At long last, the annual Portland Metro Reptile Expo is returning to that Holiday Inn by the airport, and this year, there is almost no chance at all that thousands of soulless, dead-eyed monsters will decide to escape en masse, shattering their aquariums and strangling their owners, spitting and slashing as they terrorize the blood-soaked halls of the Holiday Inn, climbing along ceilings and slithering under doors, feasting on the flesh of old women and toddlers alike as they reclaim their world from its complacent interlopers. Will your face be pierced by a cobra’s black-poisoned fangs? Will your skull be crushed by a boa constrictor's vicious embrace? Will your screams be the last to echo through the ruined Holiday Inn, drowned out by the unholy screeches of a cold-hearted army that will not rest until each of us has been slaughtered? No one can say. Earth is their world now. by Erik Henriksen