Snake Jaw

by Andrew Gallacher

  “Where am I?” Vanessa mumbled.

  “This is the place you wanted me to show you.”

  “What place?”

  “Remember? I told you about that research company, how they wanted volunteers.”

  “No.”

  “I guess you were pretty high. They’re paying people top dollar to test foods and stuff. You wanted me to take you. Now we’re here.”

  “I don’t remember talking about this at all.”

  “You wanted to come here. It’ll help you pay your rent. Hell, you could do a lot more with what they’re paying.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve rung the bell, they should be coming soon.”

  “Who?”

  “The people who run the tests. I’ve gotta go.”

  “Don’t leave me here.”

  “Your car is here, just drive home when you’re done.”

  “But I don’t know where I am.”

  Adam was already gone, vanished around the corner of the factory. She thought she mustn’t be far from home if he left without driving. She assured herself it would begin to make sense to her the more she went along. She needed the money enough to not get up off the log, and her body ached; her genitals throbbed. Her head was too cloudy to speculate why.

  The roller door of the factory began to rise and she watched a man come into view, standing there holding the death switch on the side wall. He wore a white lab coat and black pants. His hands and face were pale, his features soft and bland like a defined crash-test dummy. He had a half smile and simply said: “Miss Moore,” the way a doctor calls you from a waiting room. She stood up, cradling her baby close. She bounced Heather in her arms like a shield as if to say, ‘don’t hurt me, I’m with child.’

  “How did you know my name?”

  “You called us earlier. You said you were coming in.”

  “I did?”

  “You did.”

  Embarrassed, she began to believe him.

  “Of course I did. That’s right.”

  “Come this way, Miss Moore. We have many questions to ask you.”

  She was lead into a portable office, the type commonly used on construction sites, and asked to sit down on a plastic chair before a desk. She was given a glass of water, which she downed in one go, desperately thirsty. The man introduced himself.

  “I’m Dr. Ferngehn, operations assistant. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Vanessa.” He sat down behind the desk and pulled from the drawer several pieces of paper stapled together at the corner. He began by asking her name, getting her to spell it out. Then her address, occupation, he asked if she had any close relatives staying with her. She answered thoroughly, wanting to seem as capable and enthusiastic about the program as possible, worried her drug use would come under speculation. The questions veered towards what seemed irrelevant to Vanessa.

  “How do you know Adam?” Dr. Ferngehn asked.

  “Adam? I work with him. I know him from work.”

  “He drove you here, is that correct?”

  “Yes. What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Not much really, we just like to know how test subjects are referred to us.”

  “Oh, ok.”

  “And your child, does your child have any special needs?”

  “Heather’s fine. My baby won’t be getting involved in... whatever it is I’m doing here. What am I doing here?”

  “Your baby will be fine, we just don’t want the thing dying on us while you’re incapacitated.”

  “Excuse me? Inca-what?” She began to panic.

  “Please, go sit.” He pointed to a small couch at the rear of the office.

  “I am sitting.”

  “Yes,” he smiled, “but in a moment you’re going to pass out and we think the couch is a better place to do this.”

  She looked at the empty glass on the bench.

  “Go and sit down, Vanessa.”

  She clutched her baby tight in her arms and stood up, wondering if she could make it out of the office and flee, but standing only made the drugs work faster, and she stumbled onto the couch. She looked down at her baby.

  “Whatever you do, please don’t hurt my child.”

  She made herself comfortable knowing that soon she’d be too drugged to move. Her mind filled with vague ideas of what strange atrocities possibly awaited. She began to mumble a lullaby, perhaps for the baby, but more for herself. She just wanted her mummy to come and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  Chapter 7

  Vanessa woke up strapped to a bed in a dark room. The walls were made of concrete and soaked from rainwater seeping through the shabby iron roof. There was nothing in there but a toilet and a small hand basin with a blot of flattened glue above it where a mirror used to be. She could hear wheels moving toward the door outside. The door opened and another man came in, wheeling a television on a steel frame. He was tall and thin with white blonde hair, sharp features you could cut glass with, and baby blue eyes.

  “I am Dr. Phalanx. You can call me Gerald.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Watch.”

  He plugged the television into a power socket and pressed play. The screen flickered to an image of long grass.

  “I don’t understand,” she argued. “Where’s my child?”

  “Your child is fine,” he said. “Watch the video.”

  The video went from the thick grass to a clearing where a large python lay, slowly consuming a goat, headfirst. There was no sound on the video, just the silent swallowing of a full sized goat by an enormous python.

  “I think you have the wrong video.”

  “This is the right video.”

  “Where is my baby?”

  Dr. Phalanx put his finger up to his mouth then he pointed at the television. “Watch.” Vanessa watched the video.

  After some time she began to seriously panic and started thrashing around in the bed but soon exhausted herself.

  “What? It’s a fucking snake eating a goat. What about it? What is going on, you fucking psycho?”

