. They had to be, to avoid being sent to some job training that exposed them to humans.

So they shoveled tons of trash, waxed acres of floors and fished bits of food outta the dishwashers with spears and safety lines.

But what amazed Denise was how protective the rest of the sylphs were. The same bastards that had teased or tormented her for being 'over pampered' would take a bullet for the Night Staff.

There were lots of theories about why and what motivated them. Annie just shrugged. "There but for the grace of God we'd be." Pet had agreed with the normally cynical sylph.

So one of those brittle souls was in the walls, alone and lost. Denise started running.

-----------

There was no one between her and dry stores. It wasn't a big surprise. The Night Staff tended to work in crowds. At any given time they might be anywhere in a kitchen, giving it the once over.

Even the blindest human couldn't miss a 40-sylph mass like that.

But searching them out right now would delay the rescue. Denise looked around but never stopped moving. She rounded the doorway and figured out what had to have happened.

One of the steel shelves of supplies had tipped over. The top corner had opened a foot-long slash in the wall a few feet above the floor. Anyone on the top shelf might have been catapulted into there.

Stores, tools, bowls, drip trays, everything she had ever seen on a buffet that wouldn't attract rats was dumped all over the floor. The pile nearly reached the hole in the wall.

It almost looked steady. She looked around for a pole. The best she could find was a fork from a fondue set.

She paused for a nostalgic second. Ray had always loved fondue dinners, and constructing an elaborate scaffolding to let the sylphs safely cook their own food.

She'd never imagined such a thing. She'd let Pet pick meals and pick bits off her plate and even hack at fruits and veggies with her own silverware. But Ray made it possible for Pet to actually cook.

And when Annie had helped Pet stab some pork, drag it to the pot and cook it for Denise... Both owner and sylph had felt so proud and happy.

Denise wiped a tear and grabbed the fork. "Hang on!" she shouted. "I'm coming."

She used the metal as a balance and as a climbing stick. It was like mounting a spiral staircase with a pole-vaulting cross-bar but she persevered.

When she reached the last napkin holder, it swayed a little bit as she clambered atop it. She leaned on the wall and looked up, then at the fork.

She probably wouldn't need it in the walls. But if she did need it, she wouldn't want to be wanting. She grabbed the haft and eased the handle up into the hole. "Look out!" she called. "I'm pushing a fork through!"

The clatter of the fall didn't sound like it hit anyone. She took a deep breath and jumped for the hole.

Swinging up and over was easy enough. The other side was not a hollow space in the wall. It was another storage room. Not something that opened off of the kitchen. This one had a door...

She tried to figure out which door it was. Something off the hall behind Reception. The lights were off but she could make out furniture in the gloom. A little light came through the frosted glass in the door.

Chairs for seminars, she thought. Then she shook her head. What mattered was the sylph, not the inventory.

No one answered her calls while she straddled the hole. Or after she dropped to the floor, bouncing a bit as sylphs did.

The fork was resting on the carpet. "Of course, if I'd left it, that's when I'd have needed it," she muttered. She shook her head and headed for the door.

"I'll try to get the lights on!" she called. It'd be easier to find the sylph and more comfortable for them.

And maybe someone from the staff might notice the light and come help?

She jogged along, past carts' wheels and chairs' legs. Some folded tables made walls that kept her from going in a straight line. But she just kept following the frosted light.

Finally she got to the doorway. The sylph switch for the light was right where it was supposed to be. She cupped it in her hands and threw it.

Light burst into view and the gloomy room became a lot more cheerful.

Until she turned around and saw the rat. A big one. A big rat looking right at her.

"I left the fork," she said softly. "So that's when I need it.."

-----------

The guys that designed the Sylph Center did put effort into figuring out what the sylphs needed, in rooms at both scales.

There were light switches for both scales in each room. If the switches for humans were on the right side of the door, the sylph switch was directly beneath it.

They also put the sylph-sized door on the hinge side of the human door. That meant in some rooms, the light switch was four feet away from the door you needed to run through to get away from the fucking rat.

She wasn't sure if she'd make it. If it was locked, there might be a problem opening it. Sylph doors in the center were sturdy and the locks even more so. That meant the ones in the seldom-used rooms tended to stick as if they were welded in place.

What she needed was the fork. While it was still sniffing the air, trying to decide if she was tasty or not, she edged along the wall. If she could get out of its sight...

It squeaked and started slinking towards her. She gave a little squeak of her own and tore off.

