Three Questions

“What the hell’s a spinks? Aren’t those, like - those ugly hairless cats, or whatever?”

“Hello?”

“Yeah,” I say flatly into my phone. “Hey. I’m, uh - I’m gonna be a bit late getting in today.”

My manager is conspicuously quiet on the other end of the line. “Is… everything alright?” There’s the barest twinge of concern in his voice. Probably more concerned with the hit that the department make take to its much vaunted productivity with my absence than my well-being. Or perhaps I’m just being cynical, but I’m not in a charitable mood this morning. It’s cold and drizzly and the light of the morning sun is muted into an unkind gray by the dense layer of clouds hanging low overhead.

“I’m fine,” I say. “It’s just car issues. Kind of.”

“What kind of car issues?”

I sigh into the receiver. “There’s a sphinx on my car.”

The sphinx coiled up on the hood of my car grins with unwarranted self-satisfaction, her human lips taking on a distinctly feline bend as the revels in the warm pleasure that must come with being a problem on purpose. The long, spotted tail of a big cat squirms with sadistic delight while the aquiline wings folded against her leopardine body twitch. She’s a lovely specimen, from the chest up - bronze skin, a comely face with Mediterranean features. Modesty is not a concept her species is acquainted with, as her chest, too, is very human, and, under other circumstances, would not be something I would complain about seeing.

I hear a tinny cough come through my phone. “A what’s on your car, now?”

“A sphinx,” I repeat.

“What the hell’s a spinks? Aren’t those, like - those ugly hairless cats, or whatever?”

The Sphinx’s keen, rounded feline ears, filled with white fuzz and sprouting out from the gently falling curls of black hair, perk up as they catch the word ugly faintly slip through the receiver. The black slitted pupils set into her amber eyes narrow into thin slips. I block the receiver on my phone with a hand and briefly pull it away from my face.

“He doesn’t know what a sphinx is,” I whisper, so as to not add mauled by an enraged sphinx to the growing list of my morning miseries, right behind running out of toothpaste and no clean underwear because the girlfriend was too busy watching some shitty true crime documentary to put in the laundry last night. Though the sphinx’s claws are withdrawn, her paws are quite large and it stands to reason that the natural daggers concealed within are proportionally so.

The sudden acrimony that had materialized in the sphinx’s expression melts away as she discovers that she was, indeed, not being called ugly by my boss. She nods and rolls her eyes as if to say, Ugh. Stupid, knuckle-dragging apes.

“No,” I tell my boss. “Okay, well, yes, actually, those are sphinx cats, but - this is, like, sphinx sphinx. A real sphinx.” I’ve said sphinx so much in one sentence it stops sounding like a real word to my ears.

“A genuine specimen of Sphingidae Andropardus,” the sphinx adds. Her voice is low and husky, tinged with an unplaceable accent that, taken altogether, is not unpleasant on the ears.

I didn’t even know they’d gotten around to assigning proper Linnean name to fantastical creatures yet. Or maybe she was just making shit up. Both seemed equally likely.

“Y’know, like… a big cat with a human head.”

“And wings,” the sphinx says.

“And wings,” I tell my boss.

He grunts. “Never heard of that before.”

The sphinx makes a derisive sound.

“Yeah. Yeah, well - they’re a thing.”

“And is it, like, smart?” asks my boss.

“Very,” the sphinx says, her tail swaying with pride.

“If you mean sentient, yes,” I say.

“Then can you just ask it to move?”

“Tried that,” I tell him. “The thing is, sphinxes - they like to ask riddles. That’s, like, their whole bit, and unless you answer their st-” I catch the word stupid before it fumbles out and I throw verbal gasoline on a smoldering fire. “You answer their riddles. It’s the only way to get them to f-” I bite my lower lip while the sphinx watches expectantly, eagerly waiting for my irritation to manifest in an unwise word and tacitly grant her an excuse to do away with the niceties and just claw my face off. “Look, I just - she’s asking me this riddle, I don’t know the answer, and she isn’t going away unless I answer them right.”

