Grease Monkeys

I frowned and stepped forward, starring into the jungle of wheels and gizmos, unsure as I moved to wipe my oily face. My handkerchief was soiled enough that it only smeared more gasoline onto my face and I groaned. Mitch was giving me his Look again. God, I hated that look. The Look that said I wasn’t doing it right, that the thing-a-ma-jig didn’t go in the what-cha-ma-call-it and could he help me pretty please?

 I’d be damned if  he would.

“While I still have dignity, old man,” I said.

“Aw, c’mon,” he had the nerve to reply. “Kid, yer not perfect. Far from it.”

The wrench in my hand was slippery, smooth and brand new but I already ruined it. I sighed and then coughed out the air, heavy with smog and exhaust fumes. My shoulders shook as I squeezed my eyes shut tight with frustration when my headache began to restart. The pain killers didn’t work anymore and this was the third mechanism that week I hadn’t been able to be fix. Father would’ve been ashamed. No. Father would’ve been rolling in his grave right about then.

“This is my house.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and my head snapped in his direction at the first sign of a mocking tone. When I glanced at him, he rolled his eyes. “Dis is yer father’s house. Ye ain’t nuddin’ but his half-assed heir. Ah always thought yer brudder shoulda been given it. A good, wholesome boy…”

“Oh-ho-ho!” I spat, tossing the wrenched across the room and stalked over to him. I wouldn’t be seeing that wrench in a while. “Dat’s rich comin’ from ye, ye ol’ blast’d geezer!”

My gloved finger was in his face before he had the time to push me back, but even then, I didn’t stop yelling as I stunted my fall with the corner of my desk and an air-bike. My finger still pointed at him, full of accusation and pent up fury at myself.

“Ye spen’ all me money off in dem pubs an’ still got da nerve to insult me in me own home!” I screeched. I quivered with rage when he laughed. “Wha’s so funny?”

“Ye like t’ talk in fancy Lowlander, but ye always go back t’ yer Highlander roots, dunt ye?” he said and smirked as I bit back my usual pout. “Think yer better dan me, but ye ain’t.” His smirk widened. “An’ Ah still think yer brudder shoulda been given it.”

“My brother,” I seethed in careful Lowlander, “didn’t want this mess. My brother wanted his pretty little job as Minister of Highland Finances and the Grand Minister’s personal pet. While my brother sits grand and nice, I slave here, unwanted and unappreciated, desperately trying to keep my father’s sinking business afloat…” I glared at him when his smirk faltered, “…desperately trying to make sure you stay employed so you have enough money to waste at the local brothels and taverns.”

He shook his head and heaved a tired breath of air, full of fake exasperation and wisdom he didn’t have. I sighed and laced my fingers together to cover my face with them as I moaned. I could feel every muscle in my body cry out for rest, reprieve, but instead I picked up a wrench like the one I threw—a fool move. It was a little rusted, a bit bent…but I fell to my knees and restarted working on the incubator.

A sharp edge snagged my finger and I watched blood pour from a gash in my skin when a bolt scratched my arm. Thick and dark, it slid down my arm as I held it up from the machine and jumped to my feet. If things had been going better I would’ve just wrapped a bandage around my arm to stop the bleeding and then finished what I’d been doing, but things weren’t going better. Everything was going wrong, and this small injury was my Godsend out of that pit of smoke and reminders of my recent shortcomings.

I raced up the stairs, pulling off my leather gloves to stretch my brown hand stained with black smudges and pushed the door open. My father’s workshop was a nightmarish wonderland, with metallic mechanisms puffing and whirring everywhere and tools scattered over every surface. The house was a whole other world, with new rules and a robot huffing smog and clean air out of its holes that told me to please take my boots off.

“This is my house, Hala,” I complained, pulling them off so she could take them and hold them off at arm’s length. “And if I don’t mind tracks of oil, you shouldn’t either. I built you.”

Hala had been crap when I built her. In fact, she had been unisex with a bunch of bugs and little ticks that once nearly got me killed. Father fixed those and gave her ‘upgrades’, but the gravitation towards the female gender was something neither of us had foreseen. I’d always thought of her as more as a butler-bot than a maidroid.

“As you say, Mistress,” she buzzed, but I knew she didn’t mean it. “It would be exquisite if you found it right to bathe yourself afore supper.”

I watched her roll away with my boots and sighed. Hala never did believe that I made her. As far as she was concerned, Father was her Father too, and I was just the clueless brat she was stuck with.

“Oh, rubbish,” I said, and yowled when my foot smarted from kicking the side of a counter. “Alder take you!” I yelled at it, and stormed out of the room before my stupidity could catch up with me.

This was not my day. I pulled open the old doors leading into the kitchen and frowned.

