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Description
Note: I went back and edited this to fix formatting issues and remove extraneous words.

Thanks to and for their help with editing this!

Content warning: violence, mild gore.
Mandy’s Arcade Escapade
By Joshua Reynard

  The sign said “FELIX’S FUNHOUSE”. OK, it actually said “FE IX S UNHOUSE” – a few of the letters had fallen down. Faded stripes of red, blue, and yellow trimmed the top of the grimy off-white wall. Mandy Thompkins wasn’t sure if her client, local vending machine and arcade game “magnate” Andrew Mills, actually owned this building or not. Oh well, that wasn’t her problem. He said he was too busy to come by to unlock it, and that he’d lost the key. Given how disorganized the guy’s office was, she believed him. That key was probably buried underneath a stack of papers or tucked away in one of the filing cabinets. So there she was outside of the building around 9 PM, picking the lock. A couple of cars drove by, and she froze up, but they didn’t stop or show any other signs of noticing her. Her dark green jacket and black fur made her difficult to spot in the late spring twilight.
  When she finally picked the lock and got inside, she noticed that the walls inside the front door were flanked by amateurish murals of the arcade’s mascots – a fox wearing a black jacket, a chubby lady raccoon wearing a pink dress, a gray mouse wearing a green vest, and a brown otter with diamond-encrusted spectacles and a pinstripe suit. They almost looked like they were watching Mandy as she passed through the entrance and entered the arcade area.
  Mandy’s flashlight beam swept through several rows of old arcade games. There were a few titles she recognized from when she was little – Space Patrol, Kangaroo Klash, and Rodent Racers – along with many she’d never heard of before. Maybe they still had quarters left in them? She considered prying one open on her way out if she had time. But the arcade machines weren’t lined up the way they’d been whenever this place was last open. They were strewn about haphazardly, as if someone just shoved them in here without putting any thought into it.
  Mr. Mills – who preferred to go by Andy – had told her to look for a VHS tape. Mandy didn’t want to know what was on it. Whether it was something unsavory and disgusting, or just some boring training video, it was none of her business. She reasoned it would be in some back office somewhere, so she looked around for any doors that might lead to one.
  Mandy turned left and navigated the maze of broken arcade cabinets, boxes of electronic components, dusty rolls of tickets, pinball machines with the glass smashed in, and even a few gutted video poker terminal carcasses. She’d made it to the prize counter on the other side of the room from the entrance. There were a few prizes there – old neon-colored plush toys, candy that was almost certainly stale, and a few plastic trinkets – but they weren’t the prize she was seeking.
  A few steps to the right of the counter was the prize she was after: a door labeled “EMPLOYEES ONLY.” Mills was paying her for this, she reasoned, so she was technically an employee. She pried open the door with one paw, pointed her flashlight with the other paw, and scanned the room. More broken arcade cabinets, a vending machine, stacks of boxes, and shelves full of bits and pieces of various machines.
  And that’s when she saw something that made her heart skip a beat. On the other side of the room, to her left, was a pair of glowing eyes. After the initial surprise, Mandy calmed down. This wasn’t anything abnormal. Many people’s eyes – including Mandy’s – had tapetum lucidum that reflected light like that. The eyes belonged to a female red fox dressed in a stereotypical gypsy dress and seated inside one of those “fortune teller” booths. “FRANCINE THE FANTASTIC,” said a dusty sign atop the booth. It was just a cheesy carnival animatronic, like the kind Mandy had seen on the midways during her days as a carny.
  Mandy was relieved she wouldn’t have to deal with unwanted company, but she couldn’t stop imagining the animatronic slipping out of its box and skulking around. She wanted to just shut the door on it and leave. But just past the animatronic, there was a big CRT TV on a cart with a VCR and a stack of VHS tapes. Maybe one of them was the one she was looking for.
  She didn’t take her eyes off that animatronic while she made her way across the room. She found her way forward by touch, her prehensile tail serving as an extra feeler. When she got to the TV cart, she sifted through the stack of VHS tapes. They were all old sitcoms. None of them were the tape she was looking for, “Birthday 1995.” She checked the VCR, but it was empty. Oh, well. No tape here. She’d keep looking elsewhere. As she went back across the room, eyes still locked onto that animatronic, she thought about the eyes. They weren’t real, right? So why were they glowing? Probably just fluorescent paint, she reasoned. It helped add to the mysterious and otherworldly look of the character. But her rationalizations didn’t stop her from feeling an instinctual sense of uneasiness.
