Cally probed the crook of Randall's left top arm elbow with her index finger. After a minute, she looked up at him. "Yeesh. If blood vessels were muscles, you wouldn't even be able to sit up. They're barely palpable."

"Huh?"

"I can hardly feel them."

"Oh."

"Here, go like this." She opened and closed her fist several times. "For about a minute. Then I'll try again."

Randall did as she said. "So, I thought you were a former employee of Monsters Inc. How'd you get nurse's training?"

"Correspondence courses. Took me 2 years. Been working in the clinic ever since."

He looked over at her. "I heard why you got exiled."

Cally brushed an ear out of her face."Yeah, I'm not exactly an unknown." She picked up his arm again and repeated her earlier action. After a few seconds, she found a large enough vein and inserted the needle. Randall looked away. He felt ill. Suddenly, he actually felt sorry for the hornet guy. A new feeling. One that didn't fit him, like a hand-me-down pair of shoes.

"It helps if you talk about something else." Cally said. "But I guess you'll have to learn that lesson next time. All done." She took the needle out, and put a small bandaid on his arm. Randall sighed with relief. "Oh, and Doc Beele told me to give you this." It was a small plastic cup with a round lid. Randall stared grimly at it. He knew exactly what it was for.

"Bathroom's to your left," Cally called as he walked out the door and down the hall.

Somehow, between blood and Cally's reappearance, Randall had forgotten all about breakfast. Luckily, they were still serving breakfast food. He walked in to the serving area of the cafeteria and grabbed a green tray off the rack.

The server he stood in front of was also dog-like, but a pink poodle woman. She had her hair-fur- in a hair-fur-net.

"Bonjour, monsieur," she purred. "Qu'est-ce que vous aimez?"

He recognized the language, French. He had heard it several times on the job, but only knew one phrase really well. He decided to use it now.

"Est-ce que je peux aller aux toilettes?"

The poodle woman burst out laughing.

"Huh? Pardon me?"

She took the pencil from behind her ear and drew a picture on a pad of paper and handed it to him. Randall stared at it for a few seconds before finally realising what he had said. The picture was of a crudely-drawn lizard, himself, he supposed, and an arrow pointing to a toilet. Randall blushed.

"No, no,that isn't what I mean. I mean, I want........" The poodle offered the pencil to him. Randall gratefully took it from her hand and drew pictures of an egg, a sausage, a stack of waffles, and a cup of coffee. He handed it back to her.

"Mais oui! Un oeuf, des saucissons, gaufres, et une tasse de cafe! Oui, monsieur." She loaded up his tray with the items he asked for, then sent him on his way.

"Thank you."

"Non. Merci."

"Oh, uh, yeah. Mercy. Whatever." Randall walked away from the counter. As he did, he suddenly felt uncomfortable, a weird prickly sensation on the back of his neck. Turning around, he saw that all the servers were looking at him oddly. Thinking hardly anything of it, he walked into the caf.

There were very few people there. Oddly, however, as soon as he walked in, all the conversation stopped as they all looked at him. Randall turned around and walked towards the door, as fast as he could without spilling his tray.

As he went through the door, somebody grabbed his left top arm, hard, and pulled him back through the door.

"Ouch! Hey, what do you think you're-" He looked up, and saw his captor; it was none other than Cally.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! That was your bad arm, wasn't it?" Cally brushed her ears out of her face. "You know, working hours in the clinic, pulling hundreds of people's blood samples. I'm kind of surprised I didn't remember you, though."

"Is this your break?"

"Yeah."

"Guess you didn't have time to eat this morning either, huh?"

"No, actually, this is my brunch. I'm a very hungry person." Cally laughed. Unlike Bob's, hers was a cross between a giggle and a chuckle. They sat down at a table together. Randall could see that she basically had the same things on her tray that he did, but more of them. She also had bacon and hash browns.

"Do you know why they were all staring at me?"

"Well, partly because you're new, and partly because you're nude. Most of the folks in Monstropolis go around in the buff, except when they're in positions of authority, or when they're women. But a lot of the Pester guys are born here, and therefore they're used to seeing us all clothed. If you walked in wearing a three-piece suit and tie, and dress shoes, they wouldn't bat an eye."

"Uh-huh." Randall sipped his coffee. "I see."

"Oh, by the way, I learned something very interesting about you."

"What?"

"First of all, a sight test."

"Aw,come on. I already had enough tests."

"This won't take very long." She threw a box on the table and took something out of it. "Okay, here's a Skittle." Cally placed a red candy on the table. Then she appeared to pick it up and stick it up her left nostril. "Now, where did it go?"

"That's easy. Up your nose."

"Wrongo." She repeated the action, slower, with a blue candy. This time, Randall could see that it didn't go up her nose at all, but instead, she put it in her mouth and stuck a furry finger up instead. "I ate it."

Randall looked confused for a few seconds, then he understood immediately what she was trying to tell him. "Criminy, so THAT'S how he did it!!" Randall banged on the lunch table so loudly that the guys at the next table looked up at him. He disappeared for 10 seconds, then reappeared.

Cally was laughing at him.

"What's so funny?" he asked, then looked down. In shock, he saw that he had reproduced the pattern of the American flag.

"No wonder they were all staring. When you get embarassed, you probably do something similar to that all the time!"

