(A sample from Crawlspace.)
© 2009 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
3:42 AM
Briggsville High
THE FORD pulled up to the curb of the school parking lot.
Trickman rolled down his window and aimed a flashlight around. ‘No sign of life. Want me to get out, Professor?’
The Professor looked at his watch. ‘No. Styles, cruise around. Then head back to the motel.’
Trickman rolled up his window and they started off. ‘Poor kid,’ he said. ‘If anything happened to that kid – if any of those Things hurt him—’
‘We’ll hurt them back,’ Styles said. He looked over and met Trickman’s gaze.
‘Promise,’ they said together.
In the back seat, the Professor pulled out his journal and began to jot down some notes. He checked his watch again and frowned.
The Ford’s wheels spun and raced over the asphalt in the night.
ACROSS TOWN, the Alfa Romeo Spyder’s tires squealed on the street.
Miss Quinn drove. The wind blew in her hair. She had put on a dress she’d gotten from her bag. She had dressed again in the Renfield’s downstairs lavatory, and left the door open so Tommy could almost watch her doing it.
Tommy crouched against the car door. He was looking at her legs. Her short skirt had ridden up on the car seat and he could see above her knees. She was talking, lecturing him like she was in class again, but he kept looking at her legs.
‘The tree of life isn’t really a tree, Tommy,’ she said. ‘It’s more like a web, with lines going from branch to branch. In every one of us there are fragments of code, of DNA, that belong to viruses that swam the oceans billions of years ago. Also DNA-bits of bacteria. There’s fish in us and birds, beasts of all kinds, reptiles, serpents … even insects.’
She down-shifted into a red light. Her feet worked the clutch and the gas pedals and he glimpsed a bit more of her inner thigh.
‘Yes, we carry even insect DNA in the millions of bits of so-called junk DNA.’
The light turned green and her legs flashed again and the sports car kicked Tommy back against the seat with a powerful forward thrust.
‘With some perhaps the Change is permanent, a one-way street. Others can control the Change, and pass from one state to the other. And with such ones, who can say except they themselves, whether one state will come to rule over the other? Would they prefer to exist as one state? Would they come to define themselves as the other state? Perhaps some might even prefer to call themselves no longer human, but Other? Maybe there are better things you could call yourself – than human?’
She looked at him like she was daring him to do something.
‘You can’t stop me, Miss Quinn.’
‘Why, Tommy! Why on earth would I ever want to stop you? And my name’s Tia. Don’t you think you should call me Tia now? After all!’
She laughed. The throaty tones made Tommy’s flesh go all prickly, in a new way that felt both exciting and dangerous.
He blurted out, ‘But you can’t be one of them. You can’t be! You don’t smell. I mean, you don’t smell—’
‘You mean I don’t smell bad, is that it? Isn’t that how you Tracers usually work it? No, Tommy, I don’t smell bad. I smell good, don’t I? Or do I?’
She looked at him straight in the eye. She was still driving fast and her hands turned the wheel but she didn’t look at the road at all.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, soothingly, ‘I do smell bad. Perhaps I smell just as bad as all the others – only your tastes have changed. After all, you’re growing up, Tommy. You’re not a little boy anymore. You’re almost a grownup now. Almost a man.’
He felt himself blushing. Miss Quinn laughed again and glanced at the road. She said, quite freely and gaily, ‘I feel good, too. If you care to find out for yourself?’
She glanced back at him and he blushed fire-hot and she leaned back and shook out her hair in the wind.
‘Do you wonder why you never got those feelings around me, Tommy? It’s because I can hide myself, and seem like a human thing, better than almost any other of us that I know. I can make anybody think that I’m human, even you – until I don’t want to pretend anymore – until I get bored and tired of it – until I get … hungry?’
She smiled at him and it was such a movie-star smile that he almost forgot for a second that she was a Thing after all. And then she did something very odd.
She shifted in her seat, parting her knees. She reached under her skirt and when she drew out her hand, two fingers foremost, Tommy could see something on her fingertips. It was a gob of Jelly … but Miss Quinn’s Jelly wasn’t stale and acrid and greenish-gray like the Jelly Tommy was used to. Her Jelly was golden, a rich honey yellow brown, oozing sweet, warm and sticky, straight from the source.
She held it out to him. The smell was stronger than the liquor in the punch. Tommy breathed it in. He couldn’t help himself. There was a rich melange of odors steaming from Miss Quinn’s Jelly, and underneath them all lurked another odor, stronger, a little bitter, like the liquor in the punch. But it didn’t smell bad, not really. It was kind of like the stink of the other Things’ Jelly, but somehow, this smelled good.
Tommy caught himself leaning forward, his head bent low, her fingers right up under his nose, almost touching his mouth. He fell back against the car door.
‘I’m going to tell the Professor the truth about you.’
‘Are you? But what about the rest of it? Don’t you want to learn the truth about Tommy?’
‘You’d say anything now – I saw you – how could you—’
‘You mean back at the party? Oh, that was easy. Angeline wanted it so bad, and I fed her all the cake and punch she wanted, and she never had to gain weight or break out or anything.’
She tasted the slime on her fingers. ‘I don’t have to do it, Tommy. I don’t have to do any of it. I want to.’
She put on her glasses, and resumed her teacher mask.
‘You see, I enjoy it. You will, too.’
THE FIRST STREAKS of dawn ignited the sky beyond the Interstate when the Spyder pulled up on the corner outside the Bright Dayz motel.
Tommy fumbled with the door handle. He almost had it open when Miss Quinn’s words stopped him.
‘Tommy, what do you remember about your parents?’
‘My parents?’
‘Yes, your parents – you had parents didn’t you?’
‘I don’t remember them.’
‘Tommy, you don’t remember your parents because you didn’t have any. You were stolen before birth. By your Professor, or the people behind him. Don’t you get it?’
‘Get what?’
‘They’re using you, Tommy. You aren’t like them. They had parents. You didn’t.’
‘You’re lying—’
‘Tommy. Tommy Q. What does the Q stand for, Tommy?’
‘Nothing. It’s just Q.’
‘Don’t you have a last name, Tommy Q? Why not?’
‘I’m an orphan—’
‘No, that doesn’t do it for me. There’s another reason. The real reason. You’re one of us, Tommy Q. You’re a Crawler.’ She leaned across the seat. ‘Just like me.’
‘No! No!’
Miss Quinn leaned nearer. Her hair fell across his face, breathing out her scent. She whispered, ‘Still want to tell on me to your Professor? You won’t. Because if he found out the truth about you, he’d burn you with those nasty guns of his. And anyway – could you face him? With the truth? No. You won’t. You don’t even want to.’
Just then the door handle twisted under his hand and Tommy fell out of the car.
