RETURNS

6303 Arcus

Finally the girl comes one day on her regular visit, and her look tells me that she knows what I have done. She grins, the pupils of her red eyes tiny. “Your pets.”

“Are they to your liking?”

That grating, choking laugh again. She reaches into a pouch at her side very slowly, and extricates a small mass of mangled flesh, holding it by the nubbin of its tail. “They’ll make a good dinner for you. Here.” She throws it on the floor by my chair, and leaves.

The specimen she has dissected reveals to me that she has found its demorphin-secreting glands. Unfortunately for my dinner enjoyment, I hadn’t thought to make the shix better-tasting than streetrat.

I want to know whether some of the shixen had gotten free, whether some of the children had escaped being affected, but now there is no one to ask.