Temp Work

Evie was happy to be a bridesmaid for her neighbor.  Estelle was new in town and didn't have too many friends locally.  One really close friend from her hometown showed up, but she didn't want to look too lonely/desperate up at the altar.

And Evie was not terribly hurt that Estelle picked her friend to be maid of honor.  Talon took care of everything, Evie just had to show up for fittings and the parties.

Frankly, just showing up and going with the flow sounded really good to Evie at that point in time.

She'd just ended two relationships.  One with her boyfriend, one with her job.  She was...between engagements, in every sense of the word.

No one was offering anything in her major, she was overqualified for most work, but to starving to really turn anything down.  So getting out of the apartment for Estelle's sake was a good thing. Mostly.

But Estelle's wedding had...issues, we'll say.  Her maid of honor, for instance, was a Butch Dyke-Witch-not-a-Wiccan-Pussy.  

That wasn't Evie's judgment, that was how Talon introduced herself.  Tall and blonde, skinny as a cardiac needle, she could make Tabitha of Salon Takover look like Little June Cleaver

Bachelorette night included a number of group activities.  Handing out cards for a Lesbian Strip Bar to the clients at an abortion clinic.  A girls-only game of spin the bottle in a cemetery.  An exchange of gifts at a shooting range, followed by thirty rounds each through an Uzi.

And a trip to a fortune teller.  Evie had to admit, Talon was a good at selecting talent.

Madame Nordiskae was tiny with a deep Hungarian accent and a voice that wavered on every third syllable.

"Dahlink," she told the bride, "zhuUuUu  mist tek zhUuUuU huss-pant Iyyyynto zhour Haaaart.  Dish minks deEeEeEeee total TRUT!"

"Oh, yes, I will," Estelle giggled.  Evie wondered once more how this little bubble of joy didn't burst when Talon got within stabbing range.

But once more, she saw the smile of approval each gave the other and knew real love was in there, however it presented.

The wedding party worked their way across Madame Nordiskae's table, giggling at her dour warnings, gasping at her keen insights and occasionally trying to translate her comments by committee.

At Evie's turn, she sat and presented her palm.  The fortune teller glanced it over and dealt her cards.

When the last one was turned over, the little woman leaped up off her stool, gasping.  She wrapped her hand in her shawl and swept the cards off the table.

Well, of course, Evie thought.  I go last, I get the best schtick.

She waited patiently for the almost opaque commentary, or the warning or the doom.

Madame Nordiskae sat down and looked Evie in the eye.  There was only the slightest trace of an accent when she spoke, and it was pure New Yorker.  "You got someone, look afta you cat?  When y's gone?"

-----------

Not surprisingly, the party broke up after that.  They limo-ed back to where their cars were, kissed or hugged goodnight, and split up.

Evie tried to convince herself that it was all an act. But she wasn't quite buying it.

Nordiskae wasn't clear on any details. She claimed she didn't have any.  But DOOM waited, loud and clear.

There was a particularly long light on the drive home.  She tried not to look over at the prostitutes on the corner.  One looked over at her kind of speculatively, but not with much hope.

Then something bumped her car.  Evie looked around, thinking some hoodlum was trying to carjack her.

But the back end of the car was rising up, up, the angle growing. She was pressed into the steering wheel...  No, she was dangling down onto the wheel!  The car was on its end.  She thought of dominos for a weird moment, of a giant child laying cars down in a pattern.  He just started at her corner.

Then there was a terrible grinding sound.  She screamed and tried to duck.  The top of the car disappeared, torn away like a cardboard carton.

A giant hand...Oh, God it WAS a giant!  The hand dropped the remains of her hardtop, then plucked her out of the car.  She felt a tug on her thigh then heard the seatbelt part with a pop and a clatter of metal.

She screamed again.  There was an answering scream that sounded as she breathed in air.

There was another woman.  Held in a fist just like Evie.  A giant fist.  There was a giant.  A real giant.  Square head, clear features, big burly beard...  And he held Evie and one of the prostitutes in his hand like little toy dollies.

The image of a line of carefully stacked prostitutes came to mind, then a giant thumb thwacking them over to fall in a continuous line...

She screamed once more, then stopped as the giant fingers squeezed around her waist.

The prostitute was lifted to the giant's face.  "What do you do?" he asked.

"Let me go!  LET ME GO, you FUCK!" the soiled dove shouted.  

"Okay."  The giant opened his hand and dropped the whore.  She fell, screaming, to scream even louder after she hit.

He ignored that and lifted Evie to his face.  "What do you do?"

"Whatever you want me to," Evie said, promised and begged.

"Can you cook?  Clean?" he asked then.

"Yes.  Anything.  Whatever you want clooked or keened. I mean, cooked or cleaned.  I mean, don't drop me."

Sirens sounded in the distance. The whore screamed up close.  The giant nodded and thrust Evie into his pocket.  She felt him walking, then he stood very still for a while.

She curled into a ball and shivered.

Well, at elast Estelle had the key to her apartment.  And got along well with Nameless Cat....

When he started moving again, the motion was an odd rocking.  She scratched against his leg, feeling the rope-like hairs on his thigh scratch under the burlap of his pocket, then swung out into thin air.

She tried not to think about it.

She concentrated on his hand.  How it had felt.  What she had felt it against.

One finger nestled under her boobs, one across her leg about...here.  She stood five foot five.  So that was..  Numbers failed her and she ended up imagining a doll in her own hand.  

If her hand gripped...  Then the body was...  And that would make her...  He was about seven times her size.  Somewhere around thirty five feet.  That meant...  That meant...  God, what did that mean?

It meant the hooker had fallen about two stories.  You could survive that, right?  She was screaming in anger as much as agony, right?  

It's okay to talk to yourself in fear, right?  Right?

Of course it was.  The option was to stick your head out of the pocket and see where he was taking you.