  Mandy turned to her left when she walked out the door and headed towards the party room. There was a straightforward path between that back area and the party room, with the arcade cabinets arranged in some semblance of a neat row. There was a big, open entrance to the party room, with a banner over it saying “PARTY ROOM” in red, blue, yellow, and green.
  This room wasn’t in complete disarray – in fact, it was actually neat and clean. Maybe even more so than when the place was open. There was a solitary table with a tattered tablecloth bearing a very ‘90s geometric pattern. A solitary blue chair was at the table, facing towards the stage. The giant signs saying “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and “PARTY TIME!” everywhere left no doubt about what the purpose of this room was, in case the banner over the entrance hadn’t made that clear. To her left was a stage with the curtains drawn.
  Mandy doubted she’d find that VHS tape here, but she should at least give it a look. Maybe it was in a storage area backstage. She found another “EMPLOYEES ONLY” sign on a door near the stage area and decided to go check it out.
  Sweeping the room from left to right, she found a giant air compressor, a shelf full of tapes, a desk with a computer on it, and a rack of audio equipment. Wait, that was a TV next to the computer – a CRT on top of a VCR. And right in front of it was a whole stack of VHS tapes. She rushed over to the desk and pawed through them. “PlayZone training,” “Employee Orientation,” “Birthday Show,” “Literal Vixens: Live And Uncensored!” (how did that get in there?), and finally, there it was. The tape she’d come for, labeled “Birthday 1995.” She hadn’t expected it to be this easy to find. She had been starting to worry she’d have to spend weeks combing this place if she actually wanted to find the video tape, and Mills wasn’t paying her enough for that. But here it was in her paws, after only about fifteen minutes inside the building. It was almost too easy.
  As a rule, she never watched videos her customers had her pick up or deliver for them. The less she knew about their business, the better. But she did briefly wonder what made this guy so eager to retrieve this tape, and there was a VCR and a TV right there.
  And that’s when she noticed something odd. The VCR’s vacuum fluorescent display was stuck on a blinking “12:00.” Andy had told her the power had been cut and that she’d need a flashlight. She’d tried the light switch in the foyer, but it didn’t work, so she believed him. She assumed that he was so scatterbrained he’d forgotten to pay the power bill for this building. Just out of curiosity, she reached behind her with her prehensile tail and flicked the light switch near the door. And the lights came on. She shrugged, turned the lights back off, and left the room.
  Mandy had her back turned towards the stage as she made her way out of the room, but then she heard a whirring noise. She turned back towards the stage to see the curtain go up and the stage lights come on, revealing four animatronic animals. A sign announced that they were “Felix Fox and his Forest Four.” Standing front and center was the fox from the mural, holding an electric guitar. The raccoon was seated behind a drum set. The mouse held a bass guitar. And the otter stood behind an electric keyboard of some sort.
  Oh great, Mandy said to herself, here comes a musical number.
  The speakers crackled to life and emitted a steady electronic hum. Felix and his band opened their mouths like they were about to sing. Mandy didn’t feel like sticking around for the show. She would die of cringe if she tried. She turned to run, but a roller door came down from overhead and blocked the path to the arcade.
  She turned and ran out through the dining hall, in the general direction of the entrance. While she did, the speakers crackled to life and blared a synthetic pastiche of 1950s rock-and-roll.
Birth-day, birthday
Birth-day, birthday
Birth-day, birthday
Birth-day, birthday
Come celebrate with us
Celebrating your birthday
We’re gonna have a party
Partying our special way
There’s cake and presents and ice cream
It’ll be lots of fun
We are here, spreading cheer
The party’s just begun!

  That had to be the most ridiculous thing Mandy had ever heard, and she used to work with clowns. She raced towards the exit, but out of the darkness of the entryway emerged something she was really hoping she wouldn’t see…
  It was Francine, the animatronic fox from earlier. Its movements were stiff and wooden except for the occasional spasm. It moved in front of the glass doors, blocking Mandy’s way out.
