Zaftig

(continued from last week)

With his yacht stashed behind an asteroid, Zaftig transported down to the surface of the blue and white planet.  He landed in a nineteenth floor office in Mid-town Manhattan.

“Oh my Gawd!” Rhonda Minestra screeched.

“Damn!”  Sid Glower muttered.

“Greetings, puny humans,” Zaftig said to them.  “You may grovel before my tentacles.”  He spoke through a translator device hanging from his neck.

Rhonda ignored Zaftig, fetched a paper tissue from her handbag, tore it in two and stuffed a piece up each nostril.  “I forgot how bad you zaftans stink.  I almost tossed my omelette when you just showed up.”  She handed a second tissue to Sid.

“The stench almost made me lose my jelly donut,” Sid said as he stuffed the tissues into his nose.

Rhonda was a twenty-something Brooklynite and Sid’s niece.  She was several inches taller than Sid and slender with spiky brownish-blonde hair and brown eyes.  Sid was short, pudgy, had kinky black hair and wire-rim glasses.  He ran a life style consultancy that usually tottered on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Tell me what I want to know,” Zaftig bellowed, “and I won’t rip off the top of your head, suck out your brains and spit them on the floor.”

“Oh, please,” Sid retorted.  “How many times have you made that threat?  And each time I tell you I’ll order Rhonda to slice off a tentacle and throttle you with it.”

Zaftig believed that Rhonda was a trained assassin and from the corner of an eyeball, he saw her holding a stiletto and tapping the tip on her desk.  The knife was a gift from a nice old man in Sicily who had hired her father to whack a competitor.  Her father was a freelance hitman who traveled the world for his contracts.

Zaftig cleared his throat, an alarming sound like a cement mixer in need of an oil change.  “I need your help, please.”

“Hullo,” Rhonda said.  “You’re actually bein’ nice and sayin’ please?  You must be pretty desperate.”

“How much are you willing to pay for our services?” Sid asked.  “We’ve never made a dime from all the times you came here.”

“Convincing me not to destroy your miserable world should have been payment enough.”

“Okay,” Rhonda said, “Let’s hear it.  This should be good.”

“I have to locate an author named Hank Quense.”

“That name sounds familiar,” Sid replied.

“Wasn’t he the guy that had that big scandal with a movie star and her pet pig?” Rhonda asked

“Naw.  That was someone else,” Sid replied.  Isn’t this Quense guy the one who wrote the stories about the three of us.”

“Oh, yeah.  He ain’t written about us inna while.  I wonder why.”

“So how do I find him?” Zaftig asked.

Rhonda tapped on her keyboard and looked at her screen.  “The closest people named Quense live in New Jersey.  Ain’t none in New York.”

“Where is New Jersey?  Is that a different planet?”

“Many people around here think Jersey is a different world,” Sid replied.

“Can you take me there so I can find the right person?”

“My uncle once went to Jersey.  He said he ain’t never goin’ back.  So, I ain’t goin’ there.”

“There’s a bunch of these Quense’s,” Sid said.  “It’d take a while to track them all down.”

“I just checked with a librarian I know, Rhonda said.  “She says the author lives in Bergen County.  So you’re all set.  You don’t need us to go to Jersey with you.  ‘Cause frankly, you ain’t gotta enough money to pay me to go there.”

“How do I get there?”  Zaftig squatted on the rug which smoldered from his caustic slime.

“You can take the subway,” Sid replied, “but that’ll probably cause a riot.  And you’d have to take a bus or a cab after you get to Hoboken.”

“He can’t take a cab or an Uber,” Rhonda said.  “He won’t fit through the door.  And how’s the driver supposed to drive when he’s sick to his stomach the whole trip?”

“Besides,” Sid added, “You’ve been on the streets in Manhattan.  People here just assume you’re an actor wearing a costume for a movie or TV show.  In Jersey, they’ll call out the SWOT teams and the National Guard.  You won’t have a chance to surviving in Jersey.”

“Sid’s right.  You won’t last ten minutes over there.”

“Then you will have to go in my place and fetch the author back here.”

“Ain’t happenin’.’” Rhonda said.  “Why don’t I just call him?”  She tapped on the keyboard.  “I got his phone number.”  She took out her phone and punched in the number.

“Hello?”

“Is this Hank Quense?”

“Yes.  Who is this?”

“Rhonda Minestra.  I’m here with my uncle Sid Glower and Zaftig.  Zaftig wants to meet you.  Can you come to Manhattan?”

“What kind of sick joke is this?”

“What’re you talkin’ about.  It ain’t a joke.  We really want you to come here.”

“Well the zaftan may be real if he came from a different universes, but you and Glower are figments of my imagination.  I can’t believe I’m talking to some idiot who wants me to believe a character I invented is real.”

“He hung up on me,” Rhonda said.  “He ain’t comin’.”

Zaftig twisted a few tentacles together.  “I am doomed if I cannot bring the author back with me.”

“Doomed, eh?”  Sid said.  “This sounds pretty suspicious.  You probably mean to do the author some harm.  Am I right?”

“Yeah,” Rhonda said.  “Maybe you better leave.  Unless you wanna pay us a fee to listen to you moan and groan.”

“Can you go get the author and bring him back here?”

“He’s in Jersey.  We told you we ain’t goin’ there,” Rhonda replied.

“How sad,” Zaftig said.  “My friends refuse to help me out.  Perhaps I should drop a neutrino grenade and blow up this part of your world.”

“Hey, Mister Zaftig the Magnificent,” Rhonda said.  “We ain’t your friends.  You tried to kill us a few times and you tried to blow up Manhattan at least once.  If you use your grenade, you’ll also kill the author so it won’t do you much good.  Why don’t you just leave us alone.”

“I agree with Rhonda,” Sid said.  “Go away and don’t come back.”

Zaftig sighed and activated his transporter.

❀  ❀  ❀

Back on his yacht, Zaftig mixed a cocktail made mostly with yukeste, an alcoholic drink so potent it was banned everywhere in the galaxy.  He drank and bemoaned his fate.  If he went back through the wormhole, the Vice-dictator would seize him and torture him for years. If he stayed in this universe, he’d be impoverished in a short time.  Unless he resorted to space piracy, but that would require a bigger ship, a crew and weapons, none of which he had a chance of getting.

On his third drink, he developed a plan.  He’d go back through the wormhole.  But he wouldn’t stay in the zaftan galaxy.  He’d travel to a different one, load up the ship with talent, put them into a deep-space travel coma and return to this universe.  Perhaps Ronda and Sid could connect him some entertainment moguls who would be interested in unusual acts.

On his fourth drink Zaftig pass out and had nightmares about falling into the clutches of the Vice-dictator

(Author Note: Is Rhonda real?  Did I get a phone call from her?  Or am I hallucinating?   I wish I knew?  By the way, Sid, Rhonda and Zaftig are the stars in a few short stories.)