Chapter 10: Not Nancy (Jimmy)

There it was, looming before me once more. The stench of evil still clung heavily on the air all around me. The stink of it tried to latch onto me, attempting to cling to my clothing and my sweet, sweet body. Like Taylor Swift, I expertly shook it all off. Nice try evil, but you’re not going to get me to break. I'll never quit. I don’t even know the meaning of the word quit. Seriously, what the hell does that word even mean? Never heard it before, it must be some kind of foreign word, maybe French or something? Nice try France, but that won’t work either. This is America, and I am a man on a mission. 

The shelter was imposing and cruel-looking. It was big, decrepit and devoid of human decency, the Rosanne Barr of buildings. A lesser man would have gulped in apprehension and then walked away on wobbly knees. Not me. Not this hero. I set my jaw, steeled my nerves, and smoothed my thick fake mustache against my upper lip. I reached up to adjust my fedora, the closest thing that the Spencer’s Gifts at the mall had to a Sherlock Holmes hat. I was ready. 

*****

I walked the empty front corridor, my nimble footsteps echoing hollowly through the long drab halls. I knew my way around now and I wasted no time in entering the main room with the front desk, which I knew would be the first piece of resistance that I would meet on my mission.

Since some hours had passed since we last visited, there was a shift change and a new enemy now sitting at the desk. The nameplate still said Nancy but the person sitting behind the desk was a man. Large and square-faced, with the eyes of a maniac, he looked out of place behind the desk. His hands looked like hardened hooves, hairy patches peppering his knuckles. His nose was small and upturned, giving it the misshapen look of a nose that had been broken many times in too many fights. I thought he would have looked more natural in a wrestling ring than at a pet shelter. He wore a tight-fitting salmon colored shirt that was struggling to contain his fat gut. I noted the color of his shirt carefully. A fish colored shirt on someone fishy. I couldn’t help but smirk. The stooges that they hired as henchmen at this shelter could use a couple of lessons in Disguises 101.

I stepped forward, making sure to put a lot of authority into my stride. I stuck out my hand, offering a businesslike and manly handshake to my new opponent. “Hey there, I’m Mr. Garrison from corporate.” I squinted, pretending to read the nameplate on the desk. “Is there someone in charge that I could speak to Mr….Nancy?” I smiled my biggest and most reassuring smile.

Instead of accepting my handshake, the man rudely ignored it and instead he quickly gathered everything on the desktop and moved it all closer to himself, just out of my reach. “Couple of things," his gruff voice barked out. His voice was scratchy, like he had gargled a mixture of tree bark and rocks for breakfast. "First off, my name’s not Nancy.” The man opened a desk drawer and swiftly swept everything into it, taking away anything I could use for another round of 'Oh is this Yours'. He must have heard about my earlier exploits. “My name is Sid. Sid Spitler. And I’m in charge here. Something you would know, if you actually worked for corporate.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “So here’s what I think is going on. I don’t think that you are a Mr. Garrison, and I don’t think that you work for corporate either. I think that you’re an idiotic, annoying little kid who got himself a quarter machine mustache and a hat from Goodwill, then came over here to continue the trouble he caused earlier. Am I right so far?”

I sputtered, flustered, and tried putting up a hand to protest. “My good sir, I think you’re confused - ” but before I could finish my rebuttal, he rudely cut me off by stretching out one of his frying pan sized hands and snatching my fake mustache from my face. I let out a small, involuntary whimper of pain, but I tried my best to suppress it.

 “So here is where we’re at,” he continued, ignoring my pain and what I had to say. He ripped my mustache in half and then tore those halves into quarters as he spoke. “You are going to tell me what you want. And then you are going to leave. And if you don’t want to leave, I will toss you out of here like a sack of garbage. Because you see, I like animals, that’s why I work here. But I HATE kids and I’m willing to lose this job for a chance to toss one out the door like a piece of wet crap. And when I do, you won’t come back until you’re old enough to grow a real mustache. Do we have an understanding now, punk?” He smiled a big, evil smile that exposed all of his crooked, yellowing teeth.

I had to admit, I was almost scared. Almost. If there was one thing that I had learned in life, it’s that the truth is all that matters. And the truth will always protect you. And I knew, I KNEW, that I was right. Whether or not anybody believed me, I knew what I saw. I know what I know.

I reached into my back pocket and I pulled out a folded copy of Lizzy's missing cat poster. I fixed a manic, intimidating smile of my own onto my face as I cooly pushed the paper across the desk to him. “This cat,” I said, very slowly and deliberately. “The one that you’re keeping hidden in the back room. It belongs to an associate of mine. It’s time to give it back.”

The man reached out and took the poster. Without giving it a glance of any kind, he told me that he had never seen Velcro before. He never took his eyes from me.

“Why don’t you try actually looking at the poster?” I asked him. 

“What poster?” 

As he spoke,  he opened up his nasty mouth again and, after crumpling the poster into a compact ball, he stuffed it between his gnarly teeth and began chewing. His eyes never left mine as he chewed and chewed and then swallowed with a large, cartoonish gulp. I half expected him to burp, sending bits of wet paper flying out and floating to the ground like feathers from a cartoon cat that just ate a bird, but he didn’t.

“Now,” he continued, “unless there’s anything else you need, I think that it’s time for you to go.” He stared daggers into me. “Immediately,” he added, forcefully.

I shrugged and cast my eyes downward, looking defeated. “I’m sorry you hate kids so much,” I began. “Which is probably okay, since you’re so ugly that I imagine there’s no kids in your future anyway. We do agree on one thing, though.” I saw his eyes light up with rage and surprise. He began to rise up from his chair. “It IS time for me to go.” After giving him the double birds, I ran fast as lightning and powerful as thunder down the hallway, barreling towards the locked security door I had encountered before. 

I rounded the first corner, then the second and then the third. Quickly the steel door was in my sight. This time, however, I zoomed past it and I waited around the next bend. After a short beat, just as I had suspected, Don the security guard came stumbling around the corner, swinging his arms like the big stupid gorilla that he was.

Before he knew what was happening, I charged straight at him, yelling out “Attica!” and sliding between his legs, snatching the security pass that hung from his belt. I reached out before he could turn around and I swiped it at the door, hoping that the card would surpass the need for a digital code. I heard a beep and I pulled on the door with all of my might, right as two big gorilla arms closed in around me.