I Don't Seem So Bright in a Well-Lit Room

Chapter Twenty-Six

"There's got to be a place around here that has real soup," said Potto to the Yaygher.

He had been very accommodating. Much more accommodating than anyone should have been while having their arm gummed and sucked on. Much more accommodating than anyone ever had been with a Yaygher in the history of Yayghers.

"Real soup?" the Yaygher perked up. "With real soup innit?" 

Potto checked his pockets. He only had the few credits Teeg could spare giving him. Instinctively he knew he shouldn't waste it on buying someone else soup; his physical survival might need to count on it. But also, instinctively he knew he should waste it on buying someone else soup because his mental survival counted on that.

"Yeah, but you gotta get me out of here. I don't think the family that owns this house really likes me very much. I don't think their house likes me very much either," Potto added.

"Like new soup?" the Yaygher asked in disbelief (disbelief!). He, like all Yayghers, had trust issues. "I'll get y' outta here. But...I want half the soup up front. Half later. I bin burned like this before."

"Really?" Potto asked, wondering if the life of a Yaygher was far more adventurous than he had first imagined. 

"Yep. By that guy. Shifty guy, that," the Yaygher answered pointing out between the stairs to the lawn mower shed. Another Yagher stuck his head out of the shed and looked around like a slow old tortoise sticking its head out of its shell. 

"I can't give you half of the soup now. I don't have any soup yet," Potto said sadly.

"I don't believe you. Let me check your pockets," sneered the Yaygher.

"I have no soup in my pockets...um...what do I call you?"

"Why you wanna call me sumpin? Bad words? Interested?"

"I just want to know your name..."

"Oh. Name's Lazy Susan."

"Okay. I have no soup in my pockets, Lazy Susan. That would make them wet, and they are mostly dry." 

"Hmph. Neither do I," grumbled Lazy Susan.

"I figured that by the way you're sucking on my arm. And I think you'd need pants to have a pocket." Potto was trying to be helpful, but he was really growing quite weary of being cramped under the stairs of the porch of a smouldering house belonging to a family that wanted to kill him, and with a Yaygher that was causing his skin to wrinkle with saliva. 

"Can you take me somewhere where I can buy you soup?" he asked. 

"I can do it, yep," Lazy Susan fired back, making finger guns. 

Lazy Susan climbed out into the backyard cautiously and rat-like, pulling on Potto's soggy arm. Instead of heading to the main back gate and into the alley, they headed past the other Yaygher, and made their way behind the shed. 

"What 'r you doin', Lazy Susan? Who's that guy?" asked the shed Yaygher. 

"Shut up, Toaster-Oven. Yer dead to me."

They climbed out through a large hole dug behind the shed and out into the alley. They then climbed down a sewer grate. The smell was something that Potto could barely stand, but it didn't seem to bother the Yaygher at all. It smelled like stroganoff that had been sitting too long inside a long-dead bear's long-inactive large intestine, and the freshly mowed grass of a terribly befouled dog park. 

Potto noticed they were being followed. It was Toaster-Oven, the shed Yagher. They passed by another group of sewer-dwelling Yayghers.

"Evenin' Lazy Susan," one muttered.