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“Cleaning Up” by Kyell Gold
Today’s story is “Cleaning Up” by friend-of-the-fireplace Kyell Gold, who has won twelve Ursa Major awards and a Coyotl Award for his stories and novels, and his acclaimed novel "Out of Position" co-won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Novel of 2009. He helped create RAWR, the first residential furry writing workshop, and has instructed at each of its sessions through 2019.
He lives in California and is currently staying home with his partners and dog. More information about him and his books is available at www.kyellgold.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @KyellGold.
Read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.
Transcript
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,
Speaker:and today’s story is
Speaker:“Cleaning Up” by friend-of-the-fireplace Kyell Gold,
Speaker:who has won twelve Ursa Major awards and a Coyotl Award for his stories and novels,
Speaker:and his acclaimed novel "Out of Position"
Speaker:co-won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Novel of 2009. He helped create RAWR, the first residential furry writing workshop, and has instructed at each of its sessions through
Speaker:2019.
Speaker:He lives in California and is currently staying home with his partners and dog.
Speaker:More information
Speaker:about him and his books is available at www.kyellgold.com,
Speaker:and you can follow him on Twitter
Speaker:at @KyellGold. Please enjoy:
Speaker:“Cleaning Up” by Kyell Gold
Speaker:Raz pulled the plastic booties on over his feet and took a couple steps.
Speaker:It reminded him of the padded booties he’d worn as an EMT,
Speaker:only lighter and more flimsy.
Speaker:The fox rubbed the fabric between his fingers,
Speaker:then reached around back to pull the tail flap around his bushy tail.
Speaker:It sealed at the top with a Velcro strip.
Speaker:“Don’t get your fur caught in the Velcro.”
Speaker:His new boss, Kilik,
Speaker:a squat vulture with a thin neck and scarred beak,
Speaker:grinned at him from the protection of his own plastic suit.
Speaker:“Yeah, yeah. I’ve worn suits before.”
Speaker:Raz brushed a black paw over the plain
Speaker:plastic front of his suit. “Lost fur to Velcro, too.”
Speaker:“Soon’s Brike gets here we can go.”
Speaker:The vulture leaned against the big van,
Speaker:obscuring the “R” in “Recoveries.”
Speaker:He tapped a wing against the metal,
Speaker:below the letters that read, since 1997.
Speaker:“You nervous?” Cars roared by.
Speaker:Raz watched them go,
Speaker:not really looking.
Speaker:“Nah.” The fox checked his pockets for his gloves.
Speaker:“How’s the foot?” Kilik asked.
Speaker:“Fine.” The fox pressed it down into the asphalt.
Speaker:Familiar pain tingled up through his pads and calf muscle.
Speaker:“Long as I don’t have to run or do anything important.”
Speaker:“Sure, sure.” The vulture’s beak clacked.
Speaker:“Hey, there’s Brike.” A black pickup pulled into the driveway next to the building
Speaker:and paused so a tall brown rat could wave at them.
Speaker:They waved back, and it bumped up over the ramp
Speaker:and disappeared behind the Recoveries offices.
Speaker:A few minutes later,
Speaker:the big rat hurried around the corner of the building,
Speaker:plastic booties shuffling along the ground.
Speaker:“I’m here, I’m here, let’s go.”
Speaker:They piled into the van,
Speaker:Raz taking the back while Brike slid into the driver’s seat.
Speaker:When Kilik had buckled himself into the front passenger side, they pulled out.
Speaker:“You nervous?” Brike had a brash voice loud enough to make Raz’s ears flick back.
Speaker:“I’m fine,” the fox said.
Speaker:“Good.” The rat turned back to the front. “So boss,
Speaker:tell us about this ‘plague lab.’
Speaker:Sounds dicey.” Kilik brought up his tablet
Speaker:and scraped claws along the surface.
Speaker:“Basement, two rooms, up in Rahnsdorf.”
