The neon sign was clear: “Fuck Bitches, Eat Food”. Cutbastra contemplated it, arms crossed, pondering if it was worth dealing with the colorful characters on the dinner of a small rural town, just to get a meal that would ameliorate his mood. They were always one step behind the dangerous lass, and he was in need of a little satisfaction. His body had no need for food, but he still had a working tongue and stomach. Hunger wouldn’t kill or weaken him, which didn’t make it any more bearable.
“We may as well go in and buy ourselves a little meal.”
Oracle huffed. “We have a mission, there will be time for dinner when the menace is sleeping among mycorrhizae.”
“You could have said ‘roots’.”
“And you’d have retorted pointing out the adventitious roots of ferns or the haustorial roots of parasitic plants. And no, even if some ectomycorrhizae can sprout parts of the fungus above the ground, I refer exclusively to the ones inside plant’s roots,” the grumpy lizard finished his complaint by digging himself deep into Cutbastra’s pocket.
“You are no fun when you do study your botanics. Let’s go in.”
Cutbastra asked the door kindly to open, and the red-painted wood blushed before it obliged. “Cute hinges, dear, keep them fit and oiled.”
The door closed in a swooning motion, letting out a little squee of happiness as it swung.
The inside of the dinner was a world of pastel colors, squared windows and oaken tables. Men and women of all shapes and sizes occupied said tables, and so did their fluffy canines… why do I feel I need to clarify they didn’t have hairy teeth? Is this story that absurd?
Don’t answer.
Their teeth were mostly bald; some white, some yellow, and some black, like my racist friends on Discord. Dogs fat and thin, tall and short, hirsute and bald sat on chairs and tables, and discussions about them filled the mouths of most patrons. Cutbastra eavesdropped a bit on the male owner of a pug that had nearly mastered anaerobia. “Yes, this is Sir Livesalot. His line has a three-year-long lifespan and seventy percent of the puppies survive past three months, a marvel of selective breeding that keeps both the traditional pug aesthetics and improves their overall health.”
The other patron at the table, a man who wore a monocle and had his fingers paralyzed on an eternal steeple, indeeded. “Indeed,” he indeeded indeedingly.
I swear I am not paid by the word.
I am not paid. Period.
“Ah, I get it, this is a place where people try to get proper mates for their prize dogs of prestigious lineages. That’s the ‘fuck bitches’ part. Very… family friendly, compared to the name of the place,” Cutbastra said, taking his hands to his hips as a man who thinks he has understood does.
Oracle popped back out of the pocket. “There’s something ominous about this place, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…”
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Cutbastra carefully picked his friend up and her it in front of his face using his index and thumb. He smiled smugly.
“What?”
“Could you repeat what you just said, Oracle?” He teased, wagging his fingers in front of the limbless animal.
“My finger.” The lizard started retching, and soon, vomited a few small phalanxes that landed on Cutbastra’s cheek. “I keep a collection of them in my stomach. Rats’, children’s, grandmas’ little toes. They are great as gastroliths.”
Cutbastra took a handkerchief out of his pocket dimension and retired the slimy bones from his face. “You win today, friend. You win today.”
He made his way to the counter and, despite being an immortal that had shared banquets (and wives) with kings, he got awestruck at the variety and colorfulness of the dishes presented under the glass. Meats, fish, vegetables, eggs, fruits, all of them gracefully combined into works of art.
A herding dog with a long, straight, silky coat, passed them by carrying a platter full of shellfish over his head. She had a cute pink bowtie in her tail, so Cutbastra assumed she was a girl. “They trained a dog to be a maid, awesome!”
The owner, a somber, middle agedlady with arms too long and fingers too rickety to be a pleasant sight, faced Cutbastra. “What will you have, new face?” She said, vwith a voice like that of a professional glass chewer.
“I’d like fish, so… What do you have?” The cucktivator qasked rubbing his hands in anticipation. “It all looks so good.”
“Can you pay?”
“In any currency of the world. I carry spare change from every nation.”
“It’s not with coin that you pay for the best meals, stranger. But let’s see what I can offer you.”
The woman cracked her fingers, and the sound startled most dogs present, which started to howl. A pug with a horn, sole son of its unhorned mother for obvious reasons, and an overly fluffy Pomeranian stylized as an eighties punk fanatic remained unfazed.
She pointed at a particular platter with whole fish in it. “Psychic sardine for dinner may cause sterilization,” She handed a handheld video camera to Cutbastra. Then pointed at a platter with a single, colorful fish surrounded by herbs. “The little gills of sweet trout bring severe spleen inflammation.” She whistled, making the maid dog come to Cutbastra’s side and begin licking his leg.
“How… cute. May I pet her?”
The woman nodded and Cutbastra began scratching the dog’s ears as she panted excitedly. Then the lady, getting red in the face already for reasons unknown to the cultivator, gestured towards a platted with well seared fillets in it. “And if you want these kind sea breams…” she pointed at the dog so Cutbastra would direct his gaze to her “…it’s collie fornication.”
“What?”
The Collie held a stare to Cutbastra and winked seductively.
“Listen I… I believe in no sex before marriage,” he didn’t lie, as he never said the marriage had to be his.
Cutbastra backed slowly as the collie tried to hump his leg only to be repelled by the cultivator’s vital energy.
----------------------------------------
“You know, maybe letting her destroy the world is not so bad? Like, look how beautifully this pyre illuminates the night,” Cutbastra said between psychopathic laugh and psychopathic laugh.
“Those poor dogs were innocent, Cutbastra,” Oracle chastised his friend, standing by his side in that convenient hill that every arsonist wants to stand on to watch his latest work of art.
“Hush, they were tainted, Oracle, irreversibly so. May the fire purify them.”
“You need to stop going into public establishments. You are constantly dragged into dens of degeneracy and/or geese.”
“Maybe you are right.” He inhaled a bit of smoke from his latest feat, and the tick on his eye calmed down. “I could… I could just avoid these places, but then justice won’t be served.”
“Those poor dogs,” Oracle lamented again.
“It was necessary, and if it wasn’t, let me lie to myself so I feel better, party pooper. Besides, at the bare minimum, the collie maid was complicit.”
“You know, friend… I think you should tune your vigilantism down a bit for a while,” Oracle suggested, and then shut himself off in Cutbastra’s pocket. He didn’t want to be a victim of the incoming rant.