Ludo Brax: Intergalactic Gig Worker (Chapter 35)

First | Previous | Royal Road

By the time we arrived back at the house, it was almost dawn.

We slinked through the front door, Prudo and I, tiptoeing as best as we could considering the limitations placed on us by the webbing between our toes.

The family seemed to be asleep, but we had to hurry. It would be morning soon.

The plan, if you could call it that, was to stash him in the basement until I could come up with an actual plan. The problem was, I wasn't sure I had a basement.

I mean, I assumed I had one.

If this was really a paradise designed to my exact suburban fantasies, then, no doubt, there was a Man Cave around here somewhere for me to disappear into when the infernal racket of my loving family and their incessant demands for me to be part of their lives became just too much to handle.

Ordinarily I'd have just asked Meg, but Prudo was still so shaken by her behavior earlier that each time she'd spoken on the way back home, he'd broken out into fits of convulsions so dramatic I had to wonder if he really had a "condition," or just liked the implication he was tragically afflicted.

It had to be one of these doors, I figured, as I tried them all quietly. Nothing. Just hall closets, bathrooms, a pantry, and — finally — the family dog's ornate bedroom, where he, visibly annoyed at the intrusion, was watching an experimental foreign film in his tricked-out home theater.

"Can I help you, Ludo?" he paused the film passive-aggressively, taking pains to illustrate how inconvenient it was to use a remote control with only his nose.

"Uh, hey..." I leaned in to read the tag hanging around his collar, "Hieronymus..."

His ears went back involuntarily as he, with obvious embarrassment, tried to hide the fact that his tail had begun to wag.

"I'm a little out of it right now. I thought this was the Man Cave."

He stared at me blankly.

"The Man Cave?"

"The uh, the Basement. It's dark and I'm not wearing my glasses."

He flicked the movie back on, picking back up a scene in which two characters in a café lament the burdens of consciousness. Eyes fixed on the screen as if to make sure I knew he resented the interruption, he muttered back an answer.

"Third door on the left."

I drummed awkwardly on the door frame, unsure of the manner in which I should address him.

"Good boy," I finally managed, as he unconsciously turned onto his back for a belly rub before stopping himself, ashamed.

I turned to leave.

As I closed the door behind me, I swore I heard him call me a philistine, but it may have just been that sneezing noise dogs make when they abhor everything you stand for.

**

With no time to wonder how my long-held dream of a talking family dog was misinterpreted by The System as... that, I rushed to the basement door, Prudo right behind me.

Throwing open the door as quietly as I could, our stealth mission came to an unceremonious end when, fumbling for the light switch in the dark, Prudo leaped out of fear at a noise he said sounded spooky, and sent us both tumbling down the stairs with a cacophony of noise.

I didn't know it at the time, but luckily my Wife was sound asleep, having been recently prescribed an industrial-grade black-market sleep aid by Dr. Von Monkey to help her deal with the horrific fragmented nightmares she had each night that taunted her with the suggestion that her entire existence was a simulated farce. The poor dear.

After picking myself up off the floor and five or so minutes of heated debate with Prudo about who was to blame, I found a light switch and flicked it on.

What I saw was a basement beyond my wildest Suburban dreams: walls plastered with framed Dev Quasar posters, a pool table covered in dust that I clearly never used, and a custom-made sign that read "Brax Family Pub — Friends Welcome. Enemies, Bring Booze."

It was everything I could have ever wanted.

I probably retreated there for hours every night of "Daddy Alone Time," obsessing over my Model Spacecraft and redressing petty old grievances while demanding perfect silence from the family upstairs so that I could listen to my Music.

But I needed to focus, not get carried away in blissful daydreams.

"Prudo, you think you'll be alright down here? I'm sorry to shove you in a basement but —"

I turned to find he had already begun thumbing through my collection of World War 2.5 memorabilia, remarking nostalgically to no one in particular about the way things used to be.

I shook my head and laughed. He was gonna be just fine (supposing he remembered that these things were collector's items and that any damage or wear and tear put on them was going to come out of his pocket).

Turning back toward the stairs, I told him I would sneak him some breakfast as soon as I could. I promised I would do my best to accommodate his litany of dietary restrictions, which, to me, seemed more like preferences. But I didn't have time to quibble.

Tiptoeing back up the stairs, I was almost amazed I had pulled it off. We were home free.

So long as Prudo kept to himself, which seemed a good bet seeing as he was a miserable misanthrope, we would be okay.

Knowing myself, I was certain the rest of the family was terrified to go down into the basement, wary as they must have been of invoking my pathetic wrath. No one wants to walk downstairs and be subjected to tearful diatribes about "the only sliver of peace I have — ruined by interlopers of my own blood!"

It had really worked out well.

Sure, I had been forced to smuggle a clone of myself out of some sort of twisted rehash of the dystopian job I used to have because he caught me entering a tear in spacetime where I encountered an inscrutable scene that seemed to suggest a larger conspiracy that might explain how I wound up in a simulated paradise.

But all in all, I was pulling it off.

As I opened up the door back upstairs, I was excited to crawl into bed and steal a restful 53 seconds of sleep before it was time to breakfast. A job well done.

What I was greeted with instead was the face of Saman-, my darling half daughter, waiting for me at the top of stairs.

She looked me in the eyes with an expression of such pure innocence and love it broke my heart to know I was about to have to lie to her blatantly.

"Daddy, who was that man?"