Speaker:“Rahnsdorf?” Brike whistled as he
Speaker:guided the van around a corner.
Speaker:“Don’t get to go up there often.
Speaker:What the hell is a plague lab doing there?”
Speaker:Kilik held up the tablet.
Speaker:“You remember that guy, Red March, the squirrel?
Speaker:Vicious Vixen picked him up last week?”
Speaker:“That’s his place? Ha!
Speaker:How ’bout that?” Brike called back to Raz.
Speaker:“Your first job’s a super-villain.” “Great.” Raz leaned his ear against the window and looked outside.
Speaker:“You guys do many super
Speaker:-villains?” “This is only my third.” Brike laughed.
Speaker:“This part of Berlin ain’t really a hotbed of super-villainy.”
Speaker:“I like it that way,”
Speaker:Kilik said. “I’ve done four since I started the company.
Speaker:Friend of mine does CTS decon down in Berlin proper, he gets a couple a year.”
CTS Decon:Crime and Trauma Scene Decontamination.
CTS Decon:Glorified janitors:
CTS Decon:That’s what he was now.
CTS Decon:Raz rubbed a paw along his plastic-suited leg.
CTS Decon:“I met Blink Coyote once,”
CTS Decon:he said. “Yeah?” Kilik didn’t turn around.
CTS Decon:“Bad traffic accident.
CTS Decon:We were first on the scene.
CTS Decon:He helped, teleported some of the people out of cars. And he
CTS Decon:stuck around after, shook everyone’s paws, thanked us for doing the job we did.”
CTS Decon:“Cool.” Brike chuckled.
CTS Decon:“The supers are long gone by the time we show up.”
CTS Decon:Raz fell quiet again,
CTS Decon:all the way out through the dirty brick industrial buildings and then past the big shopping mall,
CTS Decon:as the van wound its way through small houses and big parks
CTS Decon:and then past a few larger houses that each had a yard the size of a small park.
CTS Decon:That stirred Raz’s interest slightly.
CTS Decon:He hadn’t had much call to come out here:
CTS Decon:rich people didn’t have their accidents out in public.
CTS Decon:They had them in private
CTS Decon:and called discreet ambulance services
CTS Decon:and went to their own hospitals.
CTS Decon:He curled his tail up around his knees.
CTS Decon:Houses rolled by,
CTS Decon:big three-story otter houses with the shimmering light of pools inside,
CTS Decon:sprawling two-story houses with big open rooms for wolves,
CTS Decon:quirky four-story houses with small windows that
CTS Decon:Raz knew would have hallways and narrow passages where foxes and weasels and martens would feel comfortable,
CTS Decon:and houses built with large trees poking out of the roof
CTS Decon:or forming a corner of the building.
CTS Decon:It was by one of these that the van stopped,
CTS Decon:a stone house whose walls met three large oaks.
CTS Decon:Yellow police tape surrounded the rightmost tree and extended back around the side of the house,
CTS Decon:and a big plastic tarp stretched across the wide double front door.
CTS Decon:“Ginsterwäldchen-Straße 21.
CTS Decon:This is it.” Brike put the van
CTS Decon:in Park. “Yup.” Kilik unbuckled his seat belt.
CTS Decon:“That’s a squirrel house, all right.”
CTS Decon:They opened up the back of the van,
CTS Decon:and Raz hung back while the others grabbed their gear.
CTS Decon:“You’re lucky,” Brike said,
CTS Decon:passing Raz a biohazard helmet.
CTS Decon:Raz snorted and laid his ears back,
CTS Decon:examining the filters,
CTS Decon:the thick plastic shields,
CTS Decon:the extended muzzle.
CTS Decon:It looked like a generic canid model, rather than the more expensive fox-specific model, which meant his ears would be cramped and his muzzle slightly too long.
CTS Decon:“Lucky? We’re cleaning up a plague lab.
CTS Decon:Who knows what’s in there?”
