by Priya Sharma
“Let me carry your bag. It looks heavy.”
“I can manage.”
“I wasn’t always like this. I had to change for us to survive. Fighting and stealing,” he shook his head, embarrassed. “I only became brutal to stop us being brutalised. Do you understand?”
The sky had darkened. Rain was on its way.
“We lost everything when Dad died. The house. The money. Your grandma lost her mind. It was the shock of having to live here. We were posh and we paid for that. On our first day at school a lad was picking on Kathy. Do you know what I did? I bit him, Lola. Right on the face. He swelled up like a red balloon. He nearly choked. Nobody picks on my princesses.”
Nobody except him.
“Are you special, Lola?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I dodged him as he tried to block my path. Tallulah wouldn’t have told him anything. Ami though, she had told him to prevent Pauline and Jade getting a battering.
“I can wait,” he didn’t pursue me, just stood there in the drizzle. “We have lots of time now.”
*
“We’re going for a ride today.” Kenny followed Kath into the kitchen. He’d started turning up at the flat every day.
“I can’t, Kenny, I’ve got loads to do.”
“It can all wait.”
Kenny had the last word.
“Where are we going?” Tallulah asked.
“You’re not going anywhere except to Ami’s. She needs to get her house in order. A girl needs her mum. She’s sorting your bedroom, so you’re going to live with her. Properly.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Want’s not in it.”
Kathy stood between them. He pushed her aside.
“I live here.” Tallulah wouldn’t be moved.
“You live where I tell you.” He had this way of standing close to you, to make himself seem more imposing, and lowering his voice. “You act like you’re something with that pretty little face of yours. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re not special. You’re fucking Mikey Flynn’s daughter. And he’s a piece of dead scum.”
Poor Mikey Flynn, rumoured to have done a runner. I wondered where Kenny had him buried.
“Go home, Tallulah.” Kathy raised her chin. “Kenny’s right. You’re not my girl. You should be with your own mother.”
Tallulah’s eyes widened. I could see the tears starting to pool there.
“Go on, then,” Kathy carried on, “you don’t belong here.”
“Mum,” I opened my mouth.
“Shut it.” Kathy turned on me. “I’ve been soft on you pair for too long. Now help Tallulah take her stuff to Ami’s.”
“No,” Kenny put a hand on my arm, “Lola stays with us.”
*
As Kenny drove, the terraces changed to semis and then detached houses. Finally there were open fields. It felt like he’d taken us hours away but it wasn’t more than thirty minutes. We turned up an overgrown drive. Branches whipped the windscreen as Kenny drove.
“Kenny.” Kath’s voice was ripped from her throat. He patted her hand.
The drive ended at a large house, dark bricked with tall windows. It might as well have been a castle for all its unfamiliar grandeur. Overgrown rhododendrons crowded around it, shedding pink and red blossoms that were long past their best.
“Come on.”
Kenny got out, not looking back to see if we were following.
Kath stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at the open front door. There were plenty of window bars and metal shutters where I grew up, but the windows here were protected by wrought iron foliage in which metal snakes were entwined. The interior was dim. I could hear Kenny’s footsteps as he walked inside.
“This is where we used to live.” Kathy’s face was blank. She went in, a sleep walker in her own life. I followed her.
“Welcome home.” Kenny was behind the door. He locked it and put the key on a chain around his neck.
*
Kenny showed us from room to room as if we were prospective buyers, not prisoners. Every door had a lock and every window was decorated in the same metal lattice work.
I stopped at a set of double doors but Kenny steered me away from it. “Later. Look through here, Kathy. Do you remember the old Aga? Shame they ripped it out. I thought we could get a new one.”
He led us on to the lounge, waving his arm with a flourish.
“I couldn’t bring you here without buying some new furniture.” He kept glancing at Kathy. “What do you think?”
The room smelt of new carpet. It was a dusky pink, to match the sofa, and the curtains were heavy cream with rose buds on them. Things an old woman might have picked.
“Lovely, Kenny.”
“I bought it for us.” He slung his arm around her neck. It looked like a noose. “You and me, here again, no interference.” His face was soft. “I’ve plenty of money. I can get more.”
“Go and play,” Kath said to me.
It’ll shame me forever that I was angry at her for talking to me like I was a child when all she was trying to do was get me out of his way.
I went, then crawled back on my belly to watch them through the gap in the door.
Kath broke away from him and sat down. Kenny followed her, sinking down to lay his head on her knee. Her hand hovered over him, the muscles in her throat moving as she swallowed hard. Then she stroked his head. He buried his face in her lap, moaning.
“What happened to us, Mouse?”
Mouse. He’d swallow her whole. He’d crush her.
“You said you can get more money. Do you mean the money from the job in Liverpool?”
He moved quickly, sitting beside Kathy with his thigh wedged against the length of hers.
“Yes.” He interfaced their fingers, making their hands a single fist. “I want you to know that I didn’t kill anyone.”
“You didn’t? You were covered in blood.”
“It was Barry’s son, Carl. He always had a screw loose. The man wouldn’t tell us where the diamonds were and Carl just freaked. He kept on beating him.”
