Part Two: The Pound

I could barely sleep a wink that night. I cried and cried until I ran out of tears. I was cold and uncomfortable and hungry and frightened. I had never really been any of those things before. With Marina, there had always been warm blankets to keep out the cold, a soft comfy bed, and enough food to fill me up. As for being frightened, Marina wasn't afraid of anything, so I wasn't either. But now that Marina had abandoned me, it was like I had lost half of myself. I was alone, and lost, and yes...I was scared.

I had never needed anything to cuddle with at night...I'd never had a special Fuzzie Bear or plushie like some other pets do. But now, I held tight to Greenox the little Doglefox, as if he were my lifeline. He let me bury my face in his soft fur, and licked away my tears.

The next morning, I began to learn about life in the Pound.

I was awakened by a sharp kick and a gruff voice.

"Wake up, ya stupid lazy Gelert! That scary Techo'll be makin' 'is rounds soon! Ya wanna get our 'ole compound sold ta some Mutilator!?"

I had finally managed to fall asleep at 5:00 in the morning...and slept only about an hour, thanks to the large red female Lupe standing over me.

"Techo? Compound? Mutilator?" I muttered as I sat up with great effort and rubbed my eyes to clear my blurry vision.

The Lupe rolled her eyes. "Clueless brat! Don'cha even know what a compound is? It's made up o' three pets grouped t'gedda in the Pound!"

She kicked an enormous yellow male Skeith sitting motionless nearby, whose only reaction was a loud grunt. I deduced that this Lupe and Skeith were the other two pets in my compound.

"Oh...what's a mutilator?" I queried. But the Lupe only shuddered and turned away. Then she suddenly spun around again, whipped out one paw, and pinned me to the ground.

"F'get it," she growled between six-inch fangs as I stared at her in sheer, wide-eyed terror. "Ya just f'get that word, brat, an' don't mention it again. Be grateful if ya never know what it means..."

And she threw me like a rag doll into a corner of the small fenced-in compound, where I collapsed in helpless sobs. She shot me a look of pure disgust and stalked off to peer anxiously over the fence.

All at once, I remembered.

"Greenox!" I cried, looking around anxiously. To my immense relief, he came scurrying out of the shadows, where he must have been hiding from my terrifying compound-mates, and hopped onto my shoulder.

At that moment, the Techo arrived.

Now, imagine, esteemed reader, that you are a NeoPet...let's say, a Gelert. You are small and furry and naive, and before today, the scariest thing you have ever seen is a few menacing Jetsams trailing your former owner's boat.

Now, a long, dark shadow falls over you. You look up...and up...and up...into the face of an enormous creature, looming high, high above you. Its fur is the color of yellowed rotting flesh, it is dressed in a long white lab coat, and its eyes...its dark, narrow, ferocious eyes...are glaring right down on you.

I let out a scream that probably reached the ears of Marina out at sea. Thus went my first meeting with Dr. Techo.

To my utter surprise, this nightmarish monster did not pull out a gleaming butcher knife and make short work of us. Instead, while I trembled violently with Greenox hidden in my arms, Dr. Techo delivered sharp kicks to the Lupe, the Skeith, and me, grunted "All awake," whipped out a pencil and a legal pad, scribbled something down, and shuffled on to the next compound.

Don't ask me where I came up with the question, "What about breakfast?"

The reply was shouted hoarsely by a sardonic voice two compounds away.

"Ya actually think they feeds us?"

"Newbies," someone else grumbled in an annoyed tone.

I was, indeed, a "newbie," innocent and trusting. I was not really soft or weak; a life of financial problems and sailing does not make a NeoPet soft or weak. But I was used to warmth, and cleanliness, and always enough food; and, most of all, I was used to love...to care and affection. Now I look back on those times and weep silent tears. Oh, that we could all remain newbies forever.

But we can't, and I didn't.

Day after day, night after night, as browsers at the Pound bypassed my cage without a second glance, as the dreadful Dr. Techo made his daily rounds, as the Lupe beat and taunted me, as the Skeith sat and stared with his blank, emotionless eyes, and as, little by little, the terrible plague known as "starvation" took its toll upon me, I lost all my innocence, and all my trust, and my heart hardened, and my eyes dulled, and I became a newbie no more.

I grew thin. Sickeningly thin. Thin to the point of transparency...so that my ribs and bones stood out clear and sharp against my skin.

I grew ill. Germs and bacteria were everywhere...everywhere. The floor of the compound, the fence that surrounded it, my two compound-mates and all of the pets in the surrounding compounds, the very air...all were filled, swirling, flowing, twisting and squirming with germs. My cheeks flushed. My head pounded. My nose ran. My eyes watered. My throat grew as dry as a desert, for the only water anyone could get was obtained from a day's dig in the rock-hard dirt floors of our compounds. My fur dropped out in massive amounts, leaving huge bald patches all over my body.

Every morning when I woke up, and every night when I went to sleep, I knew I was weaker...weaker. Then came the day when I could not speak, then the day when I could not stand, then the day when I could not even sit up...eventually, I couldn't move at 't hear the voices of the other pets...everything looked blurry...and then day and night became one, filled with visions, horrible, grotesque, distorted images, delusions of past and present and things that had never existed anywhere, except in my worst nightmares.

Through it all, that faithful little Doglefox, who Marina had promised would take care of me, stuck by my side, and gave whatever comfort he could, even after I could no longer lift a paw to stroke him, even after I could not hear his sweet little yips, even when he became just another hideous demon and I would strike out at him at night with inhuman cries. But Greenox was small and weak, even more so than I, and he too grew gaunt and sickly and hovered at the boundaries of the living world.

Of course, every morning, without fail, the Lupe, haggard and wild-eyed, staggered to my side and pried my eyes open, shook me, nipped me sharply around the ears, and dragged me to my feet, and when the hated Dr. Techo stopped at our compound on his rounds, invariably he gave us each a kick, then muttered, satisfied, "All awake," and marked the three of us down on his legal pad, scheduled us all for one more day of torture.

And then at last...at last it came. At last came the day when my eyes would not open. And when the Lupe tried to drag me to my feet, I sagged back to the ground. Unseeing. Unhearing. Unconscious. An empty shell.

"Hey!" she growled, rather weakly...for, although she was by far older and stronger than I was, the Pound never fails to take its toll on any pet. "Hey, wake up!" She kicked me.

I did not react. I actually heard her voice, but it was from far away...so far away...many many universes away, and made no sense to me at the time, and did not matter.

"Hey, Gelert, WAKE UP!!"

She scratched me. She bit me. She threw me against the fence. She called to me again...and again...and again...and even through a haze too thick and impenetrable for almost anything to get through, I detected the beginnings of fear in her voice, and their development, their advancement, into cold, sharp, raw terror.

Then the Techo came.

He kicked the Skeith, the wide-eyed, staring, unseeing Skeith. He kicked the Lupe, and I think she tried to bite off his filthy paw. He kicked me. Grunted.

Through my ever-thickening haze, I just barely made out a long, shrill scratch. The scratch of a pencil across a legal pad...scratching out the name of Galleymyst.

Then Dr. Techo picked me up, and threw me in a sack, and carried me to a truck. He tossed me in the back of the truck and took off down the road, and an anguished howl echoed after me, as I was carried from the home of the dying to the home of the living dead.