Okay, so like the Pet Store wasn't the best place, but it was home, y'know? Me and a bunch of Chimerans and Chronosians lived there - literally AT the Pet Store. Crazy, right? Pa always said, "The UFS is different - they like to wrap their evils in happy packaging." As a teenager up for adoption, New Dallas would spit us orphans back up every chance it got - if you didn't act the part of son when they wanted you to, and work like a dog the rest of the time, you were kicked out and sent back to the matron at the Pet Store. I swear this cold mechanical bitch had it out for me - like, she hated me, bro.
Like this one time - me and Kensy Spidergirl, Tony the Rat, and Bob-bear, we all came back on the same day, it was a mess (first day of that private school was horrible). The Matron had already refilled our spots from another shelter when we got back, and it had barely been a week for me! We had to share a room, all four of us. And like, you can't put me and Tony in the same place and not expect trouble. Tony was done, especially after getting his tail mangled by some skinny normie fuck with a switchblade! Normie is like, non-animal persons - they can't call us freaks and not be normies, fuck 'em.
Anyway, Tony was done - he wanted out, like out into the wastes out. He got me onto that, y'know? Said they had a whole town of freaks like us out there, like that crazy expensive private boarding school that orphans like us can't afford, except this place outside of New Dallas wouldn't have all the rich normie asshole parents, and just... people like us! So we tried to break out again, me and Tony. Kensy told us it was a shit idea, I know, I know - she was right. Trying to rig an explosion in the kitchen as a distraction may have worked TOO well, actually.
Matron started locking me in solitary ever since. Whenever I'd get back from angry gangster asshole parents, or worthless owners who groom me like an animal, or other weird sicko shit I don't even wanna *talk* about, that bitch had me locked in a cage half the day. Looks like Juan is too dangerous to do shit besides work anymore.
So I had to get out, man. I was out of options, I had to do it.
Bob never helped me and Tony out before. Bob-bear said, "You two stupid assholes need to be content with enough food to survive, so get your shit together." His brother had gotten adopted, so I knew Bob-bear was just being cranky. Billybear ended up going to a sicko, psycho, whatever - few weeks after I was in solitary, Bobbear started sitting to talk with me. The Matron didn't like it - she would constantly try to move Bob out of solitary, to get away from the cages, but I could tell, Bob wasn't listening to her anymore.
"How do you plan to get to the wastes?" He asked. It wasn't hope I saw there in Bob's eyes, that had gone with his brother, just another dead Chimeran - no funeral, no corpse, nothin'. He finally wanted out, I think.
Without Bob-bear, with me and solitary and Tony being watched by the Matron and even some of the other kids, traitor bastards they are, there was no way we could get out.
With Bob? This was gonna be easy. Or so I thought.
The one place the Matron never took any of the costumers of the Pet Store was the downstairs. Only she could access it with her right arm, and the electronic locks weren't like any Tony had ever seen. Downstairs is where we worked, slaving away on synthfiber clothing machines, spinning shirts, pants, underwear, socks, hats - all shitty clothes she sold to local places in bulk. "Even this barely pays to feed you filthy creatures." The Matron spoke like an older model android, something that stewed in their robotic grave and soured, and it made her all cold bitch.
Work was the only time I was let out to play with the others, sorta. So it would happen at the end of a long shift, even though the rest of the kids would probably want to kill me for it. But maybe we had a chance to get out, and that was enough to try.
Five or six kids got to stay upstairs, "Because they have behaved, and helped with chores already today." The other dozen of us were going to be "punished with a hard day's work, and some ethics which should help you to become good and decent, as impossible as it is for animals, like you lot."
"And what the fuck are you? An appliance?" I said to the Matron.
I heard Tony snickering at the top of the stairs. Bob was standing near the bottom step, watching me from behind her. The two camera lenses she had for eyes glared at me, and I swear I could hear whatever motors she has groaned, just so prepared to try something. Me and this bitch had gone before, and I knew I could overpower her for a minute, but she was a machine, didn't get tired or have any real place for me to get at with my teeth. So she'd just wrestle me to the ground, time and time again, using her fat metallic ass to pin me to the floor and beat the shit out of me, then throw me in a cage.
Something was different today. Normally she'd be all over my ass, but today she glared at me.
"What did you say, child?" She sounded unnervingly calm.
"Excuse me, I guess your ear-unit is malfunctioning - I asked if you were an appliance, like a fridge? Maybe, a toaster? You know, before they promoted you to evil robo-bitch?"
The other kids were laughing at this point, but she walked over to me, directly in front of me. Her big fuckin' camera eyes were turning, focusing and refocusing on my face. This machine was off her meds, or blowing a circuit, or fucking I don't know.
"...I don't remember who I was before you children. I was told that this place was my charge, my home, and the last chance I had of ever seeing my real children again. And for a while, I thought, maybe..." She wasn't even looking at me anymore, instead staring off somewhere else. Everyone was quiet for a minute, just kinda standing and staring at her. It was the first time I'd heard her say anything besides giving us orders or calling us filthy, disgusting animals. But after a minute, she looked at me, like she woke up or something.
"Get to work. All of you! WORK!" She screamed, way too loud, loud like a speaker turned up way too much, pushed kids out of the way and went upstairs, closing the place up behind her.
********
House of Animals is a story in the Junktown Blues Anthology I have planned, a group of stories related to the area outside of New Dallas, known locally to the wasteland kids as Junktown, on account of giant heaps of trash being sent there from the city. Rolling landscapes of chromatic hills, bikers, kid-gangs of hoverskaters, crazed robotic killers, lost alien vessels, and so much more!
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