No, thanks, that's okay.  We'll just stay here.

Suit ourself.  

Okay, I will.

Fine.

Great.

Shut up.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.  What the hell is going on?  Feels like King Kong climbing the Empire State Building.  Is there anything like an Empire State Building in Buffalo?

The ESB was about 100 floors.  City Hall in Buffalo was...was... Come on, we memorized it in school.  Third grade, umpty-ump years ago.

Thirty two!  Thirty two floors.  Surely he'd be at the top by now?  Surely?

But when he reached the top, there'd be airplanes and a long fall and she wasn't sure she wanted to be crushed under a giant in downtown Buffalo.

She was just about ready to scream when he stopped swinging outside the building and stepped forward.  The rocking was a little more uncomfortable, but at least there was no unsupported swinging.

And after a few dozen steps she heard a door slam.

The top of the pocket parted and hands shoved in around her.  He picked her up by one leg. She screamed.

"Oh, stop it," he said.  The words were gruff but the voice was gentle.  She dangled from his grip as he looked her over.  He nodded and placed her down on a surface.  

"Wait here," he said, then went outside.

"Sure," she said softly to the shut door.

Evie looked around.  The place was a stone building.  The furniture was wood.  Thick stuff, sturdy enough to hold a 35 foot tall giant.

Or a frigate.

There were small windows of thick glass, dark timbers holding the ceiling, a bare stone floor.  Well, not quite bare.

The place was a mess.  As she relaxed a bit, she noticed that the décor was early bachelorhood.  Clothes were everywhere.  Plates with partially completed meals.  Odd unidentifiable bits of leather and metal.  

Evie snorted, surprised there was no Playboy.  Unless....she was going to be the centerfold?  No.  NO!  No, he didn't grab the hookers.  He asked... He asked about cooking.  And..  Oh, my.  She glanced at the mess and swallowed once, hard.

Instead of thinking about the giant clothes on the floor and the giant dishes (Would I make a Brontoburger?  Mammoth ribs?  Marinated whale?  And what the hell to stir the pot with...  A steam shovel?), Evie shook her head and turned towards the wall.  The shelf she was on was only a little dusty, and only had one thing on it.  A trophy of some sort.  

She stepped closer.

It was an array of wires.  No...  Lots of arrays.  It looked like the insides of a dozen pianos .  Wires stretched in a dozen frames, all arranged around a central beam.  

Like an impressionist orchestra or an opium dreamer's zither.  The biggest one looked like a classic piano, the smallest looked like guitars without any bodies.

The whole array loomed overhead like a metal tree with one-dimensional leaves.  She glanced down as she got closer.

There was a snakeskin cover for the base.  Vivid scales banded in the primary colors of red, blue and yellow.  

She wondered what had worn that before it became a decoration.

There were a couple of string sets in reach.  She plucked one but it didn't twang.  It sounded more like striking a snare drum.

"What the hell?"  She strummed the array.  It sounded like a drum riff...

Someone was watching her.  A pair of huge eyes were looking at her from the other side of the base.  

Not a giant, the head was a little bigger than Evie's own.  Another prisoner?  Maybe they could split the laundry?

"Hi," she called.  The eyes blinked.  Sideways.  "Oooooookay," she said, taking a step backwards.

The head rose.  A large, muscular woman lifted off the ground.  And kept lifting.  And lifting.  Powerful arms rose into view.  

The snakeskin decoration fell off the base of the...  No, it was uncoiling from the base.  It wasn't skin, it was...  It was a snake.

A huge one, bigger than the monster Conan killed in that movie Dexter always wanted to watch.

Bigger across than Evie was at the shoulders.  "Look out!" she called to the other woman...

She froze as the woman hovered over from the far side of the trophy.  The snake coil at Evie's knees continued on up into the woman's waist.  She looked like a mermaid.  Smooth skin down to the hips, then the legs were fused into a cylinder of scales.

A snakemaid?  A snake centaur?

The body floated, kind of like someone on wires over a stage.  The snake length from her...her waist, that stretched around the trophy.

"I'm sorry," Evie said. She turned as the snake woman coiled around her.  Not touching, not even crowding, but cirling.  Evie faced the face.  "I'm sorry," she repeated, "is this your trophy?  It's just so different."

She finally realized that the woman/snake thing had four arms.  Two were clasped before her, palm to palm, the others were crossed over her bosom.  

"It's no trophy," the thing hissed.  "It is me."

"You?  Yours?" Evie tried to understand.  The creature pointed with two forefingers.  Evie turned to follow.  

The stub of the tail joined with the base.  The woman was part of the assembly.  

"And," the voice hissed behind her, "it is no trophy.  I am a Harp."

"A harp," Evie repeated.  She looked up.  Sure.  Not naked piano centers, but various harps.  That made sense.  She should have realized it on seeing the big one.  That was harp shaped, like the ones in the movie about...

She spun to face the hovering figure.  "You're a harp!  A talking harp!"

"Yessssss."

"Like at the top of the beankstalk!  Oh, Lord, I'M at the top of the beanstalk!"

"Where didst think thou was?" Harp asked sarcastically.  "Toronto?"

"There was...he was walking.  Then climbing the...  Oh.  Oh, crap.  That was him on the beanstalk."

"Probably," Harp said.  She twisted around, avoiding the human, strumming a few strings.  Music played, something that reminded her of the classical station they played at the garage where she had her car worked on.

"Pretty," she said absently.

"Pretty?"  Harp laughed.  "This isn't pretty.  THIS is pretty."  She rose up into the center of the wires and started to play.  An entire symphony came to life.

Her trunk flexed and bent to bring her to whatever array she wanted to play.  And the fingers danced.  

Evie had loved a Scottish band that played electric guitars to sound like bagpipes.  That was cool.  This...this was amazing.