CTS Decon:“Yeah, but it’s just a super-villain lab.
CTS Decon:The supers got anything really bad out.
CTS Decon:We gotta be careful,
CTS Decon:but you won’t have to sniff out body fluids, and we won’t be scraping horrible stuff off the walls or sponging it up off the floor.”
CTS Decon:“And we can just do the cleaning,”
CTS Decon:Kilik added. “No weepy relatives to coddle.”
CTS Decon:There it was. They’d talked to Raz a lot about his background dealing with people,
CTS Decon:and he’d gotten the impression that neither of them really liked it, mostly because they talked so much about how Chauncey, the armadillo who’d retired,
CTS Decon:had been great at putting people at ease.
CTS Decon:They paraded up to the house with their biohazard gear,
CTS Decon:Raz pushing the big cart that held the cleaners and the buckets.
CTS Decon:At the plastic-tarped front door,
CTS Decon:Kilik pulled out his phone.
CTS Decon:“I called him from the van,”
CTS Decon:the vulture muttered,
CTS Decon:and dug around in his pocket just as a red squirrel about twenty years older than Raz
CTS Decon:came running around the corner in a pale yellow collared shirt and corduroys.
CTS Decon:“There you guys are!”
CTS Decon:He beckoned, his disheveled tail fluttering behind him.
CTS Decon:“You have to come around the back.
CTS Decon:Sorry. They won’t rebuild the front door until the basement’s cleaned up.
CTS Decon:I’ve been living in the treehouse out back.”
CTS Decon:Around the side of the house, the police tape proliferated,
CTS Decon:stretched across ground-floor windows,
CTS Decon:a wide perimeter from the corner tree to the stone corner in the back,
CTS Decon:and across a recessed stairway leading down into the ground.
CTS Decon:Raz’s eyes rested on the stairs,
CTS Decon:the bright red and white tape across them.
CTS Decon:That’s where they’d be going.
CTS Decon:“You can get in and out through the back door,
CTS Decon:it leads to the kitchen and there’s stairs,
CTS Decon:that’s what the police used.”
CTS Decon:The squirrel barely paused for breath.
CTS Decon:“All the food in the kitchen has to go, they told me that,
CTS Decon:even the Chanterey Walnut Paste.
CTS Decon:Can you believe it?
CTS Decon:That stuff costs eighty an ounce,
CTS Decon:it’s in a sealed container, and we were living here the whole time, but now it’s no good.”
CTS Decon:“Things might’ve spilled during the fight,”
CTS Decon:Kilik said. They rounded the back corner of the house.
CTS Decon:The oak at the center of the back wall was larger than either of the two in the front,
CTS Decon:and up in its branches sat a neat little wooden frame house.
CTS Decon:In the back wall to the left of the oak,
CTS Decon:a single door with one strip of red and white tape across it waited.
CTS Decon:Kilik ripped the tape off and let it fall to the ground.
CTS Decon:“Let’s have the cart,”
CTS Decon:he said, beckoning to Raz as he and Brike put their head coverings on.
CTS Decon:So the fox threw his on as well
CTS Decon:and fastened it, then pushed the cart up while Brike held the door,
CTS Decon:but as he was pushing the cart over the threshold,
CTS Decon:he turned his head to work one of his ears free of a fold in the plastic and paused for a moment.
CTS Decon:The squirrel stood at the base of the tree,
CTS Decon:his paws clasped together.
CTS Decon:For the first time,
CTS Decon:Raz noticed that his shirt had been buttoned wrong,
CTS Decon:the top button hanging along
CTS Decon:on a corner of the collar while the second button had been fastened into the top buttonhole.
CTS Decon:He was breathing quickly, too,
CTS Decon:and his eyes were slightly wider than Raz thought were usual.
CTS Decon:It was easy to overlook stress in squirrels because of their natural excitability.
CTS Decon:Raz had learned not to do that.
CTS Decon:“Hey, Brike,” he called.
