Eviscerating the Snake - The Complete Trilogy

by Ashley Fontainne

  MALES: THEY ARE RATHER easy targets to manipulate if you lower yourself to their sensory levels and prey upon one of their three basic needs: food, ego stroking, or sex. I have used all three tricks in a variety of combinations over the years and discovered that sex—or the tantalizing lure of potential intercourse—is the best tool to wield for the quickest results.

  I finished applying the final touches of mascara to my contact-lens-converted light green eyes and walked into my closet. Pushing the hidden button, I stood back as it recessed into the room that housed my various props. As the lights came on and showcased my numerous costume options, I tried to decide which look would best suit the reclusive herpetologist that I was meeting with this afternoon. Considering that he spent most of his days either milking poisonous snakes or staring through a microscope, I figured that a demure redhead would suit my purposes for the day as I reached for the long mane of wavy copper.

  Returning to my makeup table, I adjusted the wig, letting its flowing waves cascade down my shoulders and back. Sliding on a pair of dainty eyeglasses, giving me the “sexy reporter” air that I hoped would render Dr. Moore into pliable putty in my hands, completed my look. I stood up and surveyed the entire ensemble and decided that the subdued black skirt and white shirt would need a bit of va-va-voom, so I crammed my feet into the highest black pumps I could find in my closet and looked again. One more little morsel: I unbuttoned my shirt to just above my décolleté. With just a small dab of perfume strategically placed behind my ears and between my breasts, I was ready; time to play my part of “interviewer” to my “interviewee”, Dr. Moore. I grabbed my black leather satchel and double checked for the empty syringes and the full syringe of liquefied Ambien. They were tucked safely away in the side pocket right next to the small insulated lunch sack, so out the door I went. The thrill of the hunt made my heart pound a bit faster than normal.

  Irritated at the Monday morning rush hour traffic, I finagled my way through the hordes of sheep on their way to their pathetic jobs in their pathetic little cars, their pathetic little lives just plodding along. Normally, it was a two-hour drive to the tiny field office in McNeal that Dr. Moore worked at, so I had plenty of time to rehearse every possible scenario that might occur during our meeting. Considering the ridiculous congestion, I knew I would be a bit late if I didn’t step on it.

  My initial contact with him was a week ago under the guise of “Bridgette Summers, reporter for a start-up magazine entitled Reptiles Today.” When I explained that Arizona was next on the list of states that our magazine was interested in showcasing for a two-part series on the venomous snakes of the United States, I could almost feel his excitement projecting through the phone lines. My research had led me to choose Dr. Moore as my “interviewee” for several reasons. His remote location in the desert of Southeastern Arizona and the fact that his specialty was producing anti-venom were strong points for sure. But, his bland biography I found online was the clincher. It was patently obvious that Dr. Moore was a loner that enjoyed the company of scaly creatures rather than humans.

  In other words, he would be an easy target.

  I wound my way through the endless twists and turns of dusty back roads until I came over a small rise and found the research lab. Quickly glancing around, I only noticed one vehicle other than my own, so luck was with me. I let the grimy dust settle around my car while I checked my reflection in the mirror one last time. Everything had to be in place. I dabbed a bit more shine to my lips then stepped out of the car. Before I could even take three steps toward the front entrance, the heavy steel door opened and the silver-colored head of Dr. Moore popped out.

  “Welcome, welcome, Ms. Summers. Right on time, yes, right on time. My directions were on the button, were they not?” he stammered, unable to take his beady little eyes off my chest. I knew then that this would be a piece of cake.

  “Dr. Moore, I presume?” I asked coyly as I batted my falsely elongated lashes at him at the same time I extended my hand. He nodded his head in agreement, his wire-rimmed glasses lightly bouncing on his protruding nose. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, flashing my best smile.

  Dr. Moore released my hand and stepped back, holding the door open for me. I walked inside, immediately accosted by a smell that overwhelmed my nostrils. Years of smelling horrid stenches at Haven Hills allowed me to keep my composure and not react to the reeking odor that now pounded my olfactory senses as my eyes tried to adjust to the sudden change from the brightness of the Arizona sun to the darkness of the lab.