“But you admitted it.”
“Who would believe me if I denied it? I did the time. Barry was very grateful. I knew it would set us up for life. I hated waiting for you. I imagined slipping out between the bars to come to you. I was tempted so many times. I hated the parole board. There were diamonds, Kath. I took them before I let the others in. I stopped here and buried them under the wall at the bottom of the garden. I nearly got caught doing it. Then the police picked me up, on my way back to you. That’s why I had to do the stretch, so nobody would suspect. They’re safe, now. Shankly’s looking after what’s left of them.” He laughed at his own cryptic comment. Every Merseysider knew the deceased Bill Shankly, iconic once-manager of Liverpool Football Club. “Did I do right, Kath?”
Then she did something surprising. She kissed him. He writhed under her touch.
“Mouse, was there anyone else while I was inside?”
“No, Kenny. There’s never been anybody else.”
He basked in that.
“It’ll be just like I said.”
I sensed her hesitation. So did he.
“What’s wrong?”
“It won’t be like we said though, will it?”
“Why?”
“It should be just us two.” She leant closer to him. “Lola’s grown up now. She can look after herself.”
“Lola’s just a kid.”
“I was a mother at her age.” She put her hand on his arm.
“No, she stays.”
Her hand dropped.
“Lola,” Kenny called out. “Never let me catch you eavesdropping again. Understand?”
*
“I’ll just say goodnight to Lola.” Kath stood in the doorway to my new bedroom, as if this game of fucked-up families was natural.
“Don’t be long.”
I sat on the bed. The new quilt cover and pillow case
smelt funny. Kenny had put them on straight out of the packaging without washing them first. They still bore the sharp creases of their confinement.
“Lola,” Kathy pulled me up and whispered to me. “He said to me, when we were kids, ‘I’m going to put a baby in you and it’s going to be special, like me and Dad,’ as if I had nothing to do with it. I can’t stand him touching me. When I felt you moving inside me, I was terrified you’d be a squirming snake, but you were mine. I’d do anything to get him away from us and Ami. I was the one who told the police.”
Uncle. Father. Any wonder that I’m monstrous?
“Kenny’s always been wrong. He thought it was from Dad, although he never saw him do it. It’s from Mum. It drove her mad, holding it in. She nearly turned when she had her stroke. I have to know, can you do it too?”
“What?”
“We can’t waste time. Can you turn into,” she hesitated, “a snake?”
“Yes.” I couldn’t meet her gaze.
“Good. Do it as soon as I leave.” She opened the window. “Go out through the bars. Will you fit?”
“I don’t know if I can. I’m not sure that I can do it at will.”
“Try. Get out of here.”
Panic rose in my chest. “What about you?”
“I’m going to do what I should’ve done a long time ago.” She showed me the paring knife in her back pocket and then pulled her baggy sweater back over it. It must’ve been all she had time to grab. “I won’t be far behind you.”
“What if you’re not?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” she paused, “I’m sorry for not being stronger. I’m sorry for not getting you away from here.”
“Kathy,” Kenny’s voice boomed from the corridor, “time for bed.”
After she left I heard the key turn in the lock.
*
I went through the drawers and wardrobe. Kenny had filled them with clothes. I didn’t want to touch anything that had come from him. There was nothing that I could use as a weapon or to help me escape.
I’d not changed since the time I’d bitten Jade. I lay down, trying to slow my breathing and concentrate. Nothing happened. The silence filled my mind along with all the things he would be doing to Kathy.
I dozed, somewhere towards early morning, wakening frequently in the unfamiliar room. I missed Tallulah beside me in the bed we’d shared since childhood. I missed her warmth and tangle of hair.
When Kenny let me out it was late afternoon.
“Where’s my mum?”
“Down here.”
There was a chest freezer in the basement. Kenny lifted the lid. Kathy was inside, frozen in a slumped position, arms crossed over her middle. Frozen blood glittered on the gash in her head and frosted one side of her face.
Kenny put his hand on my shoulder like we were mourners at a wake. I should’ve been kicking and screaming, but I was as frozen as she was.
One of Kathy’s wrists was contorted at an unnatural angle.
“She betrayed me. I always knew it, in my heart.” He shut the lid. “Now it’s just you and me, kid.”
He took me up through the house, to the room at the back with the double doors. There were dozens of tanks that cast a glow. Some contained a single serpent, others several that were coiled together like heaps of intestines.
“My beauties. I’ll start breeding them.”
There were corn snakes, ball pythons, ribbon snakes, though I had no names for them back then, all of which make good pets. I stopped at one tank. He had a broad head with a blunted snout
“Ah, meet Shankly.” Kenny put his hand against the glass. “He was hard to come by. They’re called cottonmouths because they open their mouths so wide to show their fangs that you see all the white lining inside.”
The cottonmouth must have been young. I remember his olive green colour and the clear banded pattern on his back, which he would lose as he got older.
“Are you special, Kathy?”
“I’m Lola.”
“Yes, of course you are. Are you like me?”
“I’m nothing like you. Leave me alone.”