This was magic.

The song quieted and finally stopped.  Harp looked down at Evie with a challenging glare.

"That's beautiful," Evie said.  "So wonderful."

The glare softened.  "Thank you.  I was made to reproduce any music."

"Well, not any music," Evie found herself arguing.

"Any!" Harp insisted.

"Well, nothing like a synthesizer could come off of strings."

"Anything humans can make, I can replicate.  Hum a few bars."

"Okay," Evie smiled.  She did her best to reproduce the five-note theme from Close Encounters.

Harp nodded and repeated it.  Not the half-assed humming Evie managed.  The original sound effect from the movie.  On four strings.

"How did you....?"

"Magic," she replied off-handedly, examining seven of her left fingernails.  "And, some skill."

-----




When the giant came home, Evie was teaching Harp the Macarena.  Harp had mastered the music in her instant, perfect manner.  She wasn't programmed for the dance, though, so that took practice.  "Then hands here, do some hip rolls.  Oh!  I'm so sorry."

"What?" Harp asked.  "I can do hip rolls."  She demonstrated.  The undulations started at her belly and continued sensuously down to the base of the harp.  

"Oh, wow," Evie said.  "But then there's a-"

"Quarter turn to the right," Harp nodded.  Suddenly she stiffened and rose up into the array.  She began playing soft, lilting and traditional harp music.

The door swung open.  "Fee fi foe fum," the giant thundered.  "I'm home from the fields and hunger has come!"

"Eep!" Evie squeaked, hiding behind Harp's trunk.

There was the sound of some giant shuffling, then sniffing.  He moved, stepping closer and closer.

Oh!  They could smell blood!  She wrapped her arms around Harp's snake part and closed her eyes.

He found her anyway.  Two huge fingers pinched her hips and tugged her.  She slid across the counter, then he let go.

"And that's why I need you to clean for me," he said.

Her eyes blinked open at the non sequitor.  

"What?" Evie asked.  He pointed.  She followed his finger to where her footprints crossed the dust to the base of Harp.  "Oh.  Well.  You, uh, you didn't give me-"

"A chance.  Right," he agreed.  "Well, what's for dinner?"

"I...  I don't know," she admitted.  "Is that an invitation?  I know this GREAT place downtown.  Let me go ahead, get reservations, I'll meet you there at-"

"WHERE IS DINNER?" he thundered.  Her whole body shook from the voice, she felt the vibrations like an earthquake through the shelf under her feet.

"I DON'T KNOW!" she screamed.  "You didn't SAY anything about dinner!"  She fought not to cry but it wasn't easy.  "You put me here, said wait, and you left!"

"Oh."  His voice dropped in volume and force.  She lowered her hands from her ear, though they hadn't added much protection.

There was an odd hissing, clicking sound.  His head spun, she turned more slowly to follow his gaze.

Harp continued to play the music, though there might have been a small grin on her face.  Was that her laugh?  Evie hadn't been sure the instrument could smile.

"Well," he said.  There was apology in his tone and a slump to his shoulders.  "C'mere, then."  He swept her up in his hand.  The grip was a little better this time. He cupped her butt, so her weight was on her sit-down, not hanging from her ribs.

Around the corner of the shelf Harp was on there was a door into a kitchen.  A sink was piled with dishes.  Giant mold was an impressive evil, Evie noted.

Great tree-stalks of spore-bearing growths loomed over the plates.  She thought of Venus fly-traps and horror movies.

She thought of a flamethrower.

Then the giant turned, moving his hand, and the woman in it, in front of what looked like a pizza oven.  A black hulk of metal bigger than a storefront at a shopping center, there was a long handle over the wide, short door.

"This's the oven," he said.  "Cook, uh, cook something for dinner."

She looked around the room desperately.  "There's...there's no fridge?" she whined cautiously.  Surely she wouldn't have to kill a live giant chicken for dinner.  Did they have chickens?

"Don't need it.  Just...  Tell the stove what you want."

I want to go home, she thought.  She stared at the giant.  "Come on," he urged.  "Make something for dinner."

"I don't know how..."

"I SAID," he said loudly, "you just tell the oven what you want.  Then open the door."

"I couldn't open that door with the National Guard!" she protested.

"Will you STOP objecting and just OBEY!?" he demanded.  The hand holding her shook a bit.

"PIZZA!" she squeaked. The door opened all by itself, revealing a pie ten feet across, with Frisbee-sized mushrooms and tire-sized pepperonis over a crust as deep as her calf.

"What the hell is peetsah?" the giant asked.  He leaned down and took a sniff.  "Never mind," he smiled.  He placed her on the counter, then reached in and slid dinner out.

He carried it to a table that he cleared by brushing plates off of it with his forearm.  He poured from a wooden cask into a flagon and cut the pizza with a cleaver.

Then he came back and picked Evie up.  "You want some?" he asked.

"Can the oven make one my size?" she asked.  He paused, considering it.  

"I don't know," he said. "Try it."  

"Human pizza!" she shouted.  The door opened.  She had a brief glimpse of a twenty foot wide pizza with some sort of meat...then she saw the human-sized skulls in a ring in the center.  She covered her hands with her eyes and screamed.

"You have to be careful," the giant said.  "Ask for peetsah made for humans."

"I'm not hungry anymore," she said.

He shrugged, shut the oven door and carried her to the table.  She cowered by the flagon of ale as he ate.

"Not bad," he said.  "You'll do."

"Do what?" she asked.

He chewed on another slice for a bit.  "My wife left me."  He waved around the kitchen.  "I need someone to cook and clean."

"So that gives you the right to kidnap a person?" she asked angrily.

"Not a person," he said.  "I just found a wild human and brought her in."

"That's kidnapping!  Kidnapping ME!"  She stomped her foot.