  Dr. Moore’s biography failed to mention that he looked exactly like a hobbit, save for the pointy ears and clothes. I quickly surmised this was the reason he decided to spend his life as a recluse in the desert. Why he chose to work around fanged creatures that could kill him in a matter of seconds was beyond me. He could have been a desert dwelling hermit without keeping company with vipers. It was obvious that he did not often entertain females here by the way his ravenous eyes glided across my body. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since he had actually fucked a woman. Quite some time, I suspected, which made the avenue I was going to take today an easy choice.

  “Thank you so much, Dr. Moore, for allowing me the opportunity to see firsthand all the wonderful and exciting work you do here. To think, you risk your life each day just so others can be saved by the life-giving anti-venom you create.” I gushed as I strolled over to the long table in the middle of the room. I made sure I kept my distance from the glass cages that were to my left. As I walked, the sound of my heels must have agitated the snakes because the room suddenly filled with the sound of their rattles. I stopped at the table and placed one hand on it as I turned around slowly, making sure that I looked a bit unsteady on my feet. Dr. Moore was right behind me and noticed my falter, immediately reaching out to steady me.

  “Ms. Summers, are you all right? I hope it’s not the smell; I know to outsiders, the reptilian odor can be…well, rather repugnant.”

  “No, no, it isn’t that. I’m just a bit tired from the drive. I have only lived in Arizona for a few months and my body just hasn’t acclimated to this heat. I’ll be fine; I promise. I just need to sit down,” I said as I sat down on the nearest stool, making sure to cross my legs so my skirt hiked up well into the middle part of my thigh.

  Dr. Moore continued as he took a healthy slurp of his coffee, “Please, let me get you some water.”

  “I’m fine, really. Let’s get started, if you don’t mind. I do have a deadline to make,” I said as I set my satchel on the table and dug out my notebook. “Let’s start off with the most obvious question that our readers will want to know; what is the most poisonous snake found in Arizona?”

  Dr. Moore quickly stopped thinking about my wellbeing and my exposed thigh. He was now in his own little world, rambling about all the snakes that were indigenous to Arizona as well as the differences in their venom. I played my part well and nodded my head at the appropriate times, expertly playing the pretense of taking notes although I really wasn’t listening until he said, “…and of course, the most dangerous one to humans is the Crotalus scutulatus, more commonly known as the Mojave Rattlesnake.”

  “Oh! And just what makes this particular snake so deadly?” I purred as I glanced over at him.

  “Well, it’s venom is a neurotoxin and hemotoxin, rather than just containing hemotoxins alone as most pit vipers do. This means that rather than causing tissue death by destroying red blood cells, the venom acts on the central nervous system and can cause respiratory failure by disrupting the synaptic responses in our neurons. Death can be quite quick and excruciatingly painful,” Dr. Moore said with an almost reverent awe creeping into his annoying voice.

  “So that’s why what you do is so important. The anti-venom must need to be administered quickly which I assume means that hospitals must have some on hand at all times. How long does it take for you to create a—oh, what would you call it?—a batch?”

  Dr. Moore went
over to the stainless steel refrigerator in the corner and opened it wide as he motioned for me to come over, and said, “See this top shelf here? Those are all vials of the venom from the nine Crotalus that I have here at my facility. It took me a full day to obtain these samples, and after you leave, I’ll begin the process of injecting the hosts to produce the serum.”

  Time to bring out the damsel in distress.

  I slowly walked over to stand by him at the fridge and made a point of looking confused, the slightest bit of apprehension in my voice, as I replied, “Hosts? You aren’t referring to those precious little horses I saw out back when I drove up, are you?”

  Dr. Moore looked at me as though I was a simple child and replied, “Oh yes, the venom must be injected into a living creature that has a similar cellular structure to humans. Their bodies create the antibodies to the venom after injection, and then I harvest the anti-venom from their blood. The entire process takes up to an entire week, just to produce enough serum for three hospitals.”

