Aw, now, Ma--!'" The same voice which earlier had declared my waking state now sounded again in my car. The thin mattress beside me sagged as a second being, marginally nearer the human form than Ma, plopped himself down beside me on the bed. "Don't you mind her none. She always gets kinda brassy to guests when it's our turn to host the sabbat prayer meet.

Brassy, am I?" Ma's tone hit somewhere between a first alto and a blender full of cockatiels. She boxed hcr offspring's ear smartly and snapped, "That's how I learned you manners? You keep a civil tongue in your head, boy, or I swear I'll--！

Shoot, Ma, where else would I keep it?" hc replied, and with that an unimaginable stretch of flabby blue-black flesh shot out of his mouth and flew the length of the trailer, returning with terrible alacrity and a copy of TV Guide stuck to the tip. 'Thee?" he concluded as he wrestled with the tongue-tying periodical...