“If it helps, think about how much I shall enjoy eating such a delicious little boy like you for my lunch tomorrow. Farewell, Rodney.”

“I’ll try to look at it that way, Colleen.”

“Good boy,” she said, and picked him up and kissed his cheek with her enormous lips.

She left a reading light on in the room, and went home.

In the morning, Colleen returned and greeted him.

“Good morning, little admirer. Are you feeling delicious?”

“I don’t know exactly how that would feel,” he said.

She laughed.

“Well I’m sure my tongue will find you delicious,” she said.

“Your mouth looks lovelier than ever!” he said.

“Thank you. I’ll take you to the kitchen now.”

She took him down to the kitchen, placed him on the bench, and he saw that she must have opened the window to let in the fresh air, before she had come to greet him.

“Well Rodney, I don’t want to burn you at all, but I would like to cook you a little, before I have you for lunch. Would you prefer to warm up dry in the oven, or in water in a frying pan on the stove? In either case, I’ll turn it down low, so as not to hurt you.”

Guessing that the frying pans were in the cupboard underneath him, he opted for the stove. While Colleen knelt down and opened the cupboard door, to look for a suitable pan, Rodney grabbed a napkin, parachuted out the window, and ran across the garden. Soon he heard Colleen calling out the window.

“Rodney, here I come to catch you.”

She was soon coming out the door, and running across the lawn. Rodney saw a drain pipe on some unlevel ground, and slipped between the grate bars. He saw Colleen run over and lie down and look in at him.

“Rodney, you’re being childish about this. If you’d stayed in the kitchen, and accepted the inevitability of your destiny as my lunch, you’d be that much closer to the end of the experience. Why don’t you be sensible, and come out? We’ll still be friends, and we can go inside and get you cooking on the stove.”

He looked out at her.

“No. I’m not coming out.”

“Rodney, I didn’t let my school students get away with anything, and you won’t get away from me now. It is a pointless thing to retreat into that drain. Even if you found your way back to earth, I could teleport you back to this land with the machine anyway, even if it doesn’t zero in on objects that are already in this dimension. Maybe I’ll work that problem out too one day. So you might as well come out, so I can eat you.”

“I’m staying here,” he said.

Colleen looked sternly at him and pulled at the grate with her strong hand. It came loose in her fingers. Rodney backed further into the drain, as he saw her hand reaching in. He kept backing away, until she had most of her arm in the drain. She was unable to reach him.