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31.
The beings who had been the Muellers waited patiently in the house. In addition, the two bracket fungi were growing nicely, one in the livingroom behind the couch, the other in the bedroom out of sight from the door.
Then opportunity struck in the form of two bright-eyed, earnest young men who knocked at the door. The two beings in the shadowy livingroom looked at each other. When the knock came again, was-woman opened the door.
There stood two young men in their early 20s, holding religious scripture books, and dressed in dark suits. "Hello, we're here to tell you the great news about our religion," one of them said, in words to that effect.
"We have a great religion that will change your life and make you happy. Can we come in to tell you more?" the other said, in words to that effect.
"Why sure," said was-woman. "Come in." It stepped aside to let them in.
"Have a seat on the couch while I make you some lemonade," was-man said from the parlor.
"Thank you," the two young men said in unison. They rushed to sit on the couch and open their books to certain pages so they could start reading verses to their hoped-for converts.
"Did you know that—" one of the young men began, and told about the amazing powers and remarkable kindness of his deity if one believed all sorts of arbitrary things made up long ago. If you didn't believe these things exactly so, their deity would do horrible things to you in quite inventive ways.
The other man told them from personal experience how uplifting it ws to worship this deity, and how deleterious not to."
"Is that so?" commented was-woman, pushing a hassock close to the first young man's feet as she knelt innocuously on the livingroom carpet.
Was-man came from the kitchen holding two glasses of cold water in which floated lemon slices and ice cubes. Sugar granules danced around and around in the liquid where it had stirred and it was still circling. "Is that so?" was-man said to the second young man. It made an 'o' of his lips and blew a little cone of dark air into the young man's face.
Taking its cue, the former woman said to the first young man: "We are anxious to hear more." It blew dark air in his face.
The two young men relaxed completely.
The two was-people crawled onto their victims and did the arm and leg wraps and then the neck bite. As the glistening, wet black tube slid from the beings' mouths into the humans' neck, the beings lifted their victims and carried them into a spare bedroom with space available along the baseboards. This house would become a good breeding ground for the bracket fungi that would launch countless tiny spores into the atmosphere. Those spores, in turn, would be sacrificed in their trillions so that, for each human they killed, a single mature carrier spore of the Offensor species would walk the streets of human cities to kill more humans and create more bracket fungi.
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