Lorgo dressed for his job interview. He slipped on his sleeveless tan tunic. He slipped on his stained white trousers. He slipped on his thick silver bracelets. He slipped on the puddle of gore on the floor.
The mad scientist lived in a castle on a cliff overlooking a river running behind a Super Walmart. This was convenient for Lorgo because there was a bus stop at that Super Walmart and he did not have a driver's license, just one for driving carriages and another for driving ice picks.
After Lorgo caught a ride on a bus there, the city's transportation department had to pay extra for a special cleaning that eventually got rid of the stank but not that one hoof-hole he left in the floor. (Lorgo tended to tap his foot when he got nervous.)
He was out of breath by the time he hiked up the hill, over the drawbridge, and past the werewolf chained up in the yard, but, to be fair, Lorgo was four hundred pounds and not entirely alive so he was out of breath before he did all that, too.
The rusty door knocker broke off in Lorgo's mighty grasp but his confused moan thereafter was loud enough to announce his entrance just as effectively.
The ancient door seemed to open of its own accord and revealed, standing in the entry hall lined with portraits of his ancestors, a preternaturally white-haired man in a lab coat hastily letting go of the rope-and-pulley system that caused the door to seem to open of its own accord.
"I am Doctor Pectorius. You must be Lorgo."
"Me Lorgo."
"Yes, you are Lorgo."
"Lorgo, me."
"We get it. Your name is Lorgo." The doctor cleared his throat, not with a sound but of the spider that had begun crawling across it. He gestured over to an open doorway on the left. "If you will step into my parlor."
It was a narrow room lined with bookshelves on its walls and sporting a round table with two chairs in its center. The door at the far end of the parlor was closed and had a neon sign above it that said Skriddlescratch but that was only because Lorgo never learned to read.
Doctor Pectorius went around the far side of the table and sat down. He pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his lab coat, put them on, and examined a clipboard with Lorgo's job application on it. He looked up at the interviewee.
"You can sit."
"You want Lorgo sit?"
"Yes, Lorgo sit."
The behemoth lowered his head, embarrassed.
"Lorgo tend to break chair when he sit."
"Oh," said Doctor Pectorius. "Then Lorgo stand."
The scientist tapped a frantically scrawled line on the margin of the application. "I can't help but notice that you wrote, 'Help me, he's going to kill me and maybe eat my flesh' over here. Do you mind to explain that further?"
"That not Lorgo. That nerd Lorgo made fill out job application."
"Of course. It also says that you used to work for a necromancer. How did you like that sort of work?"
"Fulfilling . . . in grave after digging corpse up."
"Promising. A large portion of the work I do here begins and ends in cemeteries but with different bodies going in and out, of course." The doctor changed subjects. "Are you comfortable working with animals?"
"Lorgo like kitties."
"How about groundhogs? Let me rephrase that. How about gigantic and now carnivorous groundhogs? Because I have one of those out back, and I need someone to clean up after it. You can't even walk back there without stepping in someone."
"Groundhog thing with big teeth and flat tail?"
"No, that's a beaver. A groundhog is like a beaver if you're like an idiot." He consulted the job application again. "Speaking of which, you forgot to write down anything under Education."
"Lorgo no go to school. Lorgo go to root cellar. Lorgo bound in chains and fed used corn cobs. Lorgo granny mean. Lorgo love granny. Lorgo therapist say Lorgo confuse abuse with affection."
"That is a plus." Doctor Pectorius drew a check mark on the job application inside a box marked childhood trauma. "So you were born with the goat feet or did you acquire them later in life?"
Lorgo shook his head. "Common misconception." He reached down and attempted to roll up the left leg of his trousers. It split in two in his indelicate grasp. He ripped both sides off at the knee. "Lorgo have ox feet. Ox ankle and down, technically."
"Very interesting." Doctor Pectorius drew another check mark inside a box marked total freakazoid. "What would you say is your biggest weakness?"
"Torches in hands of angry peasants."
"I appreciate your honesty. Not many henchmen would be so forthright."
"Lorgo reveal too much."
"Not at all. We all have our weaknesses. Even me. For instance, I have trouble sometimes controlling my unnatural abominations. That's why I order so much pizza delivered. I have to feed the groundhog something. But the local chains are getting suspicious about all their missing pizza boys. What would you say is your biggest strength?"
"These." Lorgo held up his massive hands and turned them from side to side. "Strangle, stab, throw off castle balcony. Lorgo strong."
"Good. Because pretty soon there's going to be a whole lot of reporters and military types coming up here and trying to put a stop to my fiendish ways. And I have a glass jaw." He tapped it. "Literally. That is where my groundhog first acquired its taste for human flesh."
"Lorgo has great capacity for violence."
"Excellent. Now, if you did come to work for me, your job duties would include following my every order, snatching beautiful women so I can transplant their brains into robot bodies, and werewolf walking."
"What hours?"
"From whence the sun sets to whence the sun rises." Doctor Pectorius raised a hand to the side of his mouth to whisper the next part. "Although, occasionally, we do work day-for-night. It's just easier that way."
"You no mention pay?"
"I was thinking room and board and the occasional bullwhip lash." He held up an index finger and crooked it at him. "But only when I really need to make a point about how cruel a tyrant I am."
"No. Lorgo not work for free. Lorgo expect compensation for labor. Lorgo not pushed around by fat cat. Lorgo push fat cat into milk bowl and drown it. That where Lorgo get scars on face."
Doctor Pectorius put the top of his pen near his mouth. "Then what is it that Lorgo thinks Lorgo should be paid?"
"Gold." The man-monster spread his flabby arms wide. "Lots of gold."
"Oh." Doctor Pectorius frowned a little.
But Lorgo wasn't done. "With chocolate inside."
"Excuse me?"
"Gold with chocolate inside. Lorgo like to eat those. Lorgo never bother peeling. Lorgo like the wrapping. Lorgo have digestive issues."
Doctor Pectorius cleared his throat. "You mean the chocolate coins with the gold foil around them? That's what you want to get paid in?"
"Not want," said Lorgo. He slapped his right fist against his left palm. "Demand."
The doctor smiled. "Then we have no issues. Lorgo can eat those to his heart's content."
"Lorgo heart barely beating."
Pectorius stood. He walked around the table. He held out his hand. "You're hired, Mr. Lorgo."
"Lorgo don't shake hands. Lorgo crush weakling doctor in meaty grip." The doctor yanked his hand back. "But Lorgo looking forward to working with doctor. Lorgo think it good opportunity for advancement."
"Excellent." Doctor Pectorius went to the door to the laboratory and pushed it open. Lorgo barely fit through the doorway. "In my opinion, the quickest way for advancement is to graft mutated bat wings on your back so you can fly into the windows of my enemies."
The laboratory was littered with beakers and vials and gigantic piles of guano. There was a thick slab of an operating table in the center of the room above which a massive bat was held with its wings outstretched via metal clamps. A calming narcotic was being administered to it via a gas mask.
"That come with raise?" asked Lorgo.
"Yes," said Doctor Pectorius, as he let the door to the laboratory swing shut behind him. "Up to several dozen feet off the ground."