  He’d just walked right into my trap. Snap.

  “Oh, my, well that is fascinating, Doctor...” I said as I reached out for his feeble little arm, feigning a dizzy spell. “Oh, I’m sorry; I’m feeling a bit woozy.”

  Dr. Moore grabbed my arm, led me back to the stool, and said, “I apologize for upsetting you, Ms. Summers. The process of obtaining the anti-venom must be a bit much for a layperson. Please, sit right here, and I’ll get you a nice glass of cold water.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. You are too kind,” I said in my best please-take-care-of-me voice.

  When he rounded the corner, I reached into my satchel and grabbed the syringe full of Ambien—one hundred melted milligrams to be exact. I squirted the cloudy liquid into his thankfully black coffee, recapped it, and slid it back into my bag. I put my arms on the table and rested my head on them, the act of “close to fainting” complete.

  Dr. Moore came bounding around the corner on his little hobbit feet and almost spilled the glass on me. He was in a frenzy to help the poor, distraught-looking, pitiful female resting on his workbench. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was hoping I would pass out so he could really take a look at me because that was probably the only way this moron ever saw any action—from comatose women. God, this was the ultimate “taking candy from a baby” scenario. I couldn’t have picked a better mark.

  I looked up at him with my best doe-eyes and gushed, “Thank you so much, Doctor. I’m sure this will help.” I demurely slid my lips over the rim of the glass and drank. “Please, join me for a few moments while I regain my composure,” I said, looking over at the empty stool on the other side of the table where he had set his coffee mug. “I guess I should have taken you up on your original offer of water when I first came in.”

  Dr. Moore scurried over to his chair and sat down, his mind obviously empty of the snake discussion and now fully consumed with the hunger for my breasts and thighs. I took the glass and held it to my neck, allowing some of the water to trickle down my chest. Hungrily, he snatched up his coffee mug and swallowed several long gulps, his eyes betraying his lustful thoughts.

  He was mine now.

  I let him ogle me all he wished, for I knew that in a few moments, he would be out cold. I set down my water and picked up my pen again, asking a few more questions about his work. He droned on half-heartedly about the subject as he was having difficulty focusing on anything other than my damp cleavage. After about ten minutes, he pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, his words starting to jumble together and become nonsensical. His head began to loll around like a bobble head while his eyes rolled back in his head. He mumbled, “…not….well” and then BAM! His head hit the table with a loud thud, knocking his coffee mug onto the floor, breaking it into tiny shards. I didn’t move and just stared at him for about sixty seconds, watching for the slightest movement. When I didn’t see any, I reached across the table and poked him with my pen.

  He was out cold, the drool beginning to form a small pool around the edge of his mouth on the hard table.

  Quickly, I picked up the glass he had given me and ran over to the sink and dumped the water out, then put it in my bag. I grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from my purse and put them on, then went over to the open fridge and gently removed three full vials of the Mojave rattlesnake venom. I carefully set them on the counter, my hands shaking a bit from the excitement. One by one, I extracted the creamy liquid death into the syringes.

  Once I had repacked my fully locked and loaded weaponry into their new little home that was nice and cold, I left the refrigerator door open and walked over to the snoozing doctor. I placed the empty vials next to his curled up right hand and then walked around to the other side of the table and stretched across it. With my gloved hand, I pushed two of the three vials onto the floor, each shattering into thin slivers around his feet. The noise was startling and made the snakes begin their incessant rattling again, and I froze for just a brief moment. I held my breath, staring at him to make sure he was still asleep—which of course, he was. Hell, I had given him enough Ambien to knock out a few of the horses he had out back for a few hours. He wasn’t going to wake up soon.

