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By Root 380 0

fundamental thing, this color of life. And I would not have believed it was so alien to them if I hadn’t seen their reaction with my own eyes. They stood still, in utter wonderment. They stood and looked out into the vast arena not just because of its improbable size but also because they had never seen anything like this. Assuming they had the same access to the color spectrum as we did, and that evolution hadn’t left them unable to see beyond whiteness, they must have been overwhelmed by the sudden engagement of a dormant part of their brains. And what can be said of that ceiling? Even though they surely knew the sky it represented, still they had to be awed by this human interpretation of the heavens. It was visible how much the scene moved them, and not just in their faces and eyes but in their very spines. I could see their shivers, even under their robes. As I watched them take in the vastness of it all, I began to see the shivers increasing, nearly to the point of convulsion. It was the heat. It was exactly the same reaction Augustus had had on entry to the BioDome earlier. Understanding what was affecting him, that there was no way he could handle this temperature for too long, the horrible beast looked at me and made motions to his mouth, chomping his disgusting jowls in a pantomime that left no hideous detail to the imagination.

“AAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!” he finished with, throwing his head back and showing his fangs impatiently.

Aargh indeed. The child, perhaps sensing that the stream held cooling liquid, ran toward its banks with the universal glee of youth and laid its head straight down. Leaning in to lap up the Kool-Aid contents timidly, like a fawn. Moving away from the child and toward Karvel’s deck, Sausage Nose kept a heavy hand on my shoulder, leaning down on it either to brace himself as he adjusted to walking on grass or to keep me from getting too far away from him. The creature didn’t release me until I led him directly to the many cooking pans that still lay forlorn across the dinner table. Before I could even offer these remains, he was all over them, forgoing hands and lifting the pans directly to his mouth to scrape them with his dry alabaster tongue.

“More food,” I said, pointing off toward the freezer. There lay the trays of pudding, each one having been boiled with the remainder of the rat bait for a definitive conclusion, in case the main course dosage failed to do its job. “I’m going to get more poison, to kill you,” I added, offering the most servile of smiles before slowly moving away. Despite my physical caution, I still almost had a glass baking pan thrown at my head by the monster and probably would have if at the last minute the brute had not noticed the morsels of Betty Crocker’s classic bread turkey stuffing stuck to the sides of it.

Augustus. It was not until just then, when I looked directly at the freezer door, that I realized my favorite Tekelian was still locked inside. Not wanting his presence to be revealed, not wanting our most recent guests to have an emotional reaction to this probable traitor, I barely opened the door before going through. And Augustus was still there, lying facedown in the back amid a few half-eaten Pillsbury crescent rolls. I was first struck by the smell. You would think that the frozen air would delete some of this stench, but no. The little storage room was putrid with Augustus’s stank, which was so much more rank than usual. Soon I could see why: fecal liquid emerging from the midsection of his robes poured into a puddle around his limp body. It was even whiter than his hair; if it wasn’t for the stank odor, I would’ve thought it was yogurt.

“Augustus? You’ve shit yourself,” I called to him, first in a whisper and then repeated with increasing volume with each unanswered entreaty. Getting as close as my nose would allow, I reached out for his shoulder. What I held in my hand was hard, and it was not that muscle had miraculously appeared since the last time I had touched my ally. I wanted to convince myself otherwise, but I knew what I would find even