Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

I strained to lift my legs again. Nothing happened except the sheet moving. I was afraid to lift the sheet.

I heaved with all my might. My lower torso slid out from under the sheet — and slid, and slid, and collapsed onto the floor in a single looping, rubbery limb: a growing, sinuous tangle. The weight of it pulled the rest of me off the bed.

I grabbed at the bedsheets to keep from striking my head on the bedside table. Then I twisted around to see what I had become.

No legs. No toes. I felt them but they weren't there. My torso, my navel, even my genitalia — or so I thought then — gone.

From below my breasts, I was all snake, eighteen feet of scaled coils about the thickness of one of my former thighs and mottled now like our carpet, gleaming moonstone and sand. Even the flesh of my nipples was scaled, a slightly darker brown. My lips, too, felt scaled. How beautiful the scales were: luminous, translucent, like semiprecious stones. Beautiful, and horrible. My fingernails were long, horny claws, a lizard's claws.

My lace nightie had slipped off my shrunken shoulders and gotten tangled in the loops of snake flesh. I struggled with the nightie, sliding it over the coils, heaving portions of myself back and forth, till I could pull it off over my head. That small exertion exhausted me and I had to rest for a moment.

Then, hand over hand, I dragged myself over to the mirror by the door and propped myself upright, supported by shaky arms. From the breasts up the thing in the mirror was mostly me, though the wrong color, scaled and hairless, with an altered nose, mouth, and ears, shrunken shoulders and arms. From there down, I'd become monstrous.

I reared back in horror and shock, and my lower body clenched into a mass of coils. The thing in the mirror bobbed like a cobra about to strike. Its color — and mine — went a brilliant parrot blue with yellow, black, and red striping, as a cobra hood spread behind its head. Its reptile eyes dilated. A bitter taste bled from my lengthened canine teeth as a milky substance leaked from the mirror thing's canines.

It wore my face. A scaled, reptilian face, but unmistakably mine. The colors were fading now to a softer, smoky blue as I studied it, with sand-, ash-, and rust-colored stripes.

I ran my tongue over my lips and saw it had lengthened and forked at the end. After extruding it, when I brushed the tongue against my pallet, it could — taste the air, smell it; neither of those words is right, but it was a little like both. It could taste the scent of Brand's belongings and mine, and taste faintly the presence of Jessica and Clara and Frou Frou in the other room, of frying eggs and bacon and toast.

Hands over my face, I lurched away from the mirror with a soft cry.

First I thought, a dream. A nightmare spawned by my fever.

I But I knew differently. What Dr. Isaacs had said would come to pass, had come to pass. My body had been stolen from me during the night. Some malevolence had traded it for this mass of heaving, scaled coils. I'd become in body the predator I'd always had in my heart. I'd become a lamia.

One's priorities shift when survival is at stake. Hysteria was definitely called for; I felt it bubbling around the edges of my thoughts. But now was not the time. I couldn't be certain Brand had gone for the night — he might have borrowed Clara's bed, since she'd been at Jessica's. And Clara, I couldn't bear for her to see me like this.

On the other hand, I couldn't bear to lose her.

Brand had always hated the wild card and its victims, as much as I had. He would never tolerate a joker wife. I didn't know what he would do when he discovered what had happened to me, but given that he had been involved in the murder of two men, I didn't want to find out.

But first things first. Food.

When I thought about eating my tongue flicked, flicked again, tasting the air. The smells it detected made me writhe into knots of hunger and revulsion. The cooking eggs and bacon and toast turned my stomach. Raw animal flesh was what my body needed. A prospect equally revolting, but imperative.

Three prime, New York cut strip steaks were in the refrigerator. Those would do.

I lurched and slung and dragged my elongated self over to the door. It was exhausting work; slithering is not as easy as it looks, especially when one is starved, weakened by illness, and unaccustomed to the motion. Heart racing, I turned the knob, pulled the door open, peeked around the corner. The blue was fading from my scales and a dark brown with moonstone and sand mottlings, the combined colors of the door and carpeting, faded in.

My scales gave me protective coloring. With a sudden, faint hope that I could escape this situation unharmed, I slipped out onto the cool wood floor, my colors shifting as I moved.

Frou Frou's ears pricked up when the door opened. He looked over at me. I froze.

Clara had arranged Frou Frou and her dolls in a semicircle beyond the couch. The circle included the dog, Barbie and Ken, the plastic Crybaby Cathy baby, the fine, antique China doll my mother had given her for Christmas, and stuffed animals of assorted types, colors, and sizes. Clara told Frou Frou to sit down but instead he came around the end of the couch, suspicious and confused, with a growl rumbling in his throat.

I hurled myself toward the safety of the bedroom. But I was too long and clumsy to get all of me through the door and slam it shut before Frou Frou darted inside. Bristling, with little yips and growls, he backed me into the corner. I pulled myself into a tightly coiled mass, held out my hands.

"Frou Frou," I whispered. "Hush." My colors began to brighten, responding to my fear.

Frou Frou tilted his head at my voice, clearly confused, yipped experimentally.

"Hush." My voice trembled and my speech was slurred; I hadn't yet learned to form my words quite properly with my new mouth.

Frou Frou sniffed at my fingers, then made up his mind. I wasn't his mistress, I was an intruder. He snapped at my outstretched hand and started to bark. Jessica yelled at him from the other room.

I rose up above my coils. Colors blazed on my scales; my cobra's hood spread.

He darted at me, baring his teeth, and his teeth closed on my twitching tail. Pain lanced up my body. With a cry I struck out and bit him on the left flank, behind his foreleg. While he struggled, yelping, glands in my palate emptied themselves, venom pulsed in my gums and through my teeth. Dismayed, I let him go.

He ran in circles, yowling, then staggered under the bed, fell on his side and twitched. I worked my way over to him. His eyes were glazing. I lay down next to him. His heart fluttered against the palm of my hand. Then the heart stopped beating.

Clara stood at the door.

"Clara," I said, propping myself upright with effort. Starvation and exertion made my head spin.

"You hurt Frou Frou."

"He attacked me, honey." I forced the words out. "I had no choice."

"You hurt Frou Frou! Bad snake!"

She came at me with both fists, struck at my face. One blow caught me on my nose, still tender from its transformation. At the pain, anger flooded me. I coiled and reared. My scales blazed blue with red, yellow, and black, and my hood fanned out.

Not Clara; no!

I forced down the urge to strike. The angry, brilliant colors drained from my scales. I caught at Clara's hands and held onto them till her rage passed. Without adrenaline I was so weak that it took all my strength to control a five-year-old.

"It's all right, honey. It'll be all right. It's Maman ."

She burst into tears. I put my arms around her and stroked her head. My arms were almost too weak to hold her. "I'm so sorry, honey. I'm sorry about Frou Frou."

Jessica had come into the room to see what the commotion was. She stood at the door, pasty white. She must have seen me about to strike at Clara.