The underground portion of central is mostly an unimpressive sprawl of offices and laboratories, with one or two cafeterias — their existence is… transitory at best— and some empty rooms that, personally, I think need a few ping-pong tables and/or videogame consoles.

  There are several rooms that remain mostly dark and silent, full of empty cages and terrariums. In years with many soon to graduate, they generally are brimming with life. There was a corner rendered white and brown by crow shit, for which I was to blame as I waited for the Graduation ritual to commence, the eleven members of my murder perching on the lockers and benches and lamps all around. Lillypod loved lounging on my shoulder, and as long as she flew away whenever she had to do her dirty business, I didn’t mind her company. After that day, we would be partners for a long, long time. Lest I died gruesomely on the job or choking on my dinner, which are at any given time equivalent odds.

  On the other corner of the waiting room Valenan sat, smoking a cigar with a lost stare as his five Border Collies, three black-spotted, two brown-spotted, slept tranquil at his feet. His hands trembled and it was plain to see that he didn’t want to graduate, he didn’t want to be forced to do it.

  “Hey buddy, why the long face?” I asked with my friendliest tone, standing from my bench and approaching him, right hand grabbing my left wrist in a gesture of almost-genuine concern.

  “I raised these dogs,” he responded, staring past me and into the void.

  “Well… they are quite well preserved. An amazing feat of necromancy for someone without a functional sacromotor.”

  He grinned so briefly, gave a long kiss to his cancer stick, and exhaled the smoke on my face, the cunt. “It’s not time for your jokes, Saon. These dogs are five. Five years is a quarter of my life! They have been my pets for so long, and despite I knew all along this day would come, I… I bonded with them. Deeply.”

  “And now that bond will last forever, man.” I showed the palms of my hands, as, rare for me, I was being completely earnest. “I had my crows for six years, in the case of the two oldest. I understand what you are going through.”

  “No you do not! You are a soulless cunt.”

  “First off, I am an empath, and I like my empathy like I like my coffee: dark and thoroughly fabricated. Second, I am not always a cunt!”

  He gave another drag to his cigar, a short one this time. “Yes, you are.”

  “No. Sometimes I am a cunt. Sometimes I am a dick. Sometimes I am an asshole. And as soon as I figure the urethral business out, I am becoming a full-fledged cloaca.”

  Valenan shook his head and let out a short laugh. “I appreciate it if you are trying to cheer me up, Saon, really. But please, understand that I am not in the mood to entertain you, or be entertained. Go bother someone else.”

  “Where’s Revvie?” I asked, dusting off a feather that had stuck to the sleeve of my uniform.

  “In the bathroom across the floor, crying I guess…” Realization dawned upon him, the smoke dropping off his slacking mouth. “You know what, bother me instead, I can take it.”

  “Ah, come on. I would never mock a mourning girl.”

  He stood and walked up to my face. “Listen here, Saon. If I had to leave an emotionally vulnerable Revekka alone in a room with you or with a known rapist, I’d take my chances with the rapist because I know she is good at physical self-defense. You are the kind of motherfucker that applies to a suicide help hotline thinking it will allow you to aid people kill themselves.”

  I blinked once, twice. I met his accusatory finger with mine and slowly pushed it to the side. “You know, that was really insensitive on your part. Comparing me to a despicable sex offender. I would never touch Rev like that. I would mock whoever wanted to abuse her for having bad taste, dude. And then I’d see if I can kill them for being a fucking rapist.” There was something that could be confused for fury contained in my voice. The theater classes I had never taken paying themselves off. “And after today, we will be able to do so. To murder lowly criminals with powers they cannot even fathom, and get a slap on the wrist for doing so as long as we surrender their souls as, ahem, ‘evidence’.” I did the quotes with my fingers thing, for emphasis.

  “That’s what I meant, you are a walking cognitohazard, Saon. You are the abyss staring back and quipping. You don’t love, you don’t cry, you don’t care. You behave like a bunch of cats in a trench coat would.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  For a moment there was silence between us, and then I grinned, satisfied.

  “I am so going to mail you some dead local fauna for that.”

  He sighed and slumped back on the bench. “Just let people mourn their pets in peace, man.”

  I shrugged and then extended a demanding hand. “Give me a cigarette.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “It’s for Manslaughter.” It pointed at the bulky, sometimes-confused-with-a-raven crow on my shoulder. “He’s a tough boy and won’t live long enough to get tough boy pulmonary ailments.”

  Manslaughter cawed in agreement.

  “Why did you name him like that?”

  “That one over there.” I pointed to a crow that looked rather dumb as it remained hypnotized by a loose screw he insisted on not picking up. “Is Execution.”

  “So, you named several of them after forms of killing to have a proper murder…” he grabbed the bridge of his nose as he passed me a cigar and a small red lighter. “Deities decadent, Saon.”