  Mandy reached into her jacket and grabbed her handgun. She aimed at the animatronic outside, but as she did, she heard a clanking sound coming from the stage.
  She turned her head to see the animatronics making their way down two ramps, one ramp on each side of the stage. These things weren’t running, but they were walking very quickly. Mandy fired at them, and the bullets found their marks. Each of the four animatronics now had a gaping hole in its chest, a hole that oozed a reddish-brown fluid. But the things kept walking towards her, albeit with more spasms and twitches. She turned back towards the door and saw that Francine stood right outside.
  Mandy threw open the door and fired at Francine’s head at point-blank range. The bullet tore a hole in Francine’s skull, but that didn’t stop the fox. Francine pushed Mandy to the ground with surprising force. The other four animatronics approached, each one grabbing her by the limb, and pulled her into the kitchen. Mandy, still holding her gun, fired another round at each of them. But in her struggle, she’d missed her shots. She hit Francine on the leg and the otter on the tail. More reddish-brown stuff leaked everywhere. But the onslaught continued.
  The otter and mouse grabbed Mandy’s arm and wrested the pistol from her. The animatronics were freakishly strong, but also oddly… warm? Something didn’t feel right. She also noticed there were tubes connected to their backs that ran up to big mechanical arms on the ceiling.
  When they got to the kitchen, the overhead lights clicked on and began to buzz loudly. Mandy looked around the room and saw some standard restaurant kitchen appliances surrounded by lots of out-of-place laboratory items. She’d never seen EEG monitors, centrifuges, soldering irons, dialysis machines, syringes, spectrometers, or oscilloscopes in a kitchen before. Tubes and wires ran along the ceiling and into what appeared to be a heavily modified commercial-grade refrigerator.
  A door opened, and this time it wasn’t another animatronic – it was a somewhat chubby and disheveled coyote wearing a lab coat, two Power Paws (video game controller gloves that could track hand positions and motion), and a virtual reality headset. Mandy recognized him right away, even though he’d thrown a coat on over the faded hair metal band tee-shirt he’d been wearing earlier.
  “I thought you were busy,” said Mandy.
  Mills grinned. “You bet I was! I was busy watching you the whole time from the back office.” Mandy cursed herself silently for ignoring the security cameras. She was normally so careful to avoid those.
  Mills gestured towards a nearby table with his Power Paws, and the animatronics pushed Mandy onto it. Mills then took off the Power Paws and VR headset and exchanged them for a pair of lab goggles and rubber gloves sitting on a nearby counter.
  “So,” he said as he strapped Mandy to the table, “how did you like the show?”
  Mandy spat in his face. “That’s what I think of it, you son of a-”
  “Not a fan, I see,” Mills interrupted. “I’ll change that pretty soon. Nothing a lobotomy can’t fix.”
  Was this guy for real? Mandy wondered. Was he actually going to lobotomize her? She’d met guys who would do that sort of thing, but none of them wanted to do it to her. They paid her to go find other people for them to mutilate. She herself wasn’t the victim, and that’s the way she preferred it.
  Wait… the tubes, the lab equipment, the bottle of chloroform Mills was soaking a rag with – it all came together. Those things weren’t really animatronics – they were zombies. Their bodies sustained by some jury-rigged life-support system, but not properly alive. And somehow, Mills had control over them.
  “We can have so much fun together, you and I.” Mills looked like he was starting to drool. “You know, binturong chicks are pretty hot...”
  Mandy felt her stomach turn. She wished this guy was a standard serial killer rather than being whatever this freak was.
  “Mandy and Andy, it’s got quite a nice ring to it…” he chimed.
  This had gone far enough.
  Mandy had one appendage Mills hadn’t secured, something he hadn’t needed to secure on any of his previous victims – her tail. She grabbed Mills’ leg and pulled him to the floor, causing the chloroform to spill. Next, she pulled the surgical tray to the floor, pelting Mills with medical instruments. Nothing sharp hit him anywhere critical, but it at least elicited a yelp of pain. Mandy used another trick from her carnival days to catch a surgical knife with her tail. She lifted it to her left leg and cut the restraint. With her newly-freed forepaw, she grabbed the knife from her tail and freed the other forepaw. The animatronics stood motionless, waiting for Mills’ next command. Mandy sat up and cut her legs free as Mills got up off the floor.