  The Doctor stood there and stared at her with a little twinkle in his eye. He looked at the snake on the screen, finally enveloping the goat inside its body. He raised a little pale finger and held it before him like a glowing stick of magic. He slowly moved his finger towards the screen and pointed directly at the snake.

  “This is what you will become.”

  He turned the television off, unplugged it and wheeled it out of the room without another word.

  “Where’s my child? Who the fuck are you people?” she screamed.

  The door closed with a heavy thud and the room was dark once again. She began to cry. She comforted herself with the idea that it was some kind of psychological experiment where everything would be ok in a minute; that she was just being toyed with. She looked around the room for cameras recording her every move, but it was too dark to see such a thing. She wished she could remember the conversation with Adam that had brought her there, although it occurred to her then that perhaps it had never happened.

  Chapter 8

  Detective Gill heard the call on the fax machine from the breakfast table.

  “What could that be?” his wife asked.

  “I had the office fax over a photo of the girl I’m looking for,” he said, walking into the study.

  “Well, that seems like a good start,” she said, not exactly joking.

  He took the page from the fax and turned it over to examine the girl. It was a photo from her graduating year. Her hair was long and dark, her teeth white. What happened? he thought.

  The phone rang in the kitchen.

  “It’s like a call centre in here,” his wife said. Gill listened to her stand up and pick up the phone. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Graham,” she yelled, “it’s for you.”

  Graham took the phone from his wife and listened. Still holding the photo in his other hand, he wrote something on a near
by pad, then hung up.

  “What is it?” his wife asked.

  “They’ve found a body.”

  Chapter 9

  Graham pulled up beside another police car on the disused bridge on Croft Road. He walked to the edge of the stone construct and looked down at the other police and emergency services, scouring the surrounding area for evidence. In the middle of them lay a body, face down in a clear creek no more than eight inches deep. Gill walked down the side hill to the body and a deputy officer came up beside him.

  “We haven’t turned her over yet, thought we’d wait ‘til you got here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gill bent down to move the body.

  “Ah, sir?” the deputy said.

  “What is it?”

  The deputy handed him a pair of gloves. “Oh, of course.”

  He put the gloves on and the surrounding officers gathered closer. He got a firm grip on her shoulder and flipped the body up out of the water. Her face made a wet suck as it sprung from the mud. Several of the deputies turned away, one of them began vomiting in the nearby grass. Detective Gill looked at the dog stuck down the girl’s throat and was suddenly overcome with a panic he struggled to conceal. The skin was glazed and blue where the throat had expanded to fit the small canine. Her eyes were open and rolled back, the life long departed. The dog’s hind legs stuck from her face like the tail-end of one bounding leap, or perhaps a meal unfinished. Neither option made sense to Gill. He stood up and looked around at the other men, hoping one of them would explain it, like it was a new thing kids were doing that had gone horribly wrong. Wait, what was he thinking? What kind of activity would involve swallowing a dog?

  “Is this your girl, Gill?”

  “No,” he said, “the girl I’m after is in her mid-twenties. This one here’s only about fifteen.”

  The forensic men got to work and Gill walked away to clear his mind. When he came back he asked them what they’d found.

  “Her body has undergone some... procedures. Recently, it seems. Like her breast augmentation is quite recent. Her face and neck have a series of minor scars, likely the work of a professional surgeon. There’s something also quite odd about her genitals.”

  “What is it?”

  “Aside from being quite sexually active very recently, there seems to be some kind of fat injected into the labia. It’s a form of pussy pumping.”

  “A form of what?”

  “It’s a sex thing.”

  “Any ID?”

  “She was dumped with no clothes on, but we’re still searching the area. No form of identification found yet.”

  “Keep looking.”

  The deputy stood by him. “I didn’t think I’d ever see something like this in little Hopetown.”

  “Me either.” Gill turned to the deputy, “What’s going on in this world?”

  Chapter 10

  Vanessa woke up and everything was blue and warm. She was lying on a plate of glass and surrounded by fluorescent lights. She looked down at her naked body and felt her skin burning. She pushed on the top of the tanning bed and a chain tightened by her side. She was locked in there. She called into the dark room beyond the bed. She yelled and screamed and eventually a hand lunged in holding a cattle prod. She shrieked and attempted to brush it away, copping a zap on her forearm that sent her body into a momentary spasm.

  “Be still!” a voice said from the dark.

  She was still, and her tanning continued.

  Chapter 11

  Vanessa woke up tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth. The chair was on wheels and somebody was behind her wheeling her, through a corridor and whistling. She heard distant screams bouncing off the high rooftop of the factory. Other people! Her mind shuddered to think what was happening to them.

  She worried about Heather, but she’d cried too much already. The only thing that stopped her crying was presuming Heather was dead and that she would soon be too, and then they could be together again. The idea crumbled when she was taken to a room where Dr. Phalanx sat holding Heather. The orderlies placed her in front of a mirror and she could only laugh when faced with her dreadful state. The crying had reddened her eyes and her skin was now golden brown, a tan she’d never dreamed of achieving. A Mexican man with a big moustache walked into the room, came up behind her and started to play with her hair.

