“We’ll handle this from here,” goes Rivera.

So I got to ride in the back of the cop car with Marvin and the Shop Vac. It was really crowded and Marvin was all doggie licky love face, so my makeup was très fucked up by the time we got to the loft.

So I’m all, “Marvin loves me good long time, cops.”

And Cavuto’s all, “Figures, he’s a cadaver dog.”

And I’m all, “Sure, just make up things to make yourself sound cooler.”

And Rivera’s like, “Out. Tell your boyfriend we need our jackets ASAP. And after you deliver the message, go home. You’re supposed to be at your mother’s house.”

’Kayso, they abandoned me on the sidewalk with my Shop Vac and drove off. I could see little tears of doggie despair in Marvin’s eyes.

So I text Foo that I need help getting the Shop Vac up the stairs and he comes down just as the tow truck pulls up, so all the crying and the screaming happens, and Foo is totally inconsolable, even when I offered him a hand job, which is really the best I could do on the sidewalk with people going by and whatnot, but I was rejected, proving, I think, that he really does love his car more than me.

So it’s like, Oh noez! And an inky-colored despair of rejection enveloped me like the black tortilla of depression around a pain burrito.

I needed to mope and grieve for my lost innocence, but no. We had to fix the vacuum so it would suck vampy rat fog and turn it into vampy rat chunks. So while Foo wired science stuff into the Shop Vac, I had to get Jared down off the kitchen counter, where he had decided to stand and chuck a major spaz because he hit his rat fog tolerance level.

And Jared’s all, “Get them off me! Get them off me!” And he’s swinging the tennis racket around like a friggin’ windmill, when the rat fog isn’t anywhere near him, but running around the edges of the room like a steamy baseboard.

And I’m all, “You must chill, Spunk Monkey, my boots are scratching the counters.”

Which Jared takes as his cue to start screaming like a little girl. (When Lily and I were going through our Gothic Lolita fashion phase, which we both abandoned later, me because I’d just gotten my lip ring and I kept dribbling lattes on my lacy parts, and Lily because ruffles made her ass look huge, we used to go to Washington Square Park and practice our horrified little-girl screams, but even without practice, Jared was way better than either of us ever was. I think maybe it’s his asthma. Me and Lily could pown him at creepy staring, though.)

Anyway, I was just glad that Jody took his dagger away from him, because someone could have lost an eye if he was still holding on to it when I swept his feet out from under him with the same stainless-steel torchiere lamp that the Countess had used on Tommy. (Although it was kind of bent now.)

And he’s all, “Ow, ow, ow.”

And I’m all, “Your cross-dressing sissy-man kung-fu is no match for my superior household lighting kung-fu.”

And he whines like, “I’m going home. You hurt me. You suck. This sucks. I have to go have family dinner-with my family-and I’m going to school tomorrow so you can just fuck off and die, Abby Normal.”

And I’m like, “Fine, give me my boots.”

And he’s like, “Fine.”

And I’m like, “Fine.”

And it would have been way better if he could have just stormed out right then, but it took us about a half hour to get my boots off of him, with me sitting in the sink and him on the counter, guarding me with the tennis racket, because it turned out that I have a pretty low tolerance for rat fog trying to bite me, too.

’Kayso, we got my boots off of Jared and he decided to stay and help because it turns out that even a stream of biting rat fog is more fun than family dinner. So Foo had the Shop Vac all scienced up with sunlight LEDs and whatnot and he turns it on and starts sucking in the mist with most awesome suckage. (Gay Builder Bob rocks hardware!) And it’s so cool, because we can see the fog go in-then we can hear the thump as the sun LED turns the rats to solid again and they hit the inside of the plastic drum.

And Foo is all yelling over the motor, “We may have to unload and put them in their boxes before we get too many. We don’t want to open this and try to deal with a hundred rats.”

And I’m all, “Why don’t we just leave them in there until sunup and then they’ll all be asleep?”

And Foo looks at me, all surprised, and I’m like, “Shut up. I can be smart and hawt.”

And he’s all, “’Kay,” which I don’t know whether he meant sarcastically, or that I couldn’t be smart, or that I wasn’t hawt. But I never found out, because right then the Shop Vac starts making this, foof-thoop splat noise, and Jared lets loose with his little-girl scream.

And it turns out that the exhaust of the Shop Vac is blowing vampy rats out the back side, which is the foof-thoop noise, and splattering them against the wall, which is the splat. And with every one, Jared is eeking. So it’s like, Foof-thoopsplat-eek! Foof-thoop-splat-eek! Foof-thoop-splat-eek! I know! It would make a totally cool industrial beat for a dance groove. But I didn’t sample it because there was stuff happening.

And Foo is all, “Pick them up and put them in their boxes. Seal them with duct tape.”

’Cause it turns out that vampy rats are pretty durable, and after they splat and slide down the wall, they are starting to pull themselves together again and sort of limp away, but slow enough to catch. But they’re still all squishy and whatnot.

So Jared and I just turn to Foo and give him our best, “Bitch, please,” look.

So Foo’s all, “Okay, then, you work the hose.”

And I’m all, “Sure, now you want me to work your hose-”

And he’s all, “Abby, please!”

Up until then I thought Foo was the most chill love ninja in the Bay Area, but it turns out that if his science gets a little sideways he goes to pieces. So I take the hose and start doing the rat suck, while Foo finds some rubber gloves and a spatula to scrape up the splatter pets.

Then Jared gets the idea of shooting the rats right into their little plastic cages, which, as it turns out, kind of works after we blast a couple of them through the plastic and he starts holding the boxes against a pillow he tapes on the wall. And Foo starts duct taping on the lids before the vamp rats can pull themselves together.

Then I’m all, “You know, if we could use this to shoot tiny dogs at the vamp kitties, we’d be finished with this nonsense in a day or two.”

And Foo and Jared both roll their eyes at me like I’m high or something, when they are the ones sealing in mashed rats for freshness. ’Kayso, by, like, midnight, we have all the rats boxed again, and most of them are kind of fixed, but some of them are still pretty fucked up from the flight, and Jared is all, “I’m going home. I have issues.”

Which I know probably means that he is going to go home and break the news to Lucifer 2 that they are no longer BFFs because Jared has lost his rodent wood forever due to our night of rat carnage, which is a good thing, I guess.

Then Foo is like, “I have to go, too. I have to meet with my academic advisor in the morning, and I have to prepare, then I have work in the afternoon.”

And I’m all, “You can prepare here.”

And Foo’s like, “I don’t think I can.” And he looks away.

I was going to tell him that I had decided to become a creature of the night, but they were bailing on me, so I was all, “Fine. You two run along. I’ll stay here.”

And Foo was like, “Wait until dawn, then give each of them a water bottle of blood. They’ll heal. But make sure you tape their cages back up so they can’t escape. Blah, blah, biology, science, behavior, science word, science word, blah, blah.”

So I kissed him like it was the last time, and went into the bedroom to lie down and wait until dawn, but there was like this huge maze made out of wood on our bed, so I went back out into the living room and chilled with the rats on the futon until dawn. I couldn’t sleep anyway, because I was thinking of all the people I was totally going to get revenge on when I was nosferatu, after I found Jody and Tommy and rescued them, of course.