The towering nightmare of the woman in charge of the speed dating event rang the gong in the hotel's business hall. The dull thunder concluded the fourth five-minute round.  Each matched couple displayed a spectacular failure of human interaction comparable to a bungled mugging.

Monty, a single component of this social waterboarding, felt confidant his date would forget his name instantly.  She spat a pale wad of gum into her complimentary glass of tap-water before rushing to the next table.  His own head burned as brain cells self-destructed to forget her name, so no harm done.

For God's sake she chewed that gum with her mouth open the entire time.  For God's sake he checked his phone forty-five seconds in.  

Monty would not call this experience hell, but it gave him an idea of what to expect.

His deflated face dug into his palms.  "Meet new people," he huffed into his hands.  "Take the stress out of dating," he muttered to his pinky.

Rear-ending people at stoplights felt less strenuous.

He sloughed back in his chair and drew his hands down as a fox carefully maneuvered off the carpeted floor and into the chair across the table.

The fox straightened in its seat, its head poking above the rim of the table big enough to feel cramped for two people.  The blue bow clipped between its ears and strangely curly fur atop its pointed head left Monty with questions.  The sticker clumsily pinned to its collar reading "Hello, my name is EMILIA," in bold, swishy handwriting left him with serious doubts.  A gold pendant dangling next to the sticker also read EMILIA.

He looked around the crowded room as people shuffled into seats for a miserable five minutes. "Did someone lose a pet?" he called out.  "Or leave a door propped open?"  He pointed to the fox, who looked decidedly hesitant.  "The wildlife is sneaking inside."  A few heads turned, but no one said anything.

"l'm not wildlife," the fox said in a shaky voice, trying to smile, trying to sound sweet.  "I.  Um.  I'm a participant.  I signed up."  The fox looked down and patted her name tag with a black-tipped paw.  "Emilia.  Hello." She squinted and read his name tag.

"Monty?" Her voice betrayed absolute sympathy.

"Yeah..."

"I'm sorry."

He waved it off. "I've adjusted.  But why are you a-"

The gargantuan woman bellowed, "No talking until the session has begun!"

His mouth shut before his brain could object.  His gazed darted back to the fox,  who bit her lip and shrugged as much as a fox could.  He assumed this dating organization dealt in strictly human affairs, one of the bare minimums assumed as part of the dating experience.  While it's possible he read the eventbrite page wrong, the adverts promised, "Hip, Vibrant Singles," which Monty knew was a glittering lie the second they allowed him to participate.  But still, a far cry from offering, "Rabies and Fleas."

Although in fairness the fox appeared well-trimmed.  A sunset orange coat flowed cleanly against the snowy fur running down her neck and chest.  Her paws, gloved in black fur, crossed themselves on the table's pea soup cover.  Her nails were filed down to fine points.  The fox's campfire coal eyes would likely look striking if she didn't give the impression of someone lost in a Wal-Mart.

And yet, despite only wearing two accessories, she was likely the most coherently put together lady in the room, to say nothing of the men, to say even less of himself. 

Monty fiddled his spotted bow tie and checked the watch strapped around his wrist to avoid looking at her straight-on.  The fox's ears fell to the wayside as she likewise struggled.

The valkyrie took a deep breath before bellowing "Five minutes!"  She banged the gong, giving everyone in the room tinnitus.

Monty used a classic opener.  "Why are you a fox?"

She sank in her chair a little.  "I have allergies," she said in the voice of someone who spent the last hour, and in fact her entire life, explaining the same thing over and over.  "I can't eat shellfish."

"Aspirin makes me break out, myself."

"Well, shellfish makes me breakout too.  Break out into a fox.  A bit of a family thing.  Paternal side."

"You'll have to elaborate, please.  Forgive me if I'm being nosy, I don't talk to animals much."

Fur ruffled up the side of her neck.  "I'm not an animal.  I am a human, I'm a woman.  My name is Emilia and I signed up for this as a human, drove my car over here as a human, ate the cream cheese dip at the entree table as a human, but I suppose it had crab meat in it so I started itching then ran to the bathroom and..."

A thick paintbrush tail curled behind her.  "Here I am."

"And you didn't decide to go home after that..."

"The woman over there said no refunds and I paid forty-five dollars to be here, so hell no I'm not going home."

Monty tut-tutted.  "You'd think she'd allow for medical emergencies."

"You'd think."  Her narrow head snapped towards the woman guarding the gong, staring everyone down like a hawk.  Emilia's black ears flattened against her skull and Monty heard a low growl.  "I'm leaving a complaint on their Yelp page when I get home.  At least she let me bag my clothes and keep them under her table until this is over."

