Part 4

After laying a number of bills on the table, she grabbed my hand and guided me through the tables of the restaurant towards the elevators. The fates smiled on us in that moment by having the elevator doors open instead of having us wait for a good bit of time for an empty one. Unfortunately, there was a large group exiting the elevator slowly, and another decent group waiting to enter the elevator to head down once the one group was done exiting. Instead of queuing in the line, she pulled me into the stairwell. As the door slowly closed behind me I heard a worker yell, “Hey, you shouln’t go—“ Then the world seemed to pixelate around me.

“What. The. Shit.” My screams echoing into the void of pixels around us as we seemed to float through them at light speed.

“I’m sorry Travis, I had to use the pass before it expired and explaining what was going to happen to us once I did wouldn’t have helped stop you from the side effect of sudden explosive vomiting. Just deal with it, and don’t let go of my hand.”

“I feel fine, just a little dizzy.” The world sparkling and each pixel melting and pulsing around me suddenly made my stomach twist and attempt to squeeze out everything I had ever eaten in my entire life. “Blech! Oh, my god. Blech! Blech! Okay, I think I’m done. Blech!” The vomit continued to explosively rocket out of my mouth for what seemed like forever, each time taking on a different color and hue as it merged with different groupings of melting pixels passing by and through us. Then just like that, everything stopped, and we were standing on a nicely manicured yard outside of a two-story brick house. My stomach no longer retching as the violent queasiness became replaced with nervous butterflies as I became aware of what I’d done.

Shirley let go of my hand and reached around to her butt and unzipped a hidden compartment. A tail, long and skinny like a monkey’s tail, came out of the hole the zipper had left. Turning to look at me as I gaped at this tail ridiculousness she said, “Come on, this is my home. Let’s go inside.”

Guiding me to the front door, she reached out and turned the gold handle, a tumbler could be heard unlatching as a robotic voice said, “Welcome home.” The door swung open slowly revealing weathered gray wooden floors and a large family room with an open floor plan leading into what seemed to be a kitchen. Everything seemed fairly normal except for the decor on the walls. Each piece of art decor wasn’t really even decor, more like a small monitor or television. Some of them had a small girl with a monkey tail dancing, others had her fishing, and another one had on what looked to be a basketball game on filled with seven-foot tall men with tails so long they wrapped around their shoulders. One monitor had men and women hiking through a forest, their tails twitching back and forth, as some other men and women wearing collars and leashes walked ahead of them smiling and pointing at birds in the trees. Shirley didn’t seem to pay the monitors any mind, instead yelling, “Janey, where are you? Mom is home!”

Shaking my head like a swimmer with water in their ear, attempting to dust off the cobwebs from the edible and Shirley calling herself mom I asked, “You have a daughter?”

My question was answered by a stairwell lowering out of the ceiling near the wall on the right side, revealing what looked to be a fairly spacious upstairs floor. A little girl, maybe six, came running down the stairs with her tail slapping each step behind her as if they were drums to be played. She ran headlong into a kneeling Shirley’s open arms, screaming joyously, “Mom is home!”

They held one another closely for a a few minutes, their tails intertwining, until I felt the need to help them notice the elephant in the room by coughing quietly into my closed hand. Shirley and, whom I cleverly deduced to be her daughter, both turned to look up at me. The little girl’s smile falling away into confusion, she stared at me as her curiosity seemed to completely freeze her feet stiffly in place. I kneeled down to put myself at Janey’s level before saying, “Hi there, I’m Travis. Nice to meet you.”