Edward Lee - Slither

They moved back to the head shack area; the door was still open at the first unit, the lights on.

What is she doing in there? the sergeant thought.

"How come you went on the boat that docked earlier?" the corporal asked.

"Just a quick check for weapons, and I disabled their emergency radio."

Then the lights went off at the first head shack.

The corporal pressed up against a tree. "Look. There she is again…"

They could just see her in the moonlight. The woman with the frizzy short dark hair came back out and closed the door.

"She's finally going back to the campsite. Now we can get a look in there and see what she was doing all this time."

The corporal's face shield turned. "Hey, Sarge, she doesn't look too bad, you know?"

What is WRONG with him? "None of that."

"Why? The major just said we can kill them."

"With discretion, and only if we're seen. You'd fuck an animal if you had to. You know what happens if you get written up."

"You'd write me up for that?"

The sergeant just looked at him.

No sense of duty, he thought.

When the woman disappeared down the trail, he was about to proceed toward the head shack, but the corporal grabbed his arm.

"Wait, Sarge. Look. They're back again."

They pulled back behind the trees. It was the three that had arrived tonight. They'd staked this area out earlier but then left. What are they up to?

They were loitering at the farthest head shack, then…

They opened the door and light bloomed.

The lights were already on in there. The sergeant mulled the fact over, and couldn't imagine why.

Then the three civilians went inside and closed the door behind them.

"This is getting pretty interesting," the sergeant commented.

"I really like the girl-"

*Shut up."

I'd really like to know what they're doing in there, the sergeant wondered. He had a feeling this was going to be a long night.

(III)

"There's my babies," Jonas said. There was pride in his voice. They all looked up at the twenty-foot-tall marijuana plants growing out of their urns.

All three of them squinted in the long room's strange, silverish glow. Sheets of aluminum foil lined all four walls. Stranger was the incessant drone, like a bubbling hum, from the airstones and their small aerator pumps connected to each.

"I love these rooms," Ruth said, stepping forward toward the erect, green-spiky rows. "The sound, and the silver light. It's like mellow acid."

Slydes rolled his eyes. "Our little hippie."

"Look at 'em." Jonas grinned upward. "They're busting twenty feet, I'll bet. They don't even get that big in nature, under the best circumstances."

Forty such plants filled the former missile silo, and they had forty more in the next head shack, too. "I'm getting nine, ten ounces of the highest THC content pot per plant, every three months. Average asshole only pulls two to four."

"Look at the flowers!" Ruth celebrated. "They're beautiful!"

"Yeah, baby, they sure are. And they're big. The bigger, the better. There's more THC in my pot than anyone's.'

"Quit bragging and let's get on with it," Slydes complained. He was tired, and they'd missed high tide going out. Which means we gotta stay on this island till tomorrow night… The skinny bitch in the first head shack had stayed there for another fucking hour. They hadn't counted on that. Shit, it's past one o'clock now…

Hydroponic homegrowers had several methods to choose from. Jonas used the "wick system," with ebb and flow urns; this was the best system because it grew the biggest plants, but the least popular because it consumed the most water and electricity. Water and electricity weren't a problem here, of course, because Jonas simply tapped into the army's unmonitored supply; hence the brightest lights round the clock, and unlimited fresh water. His only expenses were airstones and aerator pumps, Perlite, Pro-Mix, coconut planting fiber, and a lot of aluminum foil, which doubled the photosynthesis effect by bouncing back the light. That's why Jonas's plants were bigger and more concentrated. The average grower was limited to closets and basements, but with ceilings this high-and all this free light-Jonas was giving the plants more than even nature could provide. Charging a little more for superior pot was only good business. His customers just wanted more.

They checked the next head shack where, if anything, the plants grew even hardier. Then they moved to the third head shack.

"A damn good thing you have some ready to go," Slydes grumbled.

This was where they did the cutting, drying, and weighing. Jonas had tables and chairs set up for the various tasks, plus cartons of plastic baggies.

"That's because I always think ahead," Jonas bragged. "You always have your next delivery ready in advance. You know, Slydes, if you ran your poaching business like I run my pot business? You might actually make some money."

"Bend over real hard and blow yourself, brother."

Ruth giggled. "That I'd like to see." But then her eyes opened wide when she looked at the cement floor, and she shrieked, "Fuck!"

The men walked over.

"What the hell's that?" Jonas queried.

On the floor a small, bright pink worm squiggled across the cement. It was about three inches long.

"Ain't no earthworm, that's for sure," Slydes noted. "Not movin' that fast."

The worm made more tracks, leaving tinseled slime. It had traversed half the width of the head shack in the time they were looking at it.

"Well, ain't that just the shit?" Jonas said. "There better not be any of these things on my plants."

"It just looks… disgusting," Ruth said and glared. "Somebody kill it."

Jonas seemed very concerned. "What the fuck is that? A corn worm?"

Slydes stepped on it. "Nope. It's a dead worm. Now let's quit fuckin' around with worms and get the fuck out of here."

When Slydes lifted his shoe, all that remained of the worm was pink slime.

Jonas grabbed a plastic bag full of a pound of trimmed marijuana, then snapped off the lights.

Before they left, none of them happened to notice that the squashed remains of the worm were sizzling.

(I)

Why did she feel so unsettled? Weird night, Nora dismissed. She'd expected the sounds emanating from the woods to help lull her to sleep; instead, they'd annoyed her. She supposed they'd all need to be up early tomorrow, for Annabelle's shoot, but now, going on two o'clock, it would be impossible to get in a decent night's sleep.

The little polyester tent pressed in like a coffin. She'd tossed and turned in the summer-weight sleeping bag. Each time she tried to clear her head of the day's aggravations, her temples began to rage in a headache. She'd drifted off once but was then bolted awake by, of all things, a sexual dream.

You've got to be kidding me…

She never had sexual dreams… an odd fact for a virgin. The little bit of dating she'd done in college and grad school had always wound up getting torpedoed by a term paper, a stwly session, or a test. The academician in her always wound up walking on her womanhood, asserting the priority. Whenever a potential relationship would fail, or she'd miss out on a perfectly normal fling, she'd always be satisfied to tell herself: You're not in school to make whoopie. You're in school to get your doctorate. Objectively this was all true, but by now it left little to console her womanhood. Her sexuality felt like something moldering. Her desires were fruit whose seeds would never touch the earth to give root.

The dream:

The man's face reminded her of the door knocker at her grandmother's house. It had been mounted on the ornate door's center stile, an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. The peculiar knocker was one of Nora's earliest childhood memories, for whatever reason. Her parents took her to Grandma's house every Thanksgiving; she remembered the knocker but not the rest. Why would that be?