"Holy hell!" Jeff squeaked. "That hurts like hell!"
His normal expansive vocabulary had failed him as his thrashing, panicked movements battered the trap against the floor, but the metal bars refused to release their hold on Jeff's long rat's tail. Predictably, his commotion attracted the attention of restaurant employees. A woman shrieked. Jeff heard laughter, too, no doubt from the loutish busboys who thought his suffering something to distract them from a boring job.
Then another man appeared holding a long, gleaming cutting utensil in a blocky hand attached to a muscular arm. The man's dark eyes locked onto Dan and the man smiled and raised his razor-sharp cleaver.
"Oh fuck!" Jeff squeaked and veered left.
The cleaver's broad blade struck the tiles of the kitchen floor with a harsh and resounding clang. The man grunted in irritation, having missed, and raised the cleaver again.
Jeff's next squeak was more of a continuous howl of pain as the cleaver sliced down and neatly severed the trap and most of his tail from his rodent's body. Free of the trap, Jeff scurried under tables and counters, dodging multiple sets of feet, as he sought an escape from the hellish restaurant kitchen.
"Where'd it go?" The man with the cleaver bellowed. "Anyone see it?"
Jeff's stump of a tail left a bloody trail as he scampered to the back of the restaurant. He sought out a familiar tunnel and escaped inside the walls to nurse his wound and avoid the cleaver-wielding maniac of a meat cutter.
Since turning into a rodent, Jeff had dreamed of losing his tail, but not quite under such gruesome circumstances.
He couldn't even imagine going back inside the restaurant. What should he do? Even more important, it had been seven days. Why the hell hadn't the Chronivac changed him back to his real self?