  Mandy tackled the otter that held her pistol. He didn’t put up a fight because Mills was too preoccupied to move him around. She got her gun back and aimed it at Mills’ head.
  Mills stood up, putting his paws in the air. “Woah, calm down, no need to escalate things!”
“Escalate things?!” Mandy shouted. “You tried to cut me open and turn me into an animatronic puppet and you want to talk about escalating things!? Well, escalate this!” She pulled the trigger.
  Mills’ body fell to the ground. The gunshot ricocheted through the building. Mandy’s ears rang. She’d be deaf by the time she was forty if she had to keep doing this, but she’d be dead by the time she was forty if she didn’t.
  Mandy made a break for the exit. She thought about what she'd been through. How many people had she delivered into the claws of psychos like Mills? She didn't have to imagine being in their position because she had been there herself a few moments earlier. Good thing she had a prehensile tail and a weapon. The formerly-living “animatronic” creatures in there hadn’t been so lucky.
  Maybe I should stop accepting job offers from obvious creepy weirdos, thought Mandy as she drove away. Then, another thought came to her. She’d just broken into a building and killed somebody, but she hadn’t actually broken any laws! She wasn’t trespassing, she’d thought about stealing but hadn’t actually done it, and killing Mills was clearly done in self-defense. There was probably even video evidence to prove it, thanks to the security cameras he had been using to watch her. So maybe she could go straight after all…
  But those thoughts were interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. She pulled it out of her coat pocket and put it on speaker mode.
  “Is this Miss Mandy Thompkins?” asked a feminine voice on the other end.
  “Yeah, that’d be me,” replied Mandy. “Who’s asking?”
  “Well,” replied the voice, “this is Rosie Alice Metzger, owner and head chef of Rosie’s Enchanted Bakery. Now, I heard you might be able to get some special and rather rare ingredients for me. And I’ll make sure it’s worth your while…”
  When Rosie started discussing prices, Mandy’s eyes lit up. And just like that, all thoughts of Mills and his house of horrors were gone. Onto the next job.

Description
Note: I went back and edited this to fix formatting issues and remove extraneous words.

Thanks to and for their help with editing this!

Content warning: violence, mild gore.
Mandy’s Arcade Escapade
By Joshua Reynard

  The sign said “FELIX’S FUNHOUSE”. OK, it actually said “FE IX S UNHOUSE” – a few of the letters had fallen down. Faded stripes of red, blue, and yellow trimmed the top of the grimy off-white wall. Mandy Thompkins wasn’t sure if her client, local vending machine and arcade game “magnate” Andrew Mills, actually owned this building or not. Oh well, that wasn’t her problem. He said he was too busy to come by to unlock it, and that he’d lost the key. Given how disorganized the guy’s office was, she believed him. That key was probably buried underneath a stack of papers or tucked away in one of the filing cabinets. So there she was outside of the building around 9 PM, picking the lock. A couple of cars drove by, and she froze up, but they didn’t stop or show any other signs of noticing her. Her dark green jacket and black fur made her difficult to spot in the late spring twilight.
  When she finally picked the lock and got inside, she noticed that the walls inside the front door were flanked by amateurish murals of the arcade’s mascots – a fox wearing a black jacket, a chubby lady raccoon wearing a pink dress, a gray mouse wearing a green vest, and a brown otter with diamond-encrusted spectacles and a pinstripe suit. They almost looked like they were watching Mandy as she passed through the entrance and entered the arcade area.
  Mandy’s flashlight beam swept through several rows of old arcade games. There were a few titles she recognized from when she was little – Space Patrol, Kangaroo Klash, and Rodent Racers – along with many she’d never heard of before. Maybe they still had quarters left in them? She considered prying one open on her way out if she had time. But the arcade machines weren’t lined up the way they’d been whenever this place was last open. They were strewn about haphazardly, as if someone just shoved them in here without putting any thought into it.
  Mr. Mills – who preferred to go by Andy – had told her to look for a VHS tape. Mandy didn’t want to know what was on it. Whether it was something unsavory and disgusting, or just some boring training video, it was none of her business. She reasoned it would be in some back office somewhere, so she looked around for any doors that might lead to one.
