Chapter 4

Lawrence Selzer was in his office drinking. It was 10am, which meant he’d been in his office too long to still be completely sober. Oh, he didn’t get drunk at work; that would be wrong. But he did get fuzzy-headed enough to make the endless days a little more bearable.

He couldn’t hear anything going on in the store, which meant today was just like every other day. Normally that would be fine, but he paid a lot of money to get in Super Happy Pet Love Magazine, and so far he hadn’t seen dick for returns on his investment.

It was time to go out there and see how he could blame this on David.

Selzer crashed through his office door like a storm, the kind of storm that stumbles a bit and bumps its shoulder clumsily on the corner. It may have also hit its foot with the door.

Now Selzer could hear talking. Was there a customer in the store after all?

He rushed out to greet his return on investment only to find David looking at him with an expression that suggested he was guilty of something that would inevitably cause Selzer problems. There also seemed to be a small white rabbit sitting on the counter.

“What the hell are you doing?” Selzer demanded.

“Uh… Just talking to myself, sir.”

Selzer gave him a look that said this was an unacceptable use of company time.

“I, uh, read that thinking out loud is helpful for coming up with, uh, ideas,” David said. “New ways to improve business.”

Selzer eyed his employee carefully and decided that if David came up with even one money-making idea it would be worth it. He tromped back to his office and poured himself another bourbon.

A couple of young people, looking carefully bored and wearing a lot of black clothing and ripped fishnets, entered Bob’s Pets. They each wore spiked dog collars around their necks, part of the uniform for young people rebelling against conformity; after all, you can’t be non-conformist unless you abide by the rules of non-conformist fashion. It’s a phase most youths grow out of, because at some point it becomes too much effort to keep up a style their parents stopped complaining about ages ago, and the money they used to spend on a pair of artfully ripped jeans could buy a life-saving amount of Ramen.

The couple’s presence alone was a black hole, sucking all the light and joy from the store. But, considering the lights were fluorescent and any joy had left long ago anyway, it was actually a vast improvement. David decided purposefully depressed youths should visit the store more often.

He wondered how they even ended up at Bob’s Pets. Maybe they’d gone to Between the Lines, the book store to the west of Gourmet Grinders. Or maybe they came from Next Next Gen, the game shop two doors east of Bob’s Pets. Either way, ending up in the pet store seemed like an ignorant mistake on their part.

David started out by showing them the sea monkeys. The expressions on the boy and girl’s faces didn’t change, but they somehow exuded a more profound sense of boredom.

They don’t want those.

Next, David tried showing them the bird-mice. The couple’s boredom threatened to become a weather anomaly that would require state-wide evacuation.

They don’t want those, either.

Then what do they want?

They’ll want the Devil Dog.

What?! No one wants the Devil Dog.

How would you know? Have you ever tried selling it to anyone?

Yes, David thought instinctively. Mano waited a moment, and finally David conceded. No.

That’s what I thought. Sell them the damn Devil Dog.

David forced a smile and led the couple to the glass that separated customers from the less people-friendly animals. He tried not to sound nervous as he pointed to the cage that contained the slavering beast affectionately known as the Devil Dog.

The girl’s face lit up with something like glee for a moment before she quickly replaced it with her practiced apathy. Her boyfriend didn’t do glee; he just watched her and acknowledged her approval by doing, as far as David could tell, nothing.

“We’ll take it,” the male non-conformist said.

David’s eyes went wide; he wasn’t as skilled at erasing his emotions as his two customers.

“Really?”

“It’s perfect,” the girl said.

David said some other inconsequential stuff, some of which may have just been noises of disbelief, and then went back behind the protective glass to get the Devil Dog. Rather than risk the thing biting his new customers and scaring them off (and the possible resulting lawsuit), he dragged the cage into the main store. The metal screeched against the tile floor, and it was heavier and more cumbersome than Sisyphus’s boulder, but keeping the beast behind bars was the better option.

“What’s it eat?” the girl said as David rang them up.

“It eats raw meat and the souls of innocents,” David said, not even pausing to look up from the cash register.

“Wicked,” the girl said with a smile; her canines looked dangerously sharp. David didn’t notice and wouldn’t have cared if he did.

We have customers, paying customers. Did Selzer’s stupid magazine article work?