  I lit the cigar and offered the filter-end to my feathery friend, who took it in his beak without complaint. I forwarded my lower lip and pointed a finger gun at him, for he looked like the perfect partner to do the good cop/bad cop routine, and now I only needed to find a good Retriever… task that would present a challenge of titanic proportions.

  “You do realize you are probably the first person who made a real crow smoke, right?” Valenan said as he caressed a sleeping pooch with the back of his hand.

  “No, I am sure tobacco companies must have used them for experimentation in the past. Monkeys, dogs, crows, cacti, poor children. It was all fair game for them.”

  “Saon, be honest with me: are you capable of having normal people conversations? Specially in moments like these? Please?” He begged, meeting my stare.

  “I don’t think so. I am sorry,” I lied, because… me being sorry? Unheard of. “I’ll go spend some time in company of my future employees.” I vaguely gestured at my entourage of black birds before turning away from him. Then I turned back the other way. “Slash slaves.”

  And lastly, I walked out of the room, in the direction contrary to the bathrooms, or, as I like to call it: the long route to avoid arousing suspicion.

  To my disappointment, Revvie had already been called into one of the Sacrament chambers by the time I arrived at the bathrooms, and only a ball of ferret hair had been left in her wake. Ferrets. I had never liked the things. Too weasely, too short lived, too pompous. I had no trouble with Valenan’s dogs because dogs and people was as vanilla as one could get in interspecies bonds between vertebrates. I took exception to Revvie’s pets because the core idea of skinks in fursuits (See: Ferrets) always rattled my mind like a chimp his cage. It was a primal repulsion, an enmity born before even myself. On one side, man, with his superior intellect, his reason, and his guns. On the other, ferrets, with their impossibly long bodies, legged snakes wearing whiskers, using switch knives and wearing tight leather outfits.

  My train of thought may have derailed there. Slightly. The point is: of all the animals I dislike, fucking ferrets near the top of the list.

  I went to the nearest toilet stall and flushed. Twice. The crows enjoyed it, watching intently how the water swirled. I gave Manslaughter and Lillypod a thumbs-up before striding out the women’s toilet. I didn’t care if somebody saw me. Everyone in Central knew me. They knew I had no interest in perving on women, and I am sure several of my peers considered me to be on the spectrum. For the record, I am not. It’s all simple, good old misanthropy here. That’s why they used to check the toilets and their tanks after every time I left the dumping premises.

  Through the loudspeakers my impending fate was announced.

  “Saon Ladius, your ritual will take place in chamber two in five minutes. No funny business, please.”

  A smile settled on my face. I cleared my throat and threw my hand up high, fingers spread and curled slightly, as if holding a crystal orb while basking on rays from a glorious sun. “My dear crows, today you are getting collective-nouned for the greater good!” I announced, and my followers met said announcement with enthusiastic caws.

  I strutted my way to the double doors of fine wood, carved possibly by paleorecreators, as they imitated the properties of a tree that existed in the times the dinosaurs walked the earth, swam in the seas and flew in the skies. A tree called… pain. Or pine. Whatever you want to spell it.

  Knocked twice, which was unnecessary, turned the handles and let the gates to my destiny fly open. So… I stepped in the rather sterile and small office that had a framed picture of a ceiling fan long gone hanging on the wall. I had hung in there, over the mirror, waiting for someone to notice. Not even when the ceiling fan got removed and changed for a newer one they did. All that effort sneaking in and money spent, wasted.

  A desk as white as the plastered walls, a combining chair, and a tall, blonde, old woman donning the colors of our organization, sitting behind it. The well lit room was the antechamber to the place where my graduation would soon take place, and the officer chosen to oversee the process was none other than Amaldia.

  Didn’t like her, didn’t hate her. My only complaint is that she was rather boring because she was a sharp one.

  “Saon, please take a…” She harrumphed, and then corrected course. “Be so kind to sit in a usual way in the chair before me, facing my person, and do not pick up and carry the chair out of the room. Do not. Understood?”

  “You say that as if you lacked the disciplinary tools to make me comply.” I complied with her petition and shot a smile at her. “They don’t like cages.”

  “We Retrievers are supposed to be easygoing with well-behaved animals. Your birds are not misbe—“

  “I fed them magnesium supplements this morning,” I dutifully informed.

  “Magnesium supplem—“

  Manslaughter shat on my shoulder, the foul liquid dripping down the rough fabric as I maintained my excellent behavior, fingers steepled as I awaited my orders.

  “I see. Keep them off my desk while they do their thing, will you?” She indicated, and I, as an exemplary member of the forces of order, nodded in agreement. “Now, mister Ladius.” She slid a blank sheet of paper over the desk, and offered me a black ball pen. “I want you to sketch out your plans for your soul.”