NOVEL FROG Jerry
Space: empty, vast, black. Dark despite the light of a million stars, a void of nothing. An endless expanse of…expanse. A wasteland of twisted sky and littered scrap and-a pawnshop?
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Jerry scratched his stomach as he pursued the wares of the strange store he had stumbled upon while drifting through the edges of this galaxy. He grunted and put down the magazine he was looking at, plodding instead over to the rack of assorted armor and what appeared to be weaponry. He picked up what he recognized as a blaster and pointed it at the wall dramatically-well as dramatically as Jerry probably did anything in his life.
A splutter of protest came from the front desk as the store owner watched Jerry pick up the space gun and point it at his wall like a cowboy with some sort of disease affecting mobility-lockjaw or something, Jim had trouble recalling ancient diseases affecting mobility in cowboys while starting at the unidentified alien about to blow a hole in his wall and kill him.
However Jerry didn’t plan on blowing a hole in this nice man’s store today-Jerry was simply doing Jerry things, like pretending to fire a blaster inside a space sealed building without regard for his surroundings, or the implications of his actions ,or in fact the possibility that the gun may fire from the motion of it being ‘fired’ as some models across the wide universe are know for doing. The man behind the counter had dealt with a lot of Jerrys across his ownership lifetime, and he was bound to deal with a lot more before his tenure as pawnshop broker ended-a reality that was not entirely thrilling.
So Jerry the Alien put down the blaster-not exactly in the place he had found it but somewhere he deemed close enough-and went back to scratching his belly. He plodded towards the front desk and ignored the other racks filled with what the store had to offer. His two good eyes spared a moment to survey the glass section of counter for whatever highlighted goods it may be offering before he closed the final distance between him and desk. Jerry flopped down the dripping mound of purplish flesh he was holding in his non scratching hand down on to the till, a green trail winded throughout the store, showing all the places where Jerry and his dripping bundle had traveled- perhaps enticing others to follow in his heavy footsteps. Jerry paused in his scratching to gurgle speak a few words to the odd pink creature in front of him.
‘You buy my good’
His stomach burgled in time with his words, the exposed skin rippling of its own accord like Jerry had spent so many years as a professional belly dancer he could subconsciously move his belly in time to his speech.
So it was that Jerry stood there and made a fateful sale to Jim behind the counter, bare apart from the apron that lay draped around his lower half. His alien words were warbling and haphazardly translated, his two good eyes blinking intensely and occasional dead skin flaking to the floor from his stomach area.
Jim nodded slightly bewildered as he scanned the lump of flesh to make sure it wasn’t an egg or egg baring. Egg check confirmed he blinked slowly back at Jerry for a moment before recovering and eyeballing the strange slightly rolled up scrap of thing slowly pooling blood onto his counter. ‘500 credits?’ He asked with expectant eyebrows raised. The translator garbled at Jerry causing him to blink slightly slower and wider in response. ‘500!? Terrible price’ Jerry garbled back offended. A master of of alien cross counter bidding at this point Jim smacked his translator in mock irritation. ‘5000, 5000’ he said quickly as if to compensate for the machines mistake. However as a pensive look came across Jerry’s two good eyes and ostrich egg shaped double chin(his third eye underneath the top two was staring lidless and piercing into Jim’s soul) he failed to realize that he may of spoken a little too quickly or hit the translator a little too hard. ‘55000 erhee. Good deal, but if want pistol too’. Jim’s mind exploded 55000??!!!?for that, and at what is apparently a bad enough price he wants one of my most expensive pistols too. Trying not to show the shock rebounding around his human brain Jim nodded/bobbed his head back-somewhat stupidly with mouth somewhat open. Laughing-well probably laughing as the sound wasn’t translated- Jerry mimicked Jim’s stupefied nod mistaking it for a gesture of a friendly sale and moved to leave. ‘My friend goodbye’ the translator spit out as the actually somewhat pleasant alien turned around and plodded happily out the store, grappling Jim’s most expensive blaster out of its stand as he did so(not the one he had worried Jim so much with earlier).
Jim took a few seconds to process what had happened, noting the slime like trail Jerry had left on his way in and the ashy skin he had littered everywhere on the way out. Finally he looked down at the chunk of something or someone he had just payed for with well over half the sum of all his stored funds. The cube that had formed in Jim’s till over the course of the conversation-bigger then any Jim had ever seen-popped itself out of its socket and flew through the closing gap of Jim’s glass front doors after whom it was owed too.
As the 55000 credits flew away to deposit themselves in either the pocket of Jerry or his ship(probably the ship as he was just wearing the one apron unfortunately) Jim forced himself to leave his stupor and put on his favourite and currently only gloves(you went through gloves fast in this business he had found). He picked up the still leaking bundle and walked on to the back to deposit it in his big fridge, placing it on the sort shelf. He created a nice and safe triple layered box on the interface to store it, liquid glass/resin material flowing out of the shelf to encompass the flesh. The big fridge automaticity scanned the biometric makeup of whatever you put in to find the optimal storage temperature. In this case the fridge actually heated itself to around 80 degrees Celsius before cooling itself to 48.35. This caused the flesh to begin to wriggle and return to a starting shade of bright purple before going inert at a much more average grey. Jim just shook his head, not surprised at the possibility that the stuff was impossibly alive. He pulled the tray that pushed up out the fridge, opened the box with a gesture and snapped a brief photo. He took the image out and expanded it before plastering it over the clean section of counter. He then went and placed the tray on a clear section of shelving far from other biological material before grabbing his vacuum to suck up the debris left in his establishment. Jim sighed as he wondered why out of all the people who lived upon the earth he'd been the one spirited away to run a pawnshop on the edge of a far edge galaxy and why it had to have happened when he was changing into his pajamas.