Mint Innards

Chop. Hack. Smash. Scrub. Scrub. Plop. Scrub more. Toss trash into garbage bins, tie them up. I stare at the now cleared up kitchen counter. It’s a small kitchen, built into the side of the living room, with the window looking out on what I now know to be East Street. A simple name, but it fits it as one of the four main streets cutting through the prosperous city of Einsell. How do I know this now? Guaggagla, my employer, told me.

Chop. I hack the head off one of the dead triptobabies. From what Perretta, Gua’s platypus friend, told me, chopping limbs and organs from these creatures is the easy part. The difficult part is getting inside those organs. I can see what she means now, as I lift the triptobaby’s chopped off head, realizing how weighty and hard it feels to the touch. As I gaze down on it, I find pink splotches all over my maid outfit. Yes, I am wearing a maid outfit, but that’s not the relevant issue. The relevant issue is that tripto blood is notoriously difficult to get out of clothes and walls. I spent the past three hours scrubbing it from where I threw one into the wall and there’s still a large pink stain framing the door. I didn’t even get anything in return for handling that problem.

“It’s because you caused it! I won’t honor the deal for any issues, cleaning or otherwise, that you yourself incur.”

That’s what she said before retreating into her workshop, the very same room I originally woke up in. I wonder if she has replacement maid outfits or if I’ll have to scrub this one clean later on. For now, I pick up a mallet.

“The only way to get inside a tripto, baby or otherwise, is through the holes. That, or just hit them really hard!”

Perrett’s words echo in my overthinking module. From the two of them, she was the one with the culinary skills. She was also a probable enabler for Gua and her father’s slovenly lifestyles, if she ever cooked for them.

I place the head on the counter, lift the mallet, and hit it hard. It cracks but doesn’t open. I try again, recalculating my strength, and it breaks open, too similar to how an egg would. Pink yolk-like substance oozes from it and I pour it into a bowl before moving on to the wings. Those were to be cooked whole as the skin there had the least amount of holes and was the least sturdy part of the body, especially after cooking. One could bite through those with ease, at least allegedly, and likely due to their inhuman features. I simply detach the wings and place them on a cooking tray.

The main body was unusable, but the legs need to receive the same treatment as the wings.

“And then, what you’ve gotta do is set the oven to max, let it heat up, and ka-blam, cook an easy dinner.”

Perretta hops down from my back, where she had found a good vantage point to oversee the start of my maid career. I glance at her with my one functioning eye and speak. “Thanks. I believe I can handle this now.”

She frowns in disbelief. “You sure? It took you two tries to crack that tripto. How can I trust such an amateur with such a grand task at hand?”

I pick another, rip its head off with my bare hands and smash it against the countertop. The top shakes, thankfully without breaking, but the triptobaby’s head starts oozing. I gesture towards it with my head as I split it open and Perretta forms an ‘o’ with her mouth, giving a short whistle.

“K, you’ve got it. I’ll go check on the missus.”

“Much obliged.”

To be honest, I am glad she left, so I can focus on examining the minute details of the tripto’s bodies as I slowly dissect them. Gua’s kitchen is equipped with a plethora of utensils, from simple pots, pans and spoons, to complex drills and what I can only describe as cartoonish laser guns. All of these things had been strewn about, left to lay with rotting food, but I cleaned them up. I did all that. Which is why it was now already evening. Thankfully, the triptobabies cooked for a measly 20 minutes. Difficult to catch, allegedly, but criminally simple to cook. Even an automaton with no cooking experience could do it. Perfect for a starting job.

Having set the oven to heat up and having prepared three more triptobabies, I take my time to point the laser gun at one of their inedible stomachs and I pull the trigger. As expected, a precise beam of red light shoots out, but it doesn’t cause any changes in the tripto’s skin. Somewhat disappointed, I reach for the drill. Now this works, lodging itself comfortably into one of the tripto’s holes and allowing me to drill into it with ease. Surprisingly, instead of pink ooze, neon green ooze comes out of the drill hole. Curious, if only I had the means to analyze the liquid. I deepen a few more of the holes which allows me to crack open the stomach. Its contents spill with ease, and I quickly push them into the sink. A small film is present, encapsulating the remains of the green liquid, likely stomach acid. My prying attempt has left the innards punctured.

