Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

Instead of a bath, she took a shower. Her soap of choice — a cake of Ivory — worked well enough to scrub the snake ichor from her hands, to sluice away the sweat of the day, and to remove every trace of the salty tears that offended her more than oozing serpent guts.

Mutants do not cry. In particular, dangerous mutants. She had an image to protect.

Usually, she avoided the shower and soaked in the tub — though with nothing more fragrant than Ivory soap and sometimes with an imaginary sumo wrestler and professional assassin named Kato, with whom she devised elaborate acts of revenge on her mother and on Dr. Doom. This night, in spite of what Sinsemilla had done, Leilani wasn't in the mood to conjure up Kato.

The shower wasn't as safe as the tub. Whenever she took off her leg brace, she was hesitant to risk standing on a slippery surface.

As now, however, she sometimes showered without removing the brace. Afterward, she'd have to towel it well and use a hair dryer on the joints, but an occasional drenching wouldn't hurt it.

The grim device wasn't a standard orthopedic knee brace; those were mostly designed from formed plastic, leather straps, and elastic belts. Leilani liked to believe that this contraption had a nicely ominous, killer-cyborg quality. Made of steel, hard black rubber, and foam padding, it provided to her some of the style and sexy allure of a robot hunter who had been constructed in a laboratory in the future and sent back in time by an evil machine intelligence to track down and destroy the mother of its most effective human enemy.

After blow-drying her hair and her leg brace, the young killer cyborg wiped the steam off the mirror and studied her torso. No boobs yet. She hadn't expected any dramatic change, just perhaps vague swellings, like an attractively aligned pair of mosquito bites.

A month ago, she had read a magazine article about enlarging your breasts through the power of positive thinking. Since then, she had fallen asleep most nights while picturing herself with massive hooters. The author of the article was probably full of beans, but Leilani figured she'd sleep better if she dozed off while positively thinking herself into a C-cup instead of brooding about all the many problems in her life, which she could dwell on if she ever wanted to explore the power of negative thinking.

Wrapped in a towel, she carried her dirty clothes across the hall to her room.

All was quiet in the kingdom of Cleopatra. No throb of camera flash. No declaiming in a phony Old English accent.

Leilani dressed in a pair of summer-weight cotton pajamas. Midnight-blue shorts and matching short-sleeved top. On the back of the shirt, a cool yellow-and-red logo said ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO. On the front, the word STARCHILD was emblazoned in two-inch red letters.

She'd seen the pajamas on the recent tour through the saucer sites of New Mexico, and it had seemed to her that acting silly-kid excited about them would help convince Dr. Doom that she continued to believe his cockamamie story about Luki being levitated to the mother ship. The aliens sometimes abduct people right out of bed, Preston. You told us stones like that. Well, gee, then for sure if I'm wearing these jammies, they'll know I'm ready to go, I'm pumped, I'm psyched. Maybe they'll beam me up before my birthday, bring me and Luki back together, with a new leg and new hand for the party!

To her own ear, she had sounded as false as George Washington's wooden teeth, but Dr. Doom had heard only sincerity. He didn't know squat about kids, didn't care to learn, and lie expected them to be excitable and shallow and, in general, dorky to the max.

He always bought her what she requested — the pajamas were no exception — probably because these gifts made him feel better about scheming to kill her. Leilani seldom asked for more than paperback books. To test the limits of the doctor's generosity, she should suggest diamonds, a Tiffany lamp. No matter how ingenuously she phrased the request, asking for a shotgun would probably alarm him.

Now, boldly identified as a starchild, virtually daring the ETs to come and get her, she picked up the first-aid kit from her dresser and returned to her mother's room.

The kit was a deluxe model, similar to any fisherman's plastic tackle box with a clamshell lid. Dr. Doom wasn't a medical doctor, but as a seasoned motor-home enthusiast, he understood the need to be prepared for minor injuries while on the road. And because Leilani understood her mother's penchant for mishap and calamity, she had added supplies to the basic kit. She kept it always near at hand.

Red blouses still draped the lamps. The scarlet light no longer fostered a brothel atmosphere; in view of recent events in this room, the feeling was now palace-of-the-Martian-king, creepy and surreal.

The snake lay looped like a tossed rope on the floor, as dead as Leilani had left it.

Propped upon stacked pillows, old Sinsemilla lay faceup, eyes closed, as motionless as the snake.

Leilani had needed the shower, the change of clothes, and time to gather the raveled ends of herself before she had been able to return here. She hadn't been Leilani Klonk when she hurried from this room. She'd been a frightened, angry, and humiliated girl, panicked into flight. She would not ever be that person again. Never. The real Leilani was back — rested, refreshed, ready to take care of business.

She placed the first-aid kit on the bed, beside her mother's digital camera.

Sinsemilla snored softly. Having crashed from her chemical high, she was planted deeper than sleep, though not as deep as coma. She'd probably lie limp and unresponsive until late morning.

Leilani timed her mother’s pulse. Regular but fast. Metabolism racing to rid the body of drugs.

Although the serpent hadn't been poisonous, the bite looked wicked. The punctures were small. No blood flowed now, but much of the surrounding soft tissue was blue-black. Probably just bruises.

Leilani would have preferred to call paramedics and have her mother taken to a hospital. Sinsemilla would then, of course, be mad-dog furious for having been subjected to university-trained doctors and Western medicine, which she despised. When she returned home, she would launch a campaign of hectoring recriminations that would last hours, days, until you prayed to go deaf and considered cutting off your ears with an electric carving knife just to change the subject.

Besides, if Sinsemilla flipped out when she woke up and found herself in a hospital, her performance might earn a transfer to the psychiatric ward.

Then Leilani would be alone with Dr. Doom.

He wasn't a diddler. She'd told Micky the truth about that.

He did kill people, however, and though he wasn't a hotheaded homicidal maniac, though he was a comparatively genteel murderer, you nevertheless didn't want to be alone with him any more than you would want to be alone with Charles Manson and a chain saw.

Anyway, when the doctors learned Sinsemilla was the wife of that Preston Claudius Maddoc, the chances of their transferring her to a head-case ward would diminish to zero. They might send her home in a stretch limousine, perhaps with a complimentary heroin lollipop.

In most cases, these circumstances — drug-soaked psycho mother, dead snake, traumatized young mutant girl — would mobilize government social workers to consider placing Leilani temporarily in foster care. Already separated from Luki forever, she would be willing to risk a foster home, but this wouldn't be handled like an ordinary case, and she wouldn't be given that opportunity.

Preston Claudius Maddoc wasn't an ordinary mortal. If anyone attempted to take his stepdaughter from him, powerful forces would spring to his defense. Like most district attorneys and police coast to coast, local authorities would probably decline to do battle with him.