lurching like sick dinosaurs along a drying swamp to-
wards the far wall.
Maybe, Childe thought, maybe the thing can lip-
read. Maybe she's giving him instructions for starting
the reassembly process.
But what if there is no reassembly? What if this
is final? What do I know about her or others of her
kind? All were strange, but Vivienne was the strangest.
She did not fit into any categories of vampire or
werewolf or lamia or ghost. Maybe, when the cord is
yanked, the lanyard pulled, she has had it. Surely, she
—her parts that is—can't survive long in this condi-
tion. They have to eat and to excrete, they are as sub-
ject to natural laws as any other creatures, even if they
seem to be unnatural.
There is nothing unnatural in this universe. Anything
that seems so just isn't explained yet. All things can
be explained by natural laws. If you don't know cer-
tain laws, then you think a thing is unnatural.
The snake-thing slid down over his eyes onto the
floor. It crawled to Vivienne's head and coiled there while
the upper part rose to a point a few inches before
her eyes. It swayed back and forth like a cobra, and
sometimes its head turned. Its mouth was working, and
its face was twisted with rage. Only when its head was
turned towards him could Childe hear the faint piping
voice. It was still using the unknown tongue.
Presently it communicated something or it tired of try-
ing to communicate. It turned and crawled to a point
just past his chin. He could not see what it was doing un-
til a moment later. It crawled out past him, towing the
uterus behind it. Its tail had been inserted into the in-
terior and probably was being implanted again.
When it was a little distance past his head, it
stopped and turned again. It crawled back towards him,
stopping with the uterus leaning up against his fore-
head. The vagina moved away, and he was able to
see that the snake-thing was butting it with its head.
Herding it.
When it had the vagina maneuvered into the proper
position, it slipped through from the rear of the vagina
and emerged through the slit. The vagina moved back-
wards as if impelled by telepathy until it was reunited
with the uterus-thing.
Now what? Childe thought, and then he was able
to worry about himself for the first time. Maybe the poi-
son did wear off; maybe Vivienne had been lying about
the necessity of the antidote. She must have wanted to
give Bill an antidote to get him going more quickly.
And at the same time she had administered the poison
that would stop his heart. If she had not lied about that,
of course.
He tried to move but was as unable as before. How-
ever, his thinking and his vision were not as unfocused.
Now he began to be impressed with the utter alien-
ness of the life before him. That a living body could
fall apart into discrete creatures which were mobile
was unthinkable. But there they were. And how did
they survive so long? The blood system, for instance, had
been cut off, sealed into each creature, but the circula-
tion, of course, had stopped. That was easy to see. There
was the heart, its veins and arteries closed up, moving
away from him towards the underside of the bed on
thirty frail legs. Something about it reminded him of
a headless chicken.
But how did these things live without the bringing
in of oxygen and the carrying away of waste? They
had to have some auxiliary source of energy and ex-
cretion. Had to have!
And how did Vivienne manage to hide all these
fissures and cleavages, all these legs and God knew what
other biological mechanisms, in her body? She should
have looked fat and lumpy, but she had not. She
had a superb body and that face, that painfully beau-
tiful face, now walking around on a score of skinny
legs and four support legs from behind her ears!
The snake-thing dragged itself in front of him, trailing
the uterus, in chase of the anus and buttocks. Obviously
it intended to unite with them. But what then? It was
becoming unwieldy and could not corner too many
other pieces and unite before it became too heavy and
too awkward.
The head had been busy while he watched the snake-
thing. It had kicked and pushed shoulders and a neck
until they were huddled together in a corner of the room.
Then the head went off in pursuit of various entrail
things while the snake-thing backed into the buttocks
and anus and hooked up as a railroad engine would hook
up several cars with another.
At that moment, he felt the floor vibrate slightly un-
der him. A second later, two large shoes were by his
head. Then the shoes moved on out past him, and he
saw the chauffeur. He was a big man with a skin as
dark as a sunburned Sicilian's, but his features were
Baltic. He had a broad face with high cheekbones and
a high forehead and straight dark hair. The scene be-
fore him did not seem to bother him in the least.
With swift but efficient movements, he began to re-
assemble Vivienne Mabcrough. The parts were placed
together or one inserted into another, and presently she
was stretched out on the floor in a unit. The fissures
closed; the cracks disappeared; the cleavages filled out.
