Mr. Sada roused me, violently. He was there, banging on my window with one of his gawdy rings. He wore so many of them. One had a bull on it, which he tapped on every-fuckin thing way too hard.

The harsh hits against the glass, and my state of deep slumber roused me into a waking nightmare. A memory.

His head hit the glass, over and over. Another boy, my age. Can’t remember what the fight was about, but it ended like all the others. I won, and they got hurt.

I jerked upright and scrambled to open the door, before essentially falling to the dirt at his feet. My heart raced and my fists clenched, but then he opened his mouth and all of my conditioning swarmed in and took the violence out of me. I became the passive loser I had been trained to be, in order to avoid the consequences of violence.

“What the fuck, Tyson?” He backed up and swung his arm at the empty space my Airstream used to be. “What happened to your rig, son?” Mr. Sada was forty-three. Called me son. Another one of those euphemisms that he used, something that pissed everyone off but he thought he was doing out of respect. No matter how many times you told him to stop it.

I groaned and stretched out my back, standing up. “Some monster sold it out from under me and tried to kill me.”

Mr. Sada glanced at me and nodded, as if what I had said was perfectly normal. His ponytail bobbed when he nodded, and I hated that. It was short and limp, and he was mostly bald on top anyway. When he saw my chest, he took a quick step back.

“What the fuck!” he looked at the turbine and then at me. “What is that shit?” He narrowed his eyes. “Can you not wear a shirt with that?”

I glanced down and knocked on the metal. “I dunno boss, it’s keeping me alive. I think it’s my new doctor.”

He frowned. “You should cover that up or something. Maybe with a vest.”

A selection of vests popped up in my vision. I angrily batted them back down.

“Yeah, maybe. What’s up, Mr. Sada?” I tried to keep the sigh out of my voice but couldn’t quite. Did this man know how fucking stupid he acted sometimes? It was so obvious and yet he never seemed to get it. I sighed at him all the time. Dude was so oblivious.

“I need you at my place. We’re moving some stuff in the basement.” He glanced around as he spoke, holding his sunglasses and tapping them against his thigh. “I’ve probably got some boots you could wear. Man, what the fuck happened to you? Do you know how bad you stink?”

I shrugged and brushed some dried scorpion diarrhea off. It fell to the sand in shining purple flakes, like glitter. “Havin’ a bad day, Mr. Sada, dunno what to tell you.”

“You say that too much, Tyson. Come to my place, and you can use the outdoor shower. It has soap and everything. We gotta talk, have a staff meeting.”

Mr. Sada put his sunglasses back on and returned to his shiny Tesla, parked at the entrance of my little secluded campsite. I realized he had intended to give me a ride to his mansion but decided not to when he saw the poo. As I brushed flakes of it out of the Lincoln, I realized what he meant. The funk was unique. Like chemical cotton candy gone to rot.

Once I had most of it out of there, I started my barefoot hike to Mr. Sada’s. I was motivated to get that shower and get him off my back. Usually, that meant doing whatever stupid-ass task he had dreamed up for me. Staff meeting my ass, I was the only one who worked there at that particular moment.

See, the newest gum-chewer hadn’t shown up for work, as predicted after the interview I conducted. Not that I blamed her, it was a shit job. Sitting in the stank ass moldy office all day, getting hit on by our crowd of rowdy asshole campers and trying to avoid the spiders that eternally tried to set up shop in there. Not to mention the alien apocalypse. I wondered briefly where that slime had come from but shrugged and went to deal with Mr. Sada.

The road was hot, so I walked in the sand on the side of it in the slightly less hot sand. As I approached the mansion, I stepped on a chunk of glass the size of a cell phone. My starfish suit spun up again.

“Damage detected.” It shrilled at me. Then the turbine slowed and came to a rest. The voice returned. “Break something for me, user! I need a charge.”

The little cartoon starfish popped up and looked sad, pointing to an empty charge bar above its head. Then it gave me a wide-eyed look of concern and pointed to my foot. I looked down. My entire leg felt cold already, and when I saw the sheer size of the blood puddle, I realized why. Lower extremity artery nicks could kill you quick.

