Devil on a Chain

Even after the transformation, Missy snipped two claws together pointedly to signify wanna ciggie. But her screeches of indignant soul-wrenching need sounded identical to an itchy call for hors d'oeuvres or snoring or Intruder! or wanna play. So no one knew how to help. A Pall Mall is the last thing you think of offering a non-mammal.

We wanted to set her for free release. At the precipice of a fine waterfall, the resolution of Walter Ditch, in Fordamall, there was a ceremony. We removed the cigar bands from her dorsal spears and administered an amphetamine, but she just stood there.

It was as if Reptily were hosting a banquet in her memory and had to tune inward. Our civic event was merely the ambient trickery to pimp her reverie. What was going to be the culmination of generations of patience and misery, a way to eschew, into perpetuity, the co-dependent mischief of the land, a dirty given, and let savage have its own airs, domains?

We found the way that wild is tamed for show, but we still didn't want to keep her. For sure, they say the devil on a chain is a wasted life. But the truth is: she's got no wheres else to go.