David Gerrold - A Matter for Men

I realized then that we were all whispering. As if it could hear us.

Well, it could, couldn't it?

"Look at the way his arms fold up when he's not using them," Jillanna pointed. "It's like they're retractable. They're not bones you know, just muscle and some kind of cartilage. Very flexible -and almost impossible to break. You'll see them in action when he's fed--0h, here we go now."

A slit of light appeared at the base of the left wall; it slid upward to become a door, revealing a closet-shaped cubicle. The Chtorran arced around quickly-amazing, how fast the thing could move. Its eyes rotated forward, up and down, in an eerie disjointed way. The sliding door was completely open now. A Great Dane stood uneasily in the lit cubicle before the Chtorran. I thought of horses-Great Danes, with their lumbering huge paws, long legs and heavy bodies, always made me think of horses. I could just barely hear a low rumbling growl coming from the dog.

For a moment, everything was still: the Chtorran, the dog, the watchers at the glass. Below, in the glow of light reflected from the cubicle, I could see a dark window just across from us. It looked as if there were someone behind the glass, watching.

The moment stretched-and broke. The Chtorran's arms came slightly out from its body. I thought of a bird getting ready to fly. It was a gesture of readiness, the way they were poisedthe claws open, ready to grab.

The Chtorran slid forward. The dog jumped sideways

-and was caught. One of the arms reached out at an impossible angle and snatched the dog in mid-leap, knocked it to the ground on its back. The Chtorran bent sideways in mid-flowas if the dog in its claw was a pivot and it was pulling itself around. The other arm came around. The Chtorran flowed. Its great black jaw was a vertical open hole that split the front of its crimson body. The dog was pinned by both arms now-I could see how the claws dug into its flesh like pincers. It thrashed and kicked and snapped and bit. The red beast raised and stretched and arcedand came down upon the hapless Dane almost too fast to follow. There was a thrash and slash and flurry-and then stillness. The back half of the Dane protruded from the Chtorran maw.

Was that it? The Chtorran was holding the dog like a snake with a mouse, frozen in lidless contemplation before commencing the long process of swallowing. Its mandibles were barely moving, just a slight ready trembling barely visible against the Dane's side. The Chtorran held the dog between its claws; its mouth was stretched impossibly around it. Its eyes stared impassively off, as if thinking-or savoring.

Then something awful happened. One of the dog's hind legs kicked.

It must have been a reflex reaction-the poor animal couldn't have been still alive

It kicked again.

As if it had been waiting for just that thing, the Chtorran came to life and began to chew its way forward. Its mandibles flashed shiny and red, slashing and cutting and grinding. The kicking leg and tail were the last parts of the dog to disappear.

Blood poured onto the floor from the Chtorran mouth. The mandibles continued to work with a dreadful wet crunching. Something that looked like long sausages drooled out, dripped on the floor. The Chtorran sucked it back in. Casually. A child with a strand of spaghetti.

"Wow!" said someone. It was one of the women, an unafraid one. The blonde. The redhead had hidden her eyes the moment the door slid open to reveal the dog.

"He'll take a moment to digest," said the guy at the end, the one who would bet his grandmother. His name, I found out later, was Vinnie. "He could eat another one without waiting, but it's better to give him a moment or two. Once he ate too fast and threw up everything. Jee-zus, what a mess that was. It would have been hell to clean up, but he ate it again almost immediately."

The cubicle door dropped closed and the dim figure in the window across from us disappeared into the deepness behind it. Two more people came in silently behind us, both men, both smelling of alcohol. They nodded at Jillanna; they obviously knew her. "Hi, Vinnie. Did we start yet?"

"Only a Great Dane, but it wasn't much. The Saint Bernard will be better."

"You hope," said his friend, the man he'd made the bet with. Vinnie won the bet. The St. Bernard did put up a better fight than the Dane. At least, that's what the sounds coming from the speaker suggested. I was looking at my shoes.

"Well, that's it," said Vinnie. "Let's go pay the man and finish getting drunk."

"Hold it," said the speaker. Smitty? Probably. "I've got one more. Dessert."

"I thought you only got two from the pound."

"I did-but we caught this one digging in the garbage, been turning over cans for weeks. Finally trapped him this evening. We were gonna send him down to the shelter. But why bother? Let them save the gas."

When the door slid open this time, there was a hound-sized mutt standing there, his nose working unhappily. He was shaggy with matted pinkish-looking fur, stringy and dirty-as if he'd been hand-knit by a beginner. He was all the beat-up old mutts in the world rolled into one. I didn't want to look, but I couldn't stop-he was too much the kind of dog I would have cared about, if ... the kind of dog that goes with summer and skinny-dipping.

The Chtorran was lying flat in the center of the room. Engorged and uninterested. His eyes opened and closed lazily. Sput ... phwut.

The dog edged out of the cubicle-he hadn't seen the Chtorran yet. Sniffing intensely, he took a step forward

-and then every hair on his back stood up. With a yow¢ of surprise, the dog leaped backward into the nearest wall. Something about the Chtorran lying there in a pool of dark red blood smelled very bad to this poor creature. He cowered along the wall, slunk toward the space behind a bale of hay-but it smelled even worse there; he froze indecisively, then began backing away uncertainly.

The Chtorran half-turned to watch him move. Twitched. One arm scratched lazily.

The dog nearly left his skin behind. He scrambled toward the only escape he knew, the tiny lit cubicle. But Smitty had closed it. The dog sniffed at it and scratched. And scratched. Frantically, with both front legs working like pedals, he clawed at the unyielding door. He whined, he whimpered, he pleaded with terrible urgency for impossible escape.

"Get him out of there!" It wasn't me who said it-I wish it had been-it was the redhead.

"How?" said Vinnie.

"I don't know-but do something. Please!" No one answered her.

The dog was wild. He turned and bared his teeth at the Chtorran, growling, warning it to keep back; then almost immediately he was working at the door again, trying to get one foot under it, trying to lift it up again

The Chtorran moved. Almost casually. The front half of it curled up into the air, then came down again, making an arch; the back half barely moved forward. It looked like a toppled red question mark, the mouth flush against the floor where the dog had been.

The Chtorran stayed in that position, its face directly against the straw-matted concrete. Blood seeped outward across the dirty stained surface.

There hadn't even been time for a yelp. "That's it?" asked Vinnie.

"Yep. That's it till tomorrow," replied the loudspeaker. "Don't forget to tell your friends about us. A new show every night." Smitty's voice had a strange quality to it. But then, so did Vinnie's. And Jillanna's.

The Chtorran stretched out again. It looked like it was asleep. No, not yet. It rolled slightly to one side and directed a stream of dark viscous fluid against a stained wall, where it flowed into a trough of running water.

"That's all that's left of last night's heifer," snickered Vinnie. I didn't like him.

Jillanna led me downstairs and introduced me to Smitty. He looked like an ice-cream man. Clean-scrubbed. The kind who was a compulsive masturbator in private. Very fair skin. Wisps of sandy hair. Thick glasses. An eager expression, but haunted. I did not shake hands with him.