  Mandy turned left and navigated the maze of broken arcade cabinets, boxes of electronic components, dusty rolls of tickets, pinball machines with the glass smashed in, and even a few gutted video poker terminal carcasses. She’d made it to the prize counter on the other side of the room from the entrance. There were a few prizes there – old neon-colored plush toys, candy that was almost certainly stale, and a few plastic trinkets – but they weren’t the prize she was seeking.
  A few steps to the right of the counter was the prize she was after: a door labeled “EMPLOYEES ONLY.” Mills was paying her for this, she reasoned, so she was technically an employee. She pried open the door with one paw, pointed her flashlight with the other paw, and scanned the room. More broken arcade cabinets, a vending machine, stacks of boxes, and shelves full of bits and pieces of various machines.
  And that’s when she saw something that made her heart skip a beat. On the other side of the room, to her left, was a pair of glowing eyes. After the initial surprise, Mandy calmed down. This wasn’t anything abnormal. Many people’s eyes – including Mandy’s – had tapetum lucidum that reflected light like that. The eyes belonged to a female red fox dressed in a stereotypical gypsy dress and seated inside one of those “fortune teller” booths. “FRANCINE THE FANTASTIC,” said a dusty sign atop the booth. It was just a cheesy carnival animatronic, like the kind Mandy had seen on the midways during her days as a carny.
  Mandy was relieved she wouldn’t have to deal with unwanted company, but she couldn’t stop imagining the animatronic slipping out of its box and skulking around. She wanted to just shut the door on it and leave. But just past the animatronic, there was a big CRT TV on a cart with a VCR and a stack of VHS tapes. Maybe one of them was the one she was looking for.
  She didn’t take her eyes off that animatronic while she made her way across the room. She found her way forward by touch, her prehensile tail serving as an extra feeler. When she got to the TV cart, she sifted through the stack of VHS tapes. They were all old sitcoms. None of them were the tape she was looking for, “Birthday 1995.” She checked the VCR, but it was empty. Oh, well. No tape here. She’d keep looking elsewhere. As she went back across the room, eyes still locked onto that animatronic, she thought about the eyes. They weren’t real, right? So why were they glowing? Probably just fluorescent paint, she reasoned. It helped add to the mysterious and otherworldly look of the character. But her rationalizations didn’t stop her from feeling an instinctual sense of uneasiness.
  Mandy turned to her left when she walked out the door and headed towards the party room. There was a straightforward path between that back area and the party room, with the arcade cabinets arranged in some semblance of a neat row. There was a big, open entrance to the party room, with a banner over it saying “PARTY ROOM” in red, blue, yellow, and green.
  This room wasn’t in complete disarray – in fact, it was actually neat and clean. Maybe even more so than when the place was open. There was a solitary table with a tattered tablecloth bearing a very ‘90s geometric pattern. A solitary blue chair was at the table, facing towards the stage. The giant signs saying “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and “PARTY TIME!” everywhere left no doubt about what the purpose of this room was, in case the banner over the entrance hadn’t made that clear. To her left was a stage with the curtains drawn.
  Mandy doubted she’d find that VHS tape here, but she should at least give it a look. Maybe it was in a storage area backstage. She found another “EMPLOYEES ONLY” sign on a door near the stage area and decided to go check it out.
  Sweeping the room from left to right, she found a giant air compressor, a shelf full of tapes, a desk with a computer on it, and a rack of audio equipment. Wait, that was a TV next to the computer – a CRT on top of a VCR. And right in front of it was a whole stack of VHS tapes. She rushed over to the desk and pawed through them. “PlayZone training,” “Employee Orientation,” “Birthday Show,” “Literal Vixens: Live And Uncensored!” (how did that get in there?), and finally, there it was. The tape she’d come for, labeled “Birthday 1995.” She hadn’t expected it to be this easy to find. She had been starting to worry she’d have to spend weeks combing this place if she actually wanted to find the video tape, and Mills wasn’t paying her enough for that. But here it was in her paws, after only about fifteen minutes inside the building. It was almost too easy.
  As a rule, she never watched videos her customers had her pick up or deliver for them. The less she knew about their business, the better. But she did briefly wonder what made this guy so eager to retrieve this tape, and there was a VCR and a TV right there.