“Hey,” David said. “Can I ask… What brought you into Bob’s Pets today?”

“Oh,” the guy said. “Well, we overheard this sushi chef talking about a store that sells all kinds of fucked up animals. It sounded crazy, so we decided to check it out.”

Of course, why w—Ow! What the hell…

David felt two pinpricks of scorching heat attacking his neck. He looked down to see the Devil Dog’s red eyes focused on his jugular.

He quickened his pace, giving the customers their receipt (and a copy of the waiver they signed) and helping them out the door as politely fast as possible, all the while wondering what kind of fruit baskets sushi chefs enjoy.

David returned to his apartment with a smile on his face and Mano in his arms. He was still in a good mood after getting rid of the much maligned Devil Dog; expelling the hell-born, face-mauling beast from the store really seemed to brighten the place up, literally and metaphorically.

“David, you’re back!” Amanda flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around him. She squeezed her body against David’s chest, forgetting the small rabbit in his arms. Luckily, Mano didn’t mind.

Soft…

David gave the rabbit a dirty look and dropped it to the floor.

“Your text was so sweet,” Amanda said, letting go just enough so she could look up and see David’s face. “Did Mano keep you company?”

“Yeah, he was—“

“That’s great!” She squeezed him again, threatening the structural integrity of his ribcage. “You’re back just in time, too. I—“

Dammit, this is why I wanted you to stay here. You’re supposed to distract her from writing.

Shut up and man up.

“—need you to take me in the closet.”

“The closet?” David said. “Our closet is kinda busy, holding our clothes and stuff.”

“The coat closet, silly.”

“That’s even worse. The coat closet has coats in it, and our vacuum cleaner.”

“It’s not supposed to be comfortable,” Amanda said. “It’s supposed to be cramped and clandestine.”

“Well, it’ll certainly be cramped…” David muttered.

His girlfriend hardly seemed to be listening to him as she pulled him toward the space-impaired coat closet. There was hardly room for one person in there much less two, but that was probably the point.

Next time you complain about pink lacy things, I won’t care. You can man up, too, you mother fu—

Mano didn’t respond, but David could feel it laughing at him. He was never bringing that stupid rabbit to work with him again.

The next morning, David walked into the store, decidedly unhappy about the white rabbit in his arms. Selzer gave him a disapproving look but didn’t say anything. Instead, the boss shifted his gaze to a new terrarium and pointed at it in a manner that suggested the glass case had maliciously insulted him and his dead mother.

“What did we get this time?”

“It’s another snake,” Selzer said. “I hate snakes. Did we ever find the last one?”

By “we,” he meant David.

“No,” David said, trying not to think about it. “Does this one turn invisible, too?”

“I don’t think so,” Selzer said. “I’m calling this one a ‘nine-heads.’”

“Nine heads?”

David peered into the terrarium; the large green snake inside did indeed have nine hungry-looking heads.

“It’s $350,” Selzer said and promptly walked away.

David grabbed a permanent marker and a piece of poster board and, without hesitating, wrote “Hydra: $350.”

Compared to his boss, David sometimes seemed almost competent. It would have made David happy if Selzer weren’t such a detriment to sales. Somehow, having no experience in the art of business gave David a better head for it.

“And David, make sure to feed each of its heads,” Selzer said before entering his office. “I don’t want one of them starving.”

“Yusero oh,” David said, loud enough so that he felt better but quiet enough so that Selzer wouldn’t fire him.

Wow, I should have known you’d butcher the Japanese language just like you do the English one.

“Shut up,” David said. “I’m still not happy with you.”

“What? Because you had to have sex with your girlfriend?”

“It feels like I still have vacuum attachments poking at my ass,” David said. “And she made me do it in the kitchen, too. The stove burned holes in my shirt!”

If rabbits could raise an eyebrow in derision, Mano was doing it now.

“I got it at a concert!”

“Stop whining,” Mano said. “It was a fucking bootleg shirt, anyway.”

The energy went out of David and his annoyance turned into pouting. “That’s not the point…” he grumbled.

Mano could have left it there, but tormenting David was becoming his new pastime; maybe if he tried hard enough it would become an Olympic sport. “You know she’s going to have some new, uncomfortable sexual escapade that requires your participation by the time you get home.”