When her skin was again unbroken, he hit her over the
heart with his fist. She gasped for air, breathed for a
while, and then sat up. She was a little unsteady but
waved the hand of the chauffeur away.
The head of the snake-thing came out of her slit
and stared angrily at him.
"Barton," she said, "put him on the bed and undress
him."
Wordlessly, Barton picked Childe up in his arms and
laid him out on the bed. He proceeded to take off all of
Childe's clothes and to hang them up neatly in the closet.
The shoes and socks went under a chair. Childe could
see this because he was able by then to turn his head.
He could not, however, talk.
"You can go now, Barton," Vivienne said.
The big dark man looked emotionlessly at Childe.
Then he said, "Very well, madame," and left.
Childe wondered what his place was in Vivienne's
group. If Barton was wholly of human origin, then he
was one of the vilest collaborators in history. Or in
unhistory, since history, or any human science or sci-
entific discipline, refused to acknowledge the existence,
or the possibility of existence, of these beings.
Vivienne stood over him and bent down so that one
breast hung above his mouth a few inches.
She said, "You frustrated me, my beautiful Herald
Childe, and I don't like to be frustrated. You took away
my Bill, a stupid ass of a man but a great cock. So you
will substitute for him, even though you are now for-<
br />
bidden."
He wanted to ask her what she meant by "forbidden"
but could not even open his mouth.
Vivienne kissed him and thrust her tongue into his
mouth and felt his tongue and teeth and gums while she
played with his cock with one hand. Despite himself, he
responded. His penis felt slightly titillated; it warmed
up and swelled a little, if his sense of feel was any indica-
tion.
Vivienne moved herself up then and put her nip-
ple in his mouth, but he was unable to suck on it. If
he had been able, he would have refused. She was the
most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she was
by now far from the most desirable. He did not care
for murdereresses at all, and he loathed her for that
thing coiled in her womb. He hoped it was still there, but
he doubted it. His anus was beginning to contract
in dread of its coming.
Even though he did not suck or tongue it, her nipple
grew large and hard in his mouth. She withdrew it and
put the other one between his lips, and it grew large.
Then she began to kiss his nipples and to stroke his
cheeks with her fingers. She slowly traced her tongue
down his belly, working back and forth and across,
drawing geometric designs with its tip.
When she came to his pubic hairs, she ran her tongue
along the edge of the hairline and then worked her
tongue over the hairs until they were wet. His penis
swelled some more. He did not want it to be affected in
the least by her, but the paralyzing effect of the bite
made him unable to resist. He loathed her and he
wanted to scream at the thought of the snake-thing.
But the loathing and the horror were numbed, far
away. The pleasure of her tongue and lips was the im-
mediate entity.
When he felt her mouth closing around his testicles,
he began to be flooded with a hot sensation. It arose
from under his navel and spread outwards but chiefly to-
wards the base of his penis. When it oozed into his
penis, it filled it out so that it rose up straight and hard.
After a while, she pushed the testicles out with her
tongue and lowered her head over his cock. Her lips
went softly and wetly around the head, and her tongue
pressed against the slit in its end. He groaned deep within
himself and could not repress a desire to move his
hips upward to drive his prick deeper into her mouth.
The desire was all that resulted; his hips remained mo-
tionless.
Vivienne continued to suck on the glans and occa-
sionally to move her head down so that the shaft went in
all the way. The warmth at the base of his penis became
a rod of fire which stretched from the tip of his spine
to the tip of his cock. The heavy gray fluid was mov-
ing slowly, rubbing against excited nerves, towards the
entrance to his shaft.
Suddenly, Vivienne got up and turned around, pre-
senting that lovely back and the egg-shaped buttocks.
She squatted over him and reached down and tenderly
took the head between her fingers. This she guided into
her anus as she lowered herself down on it. The head
stuck in the tight mouth for a minute and then abruptly
slid in. It moved against a warm slick surface until the
flesh of her ass was against his pubic hairs.
She lowered and raised herself slowly several
times, causing him to feel ecstatic. It would hot take
much of this to make him come. And he did not like
buggering. Though he had done it several times to
women who liked it, he had a distaste for it. Now his
repulsion was on the edge of his mind. It bulked large
enough for him to be aware of it, but it did not bother
him.
She stopped on an upward movement, leaving his cock
half in.
Knowing what was about to happen, he mentally
gritted his teeth. The horror did not draw any blood
from his engorged penis, however.