  And that’s when she noticed something odd. The VCR’s vacuum fluorescent display was stuck on a blinking “12:00.” Andy had told her the power had been cut and that she’d need a flashlight. She’d tried the light switch in the foyer, but it didn’t work, so she believed him. She assumed that he was so scatterbrained he’d forgotten to pay the power bill for this building. Just out of curiosity, she reached behind her with her prehensile tail and flicked the light switch near the door. And the lights came on. She shrugged, turned the lights back off, and left the room.
  Mandy had her back turned towards the stage as she made her way out of the room, but then she heard a whirring noise. She turned back towards the stage to see the curtain go up and the stage lights come on, revealing four animatronic animals. A sign announced that they were “Felix Fox and his Forest Four.” Standing front and center was the fox from the mural, holding an electric guitar. The raccoon was seated behind a drum set. The mouse held a bass guitar. And the otter stood behind an electric keyboard of some sort.
  Oh great, Mandy said to herself, here comes a musical number.
  The speakers crackled to life and emitted a steady electronic hum. Felix and his band opened their mouths like they were about to sing. Mandy didn’t feel like sticking around for the show. She would die of cringe if she tried. She turned to run, but a roller door came down from overhead and blocked the path to the arcade.
  She turned and ran out through the dining hall, in the general direction of the entrance. While she did, the speakers crackled to life and blared a synthetic pastiche of 1950s rock-and-roll.
Birth-day, birthday
Birth-day, birthday
Birth-day, birthday
Birth-day, birthday
Come celebrate with us
Celebrating your birthday
We’re gonna have a party
Partying our special way
There’s cake and presents and ice cream
It’ll be lots of fun
We are here, spreading cheer
The party’s just begun!

  That had to be the most ridiculous thing Mandy had ever heard, and she used to work with clowns. She raced towards the exit, but out of the darkness of the entryway emerged something she was really hoping she wouldn’t see…
  It was Francine, the animatronic fox from earlier. Its movements were stiff and wooden except for the occasional spasm. It moved in front of the glass doors, blocking Mandy’s way out.
  Mandy reached into her jacket and grabbed her handgun. She aimed at the animatronic outside, but as she did, she heard a clanking sound coming from the stage.
  She turned her head to see the animatronics making their way down two ramps, one ramp on each side of the stage. These things weren’t running, but they were walking very quickly. Mandy fired at them, and the bullets found their marks. Each of the four animatronics now had a gaping hole in its chest, a hole that oozed a reddish-brown fluid. But the things kept walking towards her, albeit with more spasms and twitches. She turned back towards the door and saw that Francine stood right outside.
  Mandy threw open the door and fired at Francine’s head at point-blank range. The bullet tore a hole in Francine’s skull, but that didn’t stop the fox. Francine pushed Mandy to the ground with surprising force. The other four animatronics approached, each one grabbing her by the limb, and pulled her into the kitchen. Mandy, still holding her gun, fired another round at each of them. But in her struggle, she’d missed her shots. She hit Francine on the leg and the otter on the tail. More reddish-brown stuff leaked everywhere. But the onslaught continued.
  The otter and mouse grabbed Mandy’s arm and wrested the pistol from her. The animatronics were freakishly strong, but also oddly… warm? Something didn’t feel right. She also noticed there were tubes connected to their backs that ran up to big mechanical arms on the ceiling.
  When they got to the kitchen, the overhead lights clicked on and began to buzz loudly. Mandy looked around the room and saw some standard restaurant kitchen appliances surrounded by lots of out-of-place laboratory items. She’d never seen EEG monitors, centrifuges, soldering irons, dialysis machines, syringes, spectrometers, or oscilloscopes in a kitchen before. Tubes and wires ran along the ceiling and into what appeared to be a heavily modified commercial-grade refrigerator.
  A door opened, and this time it wasn’t another animatronic – it was a somewhat chubby and disheveled coyote wearing a lab coat, two Power Paws (video game controller gloves that could track hand positions and motion), and a virtual reality headset. Mandy recognized him right away, even though he’d thrown a coat on over the faded hair metal band tee-shirt he’d been wearing earlier.
  “I thought you were busy,” said Mandy.