Mr. Sada’s Tesla was right there, and without thinking, I put my fist through the window. It shattered and Mr. Sada yelled from inside the house.

It worked though. My suit revved up again, and tendrils extended from my wounded foot’s plating. They reminded me of a sea anemone as they reached for my torn flesh and began zapping at it. Each cauterizing zap applied some kind of flesh resin, and the tendril smeared it into the wound’s sides.

The new flesh sizzled slightly and settled in place, dragging the edges of my wound together as it did. All I felt was a mild tugging, and more of that painkiller entering my system. Great, that should make the staff meeting a lot of fun.

“What the fuck Tyson!” Mr. Sada exclaimed angrily, hands reaching out to showcase the tragedy of his Tesla’s damage.

“Oh, yeah sorry, Mr. Sada.” I looked at the broken window, and then back at the angry man in front of me. “Uh . . . I broke it. Sorry.” I shrugged.

He glared at me for a moment, looked at the bloodstain under my foot and the glass chunk behind me, and then shook his head. “You’re paying for that, window-puncher. The shower is out back.”

An ad screen filled with truck windows appeared in my vision and I stuffed it down.

“Yes, thank you Mr. Sada I know the shower is out back, you make me bathe your dog in it every three months.” I muttered as I walked around the back of his mansion.

The mansion had this ridiculous pool area, all done in mauve stonework. The shower was near the pool, as was Mr. Sada’s dog, Doofus. His name was actually Roofus, but he didn’t mind if I called him Doofus. He was a big malamute who loved me and hated his life in Arizona, and he was chill as fuck because of it. That dog would rather hang out in the pool all day than do anything else, and I wish he was allowed to.

He approached and took a keen interest in sniffing me all over as I tried to walk past him and get undressed for the shower. Once I was naked except for my starfish suit, I soaped up using Roofus’s soap and rinsed off hurriedly. Thankfully, the last of the scorpion shit sloughed off in the water. Roofus stopped following me when I headed for the mansion. He didn’t like it inside all that much, which his family preferred. Mr. Sada had a young wife, and she yelled at poor Roofus for almost nothing.

Once inside, I went looking for Mr. Sada. He had mentioned needing help in his basement, so I went there first. I knew his place like the back of my hand, he had me over all the time to help with various nonsense that I hated. Even on my days off, he demanded I help him with random projects.

Today it turned out to be an oversized oak shelf that needed to be moved. We heaved it in front of a large steel grating, square shaped and covered in slick liquid. He kept checking the grate behind the shelf, as if making sure the shelf was firmly in front of it. We team-lifted a few items onto the bottom shelf. Part of an engine, a crankshaft, and three amazingly heavy toolboxes. When I suggested emptying the drawers on the third one, he freaked out a little.

“No-no! Keep them closed,” he said, reaching out for my extended hand. Too late, I had opened a drawer. It was full of lead fishing weights.

“Dude, really?” I said, frowning.

“Heave, Tyson!” Mr. Sada just nodded at my side of the toolbox, and I shook my head. We lifted it in place, and he fell back with a gasp when letting it go. One of my fingertips was smashed and I jumped back with a yelp.

“Damage detected!” My starfish suit wound up and I opened my eyes wide in panic. Tendrils began to spin out of my armored knuckle plating, and a rush of painkillers flooded my system. One of the tendrils wrapped around my broken fingertip and began sawing into it. Blood sprayed the room and Mr. Sada ducked away from me with an angry shout. I grabbed the hand to cover the blood spray, but it immediately began dripping to the floor as well. With a quick look around for options, I turned and ran for the basement bathroom.

As I reached the door and grabbed the knob with my bloody hand, I faintly heard Mr. Sada yelling at me to stop, but then it was too late again, and I was in his bathroom. Half of Mr. Sada’s wife was in the tub, nude. Her fake tits jutted at me accusatorily. I hurriedly looked away for more than one reason, before turning to face Mr. Sada. He was standing in the doorway, arms raised to wave off accusation.