  “Turn her to face me,” Dr. Phalanx said.

  The Mexican man complied. Dr. Phalanx sat with his legs crossed, one arm cradled Heather’s tiny body. He toyed with the girl’s arm. “Say hi to Mummy,” he said. He made her arm flop up and down. Much to Vanessa’s relief, her baby seemed ok.

  “Do you understand why you’re here, Vanessa?” Dr. Phalanx said.

  The Mexican removed the gag but she refused to speak.

  “I am a doctor. A surgeon. Ever since I was young I had the urge to correct people. To fix the misfortunes placed upon them by god. I started out doing this on socially acceptable terms; first I was a trauma surgeon, then I moved on to plastic surgery. Both valid professions. But plastic surgery didn’t satisfy. It’ll only ever go so far. Common people will only ever go so far. They only want to enhance their beauty to a set standard, one they’ve decided on before getting the work done. It just seemed like a such a waste to me when you consider the possibilities of what can be done when you merge the imagination with the flesh.”

  The Mexican glanced at the insane doctor and then got back to work on her hair. Vanessa barely listened, focusing only on her child and what the doctor was doing with his hands while he held her.

  “Women were not made properly,” he continued. “Women are born as diamonds in the rough; with many imperfections. Women have got to be the blandest excuses for animals in existence; the white noise of all living things. I admit some are gifted, but often lacking in other areas. Despite this, by default, women need physical manipulation of an extreme kind.”

  Vanessa began to thrash around in her chair. The Mexican stood back, scissors and comb in either hand. He looked at Dr. Phalanx. “I can’t work like this,” he said.

  Dr. Phalanx gripped Heather’s leg and held her upside down before him. Vanessa jolted still, watching with burning eyes at her dangling baby.

  “You will sit still and silent or else I’ll hold this thing upside down until it gets brain damage and spends the rest of its life a retard, and there is nothing sadder than a retarded baby. You never know, it might be an improvement on the horrible cunt she’ll grow up to be. Now, will you be still?”

  Vanessa nodded desperately and Dr. Phalanx cradled the baby once again.

  “You just saved some poor nurse from having to wipe her ass every day until death, well done.”

  He sat up straight.

  “What was I talking about? Oh yes, manipulation. A woman’s body needs to be manipulated to coincide with man’s desires. Otherwise, in her original state, she is simply a walking mistake. god’s mistake. What I’m doing here is working to fix those mistakes. Giving women their purpose back.”

  He sat and pondered for a moment.

  “Look at it this way, if a woman bends over in the forest and nobody is around to stare at her arse, does her arse still exist?”

  He sat there and stared into the distance for some time. Vanessa remained still, fearful of the doctor, as she finally understood just how crazy he was.

  Dr. Phalanx stood up from the chair and placed Heather onto a nearby tray.

  “When you’ve finished making Vanessa pretty, prep her for surgery.”

  He wheeled the tray out of the room, the baby writhed, cold on the mirrored surface like a specimen before dissection.

  The Mexican spent the rest of the afternoon making Vanessa blonde.

  Chapter 12

  Vanessa woke to the sound of dripping. The room was the same one she’d been sleeping in for several nights. The damp and grim industrial interior had begun to attune to her idea of a home.

  Her arms and legs weren’t strapped to the bed a
nd she slowly made the effort to get up. She felt a wave of dizziness from the residual effects of the drugs she’d been fed. She took slow steps towards the door and hugged the doorframe. Peering around the corner she saw a hall with two other rooms and an exit at the far end.

  She walked past the rooms, both dark inside, and went to the end of the hall. The exit was locked. By the door there was a small table and a chair. On the table lay an ashtray and a lighter. She grabbed the lighter and went back down the hall to one of the other rooms and went inside and lit it. The first room was much the same as her own: bed, toilet, no windows or doors. She left and went across the hall to the other. It was much larger and littered with filthy white linen piled up all over the floor, mounds of it casting shadows of mangled beasts.

  Something moved under a blanket. Vanessa froze. She directed the light towards the thing and the flame blew out. She flicked it back on frantically. Her panting caused the flame to waver.

  “Who’s there?” she said.

  The blankets moved again. She stepped closer towards it, thinking maybe they’d put Heather in there.

  “Heather?”

  A small hand pulled back a sheet. Wet, dirty flesh tones were visible in the dim. Vanessa’s heart was beating out of her chest, terrified by what strange atrocity might be nearby.

  The thing’s face birthed from the shroud of material, eyes black and glazed, wincing at the light, trying to focus on Vanessa.

  “Can you help me?” the girl asked.

  Vanessa came over to her and pulled back more of the sheets. The girl’s breasts were inflated so dramatically that she didn’t have the strength to stand. Her lips were so fat she could barely open her mouth. Small holes on either side of her top and bottom lips bled yellow pus that smelled of cat’s piss, crusted like dried remains of macaroni and cheese.