An all-too-familiar and exceptionally irritating sound rang in Molly's ears, her groan soft and tired. She didn't like the alarm, but it was easier to slam her paw on the snooze button than to fiddle with a phone to turn off a more appealing digital alarm and that was of utmost importance to her. She was never a morning person until after her coffee, but she took her job seriously enough to crawl out of bed in a few minutes anyway. She stretched her naked body lazily, preferring to sleep in only her fur, her tail twitching up with mounting excitement. She always prepared her coffee in her programmable machine to start the brewing process at just the right time each morning, and all she had to do for the delicious brew was walk on padded feet to the small kitchen in her apartment.
After slipping on plain, tight, white panties and a navy blue skirt, Molly sat at her little table and drank from her "The Dice Love Me" mug, a newspaper opened before her. It was all nonsense and praise for the state police this week, as if the press was under their control somehow. Molly knew from experience that the civvies didn't want the state cops snooping around, and the fact that they blamed someone or many people from Possum Springs right away rather than contemplating the possibility of an accident soured relations even further. She sighed tiredly, leaning on the table and closing her eyes. With the chief gone she had to answer to the bitchiest, most self-righteous Lieutenant she'd ever met, and the men above him were almost as agitating themselves.
She opened her eyes with a glare, staring at her four pairs of boobs as if they'd personally affronted her. "You girls are causing me a lot of trouble lately." 'Molly' was an archaic term for a female cat, and 'Candy' evoked femininity and sensuality just as easily. Their parents had passed on the genes and names the sisters needed to marry a wealthy man and enjoy being eye-candy for the rest of their lives. Candy had tried something like that, but by the time Stan managed to stop drinking and kick his abusive habits the economy had struck down their lifestyle. Molly had wanted a similar life once, but she learned to be independent when one Tom took fooling around a lot farther than she'd wanted. She worked hard to become a cop, to prove she didn't need protecting and make a name for herself, but she still had a body men dreamed about and it was all the state cops coming in bothered to notice about her.
She needed a stronger drink, but she'd have to live through her shift first.
Molly gripped her steering wheel tighter as she came upon an unwelcome sight, her eyes glaring at Lieutenant Samuel Scriggins as he slowly started to step out of his cruiser, a self-satisfied smirk splitting his scaly face. Molly knew who he was about to find inside the Party Barn, and she also knew it was illegal for anyone to be trespassing inside the yet to be sold building. She couldn't let Mae be arrested for something so benign.
"Mae!" Bea caught the cat as she collapsed forward off the stage, lapsing into unconsciousness in the crocodile's arms. "Oh my God. What the eff just happened?"
"That doesn't matter right now," Angus asserted in spite of his shaking paws, turning toward the door. "Right now we need to get Mae to a hospital." The others were nodding in agreement as he pulled the front door open, but they all came to a halt when they saw an alligator in a state police uniform leaning on his cruiser, smirking down at them with sunglasses over his eyes.
"Uncle Sam?" Gregg questioned. It's what Steve called him whenever the subject came up.
"Hello, Greggory. You and your friends know you weren't supposed to be in there, right? That's private property, not a free venue for band practice." Gregg gulped and Bea tightened her hold on Mae defensively, then they all heard a car door slam and saw Molly storming toward them.
"God damn it," Bea muttered.
"What the Hell is going on here, Samuel?" As soon as neither cop was looking his way Gregg pulled a bag of shrooms from his jacket and quietly tossed them into the tall grass creeping up in front of the building. He wasn't so sure they wouldn't be found, but at least they wouldn't be found on his person.
"Trespassers, standard stuff. I know these kids, and I'm honestly surprised I've been here a whole week without seeing them break some sort of law."
"Were you too busy being smug to notice that they all look like they've seen a ghost, except my niece who Beatrice had to carry out of the building!?" Molly's indignation was stalled as Sam slowly removed his sunglasses, his expression calm and severe as he placed them in his pocket.
"These are my nephew's friends, but we can't show favoritism. Beatrice and Margaret can go with you to the hospital, so we can take care of your niece, but I need to have a little chat with the rest of them." Molly blinked, dumbfounded by what she'd just heard. She had expected to have a much tougher time getting Sam to be reasonable.
"I, uh… thank you, Sam. Come on, Bea, let's go!" Sam smiled as they ran off. It was everything other than comforting for Gregg, who had met Sam before and knew to keep his guard up. Sam's smile became gradually more smug the further away Molly ran, until she was driving to the hospital and he shifted his gaze back to Gregg.
"Well, time to get this sorted." He pulled his radio from his vest and depressed the transmit key. "Hey Johnson, Miss Molly is headed to Deep Hollow General with her unconsciousness niece and a goth croc. I need you over there to collect drug test results. I don't want family ties messin' this all up."
"I'm on it, Sammy," came the slightly distorted reply, the chirp of a bird in the voice.
"Between you boys and myself, though Johnson is a beaked fella he's taken a shine to Miss Molly. Damn strange if you ask me. It's one thing to appreciate outside your species, but he actually wants to date her." Germ was staring at Sam, expressionless, his emotions hidden deep. Gregg gulped nervously, keeping quiet, but Angus clenched his fists.
"And what the Hell does that matter?" Sam looked at Angus as if he'd grown a second head, tilting his own slightly.
