Before Mr. Porter, Chastity's dad, could shoot, April the gorilla bounded down the hallway, lurching from side to side so he couldn't get a bead on her. Before he knew it, she was right in front of him, had snatched the rifle from his hands, and then bent the barrel into a U-shape.
Mr. Porter thought he was done for, but the gorilla just bounded past him and into the living room, where it, to his surprise, slid open the patio door and left the house!
Mr. Porter had to run down the hall as the hippo that was (unknown to him) his little girl began charging at him. It also headed for the patio door, but was too wide to get through it and broke the frame. Then, to his further amazement, a horse and pig came from Chastity's room and followed the others out of the house.
In a second, Mr. Porter was on the phone. "Hello, police?" he said. "The zoo must've had a mass breakout or something! I just had a gorilla, a hippopotamus, a horse, and a pig break out of my daughter's room, wreck my house, and then escape outdoors!
"Huh! No, there wasn't a pink elephant! All you have to do is just send someone to the Merry Hills edition and they'll see the animals! All of them real big! What? The horse was a Clydesdale, I thi -- Oh my God."
A gorilla. A hippo. A Clydesdale. And a pig. And they all had run out of Chastity's room. Without thinking, Mr. Porter hung up the phone and ran to his daughter's room.
It was in more of a mess than normal. And he could see four sets of clothing that were in shreds, torn apart -- as if the girls who had been in them had suddenly become much, much larger.
Those animal were what the girls were, what they'd called the man they'd teased at the mall. And HIS daughter, his baby, his life's joy, was ONE of them.
He was glad he'd hung up on the police.