Annie XXXVIII Some People's Pets

(Chronological index: Ray College Freshman)

Annie looked up from her magazine to see Ray bringing another birdcage into the dorm room. She stepped off the page and crossed her arms.

"What? Just when I get my cage comfortably decorated, you're going to move me to a new one?" she sneered.

"Not at all," he replied as he put the covered cage down on the desk. It was a little larger than the one Annie used. There was a strange rustling somewhere inside it. Annie stepped back a little bit, wondering what was in there.

"This isn't for you," he went on. He had a bag in his other hand and started taking some stuff out of it. She walked over, curious.

"Bird seed?" she asked. "You're putting me on the millet diet? Or…" She glanced over at the cage. "Did you get another pet?"

"Jennie asked me to watch her pet for a while. They're doing some renovations in her dorm and the dust is bothering Polly, here."

"Polly?" Annie shook her head. "I hope she's not an art student, if she can't think of anything more original than that."

"Hospitality," he said. "And she said that everyone assumes it's named Polly, and she got tired of correcting people."

He eased the cover off. A blue and yellow parrot eyed Annie suspiciously through the bars. Ray filled the water bottle and the food tray and reattached them.

Then he fished a saltine out of a paper sack and handed it to Annie. "What?"

"Make friends with her," he said, waving towards the cage.

"Why me?" Polly started to bob her head, watching the cracker in the sylph's hands.

"Because Polly is your guest for the week." He put a finger in the small of her back and edged her forward.

"Um…Polly…?"

"Polly wanna cracker!" the bird croaked happily, rocking from foot to foot on the swing. The sylph eased the saltine up to the bar. Polly took it delicately in her beak. "Thank you," it said before taking the first bite.

"Manners!" Annie said happily. "How novel!" She turned to her owner. "Now, how do you know Jennie? And what do you mean, guest?"

"Jennie's got a class is next to one of mine. She's seen me with you a time or two and thought that I'm good with pets." He arranged the paper sack on the desk between the cages so that Annie could walk into it.

"Why didn't she ask the pet how good you are with pets?" Annie snarled.

He rubbed his chin for a moment. "I think she thinks you talk like Polly talks."

"Arwk! Polly's a good talker! Polly's a good talker!"

"Yes, you are!" Annie told the bird happily. "Good Polly!" Then she turned to glare at her master. "And you explained it to her?"

"Um…no. She has a lot on her mind. She's getting dust on her homework and she has to keep her cheerleader uniform clean and-"

"She's a cheerleader?"

"It's not what you think!" he protested.

"You're doing a favor for some blonde-"

"Redhead."

"Of COURSE she is! You and redheads…" She shook her head. "Maybe I should get a red wig." Her eyes flashed dangerously, but he was watching the bird. "Can I get some red yarn?"

"Annie, you don't need to be a redhead for me to like you."

"I know THAT!" she shouted. "I just wonder if you'll be easier to manipulate."

He snorted but nodded. "Okay. I'll see what I can find."

"Thanks, master!" she said happily. She ran over to his wrist to give him a hug.

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With the red wig carefully in place, she started to teach Polly new phrases.

The wig wasn't very natural looking, but she thought it would do. She only had to outsmart a bird. A big bird. A bird she could ride like one of the eagles in Lord of the Rings.

She briefly thought about trying to break the bird to the bridle, but that would be a terribly sharp learning curve. If the first flight didn't go perfectly, it would be the last.

And for all Polly's manners, she still didn't relish getting with arm's reach of that beak.

So Annie settled for conditioning Polly to respond to red hair in specific ways.

"Polly wanna cracker" became "Gimmee the cracker and nobody gets hurt!"

She made a very large bra out of toilet paper (stuffed with more toilet paper). Then she taught Polly to respond to the sight of lingerie by shouting, "Holy melons, Batman! They're coming right at us!"

When Ray or Thomas were in the room, she hid the wig, broke out the box of raisins and taught more mundane phrases.

"Annie, what are you doing?" Ray asked the first time he 'caught' her at this.

"I'm just a little bored, master. I wondered if I could teach Polly something interesting to say."

"Well, I'm not sure if Jennie has the same sense of humor you have."

"Oh, I think it'll be fine," Thomas said. "A parrot that says, 'Quoth the Raven, Nevermore?' People will laugh and congratulate Jennie on teaching that to her bird. She'll be grateful."

"Grateful, Master!" Annie echoed. "You'll have a grateful cheerleader thanking you!"

"Well. Okay. But nothing too frightening. I'd hate to have Polly saying anything ominous in the night."

"Actually," Thomas said, "I'd be more worried if she was teaching the bird to say, ''No master, not there! I'm still virgin in that orifice!'"

"Please don't give her ideas," Ray muttered.

"TOO LATE!" Annie said.

"TOO LATE!" Polly repeated.

"Quiet, both of y'all," Ray growled.

Annie winked at Thomas. He sketched a salute at the sylph.

