I will not cover everything that happened the evening of my release from jail, too much was said that is far too personal to ever reveal, even for the sake of my degree. Trust is not lightly given among humans, however as hard as it is to gain, it is far, far easier to lose. As such, the nature of the things Rebecca and William said to me when we went into the house, I will carry to my grave.
Instead I will speak now on the things that took place after that, when I settled in and felt the after effects of my actions. For the next few days, William was fending off lawyers from the father of ‘Wolfbeard’ all of whom promised large sums of money at first, on the sole condition that charges were dropped and the entire household remained silent forever on the events that took place that fateful hour.
William would have none of it. I watched just out of his sight once, the slender man who looked as harmless as a maxiki infant, turned purple in the face and shouted with violent anger from the porch of his home. Not one lawyer set one foot on the first step leading up to his door. His gestures were ‘wild’ at first, but slowly as the visits increased in frequency, William’s tone changed.
He ceased his shouting until it became like ice on the fourth Maxikian moon of Maxiki nine. Which is to say, ‘cold as death’. Human anger is unique among the species of the galaxy, even on their own world. Many species feel anger, fury, a sense of wrath for one thing or another. But those species express it purely with reactionary violence.
No other species in the galaxy that I have ever found, has turned its anger into ice, cold, calculated, and spread with glacial slowness over many years. When a human has decided they hate you, loathe you and will do anything in their power to destroy you, rarely is that anger obvious and hot as the sun.
Instead it is cold, it is calm, it is steady. And when that wrath descends upon the human heart? They are not to be trifled with. I share with you a quote: “Never forgive. But pretend to forgive. So that it comes as a complete shock when you turn on the subject of your hatred, and lunge for their throat.” Or another gem, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Strangely, humans themselves seldom realize they have provoked this kind of anger in one another, and clearly the father of Wolfbeard was one such blind fool. This blindness I must blame on the removal from the situation that his wealth afforded him. He couldn’t hear the tone in William’s voice, nor see the hatred in William’s eyes. I believe, though I could never confirm, that to the remote father of the failed human, this was ‘just another deal’. Just one more thing to sweep under the rug, that he believed William would cave eventually.
However, after my statement was collected and Wolfbeard was removed from the hospital… and taken to a jail cell, the tone of the lawyers changed. Thankfully I could hear what they said, and will relay them here…
“The offer he has made to you is more than fair. If you refuse, we can assure you that my client will do everything in his power to protect his son. Naturally this means your daughter will be forced to testify. You don’t really want her to go through that, do you?”
“If you comply with his reasonable request, he’ll put in a good word with you with the PRS…” The lawyer who said that, trailed off, and I must point out for you here that the PRS refers to their Planetary Revenue Service, a branch dealing with taxation.
William was quick to retort through gritted teeth, “I have no issues with the PRS, and even if I did, he can shove his words. The only word I want is a plea of guilty from that lump of garbage he calls a son.”
“You don’t need a good word ‘yet’ Mr. Walker. Yet.” The lawyer made his retreat down the front steps without waiting for William’s reply.
These were but two such incidents, but there were many, many more as Wolfbeard’s lawyer filed motion after motion to delay the trial, and William’s face didn’t wear the same smile it always did before.
Even though he’d praised my actions, I could see the change in the Walker family as day stretched into day, I could hear them upstairs at night, their steps were heavy and I could hear the refrigerator crack open as their sleeplessness became more frequent.
I admit that I deleted this segment many times before deciding to include it, and when I did finally decide to keep it here, it wasn’t without reservations still.
William and Rebecca were a very loving couple, and like most loving couples, they were physically affectionate. I believe that even without my ears being as good as they were, I could have heard the proof of their physical intimacy. Their master bedroom, the place where heads of households sleep, was directly above the space where I slept. So in the first few days after the ‘event’, I didn’t leave the house, and at night I couldn’t not hear the amorous couple.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Instead I heard furtive calls, at least one side of them, “What do you mean ‘audited’ I paid extra for audit protection when I paid my taxes!”
“No, I won’t settle!”
I know that William fielded a lot of calls like that, a call asking about a settlement was always hot on the heels of a call from some acronym organization or another.
But Rebecca had her share of calls as well. “No, he’s never done anything ‘inappropriate’ and no you cannot visit! Contact our lawyer’s office if you want to arrange an interview, otherwise do not contact us again!” Rebecca’s voice was far more shrill, piercing than William’s, but despite the stark differences, their emotional drives were like wheels on a car, perfectly in sync with one another.