CTS Decon:“Can I stay out here and talk to this guy for a few minutes?”
CTS Decon:The rat turned and held up a paw,
CTS Decon:then called ahead to Kilik.
CTS Decon:A moment later he turned back and made an “OK” sign with his paw,
CTS Decon:then held up all five fingers.
CTS Decon:“Five minutes,” he called,
CTS Decon:and grabbed the front of the cart.
CTS Decon:Raz stepped back and took his head covering off.
CTS Decon:“Hey,” he said, “I know I don’t have a name tag yet.
CTS Decon:It’s my first day.
CTS Decon:I’m Raz.” “Oh, yeah,” the squirrel said,
CTS Decon:his eyes flicking down to Raz’s chest and then back up.
CTS Decon:“It’s cool. I didn’t notice. I’m,
CTS Decon:I’m, uh, Del. Del Masters.”
CTS Decon:“You were his…dad?”
CTS Decon:The squirrel—Del—nodded.
CTS Decon:“Yeah, it was just me and him.
CTS Decon:His mom, uh, she left fifteen, sixteen years ago.”
CTS Decon:Raz waited. He could feel in his whiskers the words building up in the squirrel, and a moment later they burst out.
CTS Decon:“Look, whatever you find in there, just…”
CTS Decon:Del wrung his paws.
CTS Decon:“Is there anything you want out of there?”
CTS Decon:“No. Maybe.” The squirrel looked toward the back door and then down at the ground.
CTS Decon:“There’s a microscope
CTS Decon:—he probably doesn’t use it much anymore.
CTS Decon:I gave it to him for his birthday when he was ten.”
CTS Decon:“I’ll keep an eye out for it.”
CTS Decon:Raz put on his best smile.
CTS Decon:“And I’ll tell the guys that whatever we can sterilize, we will.
CTS Decon:Then you can decide what you want to do with it.”
CTS Decon:“No,” Del said again. “No, just
CTS Decon:—I just want the microscope. Anything else,
CTS Decon:I don’t want it. I don’t want to know about it.”
CTS Decon:“Okay. No problem, Mr. Masters.”
CTS Decon:Del looked him in the eyes.
CTS Decon:“How old are you?” “I’m twenty-four.”
CTS Decon:“Been doing this long?”
CTS Decon:“Uh.” Raz’s ear itched, but he’d trained himself to ignore itches when in his plastic gear.
CTS Decon:“This is my first time, but I was an EMT before that for four years.”
CTS Decon:“You just get tired of trauma?”
CTS Decon:Raz shook his head.
CTS Decon:“No, sir. I slipped and landed on a piece of metal torn up from a car door.
CTS Decon:Angled just right, punched through the plastic and sliced up the back of my ankle.”
CTS Decon:Del winced. “Jesus.”
CTS Decon:“Partly severed tendon.
CTS Decon:I had to get surgery, stay off it for six months, crutches for three more, and now I can walk, but it’ll
CTS Decon:probably always hurt.
CTS Decon:I can’t be an EMT if my leg might give out at any moment.”
CTS Decon:His foot throbbed.
CTS Decon:“But I can do
CTS Decon:this.” “Helping people.”
CTS Decon:Del exhaled, and Raz caught the smell of acorn paste and bread.
CTS Decon:“Your parents must be proud of you.”
CTS Decon:The fox kept his ears upright
CTS Decon:—training, again, only for emotional safety rather than physical contaminant safety.
CTS Decon:“Actually, they wanted me to study finance.”
CTS Decon:Del watched him,
CTS Decon:waiting for him to say more.
CTS Decon:Raz rubbed one plastic-coated paw along his plastic suit.
CTS Decon:“I dropped out halfway through college.
CTS Decon:It wasn’t the numbers,
CTS Decon:it was my classmates,
CTS Decon:everyone just out to make money,
CTS Decon:nothing about what to do with that money.
CTS Decon:Charity was a way to get out of taxes, philanthropy something you did when you had literally too much money to do anything else.