He shrugged.  "Far as I can tell, you were just running around wild in one of your human warrens.  You should be happy.  You're safe now.  No one will hurt you, no worries about finding food or shelter, or storing supplies for the winter."

She just stared at him, stunned.  She shook her head after a moment.  "What, uh, why can't you order the oven yourself?"

"That's woman's work," he said simply.  She rubbed her forehead.  "So I needed a woman.  The first one seemed...argumentative.  You, though, you caught on fast.

"We have a contract.  You'll do whatever I want, so I don't drop you."

"I....  Oh, god, that wasn't a contract!  That was coercion.  That was fear.  ABJECT TERROR!"

He shrugged once more and picked up another slice.  "Humans do everything out of fear. You didn't ask for the pizza until you were terrified, did you?"  He looked down at her, reaching over her head to pick up the flagon.

"You're cute when your mouth hangs open like that," he said.

She snapped her lips together and stood to look around.  

The plates of leftovers and rot were on every surface.  Cleaning would require explosives.  Could the oven make explosives?  She glanced over at the giant.  Molotov cocktails?

"Hey....?" she said slowly.  

"Mmm?"

"How did you get all these plates of food?  If your wife left..."

"I asked Harp-"

"ORDERED!" Harp shouted from the other room.

"I ordered Harp to order the oven."

"Why...  Why can't you just go on doing that?" Evie asked.

"Because Harp doesn't eat. She just asked the oven to make whatever it made the day before.  She has no imagination."

The music in the other room stopped.  Harp scratched a jarring chord across the strings, then started to play Bolero.  Evie shuddered.  White noise was less boring.

"For FOOD!" the giant shouted.  "She has no imagination for FOOD!"  The tempo plodded on.  "For MUSIC she's a genius!" he apologized.

Some sort of light and lively polka started to play.  He smiled down at Evie and rolled his eyes, a 'what are you gonna do' expression on his face.

His kidnap victim, and witness to his assault with a deadly altitude, crossed her arms and refused to laugh with him.

"Anyway," he said after a moment, "the little woman was a great cook, but after four months of her one meal, I needed something else."

"Great," Evie said sourly.  "And I was the lucky innocent bystander."

"You did agree," he pointed out.  He raised one hand to forestall argument.  "And any court in this land will hold you to it.

"Courts in your land have no jurisdiction.  Also, I pulled up the beanstalk, so the only way back is if I drop you."

"Okay," she shuddered.  She tapped her foot for a moment.  "Okay.  I can see your logic, but there's no way I can clean this mess."

"Oh, sure you can!" he said.  He was up in an instant, plucking her into the air and walking to the sink.  There was a bucket on the floor by the sink.  It was full of sudsy water, a few wisps of steam rising from it.

He put her at the edge of the counter over the bucket.  Then he took a plate out of the sink and placed it by Evie.

There was a tin cup hanging on a nail over the bucket.  He used it to dipper out some water and pour it on the plate.

She watched patiently.  Then he searched the window sill and found something close to a human-sized mop.  He handed that to her and pointed at the plate.

"Sympathetic magic," he said.  She held the mop and stared up at his smile.  "Go on, scrub."

"It'll take me an hour to clean this one, weeks to clean that sink, and years to drag-"

"MOP!" he shouted.  She bent down and scrubbed.  The mop was more of a twist of thread wired to a wooden skewer.  She pushed down to scrub and moved it quickly from side to side.

There was no sign of magic, sympathetic or apathetic.  Grease and bits of food worked free by the mop rose to the water's surface, broke apart in the churn, spread out.  She moved, scrubbing, wondering when-

There was a metallic clink behind her.  She turned.  The giant was standing some forty feet away, clearly keeping his manly hands free of the taint of woman's work.

The far side of the sink there was a drying rack.  Two clean plates sat there, shiny and dripping.

"That's the magic," he said happily.  "Scrub a little, clean a lot.  There's a force multiplying projector that-"

"SHE DOESN'T CARE!" Harp shouted.  The giant stormed out to argue with her about what was important for a workman to know about his tools.

Evie shook her head and went on mopping.  She kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the edge of the plate.

She never saw the plates move.  No matter how long she stared, nothing happened until she looked away. Or glanced down or blinked.

Then the pile in the sink went down, plates appeared in the rack.

The water around her ankles never chilled, never became dark with dirt or crowded with bits of food.  It just went on supporting her cleaning effort.

"So there!"  The giant came back into the room, having won the argument by shouting.  "So, anyway, the basic force captured by the original spell was-"

He paused.  Yankee Doodle Dandy was playing.  A muzak version.  Harpsichord muzak...  

He stopped explaining and returned to Harp to make peace.  Evie resolved never to intentionally anger Harp.  Or to underestimate her.

-----------

When the rack was filled with drying plates, the giant let her knock off for the day.   She let the mop down gratefully and grabbed her shoes before he grabbed her.

He started to carry her to the living room.  Harp interrupted the fugue she was playing to shift to a German drinking song.

"Ein Prozit?" the giant said wonderingly.  "That's a harvest song for-"

"I think your guest has worked up an appetite on an empty stomach," Harp said sweetly.  The music never paused.

"Oh.  You hungry now?"

"I could eat," she said.  "Something...careful."

"Oh.  Sure.  Whatever you want."  He held her before the oven.

"Can I please, Oven," she said politely, "have a bread bowl of French Onion Soup?  Sized as a crock for a human?"

"Why did you put it that way?" he asked.

The door opened.  A place setting was centered in the chamber.  A wooden tray held a large bowl that contained the desired meal.  There was also a wine glass and a bottle of wine, a bowl of grapes, some sliced cheese of pale yellow and some nuts.

She wriggled out of his grip to jump to the door of the oven, walked in and bowed before the tray.  "Thank you very much, Oven."  She picked up her serving and looked around.  "And I don't blame you about the human pizza.  That was my fault."