After a 10 minute laugh fest (even Randall himself managed a couple of half-hearted snickers), they got back to their food. Randall cut his waffles and ate a huge chunk all at once.

"Did you get sidetracked by Sweet Polly French Bread like I did?"

"Oh, you mean Cerise. After a while, we all learn a little French from her. At least enough to tell her what we want."

"Me, I only have enough knowledge of the language to ask her if I can go to the bathroom. Afterwards, she begged me for mercy."

"'Merci' means 'thank you' in French."

"Oh, another mystery solved." A piece of waffle fell out of his mouth and on to the floor. He kicked it under the table. "So, you know all about me, I'm sure, I practically wrote my biography for Alice. What about you? I know all about you, I mean, who doesn't, but I'd kinda like to hear it from the horse's-uh, dog's mouth."

Cally cut a piece of sausage and put it in her mouth. "Okay, where to begin? I suppose I should start back at the '83 blackout. We all thought it was the end of screams."

"Same here. '00 wasn't a picnic either. I got caught inside a door for 3 hours. But that's a story I'll tell you later."

"Anyway, I was 23. A new employee, fresh from the ranks of training school. I already had a group of friends, both new and old. And then there was the power. Boss Boy said we had to work harder than ever, 'cause-"

"-'Children don't get scared as easily anymore.' Even then? Man, Waternoose used to give us the same speech over and over. It was like his pet mantra. Go on."

"Anyway, we all did our best. But, of course we also quickly found out that what he said was true. My first assignment locked me out of her room. I went downstairs and they mistook me for the family dog. After shooing me outside, I had to climb up the ivy trellis and through the window-lucky the kid was still sleeping-and finally I came back through the door. I had the worst luck with doors,at the beginning. Micheler-Fran Micheler, the floor supervisor- said I had probably broken the record for most dead doors discovered by one scarer." She sipped her coffee. "That was, until I made a discovery that changed my life. It was a normal day. Go in the door, roar, go out the door. Until the last child on my list. Penny Hocking. I'll never forget that name. 5 year old. Her mom was just leaving her room when I came in. I roared at the girl and she screamed very loudly. Upon hearing the scream, her mom came back in before I had the chance to hide or go back through the door. She saw me and screamed, too. I ran out the door, fast, and then I got a cheer of congratulations from everyone on the floor. My scare assistant, Peep Brannigan, said that he'd never seen anyone get that kind of power out of one door, ever. Fran told me that this time I did break a record, for most canisters used on one door. I guess she thought that it was Penny who did all the screaming. That was when it all began to make sense. If children produced powerful screams, isn't it logical to think that adult screams might be even more powerful?"

"I suppose."

"Well, that night I invited all my friends to my house and told them what I had discovered. They were ecstatic. I tell you, I have never seen happier monsters in all my life. That is, until Peep spoke up. 'But Cally,' he asked, 'isn't there a certain amount of risk involved? I mean, what if they catch you at it?' ("Peep sounds like somebody I used to know," Randall said.) 'Nonsense,' I said, 'you all noticed that Fran didn't so much as ask me why Penny was so incredibly horrified by me for the first time?' That seemed to settle it, because after that, nobody questioned my logic.

"The plan was, go in, scare kid, hide under bed and wait for parent, come out from under bed, scare parent, and go out. Simple, huh? It was, for a while. I lead my floor and all the others in scaring, my friends not far behind. Who was the floor leader on yours?"

"Sully, the raisin guy. Had about a hundred thou."

"I coulda creamed him. Try 267 thou."

"Do you hold the all-time scare record?"

"Used to, but I got disqualified after being discovered. Now it's - was - about 123 thou. The way they discovered me was rather unusual. Did you catch that documentary, 'Scared Silly: The Monster's Inc Story'?"

"Catch it? Are you kidding? I was in it. 4 scenes. 3 backgrounds, once in a scene showing the training course."

"Well, then, you remember that show they did afterwards, showing the best scarers? 'Scar'd'?"

"They made us watch it for training homework."

"One day,months later, I went in the doors as usual, to do my thing. I followed the plan exactly. The next day, the police show up at my door to arrest me. Seems one of the doors had a hidden camera planted in it and when they were watching the video to edit it they saw what we had done. In short, busted."

"Ouch. And that's when it all began."

"Yup. The year-long trial, the made-for-TV movie, the extended news coverage, and, of course, my book. The profits of which I can't collect. That's where your Christmas bonus came from, and probably they still do that."

"Really? Thank you. I always wondered where they got the money."

"So, yeah, that's my story." The food tray was empty. Cally looked at her watch. "Well, it's almost time for my shift to begin." She got up with her tray. "See ya."

Randall watched her walk away. As he did, he felt really weird somewhere in his middle, like he had swallowed an aerobic snake. He wondered what it could be.

After leaving the caf, he went up to his room and opened the door. He saw something on the bed. It was plastic bag. Randall opened it up and found a green T-shirt with 4 arm holes, a pair of jeans with 4 legs, and 2 pairs of shoes and socks. On the T-shirt, there was a Post-it note. Randall read it.

-Randall

I didn't think you were the three-piece suit type. These were in the hand-me-down box. Oh, and look in the shirt pocket. There you'll find the answer to the question you asked.

Love, Cally

Randall took something out of the pocket. It was a thick chocolate bar. The label said AERO. Randall re-read the note. 'Love, Cally'

The snake was back.