Suddenly, something slipped down over his testicles.
It slid over the sac and under, and something—the
thing's bearded little head, of course—touched his
anus. Then it entered and was pushing into his anus
and then up his rectum. It felt hard and solid and un-
pleasant, as when a doctor stuck a finger up him for a
prostate examination. But this disagreeable sensation
did not last long. Something, perhaps its bite or the sub-
stance released by its bite, turned unpleasantness into a
warm and relaxing feeling.
A few seconds later, Vivienne began to move up and
down on his cock, and he could feel the body of the
snake-thing sliding back and forth in him. Its mo-
tion seemed to be independent of hers; it was moving
much faster than her motions could account for.
The warmth and relaxation within his rectum and
his bowels gave way to an almost hot feeling and a
tension. The tension was, however, near-ecstatic. His in-
sides felt as ready for orgasm as his penis. Both ex-
quisitenesses acted as sine waves out of phase with
each other. But as Vivienne increased her slidings up and
down his pole, and as the snake-thing continued at the
same rapid pace, the waves slowly came into phase.
There was a moment of glory: a flashing red light
across his eyes, a spurt of metal rubbing against his
pleasure nerves, a breaking through of a red-hot drill
in the center of his brain, and he exploded. It was as
if he had been turned inside out as he passed through
some fifth-dimensional continuum. He was a glove of
flesh removed from a hand, inverted, and exposed to
radiations that would never have reached him other-
wise, intensely delightful radiations.
Vivienne sat on him for a while but rotated on his
cock so that she could face him. The action pulled the
snake-thing along, but it, apparently, was through. It
slid out of his anus and then was facing him. Its shaft
and head were smeared and it was still expelling a musky
gray fluid from its mouth. When the flow had ceased,
its forked tongue flickered out and began to clean its
face. Within a few minutes, its face and beard looked as
if it had showered.
Though it did not look as vicious as before, it still
looked dangerous.
Childe was glad to see it withdraw, although he
wished that it had not first moved up her body and kissed
her on the lower lip with its thin mouth.
Vivienne scooted up when the thing disappeared into
her cunt, and his penis slipped out of her anus. She
kissed him and said, "I love you."
He could not reply, but he thought, "Love?"
He wished he could vomit.
At that moment, three men entered the room. One of
them had a cane, from which he pulled a thin-
bladed sword. He stuck the point of it against Vivienne's
neck.
She turned pale and said, "Why are you breaking the
truce?"
&n
bsp; 25
Forrest J Ackerman, hiding in the bushes, was getting
wetter. He was also becoming madder.
Three days ago he had received through the mail a
large flat box. This had come from England, and it con-
tained an original painting by Bram Stoker. The painting
depicted Count Dracula in the act of sucking blood
from the throat of a young blonde. Many illustrations
have done this; a number of reprints of Dracula, writ-
ten by Bram Stoker, have shown Dracula going down on
a sleeping young beauty, and innumerable advertise-
ments and stills for various Dracula movies have
shown this.
But this was the only painting of Dracula done by
the author himself. Until a few months ago, its existence
had been unknown. Then a dozen oil paintings and a
score of ink drawings had been found in a house in
Dublin, once owned by a friend of Stoker's. The pres-
ent owner had discovered the works in a boarded-up
closet in the attic. He had not known what the paint-
ings and drawings represented in money. He had sold
them to an art dealer for several pounds and thought
himself well ahead.
But the dealer had brought in handwriting experts
who verified that the signature on the illustrations was
indeed Bram Stoker's. Forry Ackerman, reading of
this, had sent a wire to the Dublin art dealer and offered
to top any price submitted. The result was that he got
his painting but had to go to the bank to get a loan. Since
then, he had been waiting anxiously and could talk of
little but the expected arrival.
When he unwrapped it, he was not disappointed. Ad-
mittedly, Stoker was no St. John, Bok, Finlay, or even
a Paul. But his work had a certain crude force that a
number of people commented upon. It was a primitive,
no doubt of that, but a powerful primitive. Forry was
glad that it had some artistic merit, although he
had no knowledge of what constituted "good art" and no
desire to learn. He knew what he liked, and he liked this.
Besides, even if it had been less powerful, even
crude, he would not have cared. He had the only orig-
inal painting of Dracula by the author of Dracula. No
one else in the world could claim that.
Image of the Beast / Blown Page 28