He picked her up carefully and took her to the table.  The door shut slowly behind him.  "I have never seen it behave that way.  What do you call that?"

"Being polite," she said.  The grapes were cold enough that water was condensing on them, while steam rose from the crusted cheese.

"You, uh...."  He stopped talking and chewed on his lip.  She raised one eyebrow as she ate.  "You don't expect me to say please, do you?"

"Please," Evie said, "or maybe 'Evie.' Every so often."

"What's Evie?"

"It's my name," she said.  

"Oh.  I was going to call you Cook."

"Hope you're fond of pizza!" Harp called out with her unusual laugh.

"Evie," the giant said, trying it out.

"And you are....?" Evie prompted.

"Uncomfortable being so intimate with the help," he said. He stood and walked out.

Evie shrugged and finished her food.  The cheese was Swiss, but without holes.  Interesting....


When she was nearly done eating, the giant came back into the kitchen.  He silently put the dried plates on top of the oven and they slowly sank down inside it.

Her finished dishes, tray, utensils all went into a metal bowl by the sink.  Then he lifted her, still without speaking, and placed her beside Harp.

There was a nest for her.  It looked like it had once been a cage, about the size of a Motel 6 room.  But most of the bars had been twisted off to open up all the sides.  Some cloth had been draped over the handle and a very soft bed, a little too big for the space, had been shoved in.

A little distance from the bed was a small outhouse.  A wooden shack with a moon crescent cut into the door.  Everything she'd ever need.

He nodded to Harp and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Harp finished the song she was playing, then leaned back, away from the wires.  "Whew.  Well, day's over, Evie.  What is your pleasure?"

"I just...  Oh, wow, I've been up for...  Two days?  I just want to go to bed."  She waved at the tasteful wreckage.  "Is that for me?"

"He was going to use the original cage," Harp said.  "After you told him your name, he tried to make it into a canopy bed."

The bars were about four inches across.  The drapery hung down over the twisted hooks left when the bars were ripped clear.  They looked like meat hooks for entire cows.

"Touching," Evie said dryly.  

"I know!" Harp said.  "It's like he feels bad about kidnapping you!"  She shook her head, crossing her arms and scratching her forehead.  "I don't understand it."

"I'll think about it tomorrow," Evie said with a shake of her head.  "I'm just so exhausted..."  She picked her way carefully over the metal spikes and corkscrews.

The stuffing of the bed collapsed slowly under her.  She wasn't quite asleep before her head hit the pillow.  There was no pillow.  She chased the retreating surface of the cushion and caught it, relaxing from a long day.

She hadn't noticed a blanket but one was spread over her.  She had long enough to realize that you just haven't been tucked in until a four-armed woman does it.

Then she was asleep, dreaming of cars being hooked up to automatic can openers and ovens that downloaded Top Chef.

--------

She woke to an apology.  "I'm sorry, Evie, I really am."

"Huh?  What? Where?"  She sat up, looking around for the church key that was chasing her on a motorcycle...  "Oh.  OH!  Hi, uh, Harp."

The lamian musician was hovering just outside of the bed, wringing her hands and continuing to apologize.  Evie stared, hypnotized, at the four hands showing eleven different configurations of stress....

"Yeah, sure, whatever," she said.

"Great!  Thanks!"  And the figure rose up into the air.  Evie slumped back down on the mattress.  What was that for?

Reveille.  Harp made a 'get the hell out of bed' noise that sounded like the Navy Brass Band trying to hide the sound of an invasion behind the music.

Evie was almost physically thrown out of bed.  She rolled over, snagging her party dress on one of those meat hooks, feeling the shame of every forgotten alarm, every excessive use of the snooze, missed train, traffic excuse, forgotten appointments and screw-up involving daylight savings.

Her body shoved forward, looking for clothes, the closet, the car keys.  Her skirt ripped and fell off.  She ran head-first into the wall and collapsed, screaming.

The noise stopped.  "Y'okay, Evie?" Harp called from some distance.  "I did say I was going to be sorry."  A slightly concussed woman rose to her hands and knees, trying to recover her dignity.

"Oooooh!" Harp called.  "You have a tattoo on your butt!  That's so cute!"

Four arms scooped her up and floated her over to the bed.  "You should put your clothes back on, though.  You don't want the Master to think you're bucking for a raise."

-----------

The giant barely glanced at Evie as she held her torn skirt in place around her hips.  She went from anxiety about how he might become interested in seeing more of her body to offended at being dismissed.

Schmuck.

He scooped her up, nodded at Harp and took her to the kitchen.

"Breakfast," he ordered.  She looked from him to the oven.  

"Oven?  Can we please have a giant order of Huevos Rancheros Extremo Caliento?"  She wasn't sure if she could get the oven to make Guatemalan Death Pepper Hot Sauce, and her Spanish class was umpty-ump years in the past.

But Oven seemed to know what she was after.  When the door opened, the eggs were covered with jalapeno salsa.  The very scent made Evie's eyes water.

He took the plate to the table, then took her back for her breakfast.  She ordered her usual.  The yogurt carton was printed in a language she didn't recognize and the fruit on the front was a mystery.

But the bialy was perfect and the fruit juice at just the temperature she liked it.

She sat and ate while the master shoveled in forkfuls of his breakfast.

"Innnerstin' stuff," he mumbled.  "You're gonna work out fine."

She wondered if giants were related to the Greek god Vulcan, or if he was just eating too fast to notice any nerve damage.

"I, uh, I tore my dress."

"Saw," he said.

"I need a new one."

"Sure."  There was silence for three more bites.

"Where can I get clothes?" she finally asked.

"I'll find something," he promised.  "You need clothes."

"Well, yes, I-"

"Could have company over.  If my wife's family sees you, they need to be impressed."  Wonderful.  She was the revenge girlfriend without any of the girlfriend benefits.

