Terrence pushed the food into the service slot of the phase mole’s cage. The small creature sniffed the floor and vanished, materializing next to the meal a moment later. The ball of hands was next. It waved the string (now a filthy mass of knots) that Terrence had given it the previous day, and tapped furiously for food. “Okay, okay, I’m getting it,” Terrence said as he dropped a mouse in. He grimaced, turned around, and found the feathered monster watching him.

Terrence sighed. “One dinner, coming right up,” he muttered, taking a moment to wonder if food served at three in the morning should be considered dinner or breakfast. Checking the feeding schedule, he picked up a small cage with a mouse in it and deposited it for the monster. “Here you go.”

The monster chirped gratefully and drew back to the corner of the cage. She—he wasn’t sure what to call it but he thought the monster looked sort of feminine—opened her mouth and a pale white butterfly crawled out. Fluttering its wings, it took flight and landed on the mouse. It extended its proboscis and attached it to the mouse. The rodent didn’t seem to notice, and the butterfly remained latched onto it. Suddenly, the mouse collapsed, rolling over. The butterfly detached and landed on the mouse's abdomen. It reattached its proboscis and continued to feed from the mouse, changing color from white to pale pink. The mouse squeaked and flailed, but its struggles seemed to be growing weaker. All the while, the insect’s color was deepening as more and more blood drained out of its host. Finally, the mouse grew still.

The butterfly continued to feed for another few seconds. Finally, it detached and fluttered upward, back into the monster’s open mouth. It was completely red.

Terrence watched the whole thing, looking mildly horrified by the end of it. “Well, that might have just be the most disturbing thing I’ve seen here,” he thought out loud, “and that’s saying a lot.”

The monster gave a low, mournful chirp. All of a sudden, she started moving her hands in a strange pattern. Seeing that he looked confused, she repeated the signs and looked up at Terrence again. “I’m sorry, what?” The monster, in spite of not being with the rest of the “intelligent” monsters, was clearly trying to communicate with him. “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

The monster whistled unhappily and dropped her hands. She thought for a moment, then pointed to herself. “You?” asked Terrence. “You’re sad?”

The creature nodded, repeated some of the signs, and then paused. “That means you’re sad?” Terrence repeated the signs to her, and she whistles ecstatically. She pointed at him and made some more hand motions. “I’m sad,” he translated, repeating the signs to another happy chirp. The monster gestured toward the dead mouse. “The mouse’s sad.” The monster shook her head. She pointed first to Terrence, then to the mouse. “I’m sad about the mouse?” The monster looked pleased. She pointed at herself, then at Terrence, then once again at the mouse. “You’re sad that I’m sad about the mouse,” he stated. “That’s what you’re trying to say?” The happy chirp was his affirmation.

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He grinned, and then the realization kicked in. “Oh. You’re sad that I’m sad about the mouse.” He glanced at the bloodless rodent and his stomach churned. Still, it was the one of the only times any monster had apologized for being, well, monstrous. Looking away quickly, he stared up at the ceiling and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “Hey, everyone’s gotta eat.” The monster sat and chirped back quietly.

A few more moments passed in silence. Terrence glanced down the hallway, where something was growling hungrily. He turned back toward the monster, who was still staring at him. “Hey look,” he said, “I have to get back to work right now, but it’s been nice.” The monster blinked, and Terrence began to feel extremely awkward. “Oh, I never introduced myself! I’m Terrence.”

The monster whistled forlornly. Then she twittered and pointed to herself, making two distinct chirps. “Chi-Chi?” Terrence tried. “Is that your name?” His pronunciation was more or less correct.

Taking his cart of food, Terrence dealt with the rest of the monsters on his list. When he was finished with the hallway, he wheeled the empty cart back to the storage room.

The scream seemed to come from the walls, or maybe from inside his head. Terrence dropped his mop, startled. One of the lights overhead flickered, and down the hallway, Terrence could see a cross of yellow tape blocking off the end of it. The tape hadn’t been there when he’d started his shift.

Abandoning his cart, Terrence crept toward the blocked section. The screaming started up again, and this time, above the wrathful noise, he could hear snippets of thankfully human voices.

“…got called out here in the middle of the night…”

“…it just showed up this evening, out of nowhere…”

“…what do you think…”

The screaming voice, which seemed to reverberate throughout the facility and worm its way directly into Terrence’s head, drowned them all out. “I shall give you one final chance to correct this egregious mistake and free me at once. If you do not, I will not hesitate to do everything in my power to make you suffer for this.”

“…we have to contain…”

“…becoming unstable!”

“Turn up the power!”

Never before had so much energy been drained from one monster. This creature, however, seemed to be emitting more and more of it, replenishing its power almost as soon as it was stolen. Terrence pushed through the tape and peeked out from the corner of the hallway, just in time to see a cloud of grey mist writhing within a holding cell. Suddenly, his view was blocked. “Just what do you think—this area is restricted!”

It was Felicia. She looked furious. Perhaps even more so than the formless entity.

And that was how Terrence spent the next several minutes getting fourteen termination warnings, thirty-five insults, and a vaguely implied death threat from one angry employer.