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.       

Chapter III

And even more tightly when you tase her voice(s)box. This is the opposite effect you were shooting for.
"So it seems," she choruses (though the choir seems somewhat diminished), "you do not want to live."
You still do not know what to say. You weigh your options:
1) Apologize for the attack, excuse it as panicked indecision, and inquire as to the woman's origin and intent.
2) Come up with a biting retort.
3) Maintain silence and hope she reads it as cool unconcern.
4) Peel her fishfingers from your hand and run.
4 seems like the obvious choice, but where to run? Where are you? Did the Cathedral of Learning turn into a beach? Are there still chimeras running at you? What percentage imagination are they? You make a mental note to investigate your surroundings once you've made this decision.
2 also seems good--not practical, perhaps, but gratifying. No, this is no time for indulgence, and besides, you'll probably botch it. Your capacity for clever discourse is buried beneath a river of hormones at the moment. In fact, let's rule out talking altogether. Scratch 1. 3 it is.
The woman is gone. And, as if she had been holding a conch shell to your ear, so is the sound of the ocean. You would have noticed that, though. Maybe you can't hear the ocean anymore because the barking has gotten a lot louder. Or closer.

You look to your left. There's a snake-dog sprint-slithering towards your foot and another mid-bound, its three faces pointed straight at you. It is three, two seconds away. The door latch behind you won't move. Cursing fate for designating you a key holder rather than a knock knower, you plunge your hand into your pocket as you fall.