The Best of Science Fiction 12

"Yeah," Monica said. "I had to give her the rest of the week off. And the worst is not the threat of blackmail, no. The worst is she was disappointed. She was crushed. A movie buff left dead with no more dreams even from you."

"Muskless person."

"I have more musk in my little finger," Monica said.

"The deposit bottle boy told me," Jay said.

Monica twitched and quivered.

"What deposit bottle boy?"

"That deposit bottle boy. The centrefold from the Scout Handbook. Be prepared. Oh, lordy. It was all over the supermarket."

"I admit it," Monica said. "At least I felt youth and strength surging white heat through my loins."

"Youth and strength? From that senile midget? Youth and strength? They only sent him out after the six ounce empties, the two centres."

"He was so grateful. So damned grateful he cried. And you know what? I'm glad they know in the market. I'm glad because as long as that boy goes around on his bike its like written on a wall you were not man enough to satisfy me. It's a bug on your plate."

"It cost me a hundred dollars to keep him from selling descriptions to the magazines. That fink wrote a piece called Acne Valentino ."

"You stopped him?"

"For you, honey. It was a knock ."

"Hoooooo."

"He complained you didn't tip him."

"Hoooooo."

Curled around the abbey the creature cuddled its potential goodies. The rump-nip was like an overture to satisfaction. Its gastric mechanism stormed. The creature fed by absorption. It could have absorbed the building but stone lay lumpy in its gut. It sensed the abbey as a shell with the nourishment deep inside. This kind of feasting came natural to a sea beast. The point was to get the inside out.

The creature, cautious, extended a tentative tentacle through a window. A fuzzy purple snake, it squirmed to the floor and along the ground.

"What's fuzzy purple and squirms along the ground," Jay said.

"No elephant jokes," Monica said.

She was packed, dressed, coated. She threw a kiss at Jay and went to the door.

"Monica," Jay said.

She opened the door and walked through it squoosh into the creature's underbelly. Monica recoiled into the room. Backward she came and tripped over the fuzzy purple tentacle.

"There's something damn strange going on here," Jay said.

The tentacle was exploring Monica. She watched this happen, then leaped to her feet. She wanted to scream but could not muster sufficient wind.

"It has suction cups," Jay said.

"I deplore suction cups," Monica said in a daze.

Then she let out a bellow that sent vibrations up and down the creature's epiglottis.

"Help, help," Monica shouted.

"I'm here, darling," Jay said.

The creature sent two or three more tentacles into the room. They played tag with Jay and Monica. One of them had an eye at its end, one a lobster claw and one a nostril. All were active.

"Watch out for the squiggly devils," Jay shouted.

"My earring," Monica said.

A deft movement of the second tentacle had snatched an earring off Monica's lobe. It vanished in a bubble of acid. The earring pleased the creature as an oysterette might please a guest at an informal dinner. It wanted more. The tentacle gyrated gluttonously.

"My ear," Monica said.

"Throw it the other earring," Jay said.

Monica hurled the second earring onto the floor. It was caught and consumed.

The tentacle with the eye came over and gawked at Jay. He patted it. It withdrew, blinking.

Jay's hand was covered with goosh.

"It's not plastic," Jay said. "I don't think this is a gag. Monica, this isn't candid camera."

Jay quickly lost his composure.

"Do something," Monica said. "It's trying to eat us."

The pincer lunged at Jay's shoe. It got a lace, no more. The nostril sniffed at Monica's discarded luggage. The eye kept its distance but changed expression. It seemed less passive and more malevolent.

Jay and Monica huddled in the centre of the abbey's great hall. Their move was strategic. The creature had limitations and one of them was the length of its tentacles. It could not reach them.

But it also had the capacity to divert growth-energy into any special part and its growth was consistent and impressive. With solid will power it shifted its biology and the tentacles began to add inches.

Also, to curb its impatience, the creature forced itself as close into the room as was possible. It seeped in bulges through the windows and the open door. A flap of it squeezed through a crack in the wall. An appendage came down the chimney like Santa Claus and blobbed into the fireplace. Its dampness hissed out the flames. The abbey was pitch pitch black, except for the tentacle eye which had a shoddy luminescence.

After a short silence in which Jay and Monica stood smelling the creature's fabulous presence, Jay stroked Monica's hair.

"We are definitely going to be consumed," Jay said. "Unless this is some Oedipal dream."

"Why? Why?" Monica said. "So full of hope. So vibrant and so dynamic. At the beginning of her career."

"Her career?"

"Our. Our careers. Don't nitpick. Not now."

"A few minutes ago we hated each other," Jay said.

"E pluribus unum," Monica said. "Que sera sera."

"Now we are lovers again. Confessed-out lovers. I feel reborn."

"I too."

"Yet we can't even carve a heart on the floor," Jay said. "We can't even leave a note."

"It sounds hungry," Monica said. "You can sense its ravenous hunger."

The creature's stomachs had begun to rumble.

"It wants food," Monica said. "You could take bets on that."

"Oh it's a people eater all right."

"One wonders how much food is food for something like that," Monica said.

"Whole cities."

"Not if it were snack hungry. Not if it were hot for a nosh."

"I don't think so."

"Sometimes a potato chip is what a person wants more than a steak."

"Not in this case."

"You don't know."

"Not for certain."

"Then why should we both die if maybe a piece of just one of us would do the whole trick?"

"I get your thinking," Jay said. "It's pretty creative."

"In life boats they eat each other rather than all starve. It makes sense, honey."

"I can't let you do it," Jay said.

"Me do what?"

The creature had already added six inches to its tentacles. A foot or so more and it would reach vitamins. It huffed and puffed.

"Who then?" Jay said. "Certainly not me. In life boats the decisions are made by last minute logic. The survivor is the most important, the one who has the most reason to survive."

"So? The cleaning woman is pregnant?"

"Frankly, sweet, I was thinking along artistic lines."

"Artistic lines?"

The house shook as a flutter ran through the creature. It was a flutter of confusion, the confusion of appetites again. Now that its eye and nostril were nearer to Monica it experienced an unexpected urge to replace the pincer tentacle with more refined anatomy. It felt a surge of love.

Jay and Monica noticed the flutter and instantly understood from their own personal experiences.

"It's a female," Jay said.

"Not in a million Sundays," Monica said.

"So what's the difference? Those things carry you into the sea to a fate worse than death."

"It's better than being swallowed."

"You would think so."

Monica was already smiling in the dark. The eye turned away. The nostril tentacle advanced and Monica kissed it.

"Stop that," Jay said. "Don't act like a whore."

Jay pulled Monica back and the pincer took a crack at him.

"It's me," Monica said. "I knew it."

Jay acknowledged the attraction. He felt a surge of jealousy and envy. So did the creature which squeezed harder at its growth cells. It had determined to eat Jay and spare Monica so that it could carry her into caverns of green to a fate worse than death.