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"Inhuman?" she said, smiling.
"All right. Point well taken," he said. "However, here we are, alone together in this house with no one except Bill knowing that I amhere. And he not only does not know who I am, he isn't going to say anything aboutme. Not after he considers the possible repercussions, especially the factthat he mightbe suspected."
"Suspected of what?" she said, her eyes widening. Before he couldreply, shesaid, "I doubt that he'll say anything to anybody."
"What do you mean?" he said, although he thought he knew what shewas goingto say.
She looked at her watch and said, "He ought to be dying of aheart attack about now."
She looked up at him and smiled again. "So pale! So shocked! Whatdid youexpect, you babe in the woods? Did you think I'd let him go so hecould talk to the police? I could make him regret it, of course, with charges thatwould puthim in jail, but I don't want any publicity whatsoever. Now, really, Herald Childe, how could you be so naive?"
Childe broke loose from the casing of ice that had seemed to bearound him. He leaped at her, his hands outstretched, and she tried to roll awayfrom him on the bed to the other side, but he seized her ankle. He dragged her tohim, although she slammed one heel into his shoulder. He leaned downbetween her legsand thrust three fingers into the wet vagina and probed. Somethingfiery touchedone of his fingers, and he knew he had been bitten, but he plungedhis hand in as far as he could.
Vivie
He pressed his left shoulder against her right leg to keep itfrom kickinghim and braced his right shoulder against her other leg. She reacheddown and grabbed his hair and pulled, and the pain was so intense he almostlet loose of the thing. But he clung to it and then threw himself backward as hardas he could. The snakelike body shot out from the slit while the tiny mouthscreamed like a rabbit dying.
As he fell on his back on the floor, he saw the tail slide out ofthe slit. It came loose much easier than he had thought it would. Perhaps hehad been wrong in thinking that it was anchored to her in a plexus of flesh.
But there were red and bloody roots hanging from the end of thetail, andVivie
He jumped up and threw the thing away. Its slimy muscle-packedbody and thegrease-soaked head and unadulterated viciousness of the face and eyeswere so loathsome he was afraid he was going to vomit.
The body soared across the bed, hit the other edge, flopped, andthen slithered off the edge to fall out of sight.
Vivie
He said, "What?"
He was having difficulty standing. The pain in his fingers waslessening, but that was because a numbness was shooting up his arm and down hisside. The room was begi
"You wouldn't understand, you stupid human!"
He sank to his knees and then sat down, lowering himself with onearm that threatened to turn into rubber under him. Vivie
The skin was splitting along the hairline of the pubis. The splitbecame a definite and deep cleavage as if invisible knives were cutting intoher and the operators of the knives intended to scoop out the vagina and the wombin one section.
Cracks were appearing across her waist, across her thighs, herknees, hercalves, and her feet.
He bent over to see more clearly. There were cracks on herwrists, herelbows, around her breasts, her neck. She looked like a china dollthat had fallen onto a cement sidewalk.
When he looked back at her cunt, it had walked out of the spaceit had occupied between her legs. It was staggering on its own legs, a scoreor more of needle-thin many-jointed members with a red-flesh color. Its back wasthe pubis, the rich auburn hair, the slit, and the mound of Venus. Its undersidewas the protective coating of the vaginal canal. The uterus came next on itsmany tinylegs, following the vagina as if it hoped to reco
Out from the cavity left by the exodus came other organs, some ofwhich he recognized. That knot and fold of flesh certainly must be thefallopian tube andovary, and that, what the hell was that?
By then the cleavages around the base of the breasts had met, andthe breasts reeled off the steep slope of the ribs and fell down, turningover. One landed on its legs and scuttled off, but the other breast lay on itsback--its front, actually--and kicked its many red spider legs until itsucceeded in getting on its feet--so-called.
The belly had split across and down, as had the upper part of thetrunk. The anus and the two cheeks of the buttocks crawled off. The legs of thiscreature were thicker but the weight of the flesh seemed to be almost toomuch. It moved slowly, whereas the hands, using the fingers as legs, ran across theroom quickly and disappeared under the bed.
The head was also walking towards the underside of the bed. Itwas lifted off the floor by legs about three inches high and perhaps a sixteenthof an inch thick. Four longer legs that had sprouted from behind her earssupported thehead and kept it from falling to one side or another. Vivie
He felt sick, but he did not think be was going to vomit. If hewas, he could not feel anything churning up. His insides were too numb foranythingexcept a vague feeling of queasiness.
He fell over on his side and could not get up again no matter howhard he struggled. Or tried to struggle, rather, because his efforts were allmental. His muscles, as far as he could tell, failed to respond with even atremor.
CHAPTER 24
When he saw the golfball-sized head of the thing poke out frombeyond theend of the bed, Childe realized what he had done. By yanking sosavagely on thatthing, he had jerked it loose from some base in her body, probably inher uterus. This was what he had intended. But he could never have visualized that pulling the thing was like pulling the cord on one of those burrodolls--what were they called?--that were hung up in Mexican homes on Christmas. Pull the string, and they ripped open, and all the goodies spilled out.
The thing had been her string, and when it was torn out, she fellapart, andall her goodies, separate entities, spilled out. And began a walkthat only aBosch could paint.
Now the thing was gliding snakelike towards him, its forepartraised off the ground and the slimy, goateed, shark-toothed, scimitar-nosed, garnet- eyed headwas pointed at him. Its mouth was writhing, and a piping was issuingfrom the invisible lips.
Childe could do nothing but lie on his side, his eyes fixed onthe approaching thing. He wondered what it had in mind for him. Its bitewas poisonous, and while its poison had paralyzed Bill but left hissexual organsactive, it might be fatal if he were bitten again. Moreover, Vivie