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Astrid had laid out a large chef’s knife, a meat cleaver--borrowed from a seven-year-old who carried it for protection--and an X-Acto knife with a less-than-perfect blade

"It’s beyond creepy," Sam said

"You don’t have to be here, Saup and she hadn’t even started

Solution Solution Solution

Astrid earing pink Playtex gloves She rolled the creature onto its back "You can see the line where the human face stops and the fur starts There’s no hus There’s no blurring It’s a clean line But the bones inside? Those are coyote bones It’s articulated like a coyote leg covered with human skin and probably s to say or energy to say the not to puke A sudden gust of wind bringing the smell of the Pit did not help Plus the creature itself s and urine and sticky-sweet decay

And throughout it all: solution Where was the solution? Where was the answer?

Astrid took the cleaver and slammed it into the creature’s exposed belly It s didn’t bleed

Saed, Alien-like, fro popped or squirmed out He had terrible memories of what he’d had to do with Dekka He’d burned her open to get the bugs out of her It had been thehe’d ever done And now as Astrid used the big knife to saay and widen the cut, it was all co back

Astrid turned away fro and tied it over her mouth and nose Like that would help She looked like a very pretty bandit

Incredibly a second line of thinking was forcing its way into his consciousness He wanted her Not here, not now, but soon Soon The endless, hopeless braina much nicer tune, too Why couldn’t he just crawl into his bunk with Astrid and let so for a nonexistent solution?

Astrid now cut vertically, opening the anith "Look at this"

"Do I have to?"

"You can see organs attached to each other that just don’t fit It’s bizarre The stoe intestine It’s like a really bad pluether I can’t believe this thing lived as long as it did"

"So it’s a mutant?" Sam asked, anxious to reach some kind of conclusion and then bury the carcass and do his best to forget about it and get back to the twin thought streams of "solution" and "sex"