“And if you answer incorrectly,” says the sphinx. “I’ll add another riddle.” She grins at the thought, displaying the neat rows of white teeth that seem more fit for the mouth of a large feline than behind the lips of a human. Still, her proposed penalty for failure seems more agreeable than the alternative, which involves being eaten.

“Riddles, huh,” my boss says under his breath. “I’m pretty good at those. I used to have this daily calendar on my desk. I think my wife bought it for me one year. Had a new riddle on it every day. Maybe I can help.”

“I think I have to answer them,” I say. Then, it occurs to me that the winged nuisance never specified whether or not I could ask for assistance. I turn to her and ask, “Hey - am I allowed to ask for help? For the riddles?”

Her eyes roll around her sockets and her lips purse with thought. She tilts her head one way, then another.

“I’ll allow it.”

How very generous of her.

“Okay. You can help. I’m gonna put you on speaker.” I pull the phone away from my face and turn on the speaker function. With a nonchalance perhaps not befitting the situation, I approach the sphinx, who continues to lounge on the hood of my car with similarly insouciance.

“Alright,” I say, holding the phone between the sphinx and I. “First question.”

The sphinx sits up a bit straighter, her wings fluttering and her womanly assets unabashedly exposed. She clears her throat.

“What,” she says, enunciating the word with unnecessary panache. “Has ten thousand letters, and naught but two words?” She arches her thick and well-shaped brows as she eyes me, confident in her abilities as a trickster and pain-in-the-ass.

“Huh…”

That’s all my boss seems to be able to say. As the silence spills from the speaker, I tap my foot against the driveway asphalt. The sphinx tilts her head from side to the other to the rhythm of a tune only she can hear.

“That’s a tough one,” my boss says. “But, um… hm.”

“Take your time,” the sphinx purrs. Her eyes slide to me, and she adds, “I’m in no rush.”

She grins. I smile back, tight-lipped and hard-eyed.

“Oh. Yeah, no - I got it. It’s a post office.”

The sphinx’s smug expression drops the same way a brick does when you throw it in the air.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, yeah. A post office. It has thousands of letters, but only two words.”

“How did you know that?” the sphinx snaps.

“I figured it out?”

“No, no, no,” the sphinx growls. “You - you must have cheated, somehow. I know you humans and your damnable little devices - you can, ah - oh, what is it? Goo-Gul these things with your dark wizardry. Scry into your black screens and bid your obscene machine gods of electric clockwork to divine even the most arcane and esoteric of matters.”

“Lady,” my boss says with a laugh. “I can’t even log into my email without help.”

“He isn’t exaggerating,” I say, careful to speak below the threshold of what my phone can pick up.

“I’m not cheating, I can promise you that,” my boss assures her. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m not that kind of guy.”

The sphinx scowls, unconvinced. She flutters her wings with irritation and glowers down at the phone.

“Very well,” she says, her voice hot with venom. “Then tell me, o wise one - what can you hold in your right hand, but never your left?”

My boss scoffs. “Easy. Your left hand.”

“Damn you!” The sphinx smacks a paw against the hood of my car. The noise it makes sounds very expensive.

“Easy,” I hiss.

She glares at me in a way that keeps me from pressing the matter.

“C’mon,” my boss says. “Give me a hard one.”

“Don’t - please don’t tempt her,” I tell him. And mine, I silently add.

The sphinx’s tail is swinging back and forth with predatory intent. Her teeth are bared and, for as agreeable as she looks with her lips sealed shut, she looks every bit the fearsome beast she really is.

“Your confidence is misplaced, fool. I shall very much delight in keeping your employees automated mobile as my personal chaise lounge when you fail!”

“Try me, lady.”

The sphinx rises to all four feet. Paws? Whatever. She looks much larger than when she was sitting down.

“What,” she spits. “Does one buy to eat… but never consumes?”

Given the wolfish grin that spreads across her face, I can tell she’s already savoring what she’s sure will be an incorrect answer.

A moment of silence. The next words from my boss’s mouth will either guarantee my freedom from this winged feline wretch, or consign me to another ten maddening minutes of their back-and-forth. I swallow and find my throat is tight with anxiety.