"Does this," he gestured to her small, unassuming fox-state, "happen often?"

"Enough to be too often."

"These, er, episodes don't last too long, I would hope?"

The white fur on her cheeks curved with her frown.  "Depends on what I ate, and if I let the stress get to me.  But it normally wears off after a few hours.  Plenty of time to find a corner to hang up the fur coat without prying eyes watching."

Monty nodded, lips drawn tight. A reasonable enough explanation, but still cause for uncertainty.  He heard stories of foxes taking clever guises and tricking men into marriage or eating their souls, but was under the impression that was mostly a Japanese concern.  If so, the soul-sucking business must be on hard times to hit up a joint like this.  "So, Emilia."

"Yes?"

"Are you some kind of Shinto spirit come to eat my soul?"

No point in putzing around with only five minutes on the clock.

"Four minutes!" The organizer yelled.

Four minutes.

Emilia squinted.  Monty instantly regretted the question, because he was about to find out how an angry fox sounded, or so he thought.  Instead her black lips slid across her teeth into a long grin.  Squeaky laughter bounced her jaws, and her head pulled back in a loud, screeching cackle that gave the gong a run for its money.

The collective room turned its head and stared.  

Emilia hid her snout behind her paws and pushed the laughter down.  Orange fur hid an immense blush.  "Sorry," she said aloud.  "Sorry," she whispered to Monty.  "It's just- I was chased out of a car dealership a month ago by a man who suspected the same thing.  He apologized later and gave me a great deal on an Impala.  Blamed it on PTSD because his grandma kept telling him wild stories as a kid.  The chasing, not the Impala."

She cleared her throat.  "But no, no, I won't tear your soul out.  However I do nip if anyone tries picking me up.  My vaccinations are a bit out of date, but you won't catch anything."

Monty's mouth crinkled.

"That was a joke," she said.  "I, uh," her paws fiddled with the tablecloth.  "I try to have fun."

She grinned again, uneasy, and Monty metered an appropriate amount of cautious laughter.  Her smile faltered and Monty noticed the fox shifting her weight on the chair.  Uneven chitters rattled her throat.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asked, even though no one in the room felt alright.  Her tail twitched like it was hooked up to an electrical socket.  "Asides from the, um.  Of course."

She swallowed another string of chitters and cleared her throat.  "Fine, fine, I'm fine.  No I'm not.  Yes, no.  It's difficult to sit still this way.  Please don't hold it against me if I run a lap around the room, I'm not being rude."

"If you gotta run, you gotta run..."

"I'm going to be real, If this tablecloth didn't look so gross I'd start chewing on it."

"You can claw at it.  If anyone cared about the tablecloth they'd pick a better color."

Emilia's ears swiveled around her head, trying to pick up a radio signal offering advice on salvaging social interactions.  She wanted to disappear down a warm burrow or pull out her phone and  blip the rest of reality out.  Much to her shame, her burrowing skills lacked and paws did not cooperate with phones. 

The woman and her gong blew everyone's eardrums out. "Three minutes!"

Monty slapped the table.  "Come on," he said, "we can't let this get to us.  Two minutes in and this is hardly the worst date I've ever been on."

"Believe it or not, I can honestly say the same."  She took a quick breath and perked her ears up.  "Let's shift gears," she said, "What's the best place you've ever visited?"

The perfectly normal question blindsided him and he blurted out the truth before thinking of a charming lie. "Cheesecake Factory."

Her lips and eyes smiled.  She leaned over the table and asked, "And why Cheesecake Factory?"

"Because they pile twelve pounds of food on the plate no matter what you order," he muttered.  "And their pumpernickel bread is the greatest.  It's the greatest."  The admission of gluttony floated in open air. 

Emilia giggled.

"What's your favorite place," Monty asked, "restaurant or not?"

"Well, there's a German restaurant in the town I used to live in and they serve the best eggrolls."

"Why do-"

"This Korean lady owns the place-"

"Oh."

"But as for place-places, hmm, Carlsbad Caverns or -um, no!  The world's largest picnic basket in Ohio!  No!"  Claws raked the tablecloth.  "I've been to far off cool places, I promise!  I used to own a poster showing off Venice!"  The fox jittered in her seat, hoping something small and furry would scramble across the floor so she could chase after it.  "Top bunk or bottom bunk?" she yelped.

"Race car bed, beep beep."  Monty honked an invisible horn.

"That's cheating, but I'll take it."  

Gong.  "Two minutes!"

Monty felt the clock winding down.  "Lightning round!  Alien or Aliens?"

"Aliens."

"Hmm..."

Her ears twitched inwards, nudging her bow across her forehead.  "I'm a big Bill Paxton fan.  Twister's my jam."