“Ew what’s that smell?” Gua opens the door behind me. I turn and look at her eyes. She is giving me a deadpan. “Maid servant. Did you open a triptobaby’s stomach?” I nod and she throws her hands up. “Wash it away, wait, actually, don’t, because it might eat away the piping! God, did you touch it with your hands, let me see? No, I won’t come over, it smells too bad.”

“Okay, who farted downstairs?” The annoyed voice of Gua’s father reaches us.

“Just the maid cracking open a tripto’s guts,” Gua replies.

“Tell the maid to chuck it out, chuck it at a child walking outside or something, I don’t care, so long as it doesn’t stink up the house!”

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped referring to me as only a maid.”

“Well then I’ll call you a nuisancefart!” Gua’s father shouts back at my retort, and I consider attempting to fight him without my combat module installed. Gua laughs at this, however, muttering ‘nuisancefart’ into her chin. I take the moment to scramble the triptobabies’ brains together in the bowl, pouring them over the wings and legs and tossing the tray of pink goop into the oven. I then pick up the tripto stomach and toss it out the window, as instructed.

“Much better, nuisancefart.”

“HEH, nuisancefart.”

“You’re both 12,” I reply, before moving onto my next task, clearing up the living room table.

//20 minute timer engaged. Cooking commenced//

It’s nearly a comparable mess to the kitchen. Nearly. With tools, plates, food and garbage strewn about, there isn’t any space to eat, so my dinner duty commands I tend to this issue as well. It goes uneventfully, although Gua starts hovering around me instead of Perretta, looking over each piece of trash before I toss it.

“Because it may be valuable or sentimental!”

“You have a hoarding problem.”

“Have not!”

“Have,” since when have I started talking in incomplete sentences? I note it down as a side effect of whatever ‘language spell’ Gua cast on me earlier. I grab a dirty rag with a plethora of bite marks out of her hands. “No. That’s bad. You wanted me to handle this. Let me handle this.”

“Ok but this counts as part of my side of the deal,” she says matter-of-factly, at which I must object.

“No it doesn’t.”

She puts a finger on my mouth. “Yes it does, because it involves me doing something you want.” She says, winking.

Perretta pops out from behind me. “Silly maid robot. Making a deal with a dragon. That’s how they get their grubby little claws into you.”

“I have to say, I’m starting to agree with that overview of the situation, Perretta.”

This was the deal: for every task I perform, Guaggagla will compensate me by fulfilling my own request. It sounded like a fair trade, but there appear to be a lot of unspoken rules and tribulations. Small print, as one might call it. But I can’t even argue against it, since it was properly sealed. A ‘promise spell’ is one used for deals by dragons. It urges the relevant parties to abide by the deal to a tee, and will react if one is broken. Since neither me or Gua noticed anything wrong, her stipulation is within the scope of the deal. I would sigh if I could.

The specificity of these ‘promises’ is in part formed by the perceptions of the involved parties. This is how her father’s spell doesn’t prevent me from talking while I’m performing maid duties issued to me by Guaggagla, as my employment under her is perceived to be legally separate from my employment under her father. We caused this by writing up a short contract to, quote on quote, ‘mess with my dad’, as Gua put it after I told her of my promise with him. It just read ‘Tasks for the maid that I want done aren’t the same as what my dad wants done and my maid is my maid when doing them and not his maid.’ which sounds ridiculous and like a 7 year old wrote it, but I am not complaining.

20 minutes pass quickly and I only have a few piles of trash to declutter off the table. Gua still hovers around with teary eyes, but restrains herself from trying to hoard any of these items. That is, until I reach for what looks to be an overturned picture frame.

It happens too quick for even my eyes to follow. My fingers graze the frame, preparing to pick it up and see what it is, when Gua swipes it with ridiculous speed, jumping over the table. This overturns the other pile of trash from the table and it spills over the floor, around her feet at her landing point. I look at her and manage to glance at the bottom part of the picture, seeing a green haired figure standing next to two other figures, before she turns it away from me.

“Gua. Hoarding.” I say, but she shakes her head. “At least let me clean it.” She shakes her head again. “I won’t even look.” She’s shaking her head vigorously, so that the gems in it are dangling all over the place. “What even is it?”

Silence.

“I’ll make that my request for coo-”

She stomps away to the workshop. At that moment, the 20 minutes timer goes off in my head.

//Ding. Cooking complete, chief, excellent work//

I stand still for a moment before calmly walking over to the kitchen. That hair in the picture was the same shade of mint as mine.

Irrelevant. I’m more frustrated I couldn’t finish cleaning the table nor have my requests been validated.