Edward Lee - Slither

The only thing Annabelle needed… was herself…

Her feet parted. Her fingers slipped overtly between her legs, through bubbly hair to the folds of her sex. She found she didn't need men, nor images-she was enough, her robust body, nerves squirming like electric current as the cool spray stimulated her skin. She murmured a chuckle to herself-God, what if someone IS peeking? She could almost envision Trent, the army stick-in-the-mud, or Loren the Nerd, huffing with an eye to the curtain gap. Just to satisfy her curiosity then, she opened her eyes to check the gap…

Of course, there was no one there.

Common sense returned. I didn't come here to play with myself in a portable shower! And then she rinsed all the soap -off,-reached- to turn off the water-

Her shriek whistled through the air. She tore out of the shower, dripping and never more naked. Her bare feet crunched over dried brush and palm leaves, and when she remembered exactly what she'd seen in the shower, she shrieked again.

Annabelle manically patted her hands over every square inch of her body that she could reach, feeling for the things. She had only enough time to wrap a towel around herself before Trent, Loren, and Nora bolted into the cove.

"What's wrong!" Trent exclaimed.

Annabelle stood huddled, shivering but not from cold. "Those things! They were in the shower!"

"What things, Annabelle?" Loren asked.

"Like that thing on Lieutenant Trent's back earlier! That yellow thing with the red spots! But there's a bunch of them!"

Nora flung open the green shower curtain. The others shouldered in behind her.

"More spumarius," Nora observed. "Froghopper larvae."

On the inside of the shower curtain, a drove of the bizarre off-yellow buds seemed adhered. A few more dotted the water pipe that led to the showerhead.

"Wow," Loren said.

"Get some collection vials," Nora told Loren. Then she leaned to peer more closely at the things. They crawled along on the plastic sheet, perhaps moving an inch every two or three seconds. "I can't believe the rate of locomotion," she said. "Didn't think they moved that fast."

"You're damn right they move fast," Annabelle blurted, her fist clutching the towel to her wet bosom. "They were almost at my feet!" She pointed down.

More of the yellow things bumbled around in the sopped ground. One was almost at the tip of Nora's sneaker. When she stepped away to the right, the viscid buds shifted right. Nora frowned, then stepped to the left.

The things on the ground shifted to the left.

"That's really strange for froghopper larvae," Nora informed them. "They're not predatory at all, and they don't have the necessary sensory organs to detect other living things in proximity."

"They're sensing something now," Trent said, still irked by his own experience. "When you move, they move."

Nora stepped out, confused. "Right, and another strange thing is the size. Froghopper larvae are about the size of BBs, but this genus is significantly larger."

Annabelle fingered wet hair off her brow. "Who gives a shit? Would somebody please kill those things?"

Nora pursed her lips. "Annabelle, we already told you, they're harmless."

"How do you know?" Annabelle challenged with a scowl. She turned in a huff and stalked back toward the camp.

Nora was leaning farther; several of the things weren't but a few inches from her face as she inspected them. "Maybe I…"

"Maybe what?" Trent said. He seemed aggravated.

"Maybe I was wrong about this-"

Before Trent could respond, Loren reappeared with some collection tubes and forceps. "A spumaria this size? You know what I'm thinking, right?"

"That it's-"

"That we've discovered a new species."

Nora shook her head. "Loren, what I'm thinking is that maybe these things aren't froghopper larvae at all."

Loren stalled with the poised forceps. "All right. Why do you say that?"

"The dorsal region. Look how they're moving. I'm not seeing any parapodic structure. It almost looks like cilia."

Loren maintained his stalled poise. Then he winked at her. "Can't be. It's too big." Now he redirected his attention to the slowly moving things on the curtain. "Come to Papa, you ugly little buggers." And then he plucked several up with the forceps.

Nora didn't know what she was thinking. "Come on, let's get them under the scope for a good look."

"Wait a minute," Trent said as they were about to go back to the row of head shacks. "I was going to take a shower."

"Go ahead," Nora told him.

"Just get a broom," Loren added, "and sweep the things out. They won't bite."

Loren and Nora walked away with their specimens.

Trent looked back at the shower curtain and grimaced. "Maybe I'll skip the shower for now," he muttered.

(I)

Banks of gray-black murk chased the sun behind the horizon. Slydes nodded his approval as the weatherworn cabin cruiser churned ahead. The darker, the better, he thought at the wheel. Clear nights were so much riskier.

Ruth sat hunched at the bow, her feet dangling off the side as she watched for other boats. Not much traffic this far off Clearwater, but they always had to sweat the local police marine patrols and the Natural Resources boats.

Everything looked nice and clear.

Jonas could be heard clattering belowdecks, making room for what they'd be bringing back: several pounds of high-grade hydroponic marijuana.

They'd only started growing it at the island a few years ago, and since then, Slydes was secretly jealous. His brother's product dwarfed his gator poaching profits. But we're family, he reminded himself. Share and share alike. Jonas took care of the brainy horticulture stuff, while Slydes took care of details, like getting them on and off the island quickly, gauging the tides and the weather. Ruth was just squeeze, but she helped in her ways too-Mainly in bed, he thought, but she had lots of street contacts and helped out immeasurably in their sideline jobs, like pawning stolen goods, jacking ATMs with cards they ripped off, and helping the brothers bury the occasional body.

It was a system that worked.

"Is it high tide yet?" Ruth called back from the railed prow.

Slydes swigged more beer, burped, then nodded. "And there's the island."

A mile ahead, the island's bulk began to form in the murk.

It was a great gig. Before they'd found out about it, Jonas truly was a pissant pot grower. They rented rooms in some of the bum motels, and that's where Jonas set up his hydroponic gear, but these days the narcs were wise to everything, eyeballing erratic and nontypical electricity bills. Fuckers think of everything, Slydes bemoaned. He didn't smoke weed himself (beer and women were all he needed), but the market couldn't be better. And the stuff Jonas was growing was so topdrawer he was getting a rep as the man with the best. All the punks and college kids in these beach towns? They couldn't buy enough of the stuff. Hydro was the New Deal, and Jonas was cornering the market.

Because of the island.

The way it worked was like this: The bigger the plants grew, the more potent the THC, but you needed a place big enough to grow them past ten feet. Solution: the island. And you needed square footage, too. The average dupe could grow a plant or two in his apartment without anyone getting wise, which didn't amount to anything but small-time dealing. But what if you had a place where you could grow hundreds of plants? And keep twenty-four hours of light on them without having to worry about the narcs getting wind of your sky-high power bill?

Again, the solution was the island.

All the space we need, free electricity, free running water, and twenty foot ceilings, Slydes thought. A pot grower's dream.