“Fuck you,” David said, defeat crushing his spine and forcing him into an even more awkward slump. Rabbits shouldn’t be this astute. It just wasn’t right.

After standing in silence for a few minutes, David’s boredom became unbearable.

“Do you think we’ll get another customer today?”

“It’s doubtful,” Mano said. “Yesterday was an anomaly.”

David nodded.

“You’re never going to get a raise if you don’t sell anything,” Mano said.

“I wish I could sell off these god-forsaken creatures,” David said. “No one wants the genetic monstrosities, no matter how cheap they are. And no one’s willing to pay the exorbitant amounts of money the boss demands for the more appealing ones.”

“You could do something about it.”

“Maybe,” David said. “But not today. I’m really not in the mood to do any work right now.”

“DAVID!”

There was Selzer, as if on cue.

“MAKE SURE YOU CLEAN THOSE CAGES OUT GOOD!”

“Fucking hell,” David grumbled.

David grabbed the gloves and cleaning supplies and sulked his way to the cages, muttering under his breath the entire time.

“I will pay you a shiny Florin to stop whinging,” Mano said.

“I don’t know what that is,” David said, “but I know you don’t have it.”

Mano sighed. “I’ll clean the cages for you if you promise not to complain for the rest of the day.”

“Sure,” David said. “But I think you’re gonna have trouble holding this scrub brush.”

“You are daft, aren’t you?”

David didn’t respond.

“We can switch places,” Mano said.

“Oh, can we?” If sarcasm were acid, the shop’s floor would have melted.

“If you let me borrow your body, I’ll do the dirty work.”

“No,” David said. “Even if you could… especially if you could, no.”

David knelt in front of the first cage and picked up the spray bottle of carcinogenic cleaning solution. The smell from the cage threatened to make him vomit. He reached toward the cage, backed away before touching it, and then tried reaching toward the cage again. Finally, after the fifth attempt, he gave up.

“Will it hurt?”

“No,” Mano said.

“How can I be sure you’ll give it back?”

Mano sighed. “Even if I didn’t give your body back, you’d get it back the first time I fell asleep. But I don’t want to keep your disgusting human body, anyway.”

“You can really do this?”

“Yes,” Mano said. “But you have to promise not to complain for the rest of the day.”

“I can do that.”

“You promise?”

“I swear,” David said.

Mano helped David relinquish control of his body, and David’s world went dark.

A moment later it brightened back up, but all human thought was gone; all that was left was an overpowering hunger for carrots.

Mano spent a bit of time getting used to David’s body. It was gangly, unwieldy, and fingers were especially strange. David’s body wouldn’t have been his first choice, but it would do.

When he got used to using his hands, he picked up David the rabbit and looked him over. Mano had never realized how small he was; he could cup the rabbit in his two human hands.

Those genetic engineers are real dicks, Mano thought. They couldn’t have merged human DNA with a tiger’s or something?

There was probably a very good reason the scientists didn’t do that, and Mano wishing they had was proof that they made the right decision.

The store looked a lot different from this perspective. He was used to seeing the floor, people’s feet; if he was lucky he’d get to be on the counter and see people’s torsos. He walked around, taking in the view. It was like a whole new world from this height.

Mano finished acclimating to his new body and returned to the area behind the viewing glass. He made quick work of cleaning the cages. It wasn’t pleasant, but sometimes unpleasant things were necessary.

Mano looked down at the rabbit. “Can you understand me?”

The rabbit looked at him blankly. It might have twitched its nose slightly.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

David had lost all human cognition when he moved to the rabbit’s body.

Mano grabbed a pencil and some scrap paper and sat down on the floor. He watched the bird-mice and captured their movements on paper. It only took him a few sketches to get the hang of it.

This drawing stuff is nowhere near as hard as David makes it out to be.

Thirty minutes later Mano stopped, put the pencil away, and buried the crumpled papers at the bottom of the trash can.

David would have taken three times as long to clean the cages, so even with the extra half-hour Mano came out ahead. He gently guided David back into his body and returned to being a rabbit. It took David’s mind a few minutes to readjust to its human home. Mano watched, patient and quiet. David had a weak mind that couldn’t even keep its shape in an animal brain, but japing him about it wasn’t worth the future trouble it would cause.