  Standing across the table, staring at him, I was suddenly struck with the thought that he looked eerily similar to Dr. Hopkins from Haven Hills. Strange, I hadn’t noticed that before when he was awake and yammering on about snakes. He had been like a prepubescent boy telling his locker room buddies about the first boob he touched. Now that his eyes were closed and his head turned slightly with his glasses gone, his silvery hair mussed and covering part of his leathery cheek, the resemblance was strong enough to make the bile rise up in the back of my throat. I looked away and caught the reflection in the mirror behind him and jumped a bit, not realizing at first that the redhead in the mirror was me—crazed eyes and all. I felt a bit unsteady on my feet and glanced back over to the table. Oddly, it was Dr. Hopkins sitting there, staring silently at me, his hands folded in front of him. His black eyes pierced into my soul, waiting impatiently to begin another torture session of “Olin doesn’t love you. He’s like a poison to you, Piper.” I let out a small squeal and clamped my eyes shut so hard that bright, colorful lights burst behind them as I stood there trembling, awaiting the mental pain I knew was coming.

  I don’t know how long I stood there shaking before I finally smelled the snakes.

  The stench of them brought me back to reality as I opened my eyes and realized I was standing in the research lab of Dr. Moore, not the rubber-covered room that Dr. Hopkins had conducted his “therapy” in. My shoulders were aching and sweat was pouring down my neck and back, my ember-colored synthetic locks stuck to my neck. I realized that was because I was standing behind Dr. Moore with a large metal canister of some sort—that I had no recollection of picking up—raised high above my head. Lowering my aching arms slowly, my eyes bounced back and forth from one section of the room to the next as I tried to construct exactly how long I had been standing over him. I shook my head from side to side, hard, wincing in pain as the muscles in my neck protested, trying to gather my composure. This was Dr. Moore; I was no longer at Haven Hills. Dr. Moore was of no use to me anymore, and I detested the idea of leaving any loose ends behind, but did that mean that I should bash his skull in just because he reminded me of my own personal demon? I looked back down at his small frame and thought that one good whack on the temple would finish him off, and he was probably light enough that I could manage dragging him to my car. But then I wasn’t sure what I would do with him next after that. The thought of digging a grave in the arid dirt around his compound in the searing heat outside did not appeal to me. Besides, I wasn’t ready for the body count to start stacking up.

  Yet.

  Then I felt a surge of overwhelming anger at not only Dr. Hopkins, but also at Nick’s betrayal, Ralph’s suicide, and Olin’s previous rejection of me, and my vision becoming clouded with red fury. What the fuck? Live by the snake; die by the snake, you dirty
bastards! resounded deep inside my head. My body reacted before my brain thought my actions through, and, as though watching from a distance, I saw myself snatch up my satchel and look at the canister that was still in my other hand. With Herculean effort, I launched it at the glass cages that housed the Mojaves. The sound of shattering glass, violent hissing, and the rattling of the venom-filled monsters reverberated through my ears.

  I yanked the door open and leapt out; no time to survey the sun-baked vistas to ensure that I was still alone. If someone were to walk up now, I would just scream “Snakes loose!” and be gone, as most likely, so would they. Even in heels, I made my way quickly through the dirt back to my car, mindful of the contents in my bag as I placed it gingerly in the passenger seat, and then I cranked up the car, leaving a trial of dust and debris in the dry air behind me.

  It took me ten minutes longer than when I arrived earlier to make it to the main highway since I was a bit paranoid about hitting the heavy ruts. I didn’t want to lose the prizes inside the glass vials. If I broke one, I sure couldn’t go back now and obtain more. Once on the pavement, I finally released my breath and let a sly grin spread across my face as I thought, Although a slight detour in my original plans for Dr. Moore occurred, Phase One is complete. Now, I just had to hurry home and change into my other hunting attire. I needed to deliver one of my newly acquired gifts to Robert.

  Olin would be so proud.

  “IT’S ONLY FOR A few days, honey. This trip will be my last opportunity during the next couple of weeks to enjoy some wide open spaces and fresh air. Besides, I need to check on the herd and make sure all the calves are healthy before the trial starts. I promise, I’ll be back by Wednesday, so that’s only two days from now,” I said to Stacy while I cinched the saddle up tight on my favorite mare, Sahara. I did my best to produce a true smile for my lovely wife. I knew those brown eyes were glaring at me behind the dark sunglasses she was wearing, and I really couldn’t blame her for being irritated that I was leaving.