Snake Jaw

by Andrew Gallacher

  SNAKE JAW

  written and illustrated by

  Andrew Gallacher

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY

  LegumeMan Books

  Copyright © 2010 by Andrew Gallacher

  Design © 2010 by The Spatchcock

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the express written permission of the publisher and author, except where permitted by law

  Acknowledgements

  I dedicate this book, with special thanks, to Emily Kersing and David Jackson, for caring when I didn’t. Thanks also to the team at LegumeMan Books for their hard work, belief and making all of this happen.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part 1: Larvae

  Part 2 - Ophidian

  Part 3 - Molting

  Prologue

  Gerald Phalanx was six and unhappy when his family decided to move to the country. They moved north of a large town, by a lake that turned black at certain times of the year. The lake was one of the very few things that interested Gerald. He would spend a lot of time there during the black season, skimming flat rocks across the surface of the water. He loved the way the rocks would float and leave a little trail of ripples like a swimming reptile.

  He didn’t get along with many of the kids at school, and showed sophistication above the level of his peers. He considered them country bumpkins.

  “That’s an odd generalisation for a child so young,” his teachers would say.

  “He’s never really been a normal boy,” Mrs. Phalanx explained. “He takes after his father.”

  Gerald’s father was a vet who set up a small clinic in the country town. He’d found it hard to obtain clients as the town’s vets were already well established – the people weren’t comfortable with new business from the city. Gerald’s father shared his frustrations with his son and the two developed a partnership based on their exclusion.

  When Gerald was older his father let him work at the clinic doing small jobs. Gerald enjoyed the sterile environment and his interactions with the animals. He said that one day he wanted to be a vet, which made his father very proud.

  One summer afternoon a man came into the clinic with a pet python. The man complained that his python was more lethargic than usual, barely moving most of the day and finding it hard to capture and eat food. Dr. Phalanx took the python in, promising to study its habits and determine what could be wrong.

  Gerald took an immediate interest in the animal, it being so different from the usual pets that came to the clinic. Gerald was allowed to administer its food and grew fascinated by the way it would eat, swallowing the mice whole. Despite his interest, after some days, feeding the snake began to bore him. Starving the snake was the next logical step towards an outcome he hadn’t yet imagined.

  One hot morning, Dr. Phalanx was called out to a nearby farm to look at a flyblown sheep. Desperate for the work, he closed the clinic and left Gerald to mind the place while he was out. While his father was gone, Gerald got a pair of surgical pliers and removed the snake’s teeth. The thing moped meekly in his pale hands as he performed the operation with the efficiency of a surgeon. When he was done he took off his pants and held the snake at the end of his erect penis and let the reptile bite down on it. He helped the snake along with the process, all the while examining the expanded snake’s jaw. His heart beat faster than it ever had. He ejaculated inside the snake’s throat and then pulled it off him. He placed the python back in its cage and pretended nothing had ever happened.

  When his father returned and went about his daily duties, he noted the missing teeth on the python and immediately called the owner.

  “I’m afraid there’s something very wrong with your python,” he explained. “Its teeth have fallen out, it’s getting increasingly thin despite being fed more than usual and it seems that it’s excreting a clear fluid from its mouth.”

  The snake was put down the next morning.

  Phalanx gave up working at the clinic soon after, telling his father he had developed other interests. He would mull over these interests down by the black lake, skimming rocks over the water and watching the sun go down on the world.

  Part 1- Larvae

  Chapter 1

  Detective Gill sat at his desk and looked around the room. There wasn’t much to do. There was never much to do in Hopetown and being a detective seemed like a wasted title. There was a knock at the office door and the department secretary came in, a small woman with an old face and wiry frame, named Kathleen.

  “Graham, there’s a lady on line two. She says her daughter has gone missing. Are you able to take it?”

  “Sure,” he said, and put the call on speakerphone. He sat back in his chair.

  “Detective Gill.”

  “Hello, Detective. My name is Margaret Moore. I’m calling from Mount Baker. It’s about my daughter.” The woman sounded about sixty, her voice was frail and shaky.

  “Go on.”

  “Vanessa... that’s my daughter, she lives in Hopetown and I haven’t been able to contact her for several days. It’s not like her. I’m beginning to worry.”

  “Would she have gone on a holiday without telling you?”

  “I doubt that. She has a baby and I don’t think she’d bother with the hassle.”

  Gill reached for a notepad. “I can go out to her house and see if she’s there.”

  “I’d like that. I tried calling there, though, but the phone just rings out.”

  “What’s her address?”

  “Oh, wait, let me just get it.”

  The woman shuffled through some papers.

  “56 Herbert St. It’s near the park with the golf course.”

  “Yes, I know it,” he said, writing down the address. “Where does she work?”

  “She works at a bar. The Green something. The Green Tavern? I can’t remember.”

