Chapter 10

Hands sweaty, breath quickening, you realize your anxiety is getting out of hand. The presence of a polycephalic dog should be enough to spawn anxiety such as this, but deep in your heart, you know this isn't the case. Doc's fine. Doc's no problem in fact. Your dreams of bellow-neck women are no problem. Even the thugs from UPMC are no problem. These are all challenges in the physical world and can therefore be addressed directly with running shoes, knives, boltcutters, lockpicking tools, garden hoes, pens, pencils, high-speed internet, whips, chains, cyanide toothcaps, attack raccoons, or any combination thereof.
The problem is Jeffy. The problem has always been Jeffy. Charming though she is, he's always been somewhat of a dominating supervisor. She came on strong to you the first day you were hired, and you've been dealing with his tongue-and-cheek advances ever since. But whose tongue? And whose cheek? At first you thought you knew, but now you're not so sure. The sodium lights blaze through the crooked blinds, creating one stripe of pale orange across Jeffy's bangs, another across one eye and the bridge of the nose, another across the other eye and check, and down, and down. Your eyes follow the topography of shadow stripe down Jeffy's face and neck.
Shit. What a dilemma. Reality hits you. You're horny as fuck, and you know if you take Jeffy home you'll end up having sex. And it'll be complicated. And there'll be drama. And it'll be messy. And it'll be sloppy. And it'll be exciting. And it'll be hot. So fucking hot.
Shit. You realize the long silence has gone waaaaay past awkward o'clock, and all you're doing now is trying to mask your excitement/fear/anxiety by taking deep breaths. Something has to happen now. Once again, you weigh your options, numbered:
1. You say whatever you have to say right there in front of Doc.
2. You insist on taking Jeffy someplace neutral, perhaps with lots of people around.
3. You take Jeffy back to your house and tell her your theory on raccoon-dog conspiracies.
4. You tell him in the kitchen.
5. You tell her in your room.
6. Jeffy on top.
7. You on top.
In the bathtub.
On the floor.
Against the wall.
Shit. No, not shit, like actual feces. Just shit. As in, make the goddamn decision already.
"Actually," you say, "My place it is."
Jeffy's mouth breaks into a quizzical smile, which you can see perfectly by the light of a pale orange stripe. "Seriously?" he says.
"Seriously," you say, "Right now, before I change my mind." There's no bother to lock the door, because with Doc there, anyone would be a fool to try to rob the place.
You bike down the alleyways, despite the higher chance of running into enlarged raccoon gangs or killer cyber-deer. It beats dodging traffic on Butler Street. Up 54th Street, up and up, and still up, and you're always thankful in moments like this that you don't ride a fixie. You lock your bikes to the bottom of the stairs at the top of the hill, where the road ends for vehicles and can only be continued by those pedestrians fearless enough to trek the stairway through the woods. This is the only way to get to your house, and it keeps the riff-raff out. Unfortunately, it's also a life-threatening endeavor every time you need to go home or leave the house. The woods are notoriously a haven for all kinds of creatures who may or may not want to kidnap you and eat you for dinner or plant cyborg parts into you in the name of science. The stairs are also overgrown with foliage and littered with broken glass.
Your leatherman has a battery-operated forcefield though, and you were smart enough to charge it up at the shop. Jeffy carries a taser and a switchblade. You climb the stairs quietly and get to the top without incident. "Great," you think, "that'll just mean double-unluck on the way down I guess."
Your home, as it were, is actually a half-finished house overlooking Lawrenceville. Someone paid an architect a hell of a lot of money several years ago to design this place, and then the money ran out, and the hill started collapsing down into 53rd Street, and the house was abandoned. The first time you saw it, you thought it was the most magical place in all of Pittsburgh. You finished the upper floor so that it's habitable all year round, but in the spring and summer you pretty much spend your house time on the still bare framed first floor, with the windowless exterior walls and the view of the whole city.
"I never get sick of this view," Jeffy says, "So, is there something you wanted to tell me about the raccoons?"
As you lean in close enough to feel Jeffy's breath on your face, you realize that of all the words poised on your tongue ready to come out, none of them have anything to do with raccoons.

