By His Own Petard

by Marcel Cromulent

       On Monday evening at the Periwinkle Wall, Vera was late. I waited expectantly for twenty minutes before she arrived. Why haven't they invented women that keep appointments?
       Vera and I had been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. A few times we had made use of Lyubov's special rooms. He is kind enough to make them available free of charge for second couples like us. As Lyubov formulates it, his secret rooms are full of interesting items for immoral purposes.
       Oh, right, you don't know Lyubov yet. So you cannot appreciate that what I just told you is truly mind boggling.
       Free of charge. Lyubov.
       Yes! I almost succeeded in squeezing those two concepts into the same sentence.
       Vera was in a strange mood on this Monday. Not in her usual strange mood, but in a strange new strange mood.
       “I have just seen something horrible! You will never believe this!”
       “Something horrible? Your husband?”
       “No, no, here in Second Life, on the mall. I was checking out the skirts, but there was really nothing new there. But next to me, there was a red haired woman who was also window shopping, and a couple of newbies. Then suddenly, something totally awful happened.”
       Vera made a pause. I prodded her, “Well?”
       “There were two dogs. Or perhaps they were not really dogs, but some other kind of animal. Anyhow, they did look a lot like dogs. One of them caught the woman with his teeth, and the other started to bite her arms and her