by Adam Pepper
The wall that separated the living room from the dining room came crashing down. Dust and powder kicked up and filled my eyes and lungs; I coughed and blinked, trying to clear them.
It took a second for my eyes to focus, but once they did, I saw the creature. It was nothing like Mackenzie had described. This was no small, harmless lizard. The creature before me was eight or nine feet from pointy head to curled feet, suspended in midair; its dark, black wings flapping lightly, effortlessly coasting above us about halfway between the floor and the high ceiling of the gaudy room. A black boot hung from its mouth, and the creature spit it out and snarled at us. The creature’s eyes were black and oval shaped and seemed to stretch from its forehead to beneath its flat, wide-open snout; each nostril was like a crater in a dark moon. It was fixed in on us.
“Mackenzieeeee,” the creature spoke in a whispering tone and yet the noise reverberated loudly off the walls, the last syllable hanging in the air like fizzy cola settling in a glass.
Chapter Two
* * *
It was hungry. Its skin-cover was starting to get dry and flaky.
It needed to eat.
The journey from the land of hard ground and tall, manmade forests was long and tiring, but finally the end was in sight. Ahead lay green, soft ground, and in the soft ground were humans, many humans, eating and drinking and making joy-noises. Where there were large gatherings of humans, there would be weak humans among them, and little ones too.
The red, hot ball in the sky was growing weaker, but still it was warm. The joy-noises echoed as It approached. When the joy-noises were loud, it meant the prey was not on guard to danger. When prey was not on guard, prey became careless.
Enclosed lights flashed from circle-shaped carriages that whirled around on a track, each carriage painted black with red spider webs; inside each were small humans—smiling small humans. It couldn’t understand why the little humans happily sat in machines that whipped them around and around in circles, over and over again, but the joy heard in their noises was unmistakable.
The hot ball in the sky was almost gone. The enclosed lights were growing brighter.
It walked among the humans, but tried not to look directly at any of them. The redness of its eyes would show, or the skin-cover might peel and expose scales. The hot ball in the sky couldn’t disappear soon enough.
It rubbed its face and felt a split in the skin accompanied by horrible belly sickness. It walked away from the crowds, passed a large, yellow and white striped soft house and continued behind it to a wooded area, clutching its gut as its walk became more and more troubled.
From the seclusion of the trees, It could see the humans play and make joy-noises and eat and drink. There were so many of them. It didn’t understand how so many humans could live together. It lived alone.
It was always alone.
The scent of oncoming humans reached its nose. Two were walking away from the crowds. They were coming towards It. There was one male and one female, both young adults. The male was tall and fit. His hair was short and stood straight up, stiffened from wax. As he got closer, It noticed intimidating, large forearms on the male. He also had a wiry marking on his arm of dark ink.
The girl was smaller, a petite young thing. She’d make a far easier catch if It could somehow separate her from the male. Her hair was bright yellow, clearly the painted color and not the growth color, the way many human females wore their hair. It smelled other scents of soaps and cleansers on her, but nothing so strong as the hair paint.
The humans continued into the wooded area, and It followed, keeping a hundred yards or so between them. The couple’s joy-noises grew louder and filled the woods as they left the rest of the humans further behind them. The male fondled the female’s behind; it was a tiny behind. She was very fit. Fit humans were tough to catch.
“Hey, stop that,” she said and she slapped his shoulder. Human mating rituals were so odd. It was clear that she didn’t object to the male’s groping.
“You have a great ass. You know that?”
“Great ass,” It said quietly, mimicking the speech patterns of the young male. The better It got at mimicry, the better It ate. Was ass a basic term for the lower back? It worked hard to learn their words but was always fearful of using them incorrectly at a key moment.
“You think you can just grab it whenever you want?”
“Why not?” The male leaned over and his mouth met the female’s. They embraced and hugged tightly. Their faces were smushing together.
“You must think I’m easy,” she said as she pulled away.
“You must think I’m easy,” It said, now mimicking the female. The word It had heard before, but what was easy? A task could be easy, but how could a person be easy? Their speech was challenging.
“Stop it, Nicki. I think you’re awesome.”
The male’s hand began to wander again. This time it worked higher on the female’s body. He raised her tight, blue sleeveless top and pulled up the garment she wore underneath it. Then he rubbed the ball on her chest with his hand and grabbed it with his mouth.
“Bobby,” she said as she slid backwards slightly. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Come on, Nicki. You like me, don’t you?”
“It’s not that. If she finds out…”
“Fuck her. She doesn’t own me.”
“Are you sure?”
The male pulled her closer and his hand returned to her chest and he bit her neck while mumbling with his mouth full, “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
She made quick joy-noises. “Okay. That bitch doesn’t deserve you.”
“Come on, Nicki. I’ve been wanting this since the first day I met you.”
“So have I.”
He unzipped his pants, raised his shoulders to his ears and his tone went from aggressive to submissive as he said, “You’re the one I’ve always wanted.”
“Are you sure you’re not just saying that?”
He nodded and she pulled down his pants while bending to her knees. Then she pulled at his undergarments, but she hesitated.
