Chapter Two: Polite Conversation/The Yet Even More Exposition Chapter
Downtown Haven: the one and only hubbub of monster life in the human world. Every day was the market; monsters bringing food, trinkets and other supplies scrounged from the prosperous city above them. The downtown was the largest open space in the underground monster city; cleverly designed skylights provided most of the light, and ancient kerosene lamps provided their own smoky illumination whenever the sun wasn't in the sky.
Down below, the narrow streets that had never felt the weight of a car, monster or otherwise, were churning with furred, scaled, tentacled and other monsters too bizarre for any human (or even certain monsters) to describe. In a niche tucked into one of the walls, a small, many-armed monster played an upbeat tune on a small metal pipe. Passerby's called greetings as they passed, some tossing small items of food, which the monster would then stuff into one of it's three mouths, nodding a thank-you without ever halting it's song.
All along the sides of the streets, monsters had set up stalls, and those who didn't have the luck to own their own stalls laid out their wares on ratty old blankets for inspection.
On one such blanket lay altered human plush toys, that now resembled the more monstrous creatures like the ploofy, a cycloption canine, lancitie, a three-eyed cat with just as many tails, furbys[1] and other such toys to appeal to young monsters, and even their nostalgic parents.
A many-tentacled monster beside that one held out bowls, cups, cutlery and other kitchen supplies to passerby's for inspection. No two had come from the same set.
Randall and Jared wove their way through the crowds with the ease of long months, and years, of practice. Greetings filled the air. Every monster always found time to say a simple "Good Morning" to each other. The reptilian monsters said their fair share as well.
"Randall! Hey! Stop by a minute!" Came a call from one of the stalls. This one was a real stall; four poles, a cloth roof, and several shelves containing reading material: books, magazines, and week-old newspapers from above.
"'Morning, Moss[2]!" Randall said to the stall-keeper as he danced through a small eddy in the crowd to arrive in the stall.
"I was hopin' I'd catch you this mornin'," Moss, a spindly, six-limbed monster covered head-to-toe with shaggy, bright green fur, told him.
"Really... why?" Randall asked, folding both pairs of arms, feigning disinterest.
"'Cause look what I just got in!" The shopkeeper reached one long arm below his own roughly-cut wooden table that he used as a desk, bringing up a small green paper back book. "I know you expressed interest in the series..." In his clawed hands was a copy of Jurassic Park, that looked almost brand-new. [3]
Involuntarily, Randall reached out to grab it.
"Nuh-uh!" Moss said childishly, holding the book above his head, out of Randall's reach. "Batteries first, then you get the book."
Randall sighed, showing more of his sharp teeth than necessary. "Name your price."
"Six Double As. Fully charged." Batteries, and in fact, any sort of power, was more valuable than gold in this monster city, what with the power shortages. A single pair of AA batteries could go a long way, if used correctly.
"Yeah, right." Randall snorted. "Look, I'm gonna be late for work, Moss... A single pair, half-charged, and I know I'm getting ripped off here."
Moss shook his head stubbornly, still holding the book high. "I'm not goin' lower than five, fully charged. And that's final."
"Fine, bye then!" Randall turned to leave.
"Wait, where're you goin'?"
"Work. You know, the place where I go so I can get enough power to get food on the table? That place? The place that I'm not supposed to be late getting to?" Randall explained, over his shoulder, slowly and clearly, as if to a young child.
"...But the book!"
"Somebody else'll buy it. I'll just be leaving now." He began walking. 'Three... Two... One..."
"Four AA. Half-charged. And I'll throw in this copy of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' to boot." Randall grinned to himself, and turned around to face the shopkeeper.
"Deal." The lizard-monster reached into one of his large pockets, digging out a small leather bag. With one hand, he dropped four quality alkaline batteries into Moss's fur-covered hand, reaching out for the two paperbacks with another hand. "Nice doin' business with ya." He smiled as he stuffed the two books with care into one of his inside pockets.
"Can we go now?" Asked Jared boredly, from where he stood leaning against one of the stall's poles, arms crossed, 'mustache' slack, the very image of a bored lizard-monster. Without waiting for Randall to answer, they both set off down the street.
