Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

Onto First Street, follow it into old town. Past Wytton once, and quick look down toward his house to be sure there was no trouble, then an assertive cruise past it once again. He made a quiet U-turn at the intersection and reached up for the garage door opener — deluxe model, a two-hundred-foot response radius — and pressed the open button. He saw the towering sycamore beside his garage accept the softly growing light from below. He used the gate opener and timed it perfectly so the gate had just slid to its furthest point when the nose of the van slipped past and before he was even through he hit the close button. He rolled slowly into the garage, then pressed the control again and brought the front tires to rest against the railroad tie he had bolted into the cement to keep him from cracking into the wall, keeping as far away from the Saturn as he reasonably could. There. The door closed behind him and Item #4 stirred very quietly — just a dreamy whimper — and Hypok knew that all of his preparation, his versatility, his conviction and confidence had paid off again. He wiped a tear of gratitude and happiness from the corner of his eye as he swung himself into the back of the van, lifted Item #4’s head by its warm, damp hair and shined the flashlight at its face. Beauty, he thought, a true angel’s beauty, once you get the blood wiped off. Its eyes opened slowly and it whimpered again.

“There, there,” he said sweetly. “The worst is already over.” He got Loretta and put her down by Item #4 and Loretta licked its sticky face. “ Ohhhh. .. let’s get you inside and cleaned up! ”

Hypok sat in the chair by the old bed and ate the ravioli out of the pan. The Item lay on the bed with the black hood over its freshly washed head and face, and one of Collette’s old sundresses — a pale blue background with clouds and cowgirls atop white bucking broncos. He had taped its hands together in front of it, and its ankles, too, and of course, its mouth. Loretta lay beside it. Moloch knew something was up; he watched Hypok from inside the big dollhouse, his head visible through the “dormer” window that protruded from the roof. Tongue out; wobble in the air; tongue in. Motionless silver eyes with the black vertical cut of pupil; armored head; scales, bone, muscle.

He took a neat gulp of cactus juice and looked to the bed again. Item #4 wasn’t a fighter. Either that, or it wasn’t scared. It didn’t struggle like the others, though maybe the flashlight conk had something to do with that. All it did was moan “ Hmm-mmm-MMM! ” every once in a while, and quiver some. He’d cleansed the wound and blotted most of the blood out of its hair, and it was a nasty cut all right — an inch long and deep, and widened out like a smile from the tautness against the skull. Other than that though, it was in near mint condition.

Time now to daydream a little, as he always did when he had an Item in place and ready. A sense of accomplishment overtook him, coupled with a rising frazzle of anticipation. Have to keep the two in balance, he thought — a little reward after work well done, and a little something to look forward to in the next hours. A working man’s Friday night. He couldn’t help but think about his first full human transformation, the Item back in Hopkin, and how he was so nervous he hardly knew what to do. Stage fright. He wasn’t sure if Moloch would even be interested, though withholding food for two months probably helped. The next time, when he offered up his mother, things didn’t go smoothly at all: sophomore jinx. He thought back, fondly now, on the rigorous diet he’d enforced upon wretched Wanda, the Ultra Slim Fast shakes and no-salt, no-fat crackers, the way he had to gag and tie her in the basement for the last week while he made sure she was edible. Then, Moloch still wasn’t sure what to make of the naked, trembling old crone released into his Eden, hungry though he was. Moloch had watched her for a long while, then manifested himself next to her, his big shoebox-sized head across from hers, looking her right in the face. Must have terrified him, tasting the scent she gave off. She had backed into a corner, for what good it might do. But Moloch swerved away and redistributed himself into the playhouse, looking somewhat morose, Hypok believed, at the prospect of an edible item smelling so bad. But his mother’s bad smell hadn’t thrown him for more than a second, no: he went to the freezer, got out some frozen rats he used for his big horridus and microwaved up a couple of large ones until they were piping hot. A pair of scissors and off with their feet Click, click, click, into the wastebasket Then he’d entered Moloch’s realm — very warily — and smeared his dismal shrew of a mom with warm rat blood. It came out like ketchup from a plastic packet, except thinner, and steaming. Then he retreated outside and watched as Moloch, keen to the smell of rodent, slid his four hundred pounds of appetite over to gagged and bloody Wanda, then grabbed her by the shoulder, looped three times around her skinny little body and did the tighten-up. Hypok would never forget her bug-eyed stare. Of course, she seemed to be blaming him for her fate, but that was hardly a surprise. You could predict that. He couldn’t be sure exactly when she died, because her face was purple and her eyes popping with blood but her superfluous white fingers strained against Moloch’s armored bulk for a full five minutes or so. Then Moloch let go of her shoulder and nosed around his catch for a long lazy while, tongue berserk, finally deciding to start with her head, as big constrictors usually do. She stuck in his throat for a second, quite literally. It figured. Then Moloch unhinged his jaws and loosened up his neck — the narrowest part — and the plates of his pale mouth crept methodically down, and the next thing you knew Wanda was gone up to the shoulders. Hypok remembered standing there on the other side of the glass, intrigued by the spectacle, noting the way Moloch’s throat widened even more as he started in on the shoulders, his dark green scales parting widely against the pale pliant grout of underskin, the way they looked like counter tiles set casually apart. To be honest, Moloch had looked pretty funny with Wanda’s shoulders inside his neck, like he had these wings inside that were trying to press through a wall of gristle to get out. After that, it was fairly routine: the slow mechanical advance of unhinged jaws, half an inch of Wanda at a time, no hurry, an occasional rest, then another effort. Her head and shoulders started out as a dramatic lump inside him, but they eventually blended into Moloch’s massive bulk. There was a moment — Hypok’s favorite — when the snake’s mouth had advanced all the way to his mother’s white, drippy little rump and Moloch raised his head and Wanda’s ass and legs lifted skyward in the cage, scissoring apart rather lewdly, and Hypok wondered if Moloch was concerned about the lack of a tail. Apparently not, because Moloch stayed like that — his head upright, probably six feet off the cage bottom — while Wanda’s shriveled butt disappeared and her legs slowly came together like in water ballet and a moment later her ankles and up-pointed toes were going down in the slowest of motions, like a diver disappearing into a pool of pink tar.

You could just lose yourself in the past, thinking about good times like that.

“ Hmm-mmm-MMM! ”

“True,” he said.

Time now to change into the good skin. Hop to.

He stripped down, then got the shimmering, scaly suit out of the bedroom drawer. Cotton backing; polyester/acrylic overlay. He’d hand-washed it in an expensive detergent for wool products since his last shed, and it smelled fresh. He glanced just once at his sores — festering now, always giving him fits at times like this — but he chose to ignore them and just try to be the best he could be, like in the army. Legs and arms, squeeze in and close the big zipper up the front. Booties and gloves. Hood. Blue, silver, white of pearl, indigo, violet. Oil on water, abalone polish, faceted, changing, shifting always. For a while he stood in front of the mirror in the darkened room, only the lamp to illuminate his new self, and admired his transformation. Gone the frail, blistered man, gone the human cursed by God, gone the reeking mortal meat of Hypok. Look now, though — at the shine of scales, at the glimmer of limb, at the svelte metallic repto-hominid poised here at the peak of evolution. Look now, he thought. Here I am — Future Man But More Than Man: Homo hypokithicus.