Zoe looked at the thing that the man was holding. "What is it?" she asked, yawning.
"Well, I'm glad you asked. It's a family manipulator."
"A what?" Zoe was still half-asleep. Maybe she heard the man wrong.
"A family manipulator," the man repeated.
Nope, she heard right. But what the hell was that?
"You're probably wondering what that is," the man said.
"Actually ..."
"Let me explain," the man said, cutting her off. "With this device, you can fix your family problems. Mother doesn't understand you? Exchange her for a better model."
"That's ridiculous. You can't do something like that with ... with a machine," Zoe said.
"Oh, but you can. With this machine." He paused, seeing that she still didn't believe him. "Humor me."
"Get out of here before I wake up the whole neighborhood, you psycho." She started to slam the door. The man tried to hold the door open with his foot. Zoe was, at the same time, angry and scared.
She finally gave a hard shove to try and get the door closed. The man fell backward, the device dropping to the ground, hitting the concrete with a hard thud and the sound of something breaking.
"Oh, dear...you've done it now," he said
She peaked out at him, and then suddenly...