Denise ran past the legs of three chairs then between two tables. They were on edge, tops facing each other. The room between them was barely enough for her and she had to twist her shoulders to angle down the space.

The rat shouldn't have been able to fit. But it just slowed down and crept along behind her.

She burst out of the other end and sprinted for the far corner. The lights overhead made the room and the obstacles much clearer.

They also made it easy to see the other rat. This one spooked at her approach and ran off. "That was easy," she panted. But she knew that there was a balance of pain in the universe.

If Ratty Two was a pushover, Ratty One was going to be a stone cold bitch. She found the wall between this room and dry stores and started looking for the hole.

There it was, a plaster-colored scar above...yes, above the fork. The beautiful fondue fork with light glinting off the tines.

She skidded to a stop at the handle and raised it like a lance.

There was nothing behind her.

The sylph leaned against the wall, panting in big breaths of air. Nothing followed her. No vermin were in sight.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Now... I, uh... Hmm. What would Annie do?" She thought furiously for a second. "First things first. She'd blame Ray. Then..."

As clear as if the other sylph was standing beside her, she could imagine hearing Annie's advice. "GET OUT OF THERE!"

"Damn straight," Denise said. She didn't want to go back the way she'd come. There was no telling how far the rat had come before stopping. So she edged along the wall in the other direction.

A few yards away from the cheesy interior wall, she found a hole. A jagged gap in the wainscoting, it hid a shadowy interior. This was where the rats were coming in.

But why into here?

No matter, really. She could tell Security, and people with actual weapons could be down here in minutes.

She hefted her dining accessory and turned away from the wall. The room door was straight across the floor from where she stood.

Trying to look in all directions was worse than running. There, the only goal had been 'away.' Now there were two...or more...rats in the room.

Somewhere.

So she spun around and around, working her way to the door. Her eyes were working furiously but her brain had little to do. Not until a rat showed up.

So it pondered their entry. Why into here? There were rooms with food a few yards away. They tunneled into here for..

She tripped over a rough patch in the carpet. In seconds she was back up again, expecting a leaping attack rat to try to take advantage of her drop in attentiveness, leaping at her over the barricade of pancakes....

Pancakes. That was why this room was closed. She sniffed. The rough patch was an island of insufficiently cleaned carpet. During a pancake breakfast, there had been an incident involving a tray with three pitchers of syrup.

The rats probably smelled it. That's why they were here.

But if they were hungry enough to break into a room that smelled strongly of people, the smell of syrup wouldn't satisfy.

They'd be headed over to one of the other rooms. One with food. One with...people in it.

She threw caution to the wind and started running straight.

Out the door and running down the hall, she passed the empty reception desk. It was probably about one in the morning right now. No one was up but security and the Night Staff and crazy accountant substitutes who didn't know what was good for them.

Across the lobby was the hallway to the restaurants. They were closed, empty, lights out. Maybe she was going to be lucky. Maybe all the staff had finished for the night and any rat invasion would only involve Security and the Health Inspector.

She sent a silent prayer up to Heaven for that. And a prayer that Deliah would forgive her for thinking that Health Services was the preferable choice.

Then she was through the employee door and into the service hallway. She screamed as the door closed momentarily on the fork, kicking the door and yanking the fork free. She turned.

The kitchen lights were still on. She poured on the speed and ran. A murmur drew her attention and she veered for the corner by the walk-in cooler.

A crowd of sylphs was there. There was a bulge in one wall and they were all talking about it.

"Get," she panted. "Get." She ran up to the edge of the Staff. "Rats," she panted.

"What?" someone close to her said. She looked up to see a familiar face.

Bubba Oversteed.

The tattooist from Savannah looked shocked at seeing her face. Denise realized Sam and Amelia were hiding the recently-sylphed bastards on the Night Staff.

Well, right now, she didn't care. Or at least, no time to think of a reason to be offended. She grabbed Bubba's shirt. "Rats! Wall. Bulge. RATS!"

His eyes got even wider.

"That's a RAT!" he shouted. The crowd's reaction was instant and unanimous. They ran. Bubba grabbed Denise by the arm and yanked her against the wall.

The Night Staff swarmed past them, down the hall and towards the lobby.

They kicked the fondue fork a few inches in their passing. Denise shook her head as the last few passed.

Then she stood up straight and pushed off the wall, walking towards her fork. "I never will get used to how quickly these bodies recover," she said.

"Know what yah mean," Bubba said. He was watching the bulge on the wall. It became a crack and a furry nose peeked out. "We'd better be getting along," he said.