CTS Decon:I hated it.” He bit off the rest of the rant;
CTS Decon:who knew if Mr. Masters was a stockbroker or something?
CTS Decon:“I mean, that was just me,
CTS Decon:but my mom is a VP at a bank and my other mom is an investment counselor.”
CTS Decon:They’d wanted him to go finish his degree when he’d injured his foot,
CTS Decon:had paid for his surgery on that condition.
CTS Decon:The squirrel didn’t say anything right away,
CTS Decon:but when Raz didn’t go on, he looked up at his house,
CTS Decon:and then back to Raz.
CTS Decon:“So they probably think this is like a slum or something.”
CTS Decon:“They live in Grunewald.”
CTS Decon:“Yup.” Del looked again at his house.
CTS Decon:Raz cleared his throat.
CTS Decon:“I like your house a lot.
CTS Decon:I live in the city.
CTS Decon:My apartment is about the size of that tarp on the front door.”
CTS Decon:The squirrel laughed, and Raz was pleased to see him relaxing.
CTS Decon:“I need to go in,” he said,
CTS Decon:“but don't worry about it.
CTS Decon:We’re going to get this all cleaned up in a day—two, tops
CTS Decon:—and I’ll get that microscope for you.”
CTS Decon:“Thanks.” Del shook his head,
CTS Decon:staring at the back door.
CTS Decon:“A super-villain. I still can’t believe it.
CTS Decon:It just doesn’t make any sense.
CTS Decon:That’s…” Raz waited while the squirrel scraped for words.
CTS Decon:“It’s just not this world.”
CTS Decon:“Well, uh.” Raz pulled words back from his training.
CTS Decon:“You’ll have your basement back and usable soon,
CTS Decon:and you can start to put this…”
CTS Decon:Not ‘all behind you,’ because his son was still alive and in jail.
CTS Decon:“Uh, into perspective, I guess?
CTS Decon:I don’t know.” “Thanks again.”
CTS Decon:At least he’d calmed down the squirrel,
CTS Decon:and Raz found to his surprise
CTS Decon:that he felt good about that.
CTS Decon:He turned impulsively after a few steps to the squirrel,
CTS Decon:still staring at the back door, lost in thought.
CTS Decon:“Mr. Masters?” “Oh.” Del’s eyes focused on him. “Hm?”
CTS Decon:“If you want to talk about it…I
CTS Decon:mean, I know with friends and relatives, it can be difficult,
CTS Decon:but…you can call Recoveries and they’ll give you my number.
CTS Decon:I’d be happy to sit down and meet you for a beer.”
CTS Decon:For the first time,
CTS Decon:the squirrel smiled what looked like a genuine smile.
CTS Decon:“Thanks. I might just take you up on that.”
CTS Decon:He looked down at Raz’s plastic booties.
CTS Decon:“You take care of that foot.
CTS Decon:Don’t step on anything.”
CTS Decon:Raz nodded. “Thanks.
CTS Decon:It’ll be fine. I mean…it hurts,
CTS Decon:but I can deal with it.”
CTS Decon:The squirrel smiled at him
CTS Decon:and walked back to his tree.
CTS Decon:Still, Raz tried not to limp as he crossed the back door and closed it behind him.
CTS Decon:His paw lingered on the door handle for a moment.
CTS Decon:These were still people here who needed help,
CTS Decon:who needed healing,
CTS Decon:and he could still help them.
CTS Decon:Maybe he wouldn’t meet any superheroes,
CTS Decon:but in that moment,
CTS Decon:that didn’t seem to matter so much.
CTS Decon:This was “Cleaning Up”
CTS Decon:by Kyell Gold, read for you by Khaki,
CTS Decon:your faithful fireside companion.
CTS Decon:For more stories you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, or on the web at thevoice.dog.
CTS Decon:Thank you for listening
CTS Decon:to The Voice of Dog
