Edward Lee - Slither

She walked right up to the long brick building and stared upward. Yeah. That's definitely light. Electric light. The building's roof of corrugated metal was arch shaped, and there was very clearly a hole in it. The beam of light shot up into the trees.

Why would the inside lights be on? None of these head shacks had been used in years.

Then the obvious answer came to her. Trent checks these places every month for signs of squatters and vandalism. He probably forgot to turn the lights off last time he checked.

No big mystery.

But when she turned to leave, something else caught her eye.

More light.

At the very edge of the next building's roof, where the metal met the brick, she saw the faintest line of light leaking out.

Hmm.

She checked the rest of the head shacks and found no further evidence of lights on inside. Then she checked the doors and found them all locked.

I'll have to remember to tell him tomorrow…

She looked around and realized she was suddenly ill at ease. She supposed this was a creepy place to be alone in. Earlier, when she'd been studying the ova, she thought she'd heard voices outside, even a shriek, but she knew it was either her imagination or a night bird somewhere.

She strode hastily back to the campsite, or so she thought when she realized she'd taken the wrong trail.

She was about to turn the lantern back on when-

A voice fluttered.

"God, that's good…"

A woman's voice.

In another small cove, she saw pale shapes moving. She kept the lantern off, squinting as the moonlight brought out details. At first she wasn't sure, then-

I don't believe what I'm seeing.-..

It was Trent and Annabelle, both naked.

How tacky, Nora thought. They're doing it standing up.

Evidently Trent was stronger than he looked. Annabelle's arms and legs were wrapped around him as Trent's pelvis stroked her in an almost machinelike rhythm. Her breasts squashed against his chest, her ankles locked; she was hanging on to him-a monkey on a tree, only Trent was the tree. Judging the noises that came from Annabelle, it was apparent she was enjoying it, but-

Nora was aghast. This was making love? This was a physical gesture of passion? Nora's mind broke it down to bare parts: They're just standing there, screwing. They don't really even know each other! It was true, they'd only met this morning, and here they were, two animals in the woods.

Is that what it's all about? Nora wondered dismally. I guess that's just the way some people are…

Eventually, Trent lowered the blonde to the ground, to continue, and then she broke into a new round of gasps and moans, Trent's hips pounding onward, a mindless derrick. Nora continued to watch from behind a tree without even knowing why. She didn't have a voyeuristic streak at all, and there was certainly nothing enticing about the scene. Annabelle's back arched, her long, bare legs shooting up into the air in a wide V. Nora had never seen anything so perfunctory in her life.

Just leave, she told herself. This is depressing.

She should've obeyed herself, but she chose to watch a few moments longer, and in those moments, Annabelle's face turned toward her…

Nora's heart jolted.

In the moonlight, Annabelle's eyes met hers. Oh my God! She sees me!

Annabelle never said a word. She simply smiled.

Nora pulled herself back, turned, and ran away.

A crush of emotions buried her. She fled haphazardly back toward the campsite, images swimming in her head. By most people's standards, what she'd witnessed was of little consequence. So what? she tried to convince herself. There must've been some spontaneous attraction between the two of them, so then one thing led to another. Nora was a scientist; she should be able to understand that with no problem. But she knew what a psychologist might say: that the real reason the scene upset her was that Trent had selected Annabelle instead of her. It didn't matter that Nora felt no attraction to the army officer at all, it was merely the process of natural selection.

Being seen was the worst part. My God, she fretted. That bitch will never let me live it down. Nora knew she shouldn't care but she did anyway. The scientist in her was losing out very quickly to the human.

Just go back to the camp and go to sleep. Forget about it.

She stopped a moment to rest, that jolt to her heart finally wearing off. She placed her hand against a tree-

– then flinched.

What was that?

Her hand touched something.

A stud of some sort.

She turned the lantern up to look…

In the bright halo of gaslight, she couldn't have appeared more puzzled. A screw of some kind had been embedded in the tree trunk, but there wasn't a screw head at the end of it, as she expected.

Instead it was a clear glassine bulge. Like a lens.

(II)

Slydes lounged back in the fishing chair at his boat's aft. He raised his leg and farted, and found an inexplicable satisfaction in the act. He felt content now that they'd gotten in and out of the head shack without being seen, and more content in knowing that Jonas would turn that bag of pot into at least a thousand dollars in cash very quickly. It did secretly bother him, though-that Jonas made more money with his gig than Slydes did with his. Jonas believed that was proof of some intellectual superiority, but-

I'm smart too, damn it, Slydes reassured himself. He knew how to catch gator and effectively butcher it, didn't he? And he even knew how to prep and tan the hides, and that wasn't easy. Once he and his poaching buddies had thrown a gator-skinning contest (Jonas had had the audacity to not bet on his brother), but Slydes had won lickety-split. I put 'em all to shame, he remembered.

He didn't have anything to prove to anyone.

He lobbed the next beer bottle over the side. Goin' through 'em tonight… And why shouldn't he? It was hot and he'd worked hard all day. But now all those beers were leading to the inevitable result. The deck creaked when he lumbered to the stanchion cable and opened his pants. More inexplicable satisfaction arrived when he leaned back and pulled a hard piss over the side. Ahhhhhhhhh… -

After a couple of minutes, Slydes was still urinating. Damn! Come on, peter. I ain't got all night. He half expected to see the lagoon rise an inch or two. Bet it pisses the fish off, he allowed himself the scholarly hypothesis. But when he was shaking off, he…

He squinted at the sensation. Not an itch, but-

Something tingled very slightly.

On his scrotum.

Not a modest man, Slydes pulled his "bag" up and looked at it in the bright moonlight.

Fuck!

A beetle or something was clinging to one of his testicles. Bean-sized… and very disconcerting. At first he thought it might be some sort of sore-he'd had those in the past-but then the "sore" was moving. And the color?

That was the grossest part. The thing's shell was the color of pus.

He plucked it off with haste, then turned on one of the deck lights. Damn! he thought, outraged. The fuckin' thing was on my 'nads! He squinted at it.

Some piss-yellow bug, but it wasn't hard as he'd expect a beetle to be. It felt hot, wet.

"Fucker," he grunted. "You're fish food," and he flicked it over the side.

Thank God it hadn't bitten him-whatever it was. He surely would've felt a sting of pain on so sensitive an area. If anything, the area he'd plucked it off felt…

Kind'a cool and tingly, he noted. It wasn't unpleasant in any way.

How'd the fucker get in my pants? he wondered next. No biggie, it was gone now, but he figured it must've crawled up his leg when they were cutting through the woods to get Jonas's dope.

Suddenly Slydes twitched in place, stood up straight and wide-eyed. Now he felt another sensation.