“A fork.”

The sphinx gives a shriek - not of dejection, but wild amusement. She reels back and slams her front paws against the hood of my much abused car. I cringe hard enough to cramp a muscle in my upper-arm.

“Wrong!” the sphinx shouts. She leans forward to yell directly into my phone, her prominent nose pressing against the sceen. “Wrong, wrong, wrong! Incorrect!”

“What?”

“The answer, you arrogant imbecile, was cutlery!”

Over the sound of my own sigh of dejection and the sphinx’s manic laughter, I can hear my boss sputtering through.

“What are you - a fork is cutlery,” he protests.

“Perhaps so, but cutlery was the proper answer, and not fork, as there are more pieces of cutlery than just a fork!”

I hear my boss give a bemused laugh. “Really? You’re really gonna split hairs like that?”

“I shall split whatever hairs I please,” the sphinx hisses. She redirects her mad revelry towards me. I meet it with an expression bereft of any emotion. It’s my one paltry form of protest - depriving her of the satisfaction of seeing me as annoyed as I truly feel. “Your foolish superior has failed you, human,” she sneers. “Your wagon is mine. Do you understand? Mine!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” I hear my boss say. “Now, wait just a minute. You said that if I got one of your riddles wrong, you’d just ask another, right?”

“Ye-e-es,” trills the sphinx. “Which means you now have to answer two more riddles to free your subordinate’s vehicle from the tyranny of my tail.”

“Okay, then. How about you quit your crowing and ask another, then?”

The sphinx’s spotted fur bristles with anticipation as she shudders with a dark, oily chuckle.

“Oh, such a glutton punishment you are,” she says with an excitement that borders on erotic. “I shall take great delight in seeing you humbled.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just shut up gimme another one.”

“Uh, hey,” I interject. “Can I go inside while you do this? It’s cold and the rain’s p-”

“Sure, whatever,” my boss interrupts.

“Be gone if you wish,” the sphinx agrees, eyeing my phone the way she might eye helpless prey. “My quarrel is no longer with you.”

“If that’s the case, can you, like… go do this somewhere else?”

“Better idea,” my boss interjects. “Hey. Spinx -

“It’s Sphinx, you dull-witted ape.”

“Whatever. I’ll make a deal with you.”

For a moment, the beast looks prepared to dismiss his bargain without even hearing it, though curiosity gradually bleeds through her expression. “I’m listening.”

“Get off my employee’s car, let him come to work, and you come down here so we can do this face to face. Mano y, er… mano y beast-o.”

“Wise though I am, I know not where you are,” says the sphinx.

“Well, if you would kindly get off my employees car, he can bring you to me.”

I choke on the sound of the suggestion. While I begin to voice my displeasure in sputtering, half-formed guttural sound that vaguely resemble words, the sphinx contemplates the proposal with an audible hum.

“Y-you - you can’t be serious.” I don’t say the words so much as I vomit them out.

“Hey. You get to come into work without taking out any PTO. I get your ass in your seat. This chick gets to ask her stupid riddles. Win, win, win.”

“You really want her in the office?”

“Sure,” my boss says. I can almost hear him shrug. “It’ll make things interesting. Break up the monotony, you know?”

I look back to the sphinx. She’s still thinking, rubbing at her chin with a paw, her dark brows furrowed. I pray to whatever higher power will listen - please don’t let her accept this offer. The idea of letting her into my car, the mental image of this glorified animal the size of a leopard lounging in the back seat, padding around the office, sitting on her haunches before my boss’s desk - it’s enough to make me nauseous.

“I shall tell you this, human,” the sphinx snarls into the phone. “I will very much delight in watching you sob when I best you.”

I breath in deeply through my nose.

“Done deal.”

I breath out deeply through my mouth.

“See you in ten,” my boss says to me. Then, to the sphinx, he adds, “And I look forward to meeting you, miss.”

“Likewise,” the sphinx purrs.