He nodded, then asked "Most Oh-God-Please-Touch-Me-There body part?"

Shiny points of her teeth poked from beneath her lips and she said, "Shoulders," in a slow, low tone.  "When I have them."

"Back of the ears," said Monty, tugging a lobe, “when they're not out on business."

Emilia's turn.  She lowered her head and stretched her amber neck across the table.  Her lips moved and asked in a scratchy whisper, "Weirdest place you've ever masturbated?"

"Funeral parlor."

She snapped to the back of her chair, fur rippling up and down her sides.  "Oh my god."

"If it means anything, I wasn't related to the body in the box and I prayed a long time at church that week."

She laughed and gave herself a moment. "On a trampoline," she confessed.  "In the middle of the night and dead of winter."

"Were you, like, jumping up and down?"

Her eyes closed.  "No, no, no, the question only covers the when and where.  Now tell me, what sucks more, The Smurfs or The Snorks?"

"Oh God, you reminded me that show existed.  It sucked so much it's not even worth remembering."

"I didn't want to be the only one."

Monty pointed towards the ground. "Flat Earth or Hollow Earth?"

"I'm a fierce proponent of Domed Earth," Emilia said with quiet gravity.

Gong. "One minute remaining!"

"Shit, uh."  Monty clenched his fist and regretted handing power over these increments of his life.  Five minutes wasn't nearly enough.  His eyes darted between her hair tuft, her black nose, the goofy bow on her head, and her ability raise her brow without eyebrows.  The rolodex of all-important stupid questions flapped but froze in his throat.  What's your best hated pun?  Most regrettable drunk text?  What movies do want to hit people for liking?

"Favorite Meatloaf song?" he ventured.

Emilia's body froze.   Her mouth sat as a slit at the end of her slender snout.  Burning eyes widened into perfect circles.  Her tail twitched left.  Swayed right.

"Hey Jenny, Jenny why you crying?" she breathed.

"My name's not Jenn-"

"There's a beauty of the moon in the sky-"

"Oh you're doing the-"

Emilia looked him dead in the eye, nodding.  "But I guess when you've been leading such a shee-e-ltered life, you never lift your head 'n looked so high."

Monty didn't know a musical number was included in the ticket price.  

Her voice rose and that sharp muzzle yelled, "You don't have a lot, but it's allll that you got, and you can turn it into more than it seems!"

She hopped onto the table, torso bobbing side to side and working her narrow shoulders into it.  "Just give it a shot, ooooh, fantasize every movement and imagine every inch of your dream."

Her slim legs pistoned left-to-right as her voice rang, "No one said it had to be real!"

"Had to be real!" Monty shouted from the well of his chest.

"But it's gotta be something you've been wanting to feel now."

He stood and slammed his open palms across the table and their voices chorused.  "It ain't right it, ain't fair!"

She smiled and chimed, "Castles fall in the sand and we fade in the air-"

"You know this is technically a cover, right-"

"Not to me it's not- andthegoodgirls go to heaven-"

"-But the bad girls go everywhere."

He leaned over the table and held his arm out.  Emilia leapt up, landing with her forelegs on top his sleeve.

They both took a deep breath.

"Now I know every night in my prayers, I'll be praying that the good girls go to heaven-"

"Go to heea-av-e-en-"

Emilia's jaws opened wide as she belted wild, untuned notes.  She dug her claws into Monty's sleeve so her voice funneling through her narrow neck wouldn't knock her off the table.  Her whipping tail alone almost rocked the both of them sideways.

"But the bad giirl-l-s-" "-Go everywhere-"  "-l-ls go evee-e-e-vry-wh-e-ere."

They both fell back in their seats and laughing, cheeks reddened before catching their breath and falling into silence.  Two or so other people in the room offered half-hearted claps.  The giant woman with no empathy for any other human being glared ice and daggers at them.

"I think I need a drink now." Emilia moved to lap water from the glass on the table but stopped after spotting gum at the bottom.  "Ew."    

The gong rang.

Monty nodded.  "Definitely not the worst date.  Emilia."

Emilia's head tilted and her narrow black-yellow eyes curled at the sides.  "Glad to hear."  The whiskers sprouting along her snout twirled as she smiled.  "Hm-hm.  Maybe we can friends after all.  Monty."

"No talking in between rounds," yelled the horrid voice from the horrid person who'd benefit from strolling over a cliff.

Emilia winked and hopped off the table.  Monty watched her and her puffy tail bob along to the next table.  She took her place in a seat and smiled at him one more time.  He laughed.

Friends.  Why not?

He turned his attention across the table once more.

A rock sat on the other side.