“Rubbish,” I muttered when I saw them there, all sitting around the table I ate at and then I frowned at Berel when she winked at me. “Out of my house, now, I’ve…I’ve had a long day and I don’t need you rift raft making it longer.”

“Cripes,” a blond lad I’d never said before hissed. “This isn’t Parva, is it?”

My frown deepened. What was with them?—bringing these verdans into my house? We were practically rebelling against their empire and there they were, bringing an unstable ally into my home. My home, that was one of the housing of the most prominent of all the kara Districts, where two generations of radical rebels once lived, the one most likely to be watched by verdans.

“Goddess, sweetheart,” Berel clucked, grinning. “Is this any way to speak to a Minister’s son?”

“I don’t care for Ministers and my brother’s one,” I said, giving him the evil eye, “so don’t think that’ll impress me anyway.”

“She’s the head of Aari House?” he asked, and I rolled my eyes, pulling myself up to stand taller.

“I am Parvati Aari, the great inventor Ishan Aari’s eldest, sister of the Minister of Finances. Who are you?”

I glared at Berel when she moved up to stand beside me but she only smirked in response and moved her arm. I didn’t know what she was going to do, but not in a mood to take chances, I swatted her hand back down and turned to blond boy. Gods, he looked smug, with his light eyes and sun kissed skin. Yes, sun kissed, as if a tan was too dark for the high and mighty likes of him and to keep with perfect verdan looks, he just sort of let the sun peck him on the cheek before he pushed her away.

“I am,” he replied puffing up his chest comically to mimic me so that the three other lads guffawed and Amala—the whore—giggled, “Dermot Raimus, son of the Grand Minister of War.”

He gave Amala a winning smile and she blushed under her tanned, mixed race skin. I scowled.

“Oh? And why have you graced my humble home with your presence?”

I didn’t take in what we were both wearing. It would’ve been too depressing to take in his freshly pressed clothes, vivid and silky, and then compare it to me in my grayish green jump suit zipped open to reveal a grease soaked t-shirt that was once white. Now, it clung to me the color of a drunk’s piss.

Dermot stood to his feet, to be the perfect gentlemen and gave me a shallow bow before he waited for me to give him a—probably deep—curtsy in return. I did no such thing. I gave him a curt nod, folded my arms under my chest, and ignored the aghast look Amala shot me. She had no right to judge me, in her short dress and cheap, themed jewelry. She looked like a trollop, sitting there in my pristine kitchen, fresh from being the epitome of a stereotypical kara street walker. The nerve of her, not even half kara and mocking us. He shrugged off my gesture with a good natured laugh and a muttered comment to Gotam who quickly chuckled in response.

Traitorous bastard.

“Why,” he said, “your dearest brother, of course.”

“Of course,” was all I said, and I knew my eyebrows were twitching along with the corner of my right eye.

Berel who was, sadly, my closest of friends, spoke up then. “You should listen t’ ‘im, Parva.” She smiled, the smile that had gotten Gotam and her soon to be husband to love her, and nudged me in the ribs.

The smile that once made Gotam take a bullet for her, the smile that once made Amala pause, but what she didn’t understand was, I was neither Gotam, Amala, nor her beloved Gregory. I only scowled down at her and tossed a piece of greenish brown hair from my face.

“I thought that was what I was doing, Berel,” I snapped back, and then turned my gaze on him. He, unlike Berel, didn’t so much as wince. “What about my brother?”

“He needs you, Parvati.”

I frowned at him, fingers sinking deeper into my flesh, and tilted my head to the side in the hopes that he was shown a new angle of rage.

“My brother’s never needed me before.” I glanced at Berel, who was leaning away from me and then at Gotam just in time to see his glare directed at—surprise, surprise—me. “What makes now different?”

“You know, I would feel better about this if it were not for our audience.”

“Then, call them off.”

He raised a fine eyebrow to me and raised two back. “But, they are your companions.”

“My companions who have let a pest into my home,” I replied, and leaned against a nearby counter, actively in the process of ignoring the dirty looks Berel gave me once she recovered. “Let the pest call them off.”

It was always the same with her. I would say something rude or mildly unkind and she would go off into a pouting fit where some knight in shining armor—Gotam, in this case—become defensive of their damsel in distress against the big bad dragon. Then, suddenly, the terrified princess would recover and the pleasure of having a few mad bitches on my hide would be bestowed upon me.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it got on my nerves.

“Berel, Gotam, Amala, the rest…get out.”

“You, madam,” one of Gotam’s friends said as he sauntered out, “are a shrew.”

“No,” I replied before he left. “I’m a bitch.”

Dermot laughed, and I rolled my eyes.

“Spit it out, then.”