"They can't make nothin' of it, that's what the Hell. That ain't no way for a family to form. The only thing worse than pinin' for someone of another species is goin' after the same sex." Angus barely suppressed a growl, starting to see how it might be possible that Sam knew Gregg but didn't know about their relationship. Gregg certainly wouldn't yap about it to a bigot. "Anyway, there's a reason I sent the ladies on their way. This next bit of business is a bit… ugly." In spite of his performed tone of remorse, Sam was smirking as he said it. "Now, I know in this town that I need to be prepared for this sort of thing, so I got my own little drug testing sticks ready in the cruiser."
"On what grounds are you testing us?" Some semblance of calm was gradually returning to Angus' voice, but it still shook with repressed rage. Sam just gave him another dumbfounded look.
"Are you thick in the head, son? A kitten is being driven to the hospital right now and I'm pretty sure I know why she wasn't fit to tell me why herself. If she was on somethin', we really need to know. She's a person of interest in this case, or so Doctor Hank told our Chief." With that said, the Lieutenant opened his cruiser to pull a compact box of syringes from his glove compartment.
"Come on, man." Gregg's voice shook with apprehension, the future he thought he had with Angus looking less certain by the minute. "Don't do this to me, Sam."
"Is that a confession, Greggory?"
Yes. "Y-you know I hate needles, dude." Angus had wanted Gregg clean before the move, so he could apply for a new job without worry, but the stress of what Christine did to him every day he couldn't escape work on time tested his resolve and he had been found wanting. It only amounted to a few puffs of marijuana every other week, and he'd nearly finished selling off his shrooms to the local punks and crusties, but if Sam caught even a trace of the most benign of illegal drugs then Gregg knew he was doomed.
"There are a few facts we have to speak out into the open." Sam casually inspected a syringe as he spoke, but his expression was grim. "First, Greggory is on something illegal. Second, I'm going to get drug tests run for all of you. Third, a trespassing case involves informing the owner of the property. Fourth, I need someone Margaret trusts to keep an eye on her. And finally, those mushrooms you thought I didn't see are worth quite a nice pocketful of cash." Angus was starting to see why Gregg was afraid of this man.
"You like to hear yourself talk," Germ said suddenly. "It's annoying."
"What do you want from us?" Angus said it as quickly as he could, hoping Sam would ignore what Germ said, and aside from an agitated glance he actually did.
"Test results can be… fudged. Not Margaret's, but Gregg's. And I'm quite sure you were never in that building, just hanging out behind the monument like good citizens. I'll make the mushrooms disappear to everyone's benefit, and Jeremy here will keep an eye on Margaret for me. I want weekly updates on what she's up to, and if I don't get them then I'll become a lot less friendly."
"Why me?"
"Because the other two are gettin' outta this shithole, or didn't you know?"
"Right. That is a thing they decided to do." Germ ran the rest of the conversation through his mind again, keeping in mind that Steve seemed to be telling Sam just about everything except for the fact that Angus and Gregg were actually dating. "That is definitely a bro plan, between dudes, to go live together somewhere else, as dudebros."
Sam inhaled with a slight hiss, glancing at Gregg. "Does he always talk like that?"
"I mean, yeah dude." The tension in the conversation began to disperse, as an agreement had been reached that would at least keep them all out of jail, but Gregg's nervousness had seemed to spike at odd times and Sam had certainly picked up on it.
"It'll do you both good to get outta here. That's what I did. Being back stings a little. It's almost like there's some kinda poison in the air here." After pocketing the bag of mushrooms, Sam took a blood sample from each of them. Just before he ducked back into the driver seat of his cruiser, he turned back to Gregg with a piercing gaze. "I know you're hiding something, and I'm going to find out what it is."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Sam didn't seem to be listening to the evasive response, already driving off by the time Gregg finished speaking.
"Does he really expect me to tell him everything Mae does?"
"I think he expects you to do a bad enough job lying for him to figure out what's really happening on his own."
Mae was strapped into the back of Molly's cruiser as they sped toward the hospital, Molly turning down the radio so she could tune out the chatter while she spoke with Bea. "What happened?" Such a simple question with such and impossible answer. "Bea, please tell me what's going on."
"I… I can't." Bea still didn't understand what she'd seen in the Party Barn. It didn't make any sense. She wasn't making any sense. She was hardly keeping track of her own words.
"You can trust me. Please, I need to know." Molly was desperate, almost frantic, trying to mask it with some veneer of calmness.
"I can't. It's too… I don't understand what happened." Bea turned to Molly, studied her face, the tightening grip of her fingers on the steering wheel, and her uniform. She couldn't say what she'd really seen. She knew Molly would never believe it was real, but if it was real then any cult member she spoke to afterward would know. She was afraid that they all understood what was shaking the stability of her mind. "She just collapsed, for no reason at all."
Molly's grip tightened. "They are going to drug test her, Bea."
"Why do you think I'm so freaked out!? There weren't any drugs, she just fell over and passed out like… like she was exhausted or something." Bea saw Molly visibly relax, if only slightly. At least she seemed to believe her.
"I'm sorry. I'm worried about her, is all."
"Yeah." Bea looked back at her unstable friend, who was twitching and grimacing in her unconscious state, as if she was trapped in a terrible nightmare. "Me too."