Edward Lee - Slither

Leona sprinted forward, slid to the shack on her knees, and cranked the faucet handle. She grabbed the hose lying there and clumsily aimed the water stream toward the fire. She wagged the hose back and forth, drawing lines of smoking sizzle. The fire had spread out quickly, but just as quickly, Leona had managed to put it all out.

Jesus… Relief!

But…

She looked around. Where was Howie?

"I found the hose!" he bellowed, running back around the comer. He held the long length in one hand. "Turn it o-" But then he stopped, scanned his eyes at the smoking ashes.

"Howie," Leona croaked. "That thing in your hand isn't the hose…"

It hung limp until the moment she'd said that, almost as if it had sensed the trigger of Howie's fear. His eyes snapped down. Then the "hose" began to move…

Vaguely pink, glistening skin. About an inch thick. How long was it? It extended from his hand, behind him, its other end still on the other side of the shack. Howie tried to drop the grotesque thing, but it was already too late. In the space of that synaptic second, the creature energized and wrapped around Howie's upper torso so fast it was but a silent, pinkish blur in the air.

Then Howie was dressed in the thing, wearing it like a corselet. His scream was severed when more of its length coiled about his neck. Howie fell over. – - -- – - – - – - – - – -

His eyes still registered images as his vision clouded, and then the thing's head made itself plain: slightly tapered, less like a snake and more like a worm.

A pink hole dilated-a mouth opening?-then a thinner pink tube of something fleshy slipped out and"Howie!" Leona screamed.

– slithered down Howie's throat.

Leona stood, uncomprehending, glaze-eyed, as this twenty-foot-long living thing that appeared to be a snake relaxed the pressure of its coils… and began to pulse.

Leona wasn't quite sure what she was seeing in those last few moments before her paralysis snapped, but before her feet mindlessly began to take her away into the woods, Howie's body seemed to be filling up with something.

Something that the snake was pumping into him, through the fleshy, ringed tube that was its mouth.

(II)

Ruth Bridge's lips looked like she'd been punched in the mouth-hard-if one were cynical enough to look closely; her face, in fact, would easily have been pretty were it not for the permanent, uneven swelling. She'd asked the doctor for "Lips like Pam Anderson!" but received something significantly less. She wasn't even aware of it, though, so what did it matter? A positive self-concept was sometimes more important than the truth.

Her body, on the other hand, looked damn good for a gal worn out by thirty-nine years of dope, booze, and onthe-run living. And her breasts? It had been a Miami plastic surgeon who'd done the work-for free, because Ruth had been his sideline plaything for most of her latter twenties. The doctor's name was Levin, and the manner with which he'd inflated Ruth's meager 32-As to prominent 36-Cs was worthy of a certificate of achievement. Dr. Levin had tired of her, though, after so many hotel rendevous, after which she'd ventured to Beverly Hills for a change of scenery and the pesky warrant for check kiting. Here she'd hooked up with another plastic surgeon, one Dr. Winston Prouty, who, in return for Ruth's pleasures, offered a free lip job. Well, Dr. Prouty-jaundiced by a hidden Demerol addiction turned out to demonstrate some howlingly inferior skills. The dirty collagen needle had caused an infection whose scars had never properly healed. Hence, Ruth's overlarge and permanently puffy lips.

In the end, though, it was all relative. These days, most men likely to share company with a woman like Ruth cared less about facial prettiness and more about the auxiliary benefits of unnaturally swollen lips.

The first three dealers in Naples had offered Ruth roughly twenty-five thousand for the watch, but… shit! They'd also insisted on identification. Fuckers know the score, she thought. One had even had the balls to add, "For instance, miss, if I sold this watch and it turned out to be"-he winked at her-"stolen, then I could be charged with a felony." Fuck you, Ruth thought. But Slydes and Jonas had really scored a big one this time. The watch they'd ripped off some broad down South turned out to be a French-made lady's Cartier Baignoire Mini, eighteen-karat gold and studded with diamonds and rubies. List price: fifty-three thousand. Ruth had about had an accident in her overly tight jeans when they'd told her that.

The fourth dealer had been a bit more compliant. "I can take one look at you and know this watch is hot."

Ruth glared. "What's that supposed to mean? What? I look like some lowlife? Some tramp thief trying to peddle stolen goods?"

"Actually, yes. That's exactly what you look like, and I see people like you every day."

"Aw, fuck you!" she dismissed and was about to storm out.

And if you want some advice," the proprietor added, "put your wig on right when you're trying to disguise yourself."

She sneered. "Huh?" Then, Oh, shit! she thought. She'd forgotten to take off the cut-price sweeping redhaired wig. When she'd first picked it up, she tried it on for Jonas and Slydes, striking a sexy pose. "Do I look like Julianne Moore?"

"No," Slydes said, beer in hand. "You look like a hose bag wearing a shitty red wig." The bastard! But it was a good idea; she wore it whenever she jacked money from an ATM. They all had cameras now.

And as for this chump jewelry salesman?

She dragged the wig off, revealing the unkempt blond shag. Fuck him anyway. What could he do?

She gave him the finger and started to leave when he said, "Wait! Don't be hasty!"

When she looked back, he was holding a stack of bills. "There's no way in hell you'll do better than five thousand. And that would be in cash, by the way."

Ooo… Ruth pretended not to be waylaid. He's right. And… that's a lot of money!

"Plus," he added, "ten minutes of your time. In the back. If you know what I mean, and I'm pretty sure you do."

"Buddy!" she celebrated. "You got a deal!"

Ruth was the kind of woman who could relate to those terms. He hadn't even lasted five minutes, which was even better, and now all that money formed a big clot in her purse. She'd already tapped five hundred dollars out of the ATM (you could only take out five hundred dollars per twenty-four-hour period); hence, the wig. It was her job to hit a different machine each day until everything was gone… or until somebody found the woman's body and the bank froze the account. The lady had bucks-thirty grand in her checking account!

All in a day's work… Back down the main drag in the dented white van the boys had jacked from some one in Georgia. She lived with Slydes and Jonas in their dead daddy's house back at the far corner of Collier County, near the Everglades Highway. When she'd been dating Slydes, she'd cheated on him with Jonas, and when she'd been dating Jonas, she'd cheated on him with Slydes. So they decided to keep it simple; they were both her boyfriends now.

Slydes poached gator; he was the brawn. Jonas grew pot; he was the brains. (While Slydes had dropped out of school in seventh grade, Jonas had actually made it to college, if only for one semester, taking horticulture and botany classes). Beefy, tall, and bearded, Slydes didn't look anything like his short and slightly younger brother. In fact, they had a slew of brothers, none of whom looked anything like each other. Even in areas south of the belt, Jonas and Slydes couldn't have been more different-to put it one way, Jonas got all the brains of the bloodline, while Slydes got… something else. The entire observation certainly suggested a moral deficit on the part of their biological mother.