“Come on, baby. What is it?” Suddenly his tone was aggressive again. It was thoroughly confused by their patterns. Other animals It had witnessed courting always had defined roles by gender. The humans were constantly changing theirs.
She pulled down his undergarments. It edged forward as the hunger pains compelled It towards them. The leaves shuffled beneath It. It stopped, not wanting to alert the humans. It could never handle two adult humans. The male alone would be too strong. It was far too weak to handle the muscular young man.
Cramps twisted and turned its stomach muscles. The back of its throat began to tickle.
It faded backwards, away from the humans. Tremors came from the back of its thighs and radiated into its lower back. It winced, then buckled from the pressure. Every ounce of strength went into building the cover It needed to walk among the humans undetected. And its energy was all used up.
It dropped to its knees and began to gag and then swallow stomach fluids. The emptiness of its belly wasn’t enough to prevent the green and yellow bile that flowed, then came up in clumps. It was powerless to its own need to purge. Its guts insisted on turning inside out.
It rolled on its hands and clenched its fists together as fingernails eroded and turned a dark shade of reddish-brown. It pulled them off one by one. The stubborn nails, It twisted and turned, then bit off and spit them aside. Most of the hair from atop its head just blew into a light breeze; the few remaining strands It yanked out then dropped. The teeth too, faded and discolored, the enamel losing its strength and shape. As It retched and clutched its belly, It spit out the front teeth then yanked at the back ones. All of its human appendages needed to be removed so that It might feel some relief.
Relief just wouldn’t come.
It spit and hurled and tossed and turned. It yanked hair from its arms and nails from its feet, but the body continued to
suffer.
It needed to eat. But It didn’t have the strength to take on the two enamored humans that continued to paw each other, unaware of the suffering taking place a few hundred yards deeper into the woods.
The flaky exterior of humanlike skin peeled in sheets of pink. It pulled it off and tossed it aside. First the shoulders, then the arms. Then, its chest. Its legs. Its feet. Its hands. Then the face.
It ripped off the eyelids and then It yanked at the eyeball covers, one at a time. They were affixed quite firmly, and the nerve endings screamed as they separated from the skull.
Finally, it was done. The human shell that cost so much energy to build and maintain, had been shed.
Its camouflage was gone. The scaly exterior of its real self was exposed. It was a foot shorter and twenty pounds lighter.
Air slowly entered its lungs and It rose to its hind legs. Despite twitching limbs and countless muscle spasms, It was able to regain enough composure to walk back, slowly and deliberately, towards the pair of humans.
The male human leaned against a tree and his pants were at his ankles. The female was on top of him, bouncing up and down. She still wore a skirt, but it was flapping up and down, showing her tiny backside as the skirt fluttered.
It watched and moved closer. The urge to eat grew stronger and stronger. But It was scared of the man. It had to wait and hope for a misstep by one of the humans. The smallest opportunity would do. With the little strength It had regained from shedding the humanlike skin, It was able to color its scales brown, and blend into the woods—a far less daunting task than wearing the human cover.
Suddenly, It sensed an odor of more humans. Then It heard three humans approaching. The couple was unfazed; they didn’t hear the others, even as they grew closer and made more noise stomping through the brush.
It dropped back a few steps deeper into the woods.
“What do you think you’re doing with my man, bitch!”
The girl doing the talking was small and clearly desirable to other male humans, much like the other female. She too had bright yellow hair paint and wore a skimpy skirt. Following close behind her were two large male humans: one brown skinned with no hair on his head but black hair growing above his lip and beneath his chin; the other had pale skin, was muscle-bound with a large coating of blubber covering his muscles.
“Oh, shit!” the young male said, dropping the female from his mount. “Mackenzie. I’m sorry. It’s just…”
Her eyes widened and her nose flared. “You scumbag. You aren’t talking your way out of this.”
The other female brushed the leaves and dirt off, grabbed her shoes and ran barefoot away from the others—towards It.
She began hopping and putting on her shoes one at a time, just as she passed.
“That’s right,” the other female yelled into the woods, “run you little slut. Find your own man and stop fucking mine!”
It turned and watched the girl pass. When the humans turned their attention back to the man, It started after her. After just a few steps, It quickly gave up the chase. The girl had darted far out of sight; It would never catch up. Instead, It returned to the brush and hunched down low.
“Come on, Mackenzie,” the male continued to beg, “it was a mistake. Really.”
She shook her head, but didn’t say a word. She looked over her shoulder, and the two big men closed in.
The young man just barely pulled his pants up when a shot hit his midsection. He gasped and clutched his belly. The large brown-skinned man brought his arm down on the back of the young male’s neck, which dropped him. The two men moved in and kicked him as he reeled and twisted. They kicked and stomped again and again as the young male tried to cover up and avoid the worst of the blows.
“That’s it,” she said, while making joy-noises, but these seemed to require more air than the joy-noises the children made. “Harder. Fuckin’ harder. Make him feel it.”
“Harder. Fuckin’ harder,” It mimicked. It was learning so much watching these humans. It generally hunted them one at a time and rarely heard them talk amongst themselves.
