Dagless stood on the roof and looked out over Darkplace estate. It was a familiar landscape of desolation and terror. It felt like home. There was an ominous mist creeping over the horizon but by Dagless' estimation, it probably wouldn't arrive for a few weeks so he wasn't worried for the moment. The mist wouldn't be the next Darkplace affliction.

If it wouldn't be the mist, what would it be? There was always something brewing at Darkplace.

Something dark indeed, in this Darkplace.

It was brewing.

Something terrifying was brewing and soon they'd all be drinking terror tea.

Dagless decided to go to the cafeteria and get a cup of tea. He was suddenly thirsty.

xxx

Dagless happened to walk into the cafeteria as Sanchez and Liz were walking out, their heads together in conversation. From a distance, they could almost appear to be lovers.

"Hey, Sanch. Liz. Where are the two of you off to in such a hurry?"

"Hey, buddy! Good to see you."

Dagless and Sanchez embraced, not having seen one another in several hours.

"We're going to look over Sanchez's data and see if we can't solve the mystery of why Sanchez's Diabetegone doesn't work," Liz explained.

xxx

"Let's start by taking a good look at one of their pancreases," suggested Dagless as soon as they arrived at Sanchez's rat laboratory.

"Why's that?" asked Sanchez, a man not too proud to learn from his superiors.

"Because insulin is released into the body via the blood cells we find in the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas," Dagless explained**.

"Of course, I'd nearly forget!" giggled Liz.

"One problem, Dag," warned Sanchez, tossing his mane of hair.

"What's that?" asked Dagless, knowing it was unlikely that Sanchez had thought of something he hadn't already considered but always willing to listen to an inferior.

"A rat's pancreas is teeny-tiny," Sanchez explained, "Even with a microscope, it's hard to get a good look. Besides, I get very confused because it's all switched around so if you want to push the slide up, you actually have to push it down. It's ridiculous! In this day and age of modern technology, I mean, am I wrong?"

Liz nodded in agreement but Dagless chuckled.

"What's so funny, Dag? Do know something the rest of us don't?" asked Sanchez, knowing that Dagless probably did know something that he and Liz did not. That was how things tended to go around Darkplace.

Rick Dagless pulled a small bottle from the pocket of his doctor's jacket.

"This," Dagless explained, holding up the bottle, "is a chemical compound formula that makes small things larger. We'll put this on the mouse pancreas and make it larger and easier for us to study."

Liz grabbed the bottle in excitement.

"This is amazing!" Liz exclaimed, "I can't believe no one has thought to create a chemical compound formula of this nature before. It seems like such a natural and necessary item to have. I can think of a million uses for this bottle."

"I can think of something I would like to make larger!" exclaimed Sanchez with a cheeky wink.

"And what's that?" Liz asked.

"This coffee!" Sanchez answered, "Because it's going to be a long night, examining mouse pancreas."

Dagless chuckled. That was just like Sanchez. Always thinking about the size of his cup.

Author's notes

** For a more thorough explanation about diabetes or just about any other topic in the world, I recommend a website called. .org. I use it for all my research. The page about me is full of lies and errors but the medical stuff all sounds about right to me. I'll let you be the judge.

And I left my wife, she didn't leave me.

Snuggles watched as the humans took Jingle-Bell. The once proud beauty went meekly into the hand of the sweet-smelling, female human. There was a time when Snuggles would have grieved the loss of a friend and former lover but for Snuggles, the time for sadness was over.

It was time to get angry.

"One problem," piped up the small female human, "Won't it kill this rat if we make her pancreas enormous in comparison to the rest of her tiny body?"

The fiery one laughed, "Oh, Liz! You're such a girl. We're going to kill the rat, then take her pancreas and then enlargen the organ."

The female turned away in horror, holding the frail Jingle-Bell towards the fiery one, "Take her, I can't watch!"

Then from the shadows appeared a new human. He was roughly the same size as the fiery one and equally as attractive in appearance. Even from a distance, Snuggles could see the wisdom in this man's eyes.

"Sanchez is right, Liz," said the wise one as he put his hand on the female's shoulder, "This rat needs to die so that others may live. And eat Bounty Bars. Her life will not be in vain for she will have helped humanity."

"It's just a stupid rat! What's everyone getting so maudlin about?" Sanchez cried, his Latin blood boiling, "It's just some sad old rat that you'd beat to death with a shovel if you saw it in a barn. Sure, she was probably beautiful in her time, you can see the remnants of a good looking rat in her sorry current form but now she's old! She's... it says here she's four months old. Good God, she looks wretched. What God forsaken force turned this once vibrant rat into a sorry shell of her former self? For the love of medical science, let's just off this rat and get to work!"

With that, the fiery man plunged a syringe into Jingle-Bell and she was no more. Snuggles said a prayer to a rat God and began plotting his vengeance. He didn't have to think too hard or too long because his rat god apparently heard his rat prayers.