“It’s been really nice to spend this time with you, at least,” said Artie.

“I like to get to know my meals, when they can talk and fall in love with me,” said Samantha.

“I certainly have.”

“I’ll bet you wish you’d gotten away at some point though,” said Samantha.

“Of course, but there’s no sense in wishing for the impossible. Better to enjoy the best aspects of a situation as it actually is.”

“Well you might have an opportunity to combine the two, or at least to make your wishes a possibility, while still enjoying the best of it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Artie.

“I’ll give you a chance to get away by playing hide and seek outside,” she said, “It will give you something to hope for, and give me a lot of fun. Since you taught me that game, I’ll consider it fair exchange.”

So, in effect, she willingly set up the same scenario which Olive and Bing were experiencing that day. She took him outside, gave him a countdown with her eyes closed, and then ran through the garden, looking for him, until she got down on all fours and carefully checked all the flower beds. He saw her narrowing things down to the hiding place that he had, and knew that any attempt to flee further away would draw her attention. She closed in on him, and then lay down in front of the plants which had temporarily concealed him, and smiled, very pleasantly, but with a clear warning of what was to come.

He stared at her smiling eyes and her soft cheeks, and stepped forward and kissed one cheek, then walked to the other side of her face and kissed the other. She then turned her head and kissed his face.

“Well it looks like I won,” she said, standing up and carrying him to the kitchen.

She began preparing him.

“It was hardly a fair game, with the stakes being exponentially unequal and you having a huge size advantage and the familiarity with your own garden.

“I gave you a chance, when I could have just eaten you the first day you got here!” she said, and closed the oven door and left him.

If only he and Brody had escaped to compare notes about the similarity of their current situations, it would have made for an interesting discussion.

Samantha sat down, folded her arms and stared at the oven window, clearly still upset by his accusation of unfairness.

The look in her eyes bored into him, even from halfway across the kitchen. It seemed to be saying something else: “I’ll eat you all up, and your opinion of fairness doesn’t mean a thing.”

She soon came and took him from the oven, placed him on the dining table, and then went to fetch a cup of water, before sitting at the table herself.

The friendly look returned to her eyes as she raised the cup to her mouth with both hands and drank from it.

“Now I’m going to eat you all up,” she said.

He tried backing away from her hand, but she giggled with glee as her hand lunged past him and cut off his escape. She picked him up, stuck her tongue out at him, let him savour the view, and then licked him several times. Opening her mouth wide, she placed him inside, and then all went dark. He soon felt her gobbling him down.

*     *       *        *