The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag 00 - Skeletons in the Closet

something?”
    “Oh great, we’ve landed at the village idiot’s house.” The voice was deeper than the cat’s and came from the bottom of Ellie’s steps. A small beagle puppy stared up at her with scorn in his cocoa brown eyes. “You act like you’ve never seen a talking animal before.”
    “I haven’t.” Ellie’s voice sounded hollow in her own ears.
    “Snark, you dumbass, I told you the animals here aren’t supposed to talk!” The cat rolled her eyes at the beagle.
    “Well how the earth could I have known?” The beagle scratched his floppy ear with a rear paw.
    Ellie sat down hard on the steps of her trailer. “I feel dizzy.”
    “Looks like she’s gonna yak!” The dog yipped, and scampered out of the line of fire.
    “Don’t worry—she looks like one of them non-eaters anyhow. Probably spew a thimble full of nutrient-enriched bile.”
    “Oh God, please tell me I’m dreaming.” Being piss poor sucked enough, but Ellie did not want to be crazy. Bad things happened to crazy people.
    “Get with the program, homo sapien ! If it makes you feel any better, we’re not really animals.” The cat knocked its head against her arm, and then turned its attention to the dog. “Snark, stop that!”
    The beagle had his hind leg poised in midair, aimed at her potted evergreen. “I can’t help it. It’s instinctive in this form!”
    The cat swiped at the dog with an angry hiss. “Cut it out! Brennigan needs our help.”
    “Who?” Ellie asked. Maybe if she played along the delusions would go away.
    “Our brother, he’s unconscious.” The cat jabbed a paw at the beach. “Down there.”
    The dog barked and started tugging on her hemline with gusto. “Come on, slow poke, he’s over this way!”
    “I’m in my bathrobe!” Ellie protested. The look the animals gave her screamed, So, who gives a flying rat’s ass?
    The chilly February breeze coming off the Atlantic didn’t help the tangles in her hair one bit as she stumbled along the shoreline after the figments of her overwrought brain. The only real question in her mind, was Brennigan a gerbil or a hamster? Freud would have a field day with her—she almost heard his thick German accent in the holographic therapy program she’d be required to endure after this episode. “ So, your father never let you have a pet and now you are seeing them everywhere you go. Classic Electra complex. Very interesting!”
    The beagle stopped short and she tripped over his back and landed face first in the sand. The dog didn’t seem to notice.
    “Where did he go? I swear this is where we left him.”
    “I told you to stay with him!” The cat arched its back and hissed. “Snark, you meat sack! He doesn’t remember anything and he’s in the single most dangerous place in the known multiverse! What the earth is wrong with you?”
    “Calm down, Sass. He couldn’t have gone far. Let’s fan out and check the beach in both directions.”
    “Not like this, it’ll take too long.” A low hum reverberated through the air like a pulse of energy. Ellie sat up and wiped sand from her mouth. The yowling cat’s fur turned to feathers. Sand around the creature shimmered in and out of focus. The result appeared similar to the soft focus effect on Ellie’s cameras, where the subject remained clear against a blurry backdrop. Seeing it in real life went beyond eerie and well into the loony bin territory.
    Before she thought of what to say to her figments, the bird—a seagull by all appearances— hopped over a few feet and squawked at the dog. “You head south with the human. I’ll pan along the coastline to the north. See if I can spot him from an aerial vantage point. Hopefully, he has enough sense to stay out of the water.” Stretching its wings the bird hopped a half dozen times and took flight.
    Ellie stared at the markings in the sand. Heading from the direction of her house, cat paw prints indented the beach, but then bird tracks took their place. Could delusions be so detail specific?
    “Well come on, human. Best keep your eye on the prize.” The dog trotted off.
    For no discernible reason, Ellie jogged after it. “So, can you do that, too?”
    “Do what?” The beagle didn’t break stride as he glanced over to her. “Adopt a new form?”
    Ellie nodded.
    “Yeah, but it hurts like earth so we don’t want to do it too often. The more we refuse to change though, the more likely we’ll get stuck in a permanent form.”
    “We wouldn’t want