Eventually it leaves me again, damp and gooey.
My ear is slightly sore from being chewed, and I remember being flung about in a chaotic fashion.

It still lets me live. Perhaps it doesn’t intend to kill me. Or perhaps I died when that plushie tribe threw me from the table, and this is hell. And the beast is Satan’s Poodle.
Not likely, but nothing makes much sense any more.

I remember a dream. A strange italicised voice spoke to me in the dream. The details of the dream are fuzzy, but the voice wanted me to stand up and fight. Fight the Poodle.

Ridiculous. How can I fight the Poodle? It is larger and more powerful than me. It may even be more cunning than me. It has razor-sharp teeth and vicious claws — I have bright yellow.
There is no way to defeat the Poodle.

A wind blows across the carpet and I think I hear words carried by the moving air:

Vu vu zela!

The words make no sense, but the wind speed gradually increases and as it does it makes a hideous hooting noise. Hoot tooot toooot tooot toooooot!

The wind stops abruptly. A silent calm takes its place.
I am puzzled, but I know now that the Poodle will come back everyday and torture me, never killing me, until the end of time. I still long for death, but death will not come easily this way.

Perhaps the italicised voice is right, though. I must fight. What else is there in this treacherous land? Die fighting, rather than die submitting to my fate.

Fighting the Poodle is a hopeless matter with no chance of victory. I feel demoralised, and I don’t think I can stand up to the creature yet. Certainly I cannot defeat it until I learn of its weaknesses. I need a victory over a lesser opponent to boost my self-esteem.

What of the tribe of plushies that betrayed me? I lost my heart because of them, and I can never get it back. They left me to be torn apart. Are they not deserving of my retribution?

Somehow I will climb to the table top again. When I get there, then they’ll be sorry.