  “I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

  “Detective?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please find out what’s wrong. I’d hate to think something terrible has happened. She’s such a lovely girl. And her baby is the sweetest little angel.”

  “Who’s the father?”

  “He’s a troubled boy, but he’s harmless. He lives out in Templeton. He has nothing to do with her.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Benny. Benjamin. Benjamin Leeman.”

  “I’ll look into it, don’t worry.”

  He took her contact details.

  “I’ll speak to you soon, Margaret.”

  He disconnected the phone and looked over his notes. They were barely coherent scribbles. He was losing his touch – getting complacent with the detective game. Perhaps this missing persons case was what he needed to get back into it and get his brain ticking again. He stood up, put his jacket on and left the office.

  “I’ll be out for most of the day,” he said.

  “But what if your wife calls?” Kathleen said, knowing that at 2pm every day his wife called him and they spoke for twenty minutes about nothing much at all.

  “Tell her I’m busy.”

  “Okay.”

  Chapter 2

  He arrived at Vanessa’s house a little past midday. The sky was overcast and the ground still muddy from overnight rain. The house was beige brick, coated in moss, paint flaked off the windowsills and the front lawn was littered with disused baby toys faded from sunshine. The neighborhood barked with distant dogs, engines started and stopped, screen doors banged shut and mothers called out to misbehaving children. It wasn’t a particularly good area and Gill had already begun to paint a picture of where Vanessa Moore may or may not be.

  He knocked on the door and there was no answer. He
strolled down the driveway to the back gate. He peeked through a hole and saw nothing but overgrown grass and a soggy wooden decking. He let himself in and walked up to the back door. He knocked again, and wandered to the side of the house peering through windows at dusty rooms full of unpacked clothes and more baby toys. He decided not to go in, as he hadn’t yet developed enough of a case. A visit to her work would hopefully answer some questions. He left the house as it stood and felt relief that this mystery was not so easily solved.

  Chapter 3

  He pulled up in the car park outside The Greenhole Tavern, a gunmetal grey building with a faux balcony draped in fluorescent banners advertising bands he’d never heard of. He walked across the gravel lot to the side entrance and disappeared inside.

  His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. The place housed few patrons: men in their work clothes with mud up to their shins, glancing around disinterestedly. A large man with a ginger beard and long, filthy hair stood behind the bar drying glasses and placing them on an overhead rack. Gill approached the man.

  “I’m Detective Gill from the local police. I’m looking for a young woman named Vanessa Moore.”

  “Vanessa hasn’t shown up for work for a couple of weeks now. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “What was the first day of her no-show?”

  The man turned around and walked over to a piece of paper with the staff roster on it. He ran a dirty finger over a column and came back.

  “Last Saturday. That was a week and a half ago. It’s stupid because she was begging me for more hours, said she needed the money, so I put her on four nights this week and she ain’t shown for one.”

  “Her mother suspects she’s gone missing.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me, a girl like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s a looker. Got a huge set of tits on her.”

  “So you’re saying it’s no surprise that somebody would kidnap her?”

  “She’s not the kind of girl to stay away from bad news. Which is a shame, with her kid and all.”

  “Do you know of anybody she was involved with?”

  “Not by name. The dish hand, Adam, he’s friends with her, but he hasn’t seen her just the same.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “You can do whatever you like, Detective. He’s out back” The man pointed to a doorway at the back of the bar.

  Gill walked into the kitchen and followed the sound of banging dishes. At the end of a narrow hall a young man was hunched over a sink, elbow deep in brown water. He looked up at Gill and then at the wall in front of him.

  “I’m with the local police. I’m looking for Vanessa Moore. Your boss tells me you knew her. What’s your full name, kid?”

  “Adam Hellier. I did know her.”

  “Have you spoken to her recently?”

  “Only at work, haven’t seen her otherwise.”

  “What do you mean by you ‘did’ know her?”

  Adam stopped what he was doing and looked at the wall in front of him again.

  “I don’t know. Did I say that?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “What I meant was, we hung out a bit when she first started here, but then she got pregnant and always worried about money. She kinda withdrew.”

  “How old is her kid?”

  “I dunno. She’s a baby. A year?”

  “Has the father been around?”

  “I don’t think so. I remember her telling me he lives a few towns over. Doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “To be honest, I really didn’t have a lot to do with her.”

  “Well, if you hear anything let me know.”

  Gill took his card from his jacket and Adam grabbed it with wet rubber gloves and stuffed it in his pocket and then got busy washing again. Gill went back to the bar and got the barman’s attention.

  “I’m off. If you hear anything, call the station and ask for Detective Gill.”

  “Sure thing.”