They took turns kicking the young male, then punching him, then kicking some more.
“You don’t cheat on me, asshole. No one cheats on me.”
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say as he spit and gasped. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
She picked a large piece of tree off the ground and said, “Oh, I know you are. You’re damn well gonna be more sorry when I’m done.”
She smacked his head with the piece of tree. Then again. And a third time. It could see blood running from his nose and mouth.
The girl bent over and picked up a rock. She threw it at his face, directly hitting his nose.
“Stop!” he yelled. Then, his voice filled with gravel, his body clearly spent, he mumbled, “Please stop.”
The men continued to kick and punch the man, and soon he stopped reeling. He stopped moving at all.
The beating stopped, and the two men looked to the girl.
“That will teach this asshole.”
“Is he dead?” the large one asked the brown-skinned one, hands on his knees, huffing for air as he spoke.
The brown-skinned man bent down and checked. “Nope. He’s still breathing.”
“Good,” she said. Then she walked over to him and said, “Don’t ever try to fuck me over again.”
The three turned away from the bleeding man, and walked back towards the open field.
Mouth-water began to trickle from its mouth. The tingling It felt from the top of its elongated head to the tips of its curled toes was half eager anticipation, the other half sheer desperation. It slowly crawled towards the injured man on all fours; its hind legs alone could no longer support it. The scent of the man’s freshly spilled blood was drawing It towards the man. The song of sustenance rang out through the woods, beckoning It towards the sweet blood It needed to taste.
The humans walked back towards the green, soft ground.
The song was interrupted by the prudent instincts that governed its every move. It could sense the other humans; they were still close. Yet It was too hungry. The instinct of hunger far outweighed the instinct of fear.
The song played on. The orchestra of bloodlust demanded to be heard. It took many years to make some kind of sense out of human mannerisms and facial cues; even longer to gather what little understanding It had of human speech. But their music…from day one, It heard music playing, and It understood. As just a tiny hatchling, born in a crawlspace in the basement of a music school, It could feel the tones and textures resonating through its very essence. From the day it was born, It heard music whenever it was hungry. Music and hunger were virtually synonymous.
Music: It was the one positive contribution humans had to offer, other than their flesh and blood.
Each crawl-step It took towards the man took enormous effort: baby-steps once smooth like the twirling dancers It had seen in its youth devolved into clunky, giant leaps. Anticipating the taste of human blood reverberated through its guts like deep-tuned cellos, gently stroked in unison by bows strung with horse hair.
The man suddenly began to stir, and desperation overtook anticipation. The hunger sang louder, and rang higher and played faster, like violins plucked staccato at a frantic pace.
Once still, the man now writhed around in the dirt and leaves. He grunted and groaned, but seemed unable to get up.
It dug its thin elbows deep into the earth, using them like shovels. It wiggled and shimmied, toothpick front arms, muscular back legs and taut torso working as a team, in order to close in on its prey. Its stomach still churned and lungs wheezed. It had nothing left to give. With nourishment just feet away, It searched for any last morsel of energy; its will to live boosting just enough adrenaline through its veins to ignore the pain and weakness and push on the last few crab-steps.
The man, still lying on his side, tilted his head just enough for them to make eye contact.
I
ts heart and the man’s heart both beat a frenzied pace like pounding timpani. The man was trying to get up. It was trying to reach the man before he could rise. Both of them were spent.
The man groaned and twisted and started to crawl away. With kettledrums beating in its head, It found one last burst of energy, and It collapsed atop the man.
The man yelled, a loud but unintelligible howl—pain and fear combined as one.
Cupping the man’s head with its arms, It faced the man, and forced his mouth wide open. A dry, gritty forked tongue extended from its mouth, plunging down the man’s throat. It tapped the tonsils but its mission was far below. Traveling through the esophagus it landed in the stomach where it immediately tasted the sweetness of half digested cotton candy followed by the bitterness of a hotdog and mustard.
It closed its eyes inhaling through its nose and tongue simultaneously while sucking in with delight. The tingling in its legs was finally subsiding; its strength was rapidly returning. Raw energy converted to power instantaneously.
Once the stomach was fully emptied, It worked the tongue further into the man’s intestines. All the contents were inhaled through the tips of its tongue: bile from the liver; juices from the pancreas—nothing went to waste. Half developed stool from the colon was devoured as were all the contents of the rectum.
The tongue popped out the other side and licked the hairs beneath his anus, but the meal was not near complete. After the gastrointestinal tract, It went to work on all the body fluids. Blood, of course; all the veins and arteries were emptied. But the reproductive system was also quite tasty. There was nothing on the human body that the digestive juices generated from its tongue couldn’t break down. The lungs, the heart, even the appendix was slurped up and consumed.
The eyeballs, the brain, even the hairs on his head, all represented sustenance. And It never wasted. The man was a big meal, but It was slow and deliberate, and It would make use of every cell in his body.
Eventually, It would even break down the bones. Although that process could go on until the darkness turned to light. It was in no rush.