She tore into her bialy angrily.

"Say," he said.  "This stuff has a bite."

"It's a little spicy," she admitted, fingers crossed behind her back.  "But my last boyfriend loved it."  

His eating slowed and his face looked...uncomfortable.  He actually tasted the food.

The table shook as he bolted up and ran to one of the cabinets. He found a metal bottle of something and drank it down in one long swallow.

She tried not to smile.  Most drinks that her boyfriend grabbed after he'd overestimated his 'macho' limits, they didn't react chemically to the acids.  So the pain just floated over the fluids, waiting patiently to strike.

"Well," he said.  "That was a little-  Ahhhh!"  He spun around and grabbed for another bottle.

Evie wanted more credit for helping than attempted jalapeno-cide.  "Oven!  Four giant pitchers of milk, por favor!"

The door dropped down.  The giant looked from the bottle of stuff that hadn't worked to the innocent looking pitchers.

"It'll help," Evie called.  He nodded and grabbed the first one.  Halfway through the second one, he slowed to a stop.

His sigh of relief was like being witness to a religious conversion.

"I'm so sorry, sir.  I didn't think it would hurt that badly."

"It's probably just something about giant chemistry," he said, trying to wave it off.  And not to wipe his face and draw attention to the rows of tears on his cheeks.

"We'll, just, uh, not have that dish again, okay?"  He turned to walk out of the room.

"Okay, sir," she promised.  And you're welcome for the quick thinking, she thought to herself.

He paused at the doorway, then turned and came to the table.  She stood up from her breakfast as he reached down to pick her up.

Then he stood in front of Oven.  "I, uh, I guess I should thank you both for the milk."  He nodded to Evie and slowly, awkwardly, rested a hand on the face of Oven.

"You're very welcome," Evie said.  She'd long thought that pain was the only tool for educating men.  Who knew it worked above the clouds, too?

He moved her to the floor and scooped a bit of water out with the dipper, to pour it next to her.  He gave her the mop.  She shrugged and started in.  

Out of the corner of her eye, she kept finding clean spots on the floor, several yards from the puddle she worked.

The giant watched for a while, then said, "Okay, that's it.  You clean up that spot, that'll be enough for the day."

And he left.

She threw the mop down on the floor and started the long walk to the living room.

Harp was leaning on the edge of the shelf, looking down.

"You really wanna be done with that when he gets home, Evie," she said.

Evie smiled at the sight.  Harp was holding her chin in her hands.  And the other pair of arms was crossed.  "You look like Charlotte!"

"Who is Charlotte?"

"A spider in a movie," she said.  Harp looked confused.  "I'll tell you the whole story later," she promised.  "I just...  I can't just scrub.  Could you play something?"

"Yeah...  If I knew something appropriate to a scrubbing party."

Evie put her hands on her hips.  "Are you asking me to teach you a song?"

"Yeahuh-huh."

"Something with a regular beat, I guess?"  She thought.  "Ever hear of Bad Romance?  It's my personal dating anthem..."

---------

Working with Harp's musical support was like a cross between being backstage at a live performance and owning a rather needy iPod.

She'd take a song, play it, play around with it, adjust arrangements and wring every possible version out of it.  Then play a song or two that Evie had taught her.

Then she'd revert to something flat and painful.  It became a signal that Harp needed a new song.

For the first day, she'd exhausted Lady Gaga, then shifted.  Evie realized she was scrubbing to the MIDI version of Bach's Joy of Man's Desire.  

Kind of like Switched On Bach performed by a handheld Tetris game.  Eugh.  She dropped the mop and walked to the doorway.

"Harp?"

"Hmm?  What?  Yes?" Harp responded instantly.

"Are you in need of a new song?"

"Oh, well, if you're not busy..."

Evie stood, rubbing her back.  "Well, if it's not too Ferris Bueller..."  She walked beneath Harp's Shelf.  "It's called Twist and Shout."

"Oooh, I like it already!" Harp shouted.  Evie watched the impossible corkscrew.

"Come on and shake it up baby, now!" Evie cried up to the rafters.

Harp squealed and started to play. After watching for a bit, Evie found herself dancing, too.  If only they had a parade float...

-----------

The giant came home with a shopping bag.

He didn't say anything.  He looked around the room, at the clean spots first, nodding with some sort of approval.

Evie had climbed up to be beside Harp and teach her 'Shake Your Tailfeather.  She sat on the edge of the shelf and watched him look around.

Harp shifted smoothly to something depressingly Wagnerian as the giant came in.

He had a burlap sack that he reached into as he approached the shelf.  He dropped a fistful of stuff by her bed. Then he went into the kitchen and broached a cask.

"What'd ya get?" Harp asked.  She leaned as far towards the pile as she could while still playing.

"Clothes?" Evie guessed.  She walked over and picked through.  There were clothes on plastic hangers.  Lots of clothes, in a variety of sizes. And a WalMart 'Prices Falling' sign.

And little bits of what looked like roofing material and ceiling tiles.

"Anything good?" Harp asked.

"It's WalMart," she said as an answer.  Some of the clothes looked serviceable.  There was even an apron.  A few handfuls of bandanas...  Her handfuls, the whole pile was probably one of his.

Something clunked.  She moved a dozen T's with sparkles.  There was a scrub brush.

A human sized brush.  Rather than a rag wired to a stick.  A mop was under that.  A broom, a duster...

"I, uh, thought you might like some real stuff," the giant said.  He'd moved up without her noticing.

"I...  I was thinking that," she admitted softly.  "That with real materials, made for me, I might be better at cleaning."  Over with quicker, daily quota met sooner, needy musician satisfied.

"Yeah, uh, I said I'd get you some clothes.  And I saw...stuff.  You could...  You know, use."

