Andrew Gallacher: Snake Jaw

The Doctor stood there and stared at her with a little twinkle in his eye. He looked at the snake on the screen, finally enveloping the goat inside its body. He raised a little pale finger and held it before him like a glowing stick of magic. He slowly moved his finger towards the screen and pointed directly at the snake.

“This is what you will become.”

He turned the television off, unplugged it and wheeled it out of the room without another word.

“Where’s my child? Who the fuck are you people?” she screamed.

The door closed with a heavy thud and the room was dark once again. She began to cry. She comforted herself with the idea that it was some kind of psychological experiment where everything would be ok in a minute; that she was just being toyed with. She looked around the room for cameras recording her every move, but it was too dark to see such a thing. She wished she could remember the conversation with Adam that had brought her there, although it occurred to her then that perhaps it had never happened.

Detective Gill heard the call on the fax machine from the breakfast table.

“What could that be?” his wife asked.

“I had the office fax over a photo of the girl I’m looking for,” he said, walking into the study.

“Well, that seems like a good start,” she said, not exactly joking.

He took the page from the fax and turned it over to examine the girl. It was a photo from her graduating year. Her hair was long and dark, her teeth white. What happened? he thought.

The phone rang in the kitchen.

“It’s like a call centre in here,” his wife said. Gill listened to her stand up and pick up the phone. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Graham,” she yelled, “it’s for you.”

Graham took the phone from his wife and listened. Still holding the photo in his other hand, he wrote something on a nearby pad, then hung up.

“What is it?” his wife asked.

“They’ve found a body.”

Graham pulled up beside another police car on the disused bridge on Croft Road. He walked to the edge of the stone construct and looked down at the other police and emergency services, scouring the surrounding area for evidence. In the middle of them lay a body, face down in a clear creek no more than eight inches deep. Gill walked down the side hill to the body and a deputy officer came up beside him.

“We haven’t turned her over yet, thought we’d wait ‘til you got here.”

“Thanks.”

Gill bent down to move the body.

“Ah, sir?” the deputy said.

“What is it?”

The deputy handed him a pair of gloves. “Oh, of course.”

He put the gloves on and the surrounding officers gathered closer. He got a firm grip on her shoulder and flipped the body up out of the water. Her face made a wet suck as it sprung from the mud. Several of the deputies turned away, one of them began vomiting in the nearby grass. Detective Gill looked at the dog stuck down the girl’s throat and was suddenly overcome with a panic he struggled to conceal. The skin was glazed and blue where the throat had expanded to fit the small canine. Her eyes were open and rolled back, the life long departed. The dog’s hind legs stuck from her face like the tail-end of one bounding leap, or perhaps a meal unfinished. Neither option made sense to Gill. He stood up and looked around at the other men, hoping one of them would explain it, like it was a new thing kids were doing that had gone horribly wrong. Wait, what was he thinking? What kind of activity would involve swallowing a dog?

“Is this your girl, Gill?”

“No,” he said, “the girl I’m after is in her mid-twenties. This one here’s only about fifteen.”

The forensic men got to work and Gill walked away to clear his mind. When he came back he asked them what they’d found.

“Her body has undergone some… procedures. Recently, it seems. Like her breast augmentation is quite recent. Her face and neck have a series of minor scars, likely the work of a professional surgeon. There’s something also quite odd about her genitals.”

“What is it?”

“Aside from being quite sexually active very recently, there seems to be some kind of fat injected into the labia. It’s a form of pussy pumping.”

“A form of what?”

“It’s a sex thing.”

“Any ID?”

“She was dumped with no clothes on, but we’re still searching the area. No form of identification found yet.”

“Keep looking.”

The deputy stood by him. “I didn’t think I’d ever see something like this in little Hopetown.”

“Me either.” Gill turned to the deputy, “What’s going on in this world?”

Vanessa woke up and everything was blue and warm. She was lying on a plate of glass and surrounded by fluorescent lights. She looked down at her naked body and felt her skin burning. She pushed on the top of the tanning bed and a chain tightened by her side. She was locked in there. She called into the dark room beyond the bed. She yelled and screamed and eventually a hand lunged in holding a cattle prod. She shrieked and attempted to brush it away, copping a zap on her forearm that sent her body into a momentary spasm.

“Be still!” a voice said from the dark.

She was still, and her tanning continued.

Vanessa woke up tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth. The chair was on wheels and somebody was behind her wheeling her, through a corridor and whistling. She heard distant screams bouncing off the high rooftop of the factory. Other people! Her mind shuddered to think what was happening to them.

She worried about Heather, but she’d cried too much already. The only thing that stopped her crying was presuming Heather was dead and that she would soon be too, and then they could be together again. The idea crumbled when she was taken to a room where Dr. Phalanx sat holding Heather. The orderlies placed her in front of a mirror and she could only laugh when faced with her dreadful state. The crying had reddened her eyes and her skin was now golden brown, a tan she’d never dreamed of achieving. A Mexican man with a big moustache walked into the room, came up behind her and started to play with her hair.

“Turn her to face me,” Dr. Phalanx said.

The Mexican man complied. Dr. Phalanx sat with his legs crossed, one arm cradled Heather’s tiny body. He toyed with the girl’s arm. “Say hi to Mummy,” he said. He made her arm flop up and down. Much to Vanessa’s relief, her baby seemed ok.

“Do you understand why you’re here, Vanessa?” Dr. Phalanx said.

The Mexican removed the gag but she refused to speak.

“I am a doctor. A surgeon. Ever since I was young I had the urge to correct people. To fix the misfortunes placed upon them by god. I started out doing this on socially acceptable terms; first I was a trauma surgeon, then I moved on to plastic surgery. Both valid professions. But plastic surgery didn’t satisfy. It’ll only ever go so far. Common people will only ever go so far. They only want to enhance their beauty to a set standard, one they’ve decided on before getting the work done. It just seemed like a such a waste to me when you consider the possibilities of what can be done when you merge the imagination with the flesh.”

The Mexican glanced at the insane doctor and then got back to work on her hair. Vanessa barely listened, focusing only on her child and what the doctor was doing with his hands while he held her.