The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets Read Online Free PDF

victim. She scratched and clawed at the rusty lock. The screen door had not been opened in a hundred years.
    â€œHelp me!”
    He twisted her ponytail hard and she fell backwards onto the carpet. He slammed the door shut and leaned down and slapped her. She was too frightened to cry. Her cheek burned. Her skirt was up around her waist. She tried to straighten it without his noticing, but she saw him glance at her thighs, exposed and shaking. She blushed, embarrassed by her tennis panties with the upside down pockets for the balls. She rolled to her side to get up, but he pushed her down flat on her back. He threw a leg over her waist and straddled her. He took the knife out of his pocket again.
    Now she would die.
    A drop of his sweat slid from his temple, down his chin, and onto her face. Scratch, scratch, scratch from the kitchen. Scratch, scratch, scratch. A curl of his hair fell across his forehead and he used his knife hand to smooth it back. She clearly saw his watch: 9:23. She had been at the mechanic’s shop before nine. Lacy was in Biology. Jonathan was at work. A car drove down the street outside. Where was that person going? What did they see when they looked over at this house, these closed blinds, this locked door? Nothing. No one saw or knew anything. They never would. Her body might never be found. Then Lacy wouldthink her mother had left her, dropped her off at school and never come back. Winnie couldn’t even remember what they had been fighting about.
    Scratch, scratch, scratch. It had become rhythmic and constant.
    â€œCookie!” he shouted. “Shut up!”
    Scratch, scratch, scratch.
    He climbed off her and got to his feet. “Cookie!” he said again.
    She rolled to her hands and knees and scrambled toward the kitchen. Whoever Cookie was, he or she had to help her. She crawled like a dog toward the kitchen door.
    â€œGoddamn it!” he shouted. “Don’t!”
    She pushed the door open. “Help me, please,” she cried and looked into the face of an enormous lizard. Gigantic. Its head was bigger than hers. It hissed. She screamed and clambered away, right into her kidnapper’s legs where he stood behind her.
    Cookie blinked slowly, the bottom lid coming up to meet the top.
    â€œGet up.”
    She stayed where she was.
    â€œGet up or Cookie will bite you.”
    She stood and backed up against the kitchen wall. The lizard turned away from her to watch its master as he went to the refrigerator. Inside it was like a small produce market, green, leafy, bright splotches of orange and red. She took a deep breath, grateful for the puff of cool refrigerated air. He grabbed a bag of spinach and three carrots. The entire kitchen had been turned into Cookie’s home. There was a cave built in one corner, a real boulder, and a climbing log nailed into the wood beneath the counter. And scattered on the linoleum floor were the cedar chips she had smelled.
    â€œNo wonder it’s so hot in here,” she said. “It’s for Cookie.”
    â€œYou’re a fucking genius.” He threw the vegetables into a purple dog bowl. Cookie waddled in that direction. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
    Winnie heard the pride in his voice. She knew to agree. “He is. Okay? Yes. He’s beautiful.”
    Cookie was a rusty orange, not green as she would have expected. There were olive patches here and there and his belly was whitish, but his body and forelegs were definitely orange. He had a row of spikes down his back and a large, floppy piece of skin under his neck. His eyes were small and rimmed in red. He had weird large circles of skin or scale just behind his mouth where the hinge of his jaw might be. And his legs. There was something horribly humanoid about them, the muscles so apparent under the scales, and the hands with five long jointed fingers and wicked, sharp nails. Each finger could articulate on its own.
    She couldn’t help