"You were just passing a WalMart?" she asked.

"It could happen," Harp offered.

"I thought you ripped up the beanstalk," Evie accused.

"I did.  I grew a new one.  And ripped it up, too, okay?"

"He can do that," Harp said.  Evie shot her a glare.  She started counting time under her breath, totally absorbed in the symphony.

"But I can't," Evie said.  Asked.

"No," he said.  "No, you can't grow a beanstalk to get back to your world."

He rubbed his beard for a second, then spoke brightly, as if he'd just thought of something.

"Tell you what, though.  Let's make a deal.  I'm looking for a new wife."  

Evie had a brief moment of panic, imagining herself as the bride and the figure on top of the cake.  "Until I find her," he went on.  She breathed deeply.  "If you keep the place clean, and the food varied...just not painful?"  She nodded.  "Well, when I get married, you go back home."

"With?" Harp asked.  Then it was the giant's turn to fire her a glare.  "One, two, three, one, two, three, da, da diddle, dum, dum, dum.  Don't mind me, I'm with the orchestra."

"I was already planning to give you your weight in gold," he said to Evie.

"How long should it take you to get a new wife?" Evie asked cautiously.  

"Well," he said, scratching his beard again, "how about if you're still here in four years, I send you back with twice your weight in gold?"

"Interesting," she said.  She looked over at Harp out of the corner of her eye.  One hand flashed her an 'OK' and went on playing.

She looked back to the giant to agree.  And caught him looking at Harp the same way.

-----------

After a month, Evie finally heard the last dish clink into place on the drying rack.  The place was clean.

The mop rattled in the teacup it stayed in as she slid down the rope ladder to the floor.

She felt she was in the best shape she'd ever been in.  Climbing the ladders, toting the water, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing...  She was a lean, mean, dirt kicking machine.

Each morning started with breakfast, for her and the giant.  He left, never telling her exactly what it was he did all day.  

Then she cleaned plates until the rack was full.

Lunch was just for her, or at least there was no giant to sere.  She climbed up to Oven and got 'something to go.'  Most days she ate on the shelf with Harp.  Sometimes, though, Oven produced a tray instead of a sack lunch.  She took that as an invitation to share the meal with Oven instead.

Harp never took in personally.  

Evie spent the afternoon on floor cleaning.  She lugged a bucket (human sized) of water from the magic bucket.  Picking a spot at random, she scrubbed the floor.  That moved clothes and plates. She knew where the plates went.  And assumed the clothes went through some sort of laundering.

But they were all gone, now.  Now it was just keeping the place dusted and the floor spotless.

The master came back for dinner, then went out to see friends for the evening.  Evie was asleep when he came back.

Harp couldn't participate, but she did help.  When Evie was scrubbing, Harp played songs with a heavy beat.  Nothing like the more classical songs commanded by the giant.  She played songs Evie taught her.

Evie loved Harp.  Watching her play a heavy metal guitar solo, it made you understand the elemental force of music.

Today she had decided to reveal Beyonce.  She'd been hoarding the songs off the last album she'd bought.  With the plates finally done, she felt like celebrating.

Harp heard about half a measure and then started clapping.  Then she played.  And Evie couldn't help dancing.

She only meant to reveal one song but by the end of lunch, she'd shared the whole album.

Harp was giddy, Evie had to go back to work.  But the songs just buzzed energy down into her spine.  She couldn't get through a single song without jumping up for part of it.

The worst was 'Shoulda Putta Ring Onit."  That made her feet independent operators.

Harp noticed this and kept slipping that song into the afternoon's playlist.

Evie was up for the fifth time, dancing, when she bounced off of something in what was supposed to be a clear floor space.

She spun around, trying to hold her balance.  It didn't work.  She fell, sprawling across the floor next to her bucket.

Looking up at the giant.

He looked confused and a little offended by the music.  Or maybe he was upset that she was enjoying herself?

"A little break, sir, helps the work go quickly," she apologized.  "Not too much.  I never miss...  I always finish...  Please don't step on me?"

He bent down to scoop her up off the floor and placed her by Harp.  And stared.  Harp bit her lower lip and defiantly started the song from the beginning.

"What are you doing?" Evie hissed.

Then there was something shaking...  The whole shelf vibrated.  Evie realized that the giant was tapping his foot.

"What do the lyrics mean?" he asked.

"What she's saying is that her boyfriend fucked up.  Sir.  Excuse my French."

He made a 'move it along' gesture.  She sat back on the edge of her mattress.  "It...uh, well.  I guess we should start at the beginning?  A club is like a pub. Where people go for dancing and drinking, seeing and being seen."  

-----------

The next few months went by quickly.  With the dirt under control, Evie had more leisure time.  Harp said she should work on her singing voice.

The giant started moving Harp to the table to listen to the new songs Evie was teaching her.  He didn't quite command the human to teach more music to his Harp, but he did start to express pleasure.

He grunted and nodded.  Harp blushed and bowed and said it was all thanks to the little maid.  The giant grunted and looked away.

Then Evie was outed.

"You should hear her sing!" Harp said one night.  

"I've heard her sing," he said, but softly, willing to be corrected or coerced.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Harp said, waving it away.  "But now she's had proper instruction."

"Well, that sounds interesting," he said.  He looked down at the blushing human.  "If you want to sing, I'll listen."

"I don't know," she hesitated.  Harp decided for her.  The opening bars of 'Walk Like An Egyptian' started to play.  Evie started to back away.

Harp shot out like a striking snake.  Evie was grabbed and dragged into the air.  Next thing she knew, she was sitting on Harp's shoulders, hanging near an auxiliary set of strings.

"Hit those," Harp commanded.  Evie obeyed.  They sounded like a tambourine.  "Now play," she continued.

"Yes,'m," Evie said softly.  Harp started playing again.  When they reached the lyrics, singing felt like the most natural thing to do.  