“I’ll look after you. Like you’re a princess. You’ll want for nothing. And you’ll look after me because that’s how it works.”
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
Kenny pressed my face against the tank. Shankly showed me his pale underbelly as he slid towards me.
“Be afraid of him,” Kenny nodded at the snake, “he still has his fangs. I’ll make a mint from his venom.”
Shankly climbed up a branch in his tank and settled there.
Kenny pushed me down with one hand and undid his belt buckle with the other.
“I’m your daughter.” It was my last defence.
“I know.”
Then he put his forked tongue in my mouth.
*
I couldn’t move. The place between my legs was numb. I’d already tried sex with a boy from college. I knew what it was about. We’d fumbled and fallen in a heap in the bushes by the old boating lake one afternoon. It wasn’t an experience to set the world alight but it was satisfactory enough.
This wasn’t just a sex crime, it was a power crime. Kenny wanted my fear. I shrunk into the distant corners of myself trying to retreat where he couldn’t follow. His orgasm was grudging, delivered with a short, gratified moan.
Afterwards he sat with his trousers open, watching me like he was waiting for me to do something. I was frozen. I’m not sure I even blinked. That was how Kathy must have felt, forever stuck in that single moment of inertia and shock that kept her in the same spot for a lifetime. She was right. She should have run while she had the chance. Fuck her mother. And Ami, for all the good she’d done her.
Kenny stood up. I thought, It’s going to happen again and then he’s going to dump me in the freezer. Instead, he went upstairs, his tread heavy with disappointment.
“Don’t stay up too late, pet.”
I think I was waiting for something too, when I should’ve been searching for something sharp to stick between his ribs. I couldn’t summon anything; I was still too deep inside myself.
I was colder than I’d ever been before, even though the summer night was stifling. The room felt airless despite the window being wide open and butting up against the grille. Sometimes, when Georgia’s away, I feel that cold.
Get up, get up before he remembers you and comes back down for more.
“Lola.” A voice carried through the window.
It was Tallulah, a pale ghost beyond the glass. Her mouth was moving as she clutched at the bars.
I turned my face away, in the childish way of if I can’t see her, then she can’t see me. I didn’t want her to see me like this. It occurred to me that she might have been a witness to the whole thing. I turned back but she’d gone, so I closed my eyes.
I should’ve known that Tallulah would never leave me. The snakes swayed in their tanks, enraptured. Tallulah was long and white, with pale yellow markings. Slender and magnificent. She glided over me and lay on my chest, rearing up. I couldn’t breathe because she took my breath away. I could feel her muscles contracting and her smooth belly scales against my bare chest.
Get up, get up, or he’ll come down and find her like this.
Are you special?
Her tongue flicked out and touched my lips. I had no choice. I had to do it, for her. There was the rush of lubricant that loosened the top layer of my skin. The change was fast, my boyish body, with its flat chest and narrow hips perfectly suited to the transformation.
I crawled out of my human mantle. Moulting was good. I shed every cell of myself that Kenny had touched.
*
Both Tallulah and I are unidentifiable among my extensive research of snakes, bearing properties of several species at once. We made a perfect pair for hunting. The pits on my face were heat sensitive, able to detect a variation of a thousandth of a degree, feeding information into my optic nerves. I saw the world in thermal.
Kenny’s heart was luminous in the dark. I slid up the side of his bed and hovered over his pillow. Tallulah lay beside him on the mattress, waiting.
Look at your princesses, Kenny. See how special we are.
Kenny snored, a gentle, almost purring noise.
It’s a myth that snakes dislocate their jaws.
I opened my mouth as wide as I could, stretching the flexible ligament that joined my lower jaw to my skull. I covered his crown in slow increments. He snorted and twitched. I slipped down over his eyes, his lashes tickling the inside of my throat. He reached up to touch his head.
Tallulah struck him, sinking her fangs into his neck. He started and tried to sit up, limbs flailing, which was a mistake as his accelerating heartbeat sent the venom further around his circulation.
Trying to cover his nose was the hardest part, despite my reconfigured mouth. I thought my head would split open. I wasn’t sure how much more I could stomach. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t trying to swallow him whole. A fraction more and I was over his nostrils completely.
There was only one way to save himself. I recognised the undulations he was making. I could feel the change on my tongue, his skin becoming fibrous. I had to stop him. I couldn’t imagine what he’d become.
He was weakening with Tallulah’s neurotoxins, slumping back on the bed, shaking in an exquisite fit. He’d wet himself. I stretched my flesh further and covered his mouth and waited until long after he was still.
*
I woke up on the floor beside Tallulah. We were naked. My throat and neck were sore. The corners of my mouth were crusted with dried blood. We lay on our sides, looking at one another without speaking. We were the same, after all.
“How did you find me?” I was hoarse.
“I had to wait until Ami went out. I found the house details in her bedroom drawer. I didn’t have any money so I had to get a bus and walk the rest of the way. I’m sorry that I didn’t get here sooner.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
Tallulah picked up our clothes and then our skins which lay like shrouds. It was disconcerting to see how they were moulds of us, even down to the contours of our faces.
