Wonderland 2020

B-3: Où est ma chatte?

WONDERLAND
B. "The Pool of Tears" | 3. "Où est ma chatte?"

Prompt ▼

You are a stranger in a foreign land – try to communicate with the locals in an attempt to find your missing pet – short story. (<1000 words)

The only thing worse than needing to ask for help in a frontier town is needing to ask for help in a frontier town that doesn't speak your language. But such circumstances were par for the course in uncharted space. This particular town on this particular planet was the nexus point for a trio of mines that operated nearby. Each mining company would send their representatives here to acquire additional supplies, which made this little one-street town as much of a hub of activity as any city center.

What brought me here wasn’t an appreciation for the fine work of mining, or this particular planet’s lovely desert-centric climate and topography. No, it was the fact that Marshmallow escaped again. Some days, I really regret genetically engineering my snow-white Pomeranian mix with advanced human-level intelligence and extra opposable digits on his paws. I mean, sure, it’s great for companionship and a little extra help around the space cruiser during those long hauls between planets, but it’s a real pain when it’s the third time this week you’ve clearly told him “no” to taking one of the surface-landers down to a planet to look around and he does it anyway.

And now I find myself trying to track Marshmallow down on some backwater planet where Galactic Standard and any of the other twenty languages I speak have been received with a look of disdain usually reserved for sex criminals, agents of the Imperium, or holovangelists.

Against one of the outer walls of one of the buildings was a series of pictures with numbers listed below them. On many planets, people might call this a “notice board” or a “community connections board.” Even though I had no idea how the local currency converted against what I was carrying, I was confident the exchange rate was favorable and I could put up a good reward for finding my beloved Marshmallow. If my words didn’t work, maybe my numbers would.

I had just finished printing up a flyer using the crude but effective printer in my surface-lander and was in the process of tacking it up when I heard a commotion behind me. Someone was riding into town on a horse, fast, dragging something in the dirt behind him.

He rode right up to the building I was currently posting my flyer on.

He hopped off his horse and strode up to the notice board. He skimmed the flyers posted there, pulled one off, and tossed it onto the canvas-wrapped lump he had been dragging behind his horse. The local sheriff or magistrate or whatever they were called on this planet hurried over and opened the canvas wrapping, revealing a bloody, barely-alive humanoid that may have borne some passing resemblance to the face on the poster. The sheriff nodded, drew a blaster, and fired it into the prisoner’s head, then tossed a small bag of coins to the rider.

I looked at the board again and couldn’t help but notice the vast majority of faces on the “community connections” board were scowling, outlaw-looking individuals.

I quietly removed Marshmallow’s “missing dog” poster, crumpled it up, and pocketed it.

Finding Marshmallow was going to be harder than I thought...


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537 words