"Nuh uh," Denise said. She rested the fork like a lance under her arm. "There are people behind me that I have to keep the rats from. I'm not going to attack, but I sure as hell am not running."

He looked at her like she was crazy. "You're crazed," he said. "You're going to fight rats with a skewer? For sylphs?"

She shook her head. "If that's how you feel about it," she said. "Then get along." Two rats had crawled out of the hole and were poking along the floor. They showed no particular hurry to move towards the sylphs but they showed no hesitation, either. Another rat crawled into view.

"Yeah, well, I'll go..."

"You'll go tell Security to hurry," she said. He nodded, turned and ran.

She watched the nearest one come closer. "Come get some if you've got a pair," she muttered. Then she snorted. Pet's imitation of Annie was a lot better than hers.

Her mind cast about for an image. Then she saw her husband. Ray smiled in her mind. Ray would stand here.

Denise's back straightened. Ray would stand between the dark and the people no matter what. He wouldn't run if there was any threat.

The rat got closer and she didn't care. She was sorry that she hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. Pet would never forgive her for that.

But Annie would understand. She'd help Ray understand. With people behind her that deserved protection, and on one else to protect them... There was no choice to make.

Rat One, or Target One as she decided to name him, crept closer and closer. His beady eyes locked onto her. He hissed.

She set her feet.

He sniffed.

She lifted the fork to point at one eye.

He crept.

She growled.

He turned and ran.

She blinked.

A crowd ran past her on either side. The entire Night Staff, far more sylphs than had run FROM the rats, came back.

They had tiny brooms, they had little knives, they had oddly oversized clubs. One guy with death in his eyes swung a bucket the size of a shot glass over his head.

Usiku and Jioni were suddenly at her sides. They each took an arm. Jioni eased the fork out from her grip and handed it to a passing sylph. It might have been Usiku's husband. One of them, anyway.

He stepped between them and the rats. There was no chance of a rat getting through the murderous crowd but he still protected them.

"Come, Denise," Usiku said. "Let's get you out of here."

The African sylphs led her back in a bit of a daze. She'd made her peace with death, she'd expected to die. It was a bit of a struggle to realize she was going to live.

They edged her to the wall when security ran by. Big men with clubs and weapons, they were surely too late.

"You'll need mops!" Denise shouted. They ignored her.

----------

An exterminating firm that used heavily armed sylph teams swept the basement and subbasement. They found the amateur effort quite extensive.

"No surprise," Deliah said when she discussed the inspection, and the suggested repairs and improvements to make the place more rat proof, with her accountant and her bosses.

"The Staff forms a family. In some cases, the first one these sylphs have ever belonged to. And you don't threaten family. You just don't."

She sipped her coffee as the others nodded.

"I know," Denise said. "I... I was so jealous of Annie and Pet, facing the danger, trying to protect me. And now... I feel.... I know why they did what they did. What they must have felt." She shook her head.

Sam and Amelia both reached over to touch her on the shoulder. "You had a satori and you got out of it alive," Sam said. "That's a happy ending."

"And you did good," Amelia said.

"Thanks," Denise told them both. "But could you guys...not tell my family? That I was close to being all dead? Without them? I mean, I just got them to leave me..." She glanced around the table. "Okay, what? What's so funny?"

Sam and Deliah were smiling. Amelia was trying to smother laughter and failed when Denise asked.

"There are four main conversations in the halls right now, Denise," Amelia said. She raised a finger.

"One, is the joke. A rat goes into a sylph restaurant." Then she pantomimed a grisly death. "Urrrrgh....

"Two, everyone's saying how great the Night Staff fucked up the rats. They're all wearing their cleaning uniforms in the halls and everyone's telling them what a great job they did. They even let the human staff compliment them!

"Three, people are asking how to JOIN the Night Staff.

"And four..." She cleared her throat and used a more manly voice. "You know that pampered rich guy's sylph, Denise Foster? The one that was afraid of spiders when she got here? D'ju hear she was gonna face down those rats all alone? With a skewer! To protect the Night Staff!" Amelia sniffed, wiped her nose and shrugged. "Bitch is alright after all."

Denise stared at her friend for a moment, mouth hanging open. There was no way to prevent the rest from hearing about this. Probably several times.

With the fork changing to a skewer to a toothpick to a sharp fingernail...

"Bitch is alright after all," Deliah echoed. She nodded. "I can see that on a t-shirt."



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