  EIGHTEEN DAYS EARLIER

  Chapter 4

  Vanessa was hungry and her baby, Heather, was famished. When Vanessa became a mother it was the one thing she swore to never let happen, but it did – her baby went unfed. She opened the pantry door and looked at the gutted selection of food on offer. Everything left in there was the same stuff her mother had bought her when she moved out of home a couple of years earlier. Stuff she was told she could use to make meals, but had never, to that day, bothered to cook. Chicken stock, canned tomatoes, pasta, an assortment of herbs and spices. There must be something I could make of this junk, she thought. She took some pasta from the pantry and opened the pack and took out the knot of edible wire. She then dropped it into a nearby bowl and boiled some water. When the water boiled she poured it over the pasta and let it sit. She left the kitchen and went to the living room where Heather sat on the old couch, sucking a dummy and looking confused. Not crying for a change.

  She was a cute baby, Vanessa observed, nothing like her father. She would grow up to be as pleasant on the eye as Vanessa, though Vanessa’s looks were beginning to wane. Gotta stop smoking, she thought.

  She sat beside Heather and stroked the top of her head.

  “I’d date any crappy guy right now just to help pay the rent.”

  Heather didn’t reply.

  “Mummy’s doing it tough, girl.”

  She got up from the couch and went back to the kitchen. She took a fork from the drawer and placed it on the lip of the bowl and drained the water into the sink. The noodles looked like a handful of wet, gray hair ripped from the scalp of a dying old woman.

  “This is what it’s come to,” she said aloud.

  She squeezed the last of some tomato sauce over the noodles and went back to the living room. She forked at the meal and ate it in awkward mouthfuls. She turned the television on and watched some ads. Heather began to cry at the sight of food but refused to eat any. Vanessa picked up the phone, turned the television off, left the room and called Adam.

  “Hey. I need to score some stuff.”

  Chapter 5

  When Adam arrived he kissed her on the cheek and she let him into the living room. She grabbed at his pockets with flirtatious fingers and he told her to slow down.

  “I should have told you on the phone: I need to pay you later if that’s ok?”

  “Vanessa, you’ve done this a few times now.”

  “I know, but I’ve always paid.”

  “I had to chase you down on pay day and demand it.”

  “Things are just really tough right now. But I’m getting more shifts at work.”

  “So I’ll hopefully see more of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re so beautiful, ‘Ness.”

  Vanessa shied away from him. “Can we get high now?”

  Moments later Vanessa sucked the smoke from the burnt smack into her lungs and she thought about her face, her skin, how Adam was a dish hand and didn’t earn enough to be worth her while, plus he was younger. She didn’t like younger guys. She missed Benny, Heather’s father. She sat back on the couch and five minutes passed and soon she wasn’t awake, but not really asleep either.

  “’Ness?” Adam said. He looked around the room, at Heather sitting under the waft of smoke hanging in the dense air. He smiled at the baby and the baby smiled back.

  “’Ness, you awake?”

  He left the room and went to her bedroom. He opened the top drawer of her dresser and took out a bra. He looked at the cup size on the tag.

  “E’s,” he marveled, his heart beating.

  He put the bra back and left her room and returned to the lounge. Vanessa’s eyes were open.

  “I thought you’d left,” she said, her voice sounded forty years older.

  “Nah, just went to the bathroom.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  Adam
sat down beside her. He looked at the baby. “I want to sleep with you.”

  “But we’re just friends,” she said.

  “I know. Just for fun. And you won’t have to pay me for the drugs.”

  Vanessa smiled and looked at Adam from the corner of her eye. “That’s prostitution, Adam. I’m not a prostitute.”

  “I know, I didn’t mean that. I just think you’re lonely.”

  Vanessa reached for his pocket once again and made a lazy moan.

  “You want to get higher?”

  She nodded, too duped to speak.

  “Okay.”

  Vanessa spent the next ten minutes getting higher and when she was incapable of moving Adam took her top off and sunk his face in between her enormous breasts. Then he took her pants off and bent her over on the couch, her body a silent and dead weight. He peeled her underwear down to her mid-thighs, not bothering to take them off entirely, and began to fuck her. He pulled out after some minutes of not feeling much and licked his fingertips and touched her asshole, lubricating it enough to not wake her from her stupor as he jammed his penis inside it. When he’d come he got up and put his pants back on and then dressed Vanessa. He carried her by the wrists out to her car and put her in the backseat. He went back into the house and collected a sleeping Heather. When he had them both in the car he locked the front door of her house and drove to a secluded part of town full of rusted factories and empty fields. The town’s industry had atrophied to a dank wasteland. This was a place nobody wanted to go. He was going to be on time.

  Chapter 6

  Vanessa was sitting on a log with her back to a dense forest, weakly clutching her baby in her arms. She looked up at Adam, who stood before an enormous abandoned factory. Vines clutched to the red bricks that reached as high as the broken windows thirty feet up. There was the vague sound of running water in the forest behind her, the low hum of machines from the building. Everything seemed soggy and on the verge of rusting away. Adam was panting from exhaustion for reasons Vanessa did not know.