The call ends with a small electric blip. For a long, silent moment, the sphinx and I stare at one another. A chill wind winds across the driveway, causing the branches of the nearby trees to quake and chatter. A mist of rain washes over the two of us. She looks quite pleased with herself.

“Oh, don’t look so somber, now. Smile, human,” the sphinx says, showing me her teeth as she demonstrates what a smile is. “I should think a little gratitude would not be out of order. I could have said rejected your superior’s request, and we would be standing out here in the gloom for hours yet.”

The sphinx hops off the hood of my car. Standing side by side, she comes up to just about my waist. Fortunately, for all her theatrics, there’s no dents on the hood. I suppose that’s the best I could hope for.

“Thanks,” I say flatly as she begins to pad towards the back door of my car. Another sigh forces itself out of my nose as I dig my keys out of my pocket.

“Er - human.”

I glance back at the sphinx. For the first time since I found her atop my car, she appears to be experiencing an emotion other than smug satisfaction, anger, or slight puzzlement as she places her paw against the handle of back door.

“I require assistance.”

I stare at her. She stares at me with silent expectation. A thought suddenly occurs to me.

“Hold on,” I grumble.

“Where are you going?” the sphinx asks as I begin to walk back towards my house. “Do not think you can flee from me. Your employer is expecting us.” She sounds worried. Distraught, even, at the idea that I could just say screw you and screw my boss, and she may lose out on the opportunity on further torment.

I assure her I’ll be back with a single word. Fortunately, my girlfriend left for her own place of employment hours ago, before the sphinx decided to make my morning miserable, which means that I don’t have to explain what I’m doing as I rifle through her side of the closet.

“You wanna be funny, bitch?” I grumble as I flip through my girlfriend’s clothes, speaking to the sphinx knowing well she can’t hear. “Well, I’m about to be hilarious.”

When I come back out, the sphinx is still waiting for me. Why I thought she might have left of her own accord, I’m not sure. The rain is coming down harder. She’s visibly wet and her hair is damp. My backseat is going to smell like wet feline for the next forever, I just know it.

“Where did you go?” the sphinx asks, demanding, annoyed. “What were you - what is that?”

“Something you’re gonna need if you’re going into the office,” I tell her. I let the rolled-up black t-shirt in my hand unfurl. “They’re not gonna let you in, otherwise.”

It’s one I bought for my girlfriend as a gag. She’d only worn it a handful of times - always in private, usually to sleep in when she didn’t have anything else to wear. It’s one of the few articles of clothing she owns I know she’d be completely fine with me giving to a sphinx. And she’d probably be pleased if the sphinx ended up destroying it in a fit of rage.

The sphinx’s eyes narrow into slits as she studies the words printed on across the front of the shirt.

“What… what does any of that mean?”

I smile, just as she told me to. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well - I shan’t wear it.”

I shrugged. “Then I guess you aren’t coming. Unless, I mean - you brought a shirt.”

“Surely you have another.”

“For you to borrow?” I shook my head. “No. You’re lucky I’m even lending you this one."

The sphinx did an awkward, uncomfortable little dance as she shifted her weight from one paw to the other.

I don’t think she quite understood why she was supposed to be humiliated, exactly, but given the way she sat in the backseat of my car, sulking and brooding, I think she understood that a t-shirt bearing big, bold, pixelated letters in bright pink that read, IF IT DOESN’T HAVE TO DO WITH ANIME, VIDEO GAMES, OR FOOD, I DON’T CARE was not something a proud sphinx such as herself should want to be seen in.

---

“When the fantastic meets the mundane often we just have to go on with our lives...” - wise words from reader

SandmanEyes

, who left them in a comment on my last piece. Again - the muses began to sing.

Also, just for the record, there’s actually a shirt like that (several variations of it, too) and I did buy one for an ex-girlfriend one year. As a joke. An ironic joke. I wouldn’t have been willing to be seen in public with her if she wore it out.

They’re like those god awful graphic tee’s that had shit like, I HATE MY FUCKING SISTER! or NINJAS STOLE MY HOMEWORK, but for grown adults.