Chapter Five

Scroat’s bedroom was dark. The window was covered with a blanket, and only the tiniest bit of the sunrise could creep in. If more light were, for some reason, able to get in to the room, it would likely take a look around and leave. The room wasn’t exactly dirty so much as it was very, very cluttered. So although there were no plates of old food waiting for the unwary to reveal by lifting a pile of shirts, there were piles of clothing, tools and stacks of pointy things waiting to trip up and injure anyone unfamiliar with Scroat’s unique organizational skills.

Hephaestus was clumsy, but he had been living with Scroat for two hundred forty seven years, and could have found his way through Scroat’s room with his eyes closed. Scroat had a box fan noisily running at full speed, however, so Hep could have stumbled and crashed his way through the room and Scroat wouldn’t have heard him anyway.

Plus Scroat was a deep sleeper.

Two hundred forty six years and eleven months ago, he had made the mistake of asking Hep to wake him up early, since he had some things he wanted to get done. Hep was, of course, happy to help out. He had been waking Scroat at the crack of dawn ever since, in his own special way.

Hep crept, as best he could, up to Scroat’s bed. There was exactly enough light in the room for him to see where Scroat’s head lay on his pillow. Hep raised his favorite hammer, carefully judged the area he had to work with, and slammed the hammer down into the bed next to Scroat’s left ear.

Scroat had responded to this unique technique in exactly the same way for the last two hundred forty six years ten months and thirty days.

“You donkey-faced, shit-eating son of the cheapest infected whore in Olympus! Couldn’t you let me sleep in now and then?” Scroat yelled at Hep.

“Morning, sunshine,” Hep said, and left the room.

Scroat lay muttering curses and descriptions of what kind of ungodly act he thought was responsible for Hep’s creation. A couple minutes later, he smelled coffee and bacon cooking. He clapped his hands twice, and the lights turned on. Scroat had never been responsible for Creation, or even Creating something, but he imagined the Clapper did a pretty good job of mimicking the general feeling those Creator gods experienced after making their little parts of the world.

He sat up in bed, surveyed the epic mess that was his room, then climbed out of bed, walked over to a towering pile of t-shirts, stuck his hand in about three quarters of the way to the top and pulled out the exact t-shirt he wanted.

It read “Now Hiring. Please apply below.”

After he had pulled on his t-shirt, he looked around on the floor for the black jeans he had worn the day before. It took a couple moments for him to recall where he had left them, but found them quickly enough and put them on. He wandered barefoot out of his room and into the kitchen.

“Hey, bacon’s ready,” Hep said. “You want some?”

“You bet your ass I want some,” Scroat said and sat down at the table. “How about some of that coffee, too?”

Hep picked up a plate of bacon and eggs, and cup of coffee from the counter, walked to the beat up old kitchen table and sat down.

“Well then get a plate and help yourself,” Hep said. He took a sip of coffee and gave Scroat a toothy grin.

“Aw, fuck you, Hep,” Scroat said. He got up from the table, took a huge pile of bacon and poured a cup of coffee. He ate standing up at the counter.

“So what’s the plan for today?” Scroat asked Hep after a few minutes.

“Not a damn thing,” Hep replied, and took a bite of bacon. He intended to spend the day polishing up the successful castings he made the night before. If he had time after that, he was going to pull the busted pistons out of the motor and replace them. And after that, it would be time for the first beer of the day.

“I heard about a new dollar store in town, you want to go check it out?” Scroat asked him. Scroat loved dollar stores. He loved any place that seemed scuzzy and and old on its very first day of business.

“What the hell do you want to do at a dollar store?” Hep asked in reply. Hep, for his part, despised shopping. Why buy things when he could build them?

“To pick up chicks.” Scroat answered.

“Why would you want to pick up chicks at a dollar store? Those places are where you go to meet the freaks and rejects who… oh,” Hep stopped talking. Scroat wanted to go to the dollar store because he liked surplus and slightly damaged goods.

“Hey, a man has to have a good time, and the women who are at a dollar store, for fuck’s sake, looking for love are just the kind of women I want to have a good time with,” Scroat said.

Hep said nothing. He was hoping Scroat wouldn’t go into detail. It was a wasted effort.

“I mean, they’ll just want to come back here and fuck like wild animals for an hour or two. And these are the kind of ladies who think buying up a case of baked beans, filling the bathtub with them and making the beast with two backs is a good way to spend an afternoon,” Scroat said, and smiled widely at Hep.

“Well, you have a good time there, Scroat,” Hep said. “And you’d better clean the damn beans out of the bathtub, because I’m not going anywhere near that shit.”

“Hey, you know me,” Scroat said. “I don’t leave messes laying around once I’m done with them.”


“Make sure you give the poor girl a ride back to the bus stop this time, too,” Hep said.

Scroat looked hurt.

“You know I always leave my new lady friends in better shape than I found them in. ‘Give her a ride back.’ Fuck you! I’ll give her such a ride, she won’t want to leave. Dick,” Scroat said.

“Yeah, ok, Scroat,” Hep said. He pushed his chair back, got up from the table, kicked the chair back under the table and took his plate over to the sink. He walked over to the back door, put on his shoes and said, “You know where to find me.”

Then he took his cup of coffee and went out to his workshop again.

Scroat, meanwhile, finished his coffee, dumped his leftover bacon in the trash and went hunting for a clean pair of socks. He ran a comb through his short, dark hair, examined his three-day stubble, decided he could wait another day to shave, and grabbed the keys for his motorcycle.

Scroat’s bike was a flat black Harley-Davidson Sportster. He’d built it out of the parts of so many other motorcycles that he didn’t even venture to guess at a year. The frame was from 1981, though, so if someone pressed him for details that was the year he gave.

He fired up the motor, and tore out of the driveway, sliding to the left as he turned towards town.