Chapter 15

The next day at work, the pet store was in a roar. It wasn’t that it was more busy than usual, at least if you mean in the sense that there were an excess of customers, but the animals were busy being noisy. The Hamsterphants had discovered that if they trumpeted (they didn’t really sound trumpety, though, more squeaky), the birds would respond by squawking, and then the doggish animals would respond to that by barking, and pretty soon none of them would shut the hell up.

David liked it better when there was just the occasional twitter. This new lively pet store didn’t suit him, what with it being lively and all.

“The animals seem happy,” Kit said when she arrived for her shift.

“Happy? How do you know they’re happy? They could just be trying to tell each other to be quiet.”

It wasn’t the most ridiculous idea in the world. David couldn’t even understand Spanish, so why should anyone expect different species to understand one another?

“I always thought it was weird this store was so quiet,” Kit continued.

“It wasn’t weird; it was just a moment of silence for their fallen comrades.”

“But they were almost always silent.”

“There were a lot of fallen comrades.”

Indeed, before the customers had started coming in, most of the animals that arrived at the store lived and eventually died there. David was pretty sure the animal version of the Grim Reaper used to hang out there, to save on travel expenses and all.

“Hey David, there are no Guinea-Rats in the Guinea-Rats terrarium.”

“Did we sell them all?”

“No.”

“Oh. Okay. Also, did we get a purple snake today?”

“No, but we used to—“ David rushed over and looked in the Guinea-Rats terrarium to see a rather full purple snake lounging about. “Oh, thank god.”

It was good to know it wasn’t in his car.

Rodney took another drink. “So, what’d you do with it?”

“I killed the damn thing, put it on ice, and called around to see if any restaurants serve snake.”

“And?”

“They don’t,” David said. “But, for some reason, Pie’d Piper took it.”

“The bakery?”

“Uh-huh.” David had already decided he wouldn’t be eating at Pie’d Piper again anytime soon.

“I’m surprised Kit let you snuff it.”

“Well, it did eat all the Guinea-Rats, so it didn’t exactly make a good first impression.”

She didn’t like David killing the snake, but she liked the idea of an invisible snake killing the other animals in the store even less.

“What the hell is a Guinea-Rat, anyway?”

“Um… small?”

Rodney almost said something about David’s answer, decided against it, and instead took a drink. Sometimes, having a conversation with David required a lot of drinking.

David thought the same thing about having conversations with Rodney.

The next day was a Mano day, so as usual David threw himself into his work to distract himself from thinking. He bought cheap goldfish from another pet store and put them one by one in the Quat’s little pool. It seemed to enjoy chasing the fish and eating them, though it had trouble pawing at the things with its webbed duck feet.

He tried to play with it in other ways, like with a feather on a string, but without cat paws the most the creature could do was get itself tangled up. And the little balls with bells in them were useless without paws or teeth. Pretty much everything a cat could do was useless for this poor creature, and no one exactly made toys for ducks.

It was things like this that made David think scientists were dicks.

At lunch, he went next door to Molded Sandwiches and grabbed something to eat. Mostly, he just got it so he could feeds bits of bread to the Quat. It was like tossing bread to ducks in a pond, except this one had fur instead of feathers and it was in a pool instead of a pond in a pet store instead of a park. But other than that, it was just like feeding ducks at the park.

When his shift ended, he didn’t say anything to Mano; he just let it happen.

David woke up that morning in a strange bed, a hot girl in a red negligee lying next to him.

What the… MANO!

David could hear the rabbit yawning in his head. What is it?

What the hell am I doing here?!

Right now, you’re screaming in my head.

You dick! I’m in a strange girl’s bedroom!

Well, you didn’t want me taking anyone back to your place, did you?

That’s not what I meant! Why the hell am I still here?!

I’m sorry; they wore me out.

They?

David glanced down and saw a second girl under the sheets.

Jealousy mixed with the horror. He always missed the good stuff.

David dressed quickly and slipped quietly out of the apartment. It was his first time ever having to do so, and he found out very quickly that Rodney was right: avoiding creaky floorboards was almost impossible, and every noise was a thunderclap in the silence.

He hated when Rodney was right about something; it meant he might be right about other things, too. No one wants friends to be right about anything.

David?

David was about to say he was in the process of opening the backpack so Mano could get some air, but that wasn’t what the rabbit was worried about.

RUN!

David’s groggy reflexes didn’t react quickly enough, and a moment later an arm wrapped around his neck. The pressure made his face feel like it was swelling and his ears began to ring. Panic set in for just a moment before his body became weak. Darkness closed in on all sides and the world disappeared.