" 'Work. You know, the place where I go so I can get enough power to get food on the table?'" Jared imitated shrewdly, catching stalking along beside his friend. "You've really got to stop taking advantage of people like that, you know."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not my fault I have great haggling skills and Moss doesn't." Randall protested good-naturedly, sweeping his fronds back with one hand. "Besides, it was worth it, this time." He patted his bulging pocket.
Jared snorted. "You should have been an actor; you certainly have the skills to be one." He jibed, nudging Randall with one claw.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll keep that in mind next time and let myself get jyped, happy?" Jared paused.
"...On second thought, why don't you not, and use the batteries you saved to get me a nice present... you know, like a chunk of soap or something." He wheedled.
"Uh-huh, sure," Randall hummed, as if considering. As if he had come to a decision, he stopped and turned towards the other monster. "Or maybe I could try to get you a solid gold bar as well? I mean, that kind of stuff is just lying around everywhere! I'm surprised we haven't had to evict anyone to find place for all of the extra supplies we have lying around." He returned to walking.
"Point taken."
They continued on in amiable silence.
"Here's my stop!" Jared announced as they arrived at a stall slightly larger than the ones they had passed. The front was covered by a large piece of salvaged wood. Painted words proudly proclaimed that this was "Jared's Sandwiches: Slither down for a bite of our famous slime bread!", with a cartoon-like depiction of the red lizard-monster's head, and a green sandwich missing a bite out of one side, right next to it. There were already half a dozen monsters waiting patiently in line.
"See you after work, Randall!" Jared called. Randall grunted in reply as he was swallowed by the crowd.
He continued onwards through the bustle of monsters, making his may slowly but surely through the streets towards one of the largest buildings in the city; the BrightFright Ltd building. He supposed he could probably due to find a place to live closer to work, but had never really gotten around to moving.
Finally he arrived. The front doors weren't as impressive as Monster's Inc had been in Monstropolis; they were recycled, just like just about everything in Haven. They had once been several car doors - all of them painted different colours - and were now welded together to make a sturdy door. It actually looked quite appealing, even with the small flakes of rust decorating it here and there. One could see into the building through the still-intact glass windows. Gripping one of the door handles, Randall bent it downwards with a grunt. The door slowly creaked open, scraping against the ground as if in protest. He quickly scurried inside, and the door closed heavily with a loud, ominous thud in his wake.
The interior of BrightFright Ltd was nowhere near as impressive as the front entrance to Monsters Inc had been. The walls were made of the same combination of cement, dirt and metal as the rest of the underground city was. The ceiling was so low that monsters taller than eight feet had to stoop down to avoid hitting the ceiling. If one looked closely, one could actually make out the marks where more than a few monsters' horns had scraped along the roof. The air wasn't filled with the cheerful sound of a receptionist's voice; it was silent and still in comparison with the cacophony of the market outside.
A few flickering light bulbs were the only illumination aside from the little light that trickled in through the dusty car door windows of the front door. The BrightFright building was one of the only places in the entire city that regularly used electricity. Part of it was powered by their own facilities, but a much larger portion had been tapped from human hydroelectric lines.
Randall strode forward on light feet, to the end of the small hallway, where a single eyeball and a mouth were perched on a wall across from a small culvert, supported only by a thin green tentacle.
"Good morning, Mr. Boggs!" It chirped cheerfully.
"Mornin', Ellen." Randall sighed, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on a small metal coat hanger in the culvert. As he did so, one of his new books tumbled out of it's pocket and landed with a light thump that send a small amount of dust into the air.
"What's that?" Ellen asked as the lizard-monster bent to pick up the copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"Book." He replied shortly, putting it back.
"You ripped off Moss again, didn't you?" She asked flatly.
"Yup."
"Randall..." She said warningly.
"Fine, fine, I won't do it again." He turned, holding both pairs of arms up in a 'You've got me' manner.
"Meaning you'll do the same thing tomorrow."
"Yup." He smirked, moving towards the roughly-hewn wooden door next to the eyeball.
"Well, have a nice day!"
"You too." Randall nodded as he entered the door.
Ellen was another one of the oddities of Haven that set it apart from Monster-World cities. Supposedly, her ancestors were among the first to be banished to the human world, and it was one of them that had founded Haven. She wasn't just one tentacle; she was a multitude of them, each tip ending with a mouth and eye. Her system spread all throughout the city, running along the ceilings and walls of downtown, through to the smallest outskirt tunnels. She acted as the city's messenger; she could reach anybody at anytime, as long as he or she where within the city's limits. She was also the main source of gossip, seeing all, knowing all.
