Monster by A. Lee Martinez Page B

degree there was this chick in my Basics of Alchemy class. She was so fucking hot. I mean…”
    His voice trailed off wistfully as he closed his eyes and chuckled to himself. After a minute, Judy forced a cough to bring him back.
    “Sorry.” He grinned. “I mean, she had the sweetest tits you’ve ever seen. And talk about an ass. Oh, man. And she could do this thing with her hand that—”
    “Yeah,” interrupted Judy. “That’s great, but I really don’t need to hear about it.”
    “But it was this trick, see? She’d curl her fingers like this and—”
    She threw a disinterested glance his way, and Monster got the hint.
    “So she was hot,” he continued. “I mean, this girl was way out of my league. But she had this thing for cryptos. Wanted to become a vet. So I enrolled in some cryptobiology classes, trying to impress her.”
    “Did it work?”
    “We dated for about a year. Then she decided she wanted to be a corporate enchantress. Said I didn’t have any ambition other than to watch TV and drink beer. We broke up. I didn’t feel like starting a new major, so I stuck with it. And here I am.”
    “Do you like it?”
    “Pays for my beer and cable. Usually.”
    His attitude annoyed her. She was stuck in a world of drudgery and more drudgery with a little slogging and grinding thrown in on occasion. Maybe the world he lived in was much the same, but at least it had dragons in it.
    “Can anyone do it?” she asked. “Catch monsters?”
    “Okay, first of all,” he said, “I am not a monster catcher. I’m a freelance cryptobiological rescue agent. And no, not everyone can do it. You have to have a license.”
    “How does someone get one of those?”
    “There’s a test. You’d never pass it.”
    Judy frowned. “I’m pretty smart. How hard could it be?”
    Monster tapped his temple. “In twenty minutes, you won’t even remember how to capture a kojin.”
    “Sure I will.”
    “Okay. How?”
    Judy hadn’t the faintest idea. She wasn’t even sure what a kojin was. Something big, she thought. Red, maybe. Or black.
    “It’s not your fault, Miss Hines,” said Chester from the backseat.
    “What I want to know,” she said, “is how all those trolls got into my closet in the first place.”
    “That’s for the commission to determine exactly,” said Chester. “But in cases such as this, it’s usually just a spatial fold.”
    “Like a wormhole?” she asked.
    Monster and Chester chuckled.
    “What’s so funny?” she asked.
    “Nothing,” replied Monster.
    “No, really.
    What’s so damn funny?”
    “Nothing. Just, there’s no such thing as wormholes. Science-fiction bullshit.” Monster laughed. “Wormholes.”
    They passed the rest of the ride in silence. She turned up the radio and took account of her life. Nearly everything she owned had been eaten and excreted by trolls. Tonight she’d be working at a job she didn’t care about with people she didn’t like doing things that really didn’t matter for barely enough money to pay her rent. Except now she didn’t have rent. Upside in everything.
    She pulled the car in front of Monster’s house. “Thanks for the ride.” Monster, lugging the kojin stone, and Chester got out of the car and waited for her to pull away.
    She started the car but sat there for a moment, still thinking.
    Monster leaned in to the window. “Sorry about your apartment and your clothes and your furniture and… everything.”
    Judy, lost in thought, stared absently out the windshield. Monster fumbled for some other polite phrase, finally settled on a halfhearted “Take care now,” and turned toward his house.
    “Are you going monster hunting tonight?” she asked. “I mean, cryptobiological rescuing?”
    He answered without turning back. “Not tonight.”
    He took a step away from the car. “Why not?” she asked. “Because I’ve had a hell of a day, and I just want to go home, watch TV, drink some beer, have sex with my girlfriend, and call it a