The House Sitter - Part 2

in Scholar and Scribe8 months ago


Source


       "You have a visitor." A robotic voice announced, which broke the silence and caused Grux to start howling.

       "Shut up," M'Tiar said as she swiped her foot at the Zun-Mutta. He immediately stopped upon contact.

       Denbani moved past the slight commotion with a worried look on his face. Before leaving the room he stopped and took a long glance at Hahdir. "If I were you, I'd come clean now." He raised his eyebrows as he spoke.

       "I didn't touch anything," Hahdir felt the words fall out of his mouth. He had no energy to try and convince them of his innocence. The conversation went back and forth, and around in circles. They had made their mind up on the matter, and nothing was changing their mind.

       Denbani sighed and left the room. Soon, the door opened, and Hahdir could hear the muffled voice of Denbani, but couldn't make out what he was saying. It was most likely an extended greeting, however, it didn't seem to end. The voice grew louder, as he continued to ramble, the entire time he did so, the guest, whoever it was, remained silent.

       "We were away for a few days but left someone minding the house. It was a nice getaway, but upon our return, we found that there was a problem." Denbani took a deep breath. "Our tokens are missing. Your tokens... Razor-Jax tokens; the payment for the supply."

       He entered the room, staring back at the person following. As the figure came into the room Hahdir was startled by the pale white skin, and the contrast between it and his utterly black attire, which seemed to swallow all colour in his vicinity. The room was made cold by his presence. Grux sniffed at the air around the man and took one step back.

       "He was the one who was minding the house for us, but keeps saying that he had nothing to do with it." Denbani nodded toward Hahdir.

       The man's pale blue eyes slowly crawled across the room before stopping on Hahdir. As the man stared at him, he could feel himself shrink.

       "I don't know how to get to the bottom of this, and I don't like the idea of annoying Razor-Jax and letting this issue land on him. I want to apologize on behalf of myself and my partner, M'Tiar." Denbani rambled nervously, stepping forward and back awkwardly until the man's eyes crawled from Hahdir and back to Denbani. The moment they landed on him, he was still.

       The mans mouth opened slightly.

       "There have been problems in the past, but since those previous issues I have done everything in my power to make the relationship between me and Razor-Jax right, and healthy." Denbani started rambling once more.

       "Denbani," M'Tiar interjected. "Shut up."

       The man reached into his pocket and produced a small device, after a few keystrokes he inspected the screen closely before putting it away.

              "You owe Razor-Jax, 3,782 Free Space Tokens, in addition to a recent supply drop, of which you owe 2,421 Free Space Tokens. 6,203 FSTs is your entire bill." He said. His voice was deep, full of bass, and he spoke solidly, without a single stutter. Unlike Denbani's erratic speech. "Do you have the payment?"

       "As I said, we left him in charge of minding everything, and it was gone by the time we got back," Denbani said as he glanced at Hahdir.

       You're a scumbag. Hahdir thought as he watched someone he considered to be a friend of his nervously try to slither out of a problem of his own making.

       The man reached into his long jacket once more and produced a pistol. He aimed down and shot Denbani in the knee. The room erupted with the noise of anguish. He fell to the ground screaming in agony while trying to hold his limp leg.

       "No, no! What are you doing?! It's not his fault!" M'Tiar screamed.

       Grux nervously howled, and lunged forward, before stepping back once more, as if there was an invisible barrier around the man now wielding a pistol.