The human yawned and stretched like he’d just woken up from a nap. The world came back into focus, and it took him another couple of minutes to accept that he’d just switched places with a rabbit. He couldn’t remember anything about being a rabbit, but time had passed and the cages were clean.

“That… that worked…?”

“Of course it did.”

David stood behind the counter in silence. He wasn’t sure what to do now. He had just switched places with a rabbit.

The silence became unbearable. “What the hell do I do now?”

“What do you normally do?”

“Complain.”

Silence.

“What’s the opposite of complaining?”

“For most people, happiness,” Mano answered. “For you, silence.”

“Silence is boring,” David said. “How can I do the happiness thing?”

“You could try having sex with someone who’s not your girlfriend,” Mano said. “Maybe that would improve your attitude.”

David smiled bitterly and flipped Mano off.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Mano said. “There are eunuchs less sexually discontented than you are. Why are you still with Amanda when you’re so incompatible?”

“We’re not incompatible.”

“Sexually incompatible, you—“ Mano paused mid-sentence. “Wait, is Amanda the only girl you’ve ever been with?”

David didn’t answer, which was just as bad as the answer he would have given, anyway. Mano’s derisive laughter crashed through his skull like a herd of stampeding elephants. It wasn’t pleasant. Or encouraging.

“I’m leaving you at home tomorrow.”

“You’ll be bored out of your mind within five minutes if you do.”

“I would never think that far ahead,” David said. It would’ve been true, too, if Mano hadn’t reminded him.

It wasn’t fair for a rabbit to be this astute.

Tonight, like most nights David could manage, was a drinking night.

“I’m dropping you off at the apartment after work before I meet Rodney at the bar.”

“No, you’re not,” Mano said.

“What? Yes I am,” David said. “I am not taking you to the bar with me.”

“If you stop off at the apartment, Amanda will commandeer your services, and you know it.”

David paused and thought about it for a moment. “Fuck…”

“You’re taking me with you.”

“I don’t want you to come with me.”

Mano laughed in his head. “What you want is so irrelevant it’s almost beyond belief.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“But I’m still coming with you.”

It was true; Mano did indeed accompany David to the bar. David had a ratty backpack in his trunk that was perfect for hiding a small rabbit in, and part of what made it perfect was that Mano hated it in there. David tried to hide his smile and failed miserably. Well, actually, he failed happily, very happily.

“You have a backpack,” Rodney said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Yeah, I um…” David was terrible at this kind of thing. “I brought my Walkman with me to work today, and I don’t want to leave it in my car.”

“I don’t know what’s sadder,” Rodney said. “The fact that you still use a Walkman or that you think someone would ever bother to pinch it.”

Rather than respond with anything that might keep the conversation going, David shrugged. A moment later the waitress was there, promptly setting mugs of beer in front of each of them.

Jesus, look at those things.

The sudden interruption startled David.

What the- Why can’t you just sit in there quietly?

Why can’t you stop staring at the waitress’s tits?

David didn’t respond.

You know, it’s not cheating if you don’t stick it inside her—

I don’t think that’s true.

—and any girl would love a pearl necklace.

That’s disgusting.

He could feel the rabbit raise its eyebrow. Then why are you getting hard?

David managed to catch himself before he actually looked down at his crotch. He didn’t need to see his pants tenting to know.

It was going to be a long night.

“We finally hired that intern last week,” Rodney said. “I showed her around the booth today.” He smiled and winked at David to drive his point home.

He didn’t fuck her, Mano interjected.

What?

They just made out.

Why would he—

Your incompetence with women makes him feel superior.

He sighed inwardly. I’d really rather not know these things.

I know.

David stealthily kicked the backpack to remind the rabbit which one of them was bigger.

“She’s got tits like watermelons,” Rodney continued.

Is that a lie, too?

Not as much as you’d like it to be.

The waitress returned and placed new mugs of beer in front of them, making sure she brushed against David as she did so.

Stop blushing, you pitiful moron. She’s just saving up for a pair of boots.

Ah, yes, that explained a lot.

Still, if your cock is interested in finding out if they’re as soft as they look…

David glanced across the bar at the restroom door. He had no intention of propositioning the waitress, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t clear his head. At this point, it’d only take him about 90 seconds, anyway.

Pathetic.

Mano was right, but David excused himself for a minute, anyway.