  Mills grinned. “You bet I was! I was busy watching you the whole time from the back office.” Mandy cursed herself silently for ignoring the security cameras. She was normally so careful to avoid those.
  Mills gestured towards a nearby table with his Power Paws, and the animatronics pushed Mandy onto it. Mills then took off the Power Paws and VR headset and exchanged them for a pair of lab goggles and rubber gloves sitting on a nearby counter.
  “So,” he said as he strapped Mandy to the table, “how did you like the show?”
  Mandy spat in his face. “That’s what I think of it, you son of a-”
  “Not a fan, I see,” Mills interrupted. “I’ll change that pretty soon. Nothing a lobotomy can’t fix.”
  Was this guy for real? Mandy wondered. Was he actually going to lobotomize her? She’d met guys who would do that sort of thing, but none of them wanted to do it to her. They paid her to go find other people for them to mutilate. She herself wasn’t the victim, and that’s the way she preferred it.
  Wait… the tubes, the lab equipment, the bottle of chloroform Mills was soaking a rag with – it all came together. Those things weren’t really animatronics – they were zombies. Their bodies sustained by some jury-rigged life-support system, but not properly alive. And somehow, Mills had control over them.
  “We can have so much fun together, you and I.” Mills looked like he was starting to drool. “You know, binturong chicks are pretty hot...”
  Mandy felt her stomach turn. She wished this guy was a standard serial killer rather than being whatever this freak was.
  “Mandy and Andy, it’s got quite a nice ring to it…” he chimed.
  This had gone far enough.
  Mandy had one appendage Mills hadn’t secured, something he hadn’t needed to secure on any of his previous victims – her tail. She grabbed Mills’ leg and pulled him to the floor, causing the chloroform to spill. Next, she pulled the surgical tray to the floor, pelting Mills with medical instruments. Nothing sharp hit him anywhere critical, but it at least elicited a yelp of pain. Mandy used another trick from her carnival days to catch a surgical knife with her tail. She lifted it to her left leg and cut the restraint. With her newly-freed forepaw, she grabbed the knife from her tail and freed the other forepaw. The animatronics stood motionless, waiting for Mills’ next command. Mandy sat up and cut her legs free as Mills got up off the floor.
  Mandy tackled the otter that held her pistol. He didn’t put up a fight because Mills was too preoccupied to move him around. She got her gun back and aimed it at Mills’ head.
  Mills stood up, putting his paws in the air. “Woah, calm down, no need to escalate things!”
“Escalate things?!” Mandy shouted. “You tried to cut me open and turn me into an animatronic puppet and you want to talk about escalating things!? Well, escalate this!” She pulled the trigger.
  Mills’ body fell to the ground. The gunshot ricocheted through the building. Mandy’s ears rang. She’d be deaf by the time she was forty if she had to keep doing this, but she’d be dead by the time she was forty if she didn’t.
  Mandy made a break for the exit. She thought about what she'd been through. How many people had she delivered into the claws of psychos like Mills? She didn't have to imagine being in their position because she had been there herself a few moments earlier. Good thing she had a prehensile tail and a weapon. The formerly-living “animatronic” creatures in there hadn’t been so lucky.
  Maybe I should stop accepting job offers from obvious creepy weirdos, thought Mandy as she drove away. Then, another thought came to her. She’d just broken into a building and killed somebody, but she hadn’t actually broken any laws! She wasn’t trespassing, she’d thought about stealing but hadn’t actually done it, and killing Mills was clearly done in self-defense. There was probably even video evidence to prove it, thanks to the security cameras he had been using to watch her. So maybe she could go straight after all…
  But those thoughts were interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. She pulled it out of her coat pocket and put it on speaker mode.
  “Is this Miss Mandy Thompkins?” asked a feminine voice on the other end.
  “Yeah, that’d be me,” replied Mandy. “Who’s asking?”
  “Well,” replied the voice, “this is Rosie Alice Metzger, owner and head chef of Rosie’s Enchanted Bakery. Now, I heard you might be able to get some special and rather rare ingredients for me. And I’ll make sure it’s worth your while…”
  When Rosie started discussing prices, Mandy’s eyes lit up. And just like that, all thoughts of Mills and his house of horrors were gone. Onto the next job.