Richard who is and always was a God-damned lizard has been holding still for your assessment, his lizard face masklike, radiating faint embarrassment. (You know it's him, because you're not the one embarrassed.) How were you supposed not to ogle? His lizard fingers have small claws. His nostrils are slits. He must hear from those holes in his skull. What would happen if you poked your finger in there?

»You will not.«

Richard's voice comes from all around. You stick out your tongue— your— is it a lizard tongue? You try to feel, but your fingers are not sensitive, and your mouth is full of sharp little teeth. No change there. You attempt to see through Richard's eyes, but he's put a wall up: instead, he places a hand on your head and turns you around. You are facing a desk, a lizard desk: a flat typewriter lies on it, and a few crumpled paper cups, and, behind them, a box. The box is square in the back and curved in the front, and is beige, but the front is black glass: you can see your reflection in it.

You are also a lizard. You expected that. You have spots— you expected that too, because your hands did. White scales with grey spots. Your eyes are yellow. Your lizard face is a lot rounder than Richard's, and your snout shorter, and your neck much shorter. Perhaps a foot in length. Is that his fault? Did he make it short? Damn him!

On your neck— you tilt your head to look— are little nubby spines, which run down your back and your— ooh! Ooh! You have a tail! You mean, of course you do, because you're a lizard. It isn't very big, and it also has spots, and you can't really move it, try as you might. But when you grab it, you feel it.

"R—"

Richard lashes out and clamps your mouth shut— you mean actually clamps it; his hand curls around your snout. Your opinion of snouts drops considerably. »Think.«

Richard?

»Yes. Like that.«

Richard, you have a tail.

»I know.«

The lizard face betrays no emotion, but he doesn't sound flippant. After a moment, he bends his neck down (and down and down) to see over your shoulder, then withdraws. The eyes like spotlights fix on you again.

...Is it a special tail? Is he embarrassed because his tail is so much worse? You attempt to crane your own neck, but it doesn't go very far: you have to shuffle past him, in this cramped little wherever-you-are, to check. Richard has no tail at all. He doesn't even have a flap in his slacks for one. Aha! Is that why he's so mean all the time? He's a tailless freak?

The embarrassment has been crowded out by soft annoyance. «We do not have tails.»

But you do?

»Because you are the freak.«
»It is atavistic. You appear to the eye to be primitive. Also, stunted.«
»You have perhaps escaped the breeding program.«

The breeding program? You don't want to know. And it's his fault you look like this.

»As it is your fault I look like that.«
»It is not... bad, Charlie. It is what you are. It is...«
»I am glad to see you at last.«

(2/3)