Chapter Text
“I’m really sorry, sir,” Zombie said in the most placating tone he could muster. It was all he could do to avoid giving away his fear as he returned from the rows of hanging baskets and pots sporting their lively green. “We’re out of the Paramonian Climbers. Most of our hanging vines are very nice, though, and we can certainly find some that pair well visually with-…”
“Shut it!” the Glukkon in the expensive suit snapped. Zombie flinched as he leaned forward to glower at him over the counter. He made a show of studying the leaf-shaped nametag clipped to his white polo. “’Zombie’, huh? Yeah, that’s about right. Sam popped out a real ugly dud of an egg, didn’t she?”
Zombie frowned for a moment at his own paw, and the sickly-looking pale blue-gray skin that had given him his name. But he knew better than to say anything – it would only become fuel for the irate Glukkon to use against him.
The customer turned to his Slig assistant, as if just now noticing he hadn’t been following along with his rage. “Show him again!” he snapped.
The Slig shrugged, and held out the BotaniCo catalog they’d come in with. “This is the one the boss wants,” he said, tapping the image of the Paramonian Climber, with a bored exasperation that suggested he knew as well as Zombie did that repeating their demands wouldn’t actually cause the plant to magic itself onto the shelves.
“Why aren’t you conveying my emphasis?” the Glukkon snapped, and the Slig flinched, then pointed at the picture more emphatically.
“This one. The boss wants this one, you hear me?” he demanded, but he sounded more afraid than anything.
The Glukkon growled. “You’ve gotta have some in the back, you lazy piece of filth.”
“I’m sorry, but we j-just don’t have-…”
“Don’t you have a supervisor I could talk to? You’re clearly lying. How do you run out of your stock? Live plants are too expensive for that kind of demand.”
“I don’t know what the ordering process is like-...”
This time, the interruption came in the approach of a Slig from behind him, summoned by the call for a supervisor. Zombie could swear he responded to that more readily than his own name.
“Something wrong here, sir?” Foggy asked, straightening out his vest in an effort to disguise that he’d been slouched in a chair somewhere.
“This Mudokon doesn’t want to serve me,” said the Glukkon. “I need five more Paramonian Climbers to match the one I’ve already got. My office space looks horribly lopsided, and I’ve got the most important meeting of my career coming up. I need to make a good impression, and this bug-eyed upstart thinks he can pull one over on me.”
Foggy looked at Zombie. Zombie shrugged. “We’re out, Foggy. I looked.”
“But not in the back,” said the Glukkon, and his assistant looked up as if begging the heavens for patience. Zombie hoped they could hear his silent plea through the ceiling.
Foggy sighed deeply. “But our stockroom’s not made for that, no sunlight. Storing plants isn’t like-…”
“Are you telling me this Mudokon knows better than me!?” the Glukkon roared. “What sort of worthless Slig sides with one of them over one of us?”
Foggy instinctively flinched, and waved Zombie to the back of the store. “Just go. Go check.”
“Thank you,” said the Glukkon, with a self-important little sniff. “And you’d better give him proper discipline after this. It’ll make you look better when my review comes in.”
Zombie hurried to the back, past the frosted-glass office door. His boss probably thought he was looking for a pot or something, because his passage was ignored. For a second, he entertained the thought of setting one Glukkon on another just to see what would happen, but then the fallout would ultimately double when it finally reached him, with frustration amplifying between links in the chain, from Aron to Foggy to him.
The windowless stockroom lit by a single bare standard bulb was, of course, devoid of actual plants. It was for employee living supplies, pots, soil, and other things one didn’t have to worry about dying if left there. Zombie sat on a large overturned pot – probably upended for this very purpose by the last person sent on a wild meech chase to the back – and tried to compose his nerves. He wasn’t sure how to break it to this utterly delusional Glukkon that he, a lowly Mudokon, was in the right.