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The highest possible starting wage is offered for a two hour a day position at the Menagerie Pet store. The job of sweeping the dung from the mirrored kennel of an unknowable creature known as the Doppol. I was a bold middle aged man who could no longer afford to sky dive due to the price of my prescribed pain killers. The pet store was my ticket to easy cash, and maybe, a bit of thrill. I was given blacked out goggles, a breathing mask, a broom with steel bristles, a shovel, and a rolling cart for the feces. These items were given to me by a member of the “Lemming Division” (the workers who dealt with high risk fauna for big money), an elderly woman named Colette. She was in a plastic sheet poncho and had a face conquered by scar tissue. She told me that wearing the “blinders” were essential for cleaning the Doppols cage and staying sane. She explained the creature in a raspy, sea captain kind of way, that no one knew what the Doppol looked like. It was assumed that looking upon it was disastrous in some way to a person’s mental state or well-being. The previous cleaners had never quit or been fired but had stopped coming to work entirely. It was assumed the creature had a disorienting effect on people. An ad went out every week with a progressively higher pay rate and a medical plan. Those employees who risked it all didn’t collect enough checks to be considered a loss to revenue, so overhead worked itself out in that sense. The Doppol existed as one of the “Not for Sale” creatures that were present in every pet store. Except instead of a soft-shelled ribbon-beaked hot spring turtle, it was an unknowable aberration. It was kept strictly for promotional purposes. Newsletter subscribers for other businesses at the Voidmart would get a Menagerie advertisement in the form of a ticket in the mail adorned with question marks. Bored, or interested people would write on a ticket their guess for one prevailing feature of the Doppol. If they were right, the lucky subscriber would get a year’s supply of the pet food of their choice. When they dropped the ticket off, they’d be told: “Sorry Sir/Mam, but none of those describe it a bit. Trust me!” They looked through the rest of the store on the way out and couldn’t help but buy something or tell a friend about what exotic creatures they did see. Better yet if they asked for a Menagerie newsletter subscription. The Doppol was the creature least written about in the store records. From digital libraries, to receipts and manuals, to scrolls of vellum dated across centuries until you had to stop unless you read Aramaic What little was mentioned was, • its name in the store stock manifest • a receipt for the cage arriving on a massive barge from France in 1952, • and a kennel schematic in Mandarin detailing the placement of mirrors in an octagonal formation around a central raised platform with an iron cage around it. Collette thought it was from before communism rose to power in China. Considering her raspy cadence, and her breathless jamming of all this information into the air while she pointed out where to sign on the insurance waiver, she gave me time for two questions, “If the Doppol is such a mystery, how do you guys know what it’s features look like? No one has guessed correctly all this time?” She smiled, or at least I thought she did, it could have easily been a grimace with her chunks of missing cheek. “We don’t. None of the other employees or managers do either. I’m not sure about the owner… but I don’t think anyone knows at all. Since no one who works at or owns The Menagerie knows what the Doppol looks like we opt that all the guesses are wrong based on our own ignorance.” That was shady, but I figured they had to get something for holding onto such a dangerous creature. I also asked, “Why the mirrors?” She elaborated, ” Someone translated a bit of the Mandarin back in the sixties. Per the notes left by the translator, the creature obsesses on its reflection and needs constant lighting.” They had arrived in the stock room, it smelled like cat litter, dry meats, strange fruits and kibble until they came to the very back of the store. It smelled like meat rotting to the point of a chemical miasma. The kennel resembled an adobe hut in shape, a small circular crater of raised wood sat on a black paneled dome. She pointed out that the lights were changed through little sliding holes built in the crater. “So no one could sneak a peek. “ She handed me the face mask, I took it gratefully. “You know the dangers involved and we need someone to do this, hopefully you can last through whatever’s in there. So be careful. You might think you're invincible but the last guy had the blinders too. Keep them on, no matter what." She added on top of that, “I’m getting tired of training people for this.” I felt a bit queasy. I hadn’t expected such foreboding to go with a job like this. I thought I’d be dealing with something like a lion, or a giant insect. I didn’t bitch out though. There was a reason I always wore a YOLO T-shirt. I put on the goggles and felt for the door latch. I heard my heartbeat get drowned out by the buzzing of bright lights. ------------------------------ Colette dropped some sea mice into an aquarium of Fiji mermaids. Behind her, people walked back and forth with buckets of kibble, a cashier argued with a customer out front about knocking down the price of a three-headed dog that only had two heads. She kept an eye out for the new guy, she was curious if the goggles worked. They didn't work for the last guy. The new guy came rolling through the aisles. She studied his face. No cuts, no shifting of the eyes, no sweat. He seemed relaxed if not irritated, "So you think you can do this?" "Yeah. It’s good money. I can skydive every weekend now.” "Yeah, you’ll be able to afford painkillers again." The guy's face went blank, then he relaxed, more irritation in his voice, "I’ll need to do something, this job’s a lot more boring than I thought it would be." She sighed, he was a rude one. Surrounded by all these incredible creatures and complaining about a lack of action. "Do you think it might help if we added ear plugs?" He looked at her like she was stupid, "The thing didn’t make a noise; all I could hear was those lights you got in there buzzing." "Huh. “She continued her feeding. ------------------------------ It chided itself. It didn’t want to get filled up on the man’s front lobe, so the information about the painkillers was new to it. The skin was tight. It had checked to see what wounds it might leave on the skin in front of the mirrors. It left a slash on the belly but it didn’t help. It couldn’t stay in this skin long. It had to get back home to wait for another. If it could get chocolate from the candy store. It was worth it. Even with the terrible diarrhea it gave it.
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Oct 24, 2016 02:07
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