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By the end of the week she had stopped introducing new phrases and spent most of the day reinforcing the lessons.

Since the lessons included food treats, Polly was more than happy to cooperate. Dirty words and obscene phrases exploded from her beak again and again.

About an hour before Ray was usually back in the room she started to have second thoughts. Sure, he was using her to cruise chicks. And he was ignoring her for the sake of those chicks. And she was still mad about that sylphobic Sissy.

But what had Jennie done to her? Was it fair to punish a bubblehead because she was mad at He Who Must Be (mostly) Obeyed?

She tapped the saltine against the desk and thought things over. Polly became quite excited on the swing, watching the cracker with almost psychotic intensity.

"RAWRK! Gimmee the cracker and nobody gets hurt!" she yelled.

Annie laughed and handed it over. "Well, it's too late, now," she said with a wry smile. "And it's funny."

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She was juggling raisins when Ray came into the room. He stood in the doorway for a second.

Polly watched carefully as the fruit bounced in front of her. "Okay," Annie shouted. "Now YOU TRY!" She tossed the raisins through the bars one at a time.

The parrot cheerfully ate each one. Annie made a disappointed sound.

"What are you doing, now?" Ray asked. He propped the door open and came into the room.

"Wasting time, I guess," she said. "So, when is Polly going back?"

"As soon as Jennie gets here," he said. He sat down on his bed and picked up a paper sack. "Should be any minute, now." He started collecting food and treats, then took the food and water from the cage.

"Well, it's been fun having you over," Annie told the bird. She stared back at the sylph. Then the head raised and the beak opened.

"AWK!" Polly shouted. "What did the turkey say?" Annie spun around. Jennie was here.

Jennie was a redhead, technically. The Mohawk she sported was three times as tall as Annie. Half of it was a brilliant metallic red that faded through orange to yellow at the roots. And not a blonde yellow, either. Straw? Saffron?

Her leather jacket was studded and so were her ears. And her lips. She was pierced in places Annie'd never imagined could be pierced.

She found herself looking the woman up and down, wondering where else a metal detector might go off.

The human regarded the sylph with similar scrutiny. "You'd look really radical with a pierced belly button," she told Annie.

"Yeah," she replied, "but my master would just hide magnets under the carpet to watch me fall to my knees."

"Men," Jennie spat. "Can't trust 'em, can't rend them for soap."

"I like her, master."

"Thought you would," Ray said. He handed the bag of crackers to the punk. She offered it through the bars. Polly happily threatened her, then gently took the saltine.

"What else did you teach her?" she asked Annie.

"I, uh.. Well. Um. See, he told me you were a cheerleader."

"You didn't teach her any cheers, did you?" Jennie asked.

Ray snorted. "No, I got her nice and jealous. I'm sure there's some words in their a sailor would be shocked at."

"Wicked," Jennie said with a smile. She tucked the cover into the bag and lifted the cage. "Can't wait to find it all out. Thanks, Ray, Annie."

Then she was gone. Annie turned to glare at Ray. "What the hell was that all about?"

"You remember Genevieve? The girl that sits behind me in Miss Denner's class?" he asked.

Denner was the teacher that owned the sylph named Brent. The sylph that had taken Annie's virginity. Annie had lots of memories from that class, but not of the humans.

"No," she finally admitted.

"Well, she's decided to go punk. And she was asking how to go about teaching Polly a more…varied vocabulary. Something more fitting with her new image."

"And you said….?"

Ray shrugged. "I said leave him with Annie and piss her off." He reached out to lift his pet off the desk. Holding her to his chest, he rolled onto his back and began petting her hair.

She wriggled, brushing his finger away from her head. "You used me!"

"And you tried to get me in trouble, didn't you?" he asked. "So I think it's a wash." She relaxed and thought as he stroked her hair again.

"You lied to me," she said softly. "You promised never to lie to me."

"Eh," he shrugged. "You're still mad about Sissy. You wanted a chance to vent your fury at me. You got it." He offered a fingertip. "Pax?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "No, this is… I can't trust you. This'll take a while to get over."

"I can see that," he nodded. "How about that new ice cream parlor? You pick the ice cream, the mixings, whatever you want."

"Instead of getting my pick of whatever you ordered?" she asked, eyes lighting up.

"Instead," he agreed.

"Even if I pick something like coconut strawberry lust, with maraschino cherries and butterscotch toffee?"

"Even if," he said, wincing.

"I don't know…" she mused. Thomas and Susan came in. Thomas tossed his bag onto his desk and turned to the other two. "You guys ready to go?"

"Go where?" Annie asked.

"The new ice cream store," Susan said. "Ray's buying."

The sylph stared at the two, then turned to stare at the man holding her. "I, uh, could be talked into it. I suppose. Maybe."

Ray rolled to his feet as his pet continued to supply qualifiers. "For now, you understand. A little bit. Just ducking our heads in, not staying. On the other hand…"

And then they were out the door.

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