I kept quiet at first, unwilling to let them know I heard, until one night I was up late, listening to crickets chirp outside the window after having shared a coffee with Fauve, and I heard the bedroom door open behind me.
It was Rebecca, her hair disheveled, she wore a weary face to go with a bright blue silk robe that was tied at the waist with a thick fabric belt, and secured with an interlocking loop and a button at the chest. She walked past me, poured a cup of coffee for herself, and sat down at the table opposite myself.
“Up late again?” She asked and cracked a fragile smile, “Is it because of this, do you just enjoy Fauve’s company, or do you just naturally like the late hours?” She took a long sip of the steaming amber cup, and I just answered…
“Yes.”
She blinked a moment until she understood, and tiny trace of a smile spread across her lips. “You and Fauve seem to get along well. It’s nice to see her make a friend.”
“We have a lot in common, surprisingly enough. But why do you say that? Does she not have many?” I asked, and Rebecca sat back in her chair.
“Fauve is a special one. She got the best of her father and I, I think. She doesn’t need people, not really. She does have friends, but they’re mostly online, we sent her to school, she thought most of the kids were dumb because they didn’t like science. They didn’t want to learn another language. They just… they didn’t share her interests. That’s why we started homeschooling her. But we’ve always worried that maybe we kept her away from people too much. We’re not the perfect parents, but we did do the best we knew.” Rebecca said and took another sip.
“I guess I just always thought she’d be a happier kid if she had a few close friends she could sit down like this with.” Rebecca finished talking and I wasn’t sure what to say to that.
But I did feel the need to own up to what I’d been hearing. Rebecca listened as I relayed the fragments, and when she looked at me disbelievingly, I flicked one finger against my left topmost ear, and she finally nodded in understanding.
“Why don’t you just… all this is because you won’t settle, right?” I asked.
Rebecca shook her head, “That day at the police station, Fauve chose to press charges. When they say ‘settle’ they don’t just mean money, they want her to drop the charges and swear nothing happened, that it was a big misunderstanding that ‘you’ blew out of proportion. She won’t do that, and we won’t make her.”
“It might be easier.” I pointed out, “This is all stressing you all out a lot, even I can see that, and I spend most of the day baffled by how you can walk around wearing fabric all the time.”
She chortled a little bit, blowing some of the coffee over the rim of her cup with the force of the sudden laugh she let out.
“Maybe so. But this is her choice. And we’re going to back her up all the way, whatever happens, audits, accusations, it doesn’t matter, we’ll get through it.” Rebecca said and when I leaned forward to think that over, she reflexively scratched my head. My tail wagged, and it was bliss.
“Don’t worry, things will get better, and you’ll understand her, and us, before you know it. Then it will all fall into place. I’m sure it will make a fine addition to your dissertation.” Rebecca said and drained her little cup before getting up to leave.
I doubted her, of course. As any dlasmisa would.
And as the days passed by and the visits from lawyers became first frequent and demanding, to almost pleading, then on to frequent and vaguely threatening, the amorous activity of the couple slowed down to a grinding halt. Much like an engine that had run out of lubrication, it just stopped.
And I couldn’t help but feel as if I were responsible. I tried hard to remain neutral, despite my earlier ‘research mistake’ if you want to call it that, I wanted to just observe now. I didn’t want to taint my study. But at night when I would sometimes wander upstairs when no one was present, I could hear all the way up to Fauve’s room. She enjoyed an active online life and had many distant friends to whom she spoke.
Again, I must emphasize that I was not trying to violate their privacy, but I couldn’t avoid the snippets from her speaking into her voice chat on her server. “...They won’t say anything, but they’re really worried. Dad hired a lawyer, and both my parents make good money, but that creep got out of jail, I never should have gone there. And now I keep getting these messages from anonymous people telling me I deserved it. That if I didn’t want that attention I wouldn’t have dressed that way.” I couldn’t hear what was said to her, but her response was plain enough.
“No, I don’t have a clue, I mean it could be the creeper’s flying monkeys, but the paper picked up the story here and my name got leaked. I can’t tell my mom and dad about these, they’ve got enough problems…”
I couldn’t restrain my growl. My human was being harassed. My family was being harassed. Remaining neutral and just trying to observe, trying to ‘make up’ for my break of professionalism, had to end.
I knew what I had to do. I no longer cared about the loss of stress response data. I had an idea, and I was going to use it.