Edward Lee - Slither

One sleepless night, at age four or five, she'd gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom. The darkness of the musty hall had confused her; she'd opened the wrong door. This isn't the bathroom, she realized. It's the room Mommy and Daddy are sleeping in. But-

Her big eyes stared out. Mommy and Daddy weren't sleeping. She didn't know what they were doing-just that they had their clothes off and Daddy was doing something weird on top of Mommy. Nora shuffled away, bewildered.

The day after Thanksgiving, they'd driven away, and Nora could see that scary door knocker shrinking in the distance. Grandma died the next day.

And now her dream. The man's face was just like the knocker: half formed, just two blank eyes. He didn't need any more facial features than that, for he was just a body to suit her needs. His arms felt hot beneath her; he was carrying her through teeming woods-these woods?-deliberate footsteps crackling over twigs. He laid her down naked on the forest bed, and stood between her spread legs, looking down. The moon glowed behind him, blocking out the unnecessary details of his face. A face would give him a persona, a humanity, but her desires had taken her so completely, she didn't care who he was, or even how he might feel about the real her. He was only a symbol-of deliverance-just as her body, in this hot, compressed dreamscape, was a symbol-of her own unbridled lust.

When he turned a moment, the moon cut him into a silhouette of raven black, the outlines sharp as newly cut glass-including a stout, erect penis. Nora whined, cringing atop fallen leaves. Her belly sucked in and out as she stared up at him almost teary-eyed. The sweat on her skin felt slippery as glycerin when she smoothed her hands up her stomach to her breasts and plied her nipples as if twisting screws out of a wall. The pain drilled the most delicious sensations through her belly to her groin, where they all settled like an overcharged battery waiting to be tapped.

The silhouette seemed content to watch for now. Was the faceless figure touching himself, so incited by her body? Nora hoped so because, next, those electric sensations summoned her hand back down the slick abdomen. She gruelingly held herself back, her fingers never quite being allowed to hit the final triggers that would flatten her right there in the leaves. More and more of those sensations mounted, and soon she was moaning to let them out, but…

Not… yet…

She wanted him to see it all, to bear witness, and then to spend himself on her from where he stood. The live-wire sensations mounted; the moon bathed her glistening skin. Then her guest began to lower himself.

Yes…

Callused hands began to massage her. The compounded sensations were driving her mad; the stars blurred in her eyes. As the rough hands kneaded her breasts, her nipples burned hot as embers embedded in her flesh. But just as she thought he'd lie atop her, he pulled back-…

The hands pushed her knees back to her face, and his mouth found her sex. His tongue did things she didn't think possible-she'd never known that the web of her sexual nerves was capable of feeling such things. She closed her eyes and let the frenzy take over. First, one finger entered her, then two, then three; she was biting marks into her knees. The ministrations went on and on. Was her tongue hanging out? Was she shrieking her pent-up bliss?

Now! her mind screamed. Now!

The coal-black shadow moved upward, arms like struts that kept her knees pinned back. She could feel his hot, muscled flesh slide against the backs of her legs, and then he positioned himself. The penis nudged the entry of her sex, teased her as it threatened to enter-

Now…

– but that's when Nora woke up.

Her first sexy dream in ages, and look what happened. I don't believe it, she thought in the deepest frustration. I can't even get laid in a dream! The hot night was compressing her within the cocoon of the sleeping bag. She'd been sweating so profusely, it felt as though someone had dumped a bucket of hot water on her.

She'd been sleeping in her swimsuit. The cooler air caressed her when she finally got out of the bag. This was maddening; it was the middle of the night and she couldn't sleep. Worse was the dream's aftereffects, which left her skin prickly, her nipples aching as if plucked. Gotta get out of here, go for a walk or something…

She grabbed a lantern and unzipped the tent, crawled out as if fleeing a hornets' nest. Once outside, she stood in moon-tinted darkness, caught her breath, and let the frustration beat down.

She kept the lantern dim. Loren's tent remained zipped up; she could hear him snoring. Sounds like a busted chain saw-jeez! But the other two tents…

The strangest curiosity seized her. She wanted to look into the other tents-she didn't, of course, but she wanted to. They both stood unzipped.

Are they… in there?

Trent and Annabelle would be foolish to sleep with their tents unzipped. Their exhalations would summon droves of mosquitoes. But where would they be at this hour?

Who cares?

Nora walked down a trail, not even really aware of any direction. Her flip-flops crunching over twigs could scarcely be heard over the night sounds that pulsed all around her. Lizards scattered wherever she pointed the lantern light. An array of multicolored winged creatures buzzed around her.

The head shacks stood dark now, a row of lonely bunkers. She got her mind off the frenzied dream-and the utter letdown of its conclusion-and thought back on the details of the day.

Those things in the shower…

There was little room for error after so close an examination. She and Loren were indeed the experts, and they both knew now what the things had to be.

Motile ova. From some species of tropical annelid.

A worm.

She sat down on a stump and pondered. Some worms were sexed, some were asexual, while others were hermaphroditic. The phenomenon of ova motility among species of worms was well documented. The ovum, via its own means of locomotion, would seek out its own place to hatch, and certain parasitic varieties would seek out a living host for that purpose. But these were all marine species, and-

They're all tiny, she knew.

A mature worm ovum the size of a coffee bean? How big would the ovum be when it was immature?

Then the most obvious question struck her:

How big would the gestating worm be?

The question totally confounded her, and she knew it was doing the same to Loren. I can't wait to get those samples back to the college, she thought. If she told any of her peers she'd found a motile ova that big, they'd laugh at her.

But now they'd be able to see for themselves.

Let it rest there, she decided. For now she knew she needed to concentrate on the task at hand: finding a scarlet bristleworm for this smart-ass blond photographer.

Nora blanked her mind on the subject of Annabelle. It was like at school. Sometimes you had to work with someone you didn't like, and that's just the way things were. Nora had never had a problem with clashing personalities.

So why now?

Something felt ticking inside her. She turned the lantern all the way down, to draw fewer bugs, and to think about anything but Annabelle…

That's when she realized her eyes were focused on something…

With the lantern off, darkness reclaimed the cove.

So… what the hell is that light?

It wasn't coming from the first head shack that she and Loren were using as a lab. One of those down there…

She kept the light off, and walked quickly down the row of old missile units. She kept her eye trained, thinking it would go away as she approached, that it was just an odd reflection of moonlight, or some foxfire. But no…

A thin beam of light seemed to be leaking out of the roof of the head shack at the very end of the row.