I just stared at him.

“Monster attack, son. Just like you said.” He shook his head.

I raised an eyebrow and rolled a finger for him to go on.

“I dunno Tyson, a slime thing got her. By the time I saw it, it had her engulfed up to the waist. They all seemed to back away when I started shouting at them. I think they’ll leave us alone,” he said, finishing it with a wave of his hands. “But . . . now that you know, let’s get her taken care of.”

“Mr. Sada, I think that might be an inappropriate workplace request.” I pointed at his dead wife in the tub. “I could probably help you with that though, to be fair. Actually, not the first body I’ve helped deal with today.”

My fingertip dropped off then, and the tendrils that had been sawing at it retracted. It bounced against his dead wife’s breast, and he glared at me. “What? That old bitch Phyllis finally kick it?” He barked a laugh, entirely missing the murderous glare I cast his way. Or maybe avoiding it entirely. Never could tell with him and his strange sense of humor.

His eyes were suddenly fixated on my hand, as the tendrils reemerged with different heads on them. One of them slapped a new artificial bone length in place as another began spraying a congealed flesh foam that wrapped around the bone. A third came by and used tiny glittering energy blasts to finish the finger areas and sculpt the flesh. It spent the most time giving me back my fingerprint, which tickled.

“No, and I think I’m about done with you calling her that. You’re asking me to help deal with your dead wife’s body. Don’t be a dick at the same time,” I sighed. Something inside me broke, staring at those big fake dead tits I had to deal with. My boss was a dick. An accidental dick, sure, but a dick all the same. And at that moment, I was tired of him being a dick.

He frowned and turned a little red in the face. But I just crossed my arms and stared at him. My new metal covered hands might be good for something after all. Then he shrugged. “Right, right, you and the old lady are tight. Shouldn’t make jokes. Sorry Tyson. And thank you for helping. So, what do we do?”

I glared at him for a moment longer and then sighed. “I say we sell her.”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Sada asked sharply.

“Well, the other option I see is go get some trash bags, wrap her bottom half in that so nothing leaks, and then haul her up to the back and bury her in the heat. BuyMort buys dead bodies, warps em right away.” I explained with my arms crossed and watched his face.

He nodded his head and turned around. “Yeah. Yeah, sell her.”

So I pointed at her body and spoke softly to the air, “I’d like to sell that, BuyMort.”

It shrieked “pod dispatched,” in my ear and, I assume, dispatched a pod. Mr. Sada sat down on the nearby basement stairs.

“Shit Tyson.” His little limp ponytail flopped as he shook his head. “I’m still paying off her tits.”

I stared at him with my arms crossed and said nothing. She had been horrible, and shrieky, but she didn’t deserve to get eaten by some caustic slime monster or be married to him. The look on her face was bad. I threw a small hand towel over her while we waited.

After a few minutes, a BuyMort drone smashed in through an upstairs window. Mr. Sada jumped up and shouted, “what the fuck!” Then he glared at me. “What’d you do?”

I raised my hands. “I sold her, just like you told me!”

Mr. Sada jumped as the pod hovered down the stairs. “What? No! No, you don’t sell my wife! I was going to!”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You serious right now?” I stepped aside to let the pod by, and it entered the room, scanned the mess in the tub, and warped it all away with a rainbow beam.

Purchase: Medical waste, modified biological remains, human. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, bad. 111 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Medical waste, biological remains, human. Rarity, rare. Quality, terrible. .82 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Sundries, fabric towel. Rarity, common. Quality, fair. 4 morties dispensed.

“Hey! You sold my towel too, you fuckin’ asshole!” He was getting red in the face again. “Plus the two windows you’ve broken now!”

Suddenly, Mr. Sada turned and stomped upstairs. He gestured at an old pair of rubber wading boots on his way by. “BuyMort, I’d like to sell those.”

He turned and looked down at me. “Come upstairs, we need to talk.”