Somewhere things slide and slither.

Somewhere things rip and tear.

Somewhere things grunt and maw.

But in other places things just stare.

Joe the Kretin looked into the various bushes for something to fill his empty stomach with. It had
been so long that the long, slimy anatomy that he called his own was beginning to wither like a
purple prune. His movements were frantic and jerky, for he knew his fate would be a painful death
if he didn't find something to ingest soon. He whipped his head around right and left looking for
any signs of life. His tiny nostrils at the end of his long, green snout twitched, each seeming to
whisper it's own prayer for a scent of dried blood.

Joe was about to give up hope and except the fate which seemed to be clawing at his back his
entire life, when he suddenly felt a renewing spark fly up his nose. It was the unforgettable,
undeniable scent of sweat. He was impressed with his own ability to detect it in this humid climate
he was in. Here, where every tree, leaf, and creature was coated with a sheet of water from this
hot, muggy climate, could he detect the scent of sweat. Joe pulled his gun from the belt around his
slimy, green waist.

Joe knew that his firearm wasn't loaded, but he also knew that his unsuspecting prey had to
respect the fact that it could have been. He followed that hallowed scent through bush and brier,
sometimes losing it, sometimes gaining it even more.

Finally, Joe scuttled into a part of the jungle that he knew could be nothing but a dead end for his
ignorant prey. Trees and vines wrapped all around Joe as he held his useless gun even tighter,
waiting for his meal to reveal itself. The humidity was so thick that he could feel it in his eyes, but
he dare not close them, for this was the part of the hunt that required those keen senses that he
knew he was renowned for.

The silence was exhilarating. If it weren't for his extreme hunger and the torturous itch under his
loin cloth from the humidity, Joe might have been able to fully enjoy this exciting test of one's
patience. Finally, a sound was made, a rustle in the bushes in fact, the most notorious giveaway
for small animals hiding from predators with non-functional weapons.

Though his sense of smell could not be matched, Joe the Kretin's hearing could have used some
improvement. He took but a portion of a second to figure which angle the sound came from. He
reached the conclusion that his prey was directly in front of his back. In a green flash he made the
required turning motion toward his unwilling dinner.

Though Joe's sense of smell was biblical, and his sense of hearing was less than adequate, his
eyesight was only less than exemplary. In his quick and daring turn, his head bumped into
something which he instantly recognized as a floating bar of metal. His eyes focused, and he
mentally corrected his mislead hypothesis, noting that the structure in question was actually the
barrel of a gun. This gun was very much unlike his own, especially sense the wielder of this
weapon was very much unlike him. Behind the vast empty of the gun's barrel, Joe saw a distinctly
female eye, which was subsequently larger than his fist.

The appearance of Joe's attacker was like nothing he had seen very much. Beyond her feminine,
cat-like eyes that were as big as lemons, was a child like face cupped by short brown hair. Her
button nose and smiling, red lips helped her face inspire love for all that met her, along with her
pointed, cat type ears and her rather voluptuous build. She couldn't have been very tall, because
she met Joe at eye level and Joe wasn't very tall. She was dressed in various skins of various types
of creatures, all stitched and sown together to cover the more sensitive parts of her body. The two
weren't covering up much between them, but that had something to do with the incredible heat
associated with their current humid climate. Joe tried to study the girl's clothes, but was
distracted by her swishing tail.

Joe assessed all of this creature with his one eye still pressed into the spout of the odd girl's gun.
He started trying to think of conversation that may have been possible in this stage of the
confrontation. Maybe a simple greeting could have been nice. He knew that he could have
appreciated a formal acquainting with the person that he caught trying to eat him.

Joe acted upon his intentions to break the ice, and offered an awkward handshake, his movements
impaired by the disabiltating gun in his eye. The cute little creature shook his slimy, green hand,
pulling him in a little closer, letting the gun push further into his face. "Hello." Joe started, his
confidence building, "My name is Jo-Ow!" His greeting was a bit distorted by a sudden jerk of the
girl's gun, stabbing it quickly into his eye.

"I know what your name is." She said. Her smile so small on her face when put next to her huge
eyes, long ears, and curvaceous shape.

"Oh... ya... should I remember you?" Joe said, his voice sliding off of his tongue with the usual
raspy nature.

"No. But maybe if you study my face."

Joe looked into her cat-like appearance, trying to draw memory from it with one eye, and into the
tunnel of bullets with his other. A possibility dawned on him in the form of a small cat that he had
killed along with three out of five of her small kittens. The face and color were most definitely
familiar, but this bipedal form was a bit different. "Did you get spliced just for me, doll?" He
asked.

The cat girl never took her eyes off of Joe. She licked her lips before speaking again. "Would that
make you happy, Joe?"

"A bit flattering. The leftovers don't usually go through all this trouble. They usually just go
somewhere else. I'm glad to see that you took advantage of the technologies left behind for us.
The rest of this fuckin' planet does." Joe's stomach painfully growled. If he was planning on
eating this girl, he'd have to come up with a plan pretty soon.

Thoughts were speeding through Joe's head, trying to concoct a daring reversal of the situation.
With a loud sound and a flashing light, Joe's speeding thoughts were replaced by seeding bullets
ripping through his brain. We could speculate that no one dies instantly, and that Joe's thoughts
as the lead tore his grey matter to shreds of goo were some of the most deeply profound thoughts
that anyone can hope for in their last moments of life. He could have thought of the trivial nature
of his existence, living only to consume the living. He could have thought of his alternatives and
choices that he could have taken before the trigger was pulled, and the decision to end his life was
made. In spite of all of this, it doesn't matter, because by the time Joe's head hit the moist ground,
he was no longer breathing.

The girl with her cat like features sat on a nearby rock, one of the few things that had not been
painted by Joe's blood in the nearby area.

That was it. Her all consuming hunt for vengeance was over. Now peace could be had. Now
whole new opportunities were open to her. She holstered her hand gun, not forgetting to wipe the
chunks of head meat and skull from the end of it. If she thought that the jungle was safe enough
she would have slept, but there was no time to sleep in a world of predators, and the time for
vengeance had just recently passed. Incredibly anticlimactic and outstandingly antisocial, the
outcome of the day had been reached, she got up from the rock hoping that this chapter had been
written, and that the author went to bed when it was done.