Chapter 7

    You head towards home, where an extended family of raccoons have recently taken over, a rather embarrassing situation for someone of your profession.  During the day, when you're usually out anyway, they don't bother you, but once the sun's gone, you have to be too, or they will attack.  You know this because you tried to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with them the second night of their stay.  They said no and bit you, purportedly because their first day there you tazed each of them while they slept, bagged them and dropped them in a heap in Schenley Park.
    You underestimated their memory capacity, and now for the last few weeks you've been producing some mystifying sea foamy pus.  You've also been couch hopping at night.  Unfortunately, you're running out of hospitable friends, and apparently your place holds some charm for the raccoons apart from food.  Though you never find any scraps when you're home during the day, they must be bringing their own, because you've sterilized the place of all things edible or once edible, and they haven't shown any sign of moving out. 
    Pretty soon you're going to have to resort to asking Jeffy for a place to crash.  You don't want to.  Although, this might be a good opportunity to stop her drooling over you with your own sticky discharge.  The pus.  From the bite-wounds.  No, it'll never work.  Even as a host for rampant infection, you're unbearably attractive.
    When you and Doc arrive at your house, it is just about raccoon o'clock.  You pray to the god of snake-dogs, who you concede is whichever devious college kid created Doc and his siblings (assuming they are of the same litter, of course), that Doc isn't full and pacified from the dog treats and the stuffed fox, then push open the door.
    You overestimated your memory capacity, because the raccoons are significantly larger than you remember them being.  By the light coming in from the porch you can make out maybe five enormities huddled together on top of the kitchen counter.  They seem to be deliberating over whatever is in the center of their circle.  Doc isn't lunging ferociously at the pack of intruders, so you nudge him towards them.  He slithers up to the group and sniffs.  The raccoon nearest him turns its glowing eyes and lets its head fall towards him, its neck lengthening.  More glowing eyes creep out from under the table, behind the counter and through the doorway to the living room as Doc and the raccoon sniff each others' faces.
    All those eyes are floating towards you, and now so are the heads of Doc's new acquaintance and its discussion group.       

Chap IV

Ah, a pocketful of Universal Dog Treats. Some say that diamonds are a girl's best friend—but forget all that poppycock. Those clichés are only truth for the people who can afford them, or strive hard enough to realistically fake it. Unruly dog-leopard-snake-creature beasts know not the language that birthed everyman's token response—Dogs: Can't live with 'em, can't avoid stepping in their poop in the hallway after the new roommate neglected taking his parka-liner pooch for a walk. You know the saying, right?

Universal Dog Treats, No Bake Version–Author Unknown

One pound of fresh, never frozen ground beef
Vegetable Oil
Two cups of Vital Wheat Gluten
One quarter cup of shredded, fresh raw ginger root
A dozen garlic bulbs
Two cups of oats

Begin by pulling out your garlic crusher and pulverizing the garlic. Let it marinate in the raw meat as it festers gnats and promotes seemingly unsolicited growth of fly eggs into larvae; this adds protein and crunch, which is important for taming dogs of the Cerberus variety, a group in which this episode's nearby beast would most definitely have been classified. Darwin's "Origin of Species" could never have documented such genetic gumbo.
After the meat has collected enough wriggling, infantile insects, toss it all into a lightly oiled skillet (preferably cast iron) on high heat; let the meat brown, then add the ginger and stir.
Once the mixture is cooked completely through, mix in the oats to absorb excess liquid, and then the gluten. Gluten adds a rubbery, raw flesh appeal to the biscuit, which makes it suitable for all situations a dogcatcher might find himself in. Cut the now-solid glob into various-sized chunks, but do make sure that none of them are too large to fit, at minimum, five in a regulation-sized pant pocket. Sure, other dog catchers are going to smell the treats from across the floor at the pound, and they'll definitely make you feel as if you're walking around with sacs of frog legs on your person, but just remember who'll get the best commission in the Once Volatile, Now Domesticated Dogs and Otherwise Uncategorized Creature category.

The scene played out like a bad sci-fi story: One breath ended in the middle of a suspenseful scene, the next started with two pacified dogs, owners of an undetermined amount of faces and scales, waiting attentively on the hallway floor for orders.

"I'd tell you to sit, but I'm not sure who's qualified to give commands around here."

The three-headed beast's two outer heads opened their eyes wide in comprehension, revealing the middle to be a prosthetic addition to enhance fear and confusion when confronted with too many options in deciding where to pet a dog with too many petting combinations. As if the glue had worn off with the left and right heads' admittance to playing tri-headed tricks, the middle head fell off to reveal a tangled mess of wires beneath.

"I didn't need to take Wiring Beneath Fur: An introduction to Mammalian Cyborg Design to see that one coming," you say to yourself, because no one else could possibly be listening right now. "It's time to find out who's been signing up for extra time in the cyborg lab this month…"