Page 2 of A Merry Christmas for Art… and His Tentacles

“Sorry, Art. Didn’t mean to startle you,” I say.

With that, his tentacle slowly uncoils, he grabs the test tube, and he makes a beeline for the back of the lab. I just sigh again.

Art is adorable and sweet and utterly brilliant, but I’m guessing my chances with him are pretty slim. At least two lab assistants and one chemist all tried asking him out, and it was actually comical to watch them get shot down.

The first lab tech tried for a coffee date, which Art deflected by discussing, in depth, the effect of caffeine and sugar on lab mice in a study he recently read. He’d ended with the question as to why he would want to consume something thatcontained “biologically destructive elements,” and the poor tech had wandered off, looking deflated. He’d transferred out of the lab that afternoon.

The other lab tech had been human, and she’d learned from the last guy and had gone for the open ended, “Would you like to hang with me tonight?” Art had responded by discussing her inability to hang from anything for long periods of time because of her musculoskeletal make-up, responding that perhaps she ought to rethink her plans for the evening if they would cause her physical harm.

I’d had to stifle my giggles at that response, and I’m still not sure if Art is that adorably clueless or if he meant to turn her down.

Unfortunately, it lost us yet another lab tech, which is why we’re currently short staffed.

As if conjuring upper management with the very thought of our staff problem, I hear the voice of my harpy boss over the intercom.

“Dean and Art, please report to my office when you get a chance.”

Great. It’s really too early for a meeting with the boss. Art peeks his head around the cabinet, one tentacle snaking out before he grabs it with his hand and pulls it back.

I just give him a wave and head out of the lab, hoping whatever Frank needs doesn’t take us out of the lab for most of the day.

Art

I am sitting alarmingly close to Dean Miller. The couch in Frank’s office is tiny, and despite perching on the far corner of the cushion, there are mere inches between his shoulders and my right tentacles. That is not good. Those tentacles sometimes have a mind of their own. They also have a fondness for Dean Miller.

I still can’t believe one of them wound around his wrist this morning. How embarrassing.

“Cold morning, huh?” Dean Miller says.

I stare back at him like an idiot. That’s pretty much all I can manage around him. Either I’m slack-jawed and silent, or I’m molesting him with my tentacles. Sometimes it’s both while my metachrosis kicks in, and poor Dean gets molested by camouflaged tentacles. Because that isn’t creepy at all.

Instead of commenting on my profound social awkwardness, he smiles. This makes his distractingly symmetrical face even more appealing. My stomach flutters in response.

Where is Frank? I need to get out of here.

The door to the office opens. He spreads his enormous gray wings for a moment, then folds them neatly along his back.“Sorry. My wings are stiff from flying all the way to Paris and back last weekend. My girlfriend wanted to go shopping again. You know how it is.”

Art and I glance at each other. We’re both gay, and therefore, do not “know how it is” to have a girlfriend who insists on shopping trips to Paris. Don’t ask me how I know Dean Miller’s sexuality. It may or may not be a constant fixation of mine.

Frank walks past us to his desk, his wings rustling behind him. He’s a harpy. That means he can shift into a huge bird, with the exception of his head. But like me, he stays mostly in his human form. The main difference being that he shows off his wings, which make him look like an angel, while my tentacles make me look like the villain of a horror movie.

“I’m just gonna be real with you. The lab techs keep quitting. It’s like our lab is a bowl and the lab techs are water. I keep pouring water into the bowl, but somehow, it’s always empty. Do you want to explain that to me, Art?”

Oh, no. He’s talking to me. That means I have to say something intelligent in response. Now he’s staring at me because I’ve been silent for too long. Dean Miller is staring too.

“The bottom of the bowl is permeable?” I guess.

Frank points at me. “Exactly. Something is causing these lab techs to not like our bowl very much.”

“That would mean the bowl was repellent, not permeable.”

He sighs. “That’s the problem right there. You’re always correcting people, or you’re just plain rude to them. We’ve talked about this before.”

Unfortunately, we have talked about this before. But those times we didn’t have the “Art is failing at basic human interaction” conversation in front of Dean Miller.

“The last lab tech quit because of something you said to her. Did you know that?” Frank asks.

I shake my head. I liked Julie. Her handwriting was excellent and she never stared at my tentacles. Guilt twists in my gut as I try to figure out what I said that made her so upset she decided to quit her job.

---