Randall had been told horror stories by young children when he'd first arrived that Ellen's main body was hidden in a secret room near the center of Haven, in which every seven years seven monsters were sent into so Ellen could feed. Supposedly, anybody who went into the room never came out. Randall wasn't quite sure if such a thing where true or not; he wouldn't put it past some monsters. He'd probably never find out, as it wasn't exactly something you could bring up in a polite conversation.
The BrightFright building was actually rather simple, once one thought about it. There was a small break room, containing a few beaten-up pieces of furniture, a Door Maintenance room, in which doors were built and fixed, a tiny lab in the back that was their Research and Development department, the single scare floor itself, looking almost pitifully small and dingy when compared to Monster's Inc.'s Floors A through F, and there was the door storage room, that contained less than three-hundred closet doors. Scare assistants and apprentices brought in the doors here manually. Because of the lack of automatisation and facilities, BrightFright didn't produce much electric power, so on the side it also recycled batteries. A single full scream canister could fully recharge over four dozen standard AA batteries, a veritable fortune. The company also lacked the proper number of qualified employees; each monster had more than a single worker's responsibilities.
Randall was no exception. He wasn't merely a scarer; he also worked in the research and development department, as well as occasionally helping to maintain doors. In a standard day, he would scare a few dozen kids in the morning (finishing much more quickly than the other three meager scarers), take a donut break (it was still called that, even though donuts had never actually been served in the break room), then head to Door Maintenance to see if they were short of hands. If they were, he'd help out for a few hours, if not, he headed directly to Research and Development, where most of his time was spent picking his brain of details of the Monster's Inc. door stations (that were far superior to their own), and occasionally work on another prototype scream extractor he was building. Unfortunately, the parts he'd used to create his original prototype, the one he'd built for Waternoose, were only available in the Monster World. The half a door station that he'd found lying around conveniently at the Monsters Inc. factory, that he'd altered to make the main nozzle of his invention was quite different from the ones in Haven; he was still trying to remember exactly why their circuitry was so much more efficient, but it was no easy task. It was like trying to play an advanced computer game built for modern computers on one a decade old with less than a fifth of it's capabilities. Many times he'd gone back to his home frustrated at the end of a particularly trying work day because of mechanical parts that simply refused to work for him. Other times, he'd remained at work late at night, not even noticing the time, while he wrestled with a stubborn machine.
When he'd first begun to work there, he'd actually brought parts home to work on them in the evenings; his half of his and Jared's apartment had grown so cluttered that his parts that they'd actually begun to spill over onto his roommate's side. It was only when Jared had nearly skewered one of his feet on a circuit board in the middle of the night on the way to the pit-toilet when the red lizard monster had actually put his foot down and made Randall take all the gadgets back to work. [4]
Randall still had over half an hour before he had to report to the scare floor, so he began to head for the break room. He was distracted, trying to decide for himself what exactly Ellen really did eat. No monster could survive on nothing, even gelatinous monsters had to absorb the odd sandwich now and again. But she wouldn't be able to eat seven different monsters, would she? I mean, people would notice if seven monsters went missing every so often, right?
So absorbed was he in these thoughts that he didn't notice the shadow creeping along the wall behind him. It's amber eyes gleamed in the shadows.
It leapt! The shadow landed heavily on his midsection, knocking him down onto the floor, jarring the lizard-monster back into reality.
Randall's scales automatically shifted to match the dirt floor, leaving him a sickly looking pale mottled brown.
There he was, lying belly-up on the floor, completely at the mercy of the ominous shadow looming over him...
[1] Oh come on, you guys know that those things are way to weird to have been thought up by a human... ;)
[2] Fungus, Moss, ha ha? Get it? ...It's a joke, okay?! ;
[3] I forget which fic, but somebody somewhere wrote a scene in which Randall read this book, I believe, and he liked it... Does anybody know which one? I wanna re-read it, but I can't find it. Oo; Oh, yeah, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (by William Shakespeare, for those who have never heard of it... heathens!) is a very good read, just so you know. Just look past the complicated language, and see how funny the characters really are! ... Puck rules! :D
[4] More exposition I say, more! :)