The giant nodded his head in time.  They went on to do a couple more songs from The Bangles.

"We need nachos," the giant said during the third song.  Evie started to try to wriggle free.  But he just stood and walked over to Oven.

The door was already opening.  He grabbed the two trays of food, his and hers, and walked back to continue listening.

Evie could feel Harp's smile through her legs.  And the giant's happy tapping on the table came up through Harp's spine to Evie's tailbone.

----------

A couple of weeks after that, Evie sat quietly next to a silent but agitated harp.  

"Come on, how bad can it be?" Harp asked.

"It's just...once you get the idea," Evie said, "there's just no telling when or where you'll stop."

"Cool!"

"NOT cool!" Evie replied.  "I can only take so much of it.  It drove one boyfriend and I apart."

Harp froze.  "I couldn't do that, Evie.  No.  No, if it ever got that bad...  I'd stop, I swear."

Evie stared at her friend for a long moment.  "Okay.  Okay, you remember the song My Sharona?"

"Yeah!"  Harp started to rise, the beat aleady starting.  Evie suspected Harp had muscles connected through her tail to the base.

"WAIT!"  Harp and the drumbeat paused...  "Okay. It's called parody music.  Same tune, but... My Bologna."

"Oh, WOW!" Harp said.  She plucked a few measures.  "Ooh, my little hungry one, hungry one, open up a package of my bol-"

She paused in mid word.  Two left hands eased the human to a position behind the snake-woman's spine.

"Harp?  What is-?"

"Hssst!" Harp shushed her.

The door of the house opened and a giant walked in.  "The Ex," Harp said.

The hair literally looked like gold.  Huge waves of spun metal shone in the light of the hut.  Evie's breath caught.  Such beauty walking into view.  She started to rise to get a better view.

One sharp fingernail poked her shoulder and forced her down.

She knelt again and looked over the rest of the giant woman.  She was beautiful all over.  Evie thought of Norse gods of fertility.  Or she would have, if she could remember any names.

She stood nearly as tall as the master, long legs supporting a powerful body with generous curves.  Her features were angular, her eyes sharp as they darted back and forth over the room.

"Hmmm. Not nearly as decrepit as it should be," she muttered.  "He must be having a woman in.

"Harp," she said, without even glancing towards the shelf, "play something."

Harp rose gently and started to play.  Evie recognized the most famous cartoon death music, Chopin's Funeral March.  Evie bit down on her cheek to keep from laughing.

She wandered through to the kitchen.  "Oven, feed me.  Whatever you last cooked for Deggard."

There was some rattling in the kitchen as she looked for utensils.

Out in the living room, Evie sighed.  She'd put some effort into thinking up last night's Beef Wellington and sides.

They heard Oven's door open.  And smelled the jalapenos...

The Ex was in the giant's bathroom, moaning, when 'Deggard' came home.  He stopped at the front door.  "Who told Oven to make Huevos Rancheros muy caliente, again?"

Evie had just a moment to notice that Deggard's Spanish was better than hers.  Had he always known what she'd been saying or was this a recent development?

But then he noticed the music Harp was playing.  Evie was reminded of a line from Fear and Loathing, 'He sagged visibly, like an animal taking a bullet.'

"Where is she?" he asked.

"She asked for a meal and Oven made suicide eggs!" Harp said cheerfully.  

"Then what?" he said.  He stepped closer to the shelf, a small smile breaking out on his face.

"And she ate them!" Harp said, pausing to pump three fists victoriously.

"I have to thank Oven," he said.  He reached down casually to pluck Evie into the air.  "And thank you for teaching Oven how to make them."

"I, uh, I, well...  Please don't step on me?"  He gave a small laugh.  

"If I didn't kill you that day," he said.  His voice trailed off as the bathroom door opened.  "Shufessa!  What a pleasant surprise!"

She cleaned up well, Evie had to admit.  She might have been a little flushed, but her hair was perfect.  There was a disdainful glance down at the hand with the human in it.

Then Shufessa cocked a hip and smiled.  "Deggard, I've decided to take you back."

"Have you?" he asked.  His thumb stroked Evie's back.  He stared at the former spouse.  She became uncomfortable at his lack of response.

"Yes, uh, yes, I have.  I've reconsidered our parting words-"

"Burn in hell, you demanding jackass?" he asked.  "Those the words?"

"Yes, well, I spoke in haste."

"You wrote them," he said.  "Using calligraphy."  He turned down to the woman in his hand.  "She spent two days just finding the expensive paper she wrote them on."

"Really?" Evie asked.  "Is that her idea of haste?"

"Shut that thing up!" Shufessa snapped.  "Throw her back under the bush you found her in, and we can..."  

She remembered at the last moment to resume her come-hither pose.  "We can pick up where we left off."

He looked from her to Evie to Harp to the Door.  He stepped around her and scooped Harp off the shelf.  

Evie and Harp were placed down on the table by his favorite chair.  He sat and kicked his feet out.

"You know, dear, it strikes me."

She waited impatiently for him to complete the statement, then asked.  "What does?"

"I liked it, I did put a ring on it.  And you walked out anyway."  He shook his head sadly and stroked Harp's back.  Then he turned to look the ex full in the face.  "Get out."

Harp shifted to 'Happy Days Are Here Again.'  The giant woman stared.  

"What the hell are you doing?" she screeched.

"Well....  I don't think Oven likes you, dear.  If you stay, I'll have to eat out a lot because I think Oven's going to put jalapenos in everything."  He belched theatrically.  "And that gets old, fast."

He looked down at the duo.  "How about that one, Evie?"

"Which one, sir?"

"Mickey, fine, you're real fine?"

Harp and Evie started clapping together.  "Oh, Mickey, you're so fine."

Shufessa left before the song ended.