A shiver ran through him at the sudden memory of his enforced internment in that room; the cold, the damp, the smell. He shook it off to concentrate on the job at hand. Through the bathroom door he could hear the telltale splash of shower water. As long as it kept running it would mask the sound of his movements.
He swiftly peeled off his boots, overalls and underwear. He would be naked for the operation for two reasons; there would be a lot of blood to wash off, and the change went easier and more comfortably if he was unencumbered by clothing.
Not only that. Lonny’s shoes and clothes would be far too big for his new shape, so he might as well get rid of them now. He laid the garments out on the bunk where they would be within easy reach. Cotton was absorbent and would come in handy if there were bodily fluids to be swabbed up.
Fingers resting on the handle, he took a deep breath of preparation, then slid aside the door to the bathroom, letting out a cloud of citrus scented steam. The perfect cover. He sneaked soundlessly in. A few steps across the cold linoleum took him to within two feet of Reynolds, slick with shower gel and bubbles, eyes tightly closed against a stinging soap intrusion, ears full of foam, both hands busy with the full throes of energetic masturbation. One hand cupped and kneaded his balls, the other squeezed and pulled on his cock, every tug accompanied by a grunt of pleasure.
“Oh yeah! Come on, baby! Ride me!”
He wasn’t going to hear a thing.
Euterich took a moment to balance himself for the strike, to adjust in his hand the razor edged ceramic knife he’d managed to steal from the kitchen. Carefully, very carefully, he eased the shower screen open.
Assume the position.
Reynolds tilted his head back to receive the full flow of the shower, pounding away at his erection. “Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah –”
And … wait for it.
Climax! With a growled ecstatic, “Oh fuck…yeah!” he ejaculated forcefully into the stream.
Strike!
Euterich clamped one of Lonny’s massive hands around Reynolds’ mouth, stifling his cry and yanking his head back, stretching his neck to its fullest tautest length, while at the same time sweeping the blade across Reynolds’ throat so deep as to almost decapitate him with a single stroke.
Reynolds’ legs folded, dropping him into the shower tray like a sack of mail, a stream of bright scarlet gushing from the open space between his Adam’s apple and his chin, the sanguine flood coating his chest like a red silk bib, dribbling onto the white plastic to be picked up, swirled around and washed away by the stream of water before gurgling down the drain hole and into the grey water for recycling.
Tomorrow someone would be flushing away their piss and turds with Reynolds’ diluted blood.
Cut off from its blood and oxygen supply, his consciousness switched off and his out of control body bucked and jerked wildly, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish, sightless eyes bulging in their sockets. Euterich had no concerns. He knew what he was doing. These were automatic reactions and would cease momentarily. Reynolds would not be getting up again.
Euterich looked down on the twitching corpse, satisfied with his work. It had been quick and silent. No time for fear to contaminate the flesh with its bitter outpourings. He preferred this way of killing to the flesh stripping method he was forced to use on Lonny Dick, biting into him and injecting the poison directly. It utilised a chemical reaction which left an aftertaste he found disagreeable, and always the threat of some of the molecules not being neutralised, finding their way back into him and dissolving him from the inside out.
Reynolds would require manual butchery rather than having the skin peel away to reveal the partly digested innards, but Euterich didn’t care about the extra work it would need. He had the time, and the fresh taste of untainted flesh would be worth the effort.
He let the shower run until Reynolds’ blood stopped pumping, allowing the body a few more minutes in the stream for the warm water to wash away any soap and shampoo residue, and to soften the skin more. Dry skin could be tough, like leather. It took a lot of chewing, and it caught in his teeth.
The change began almost as soon as he swallowed the first mouthful of Reynolds’ liver, as so often happened if both bodies were reasonably healthy with little repair to be done.
He could feel it as a gentle prickling of the skin, warmth radiating from his stomach, the darkening of the hair on his arms from Lonny’s fine blond to Reynolds’ dark brown. He dined steadily and easily for the next twenty minutes, putting the leftovers aside to go into the bag – arms and hands, lower legs and feet, the head and the genitals, he also tossed in the lungs.
Reynolds was a heavy smoker, and apart from not liking the tarry nicotine taste Euterich didn’t want to take the chance of ingesting any cancerous cells which may be lurking in the tissue, infecting himself. He included the long bones from the legs, picked clean of most of their meat and sucked on their marrow, and the ribcage, crushed flat. Included also was the swathe of tattoo covered skin from Reynolds’ back.
It had been a shame to discard such an impressive work of art on living flesh; a school of smiling dolphins leaping side by side through white crested waves. It would have made a splendid display if it could somehow have been preserved, framed like a painting and hung on someone’s living room wall. But the subcutaneous ink made the flesh unpalatable and he had to leave it.
Of course, that meant the skin on his own back would remain undecorated, not that anyone here knew about the tattoo. He would have to remember to keep himself well covered nonetheless.
He bundled up the vestiges of Daz Reynolds in the cast off overalls and underwear, and stuffed the lot into the canvas bag, zipped it up and put it aside while he spent the next quarter hour cleaning up the spillage in the bathroom.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness after all.
He showered to remove any trace of blood from his body and hair. Before he dressed in Reynolds’ clothes, he examined his freshly scrubbed naked self in the mirror - close cropped brown hair, sharp grey eyes, a fine musculature, and this time with a decent sized set of experienced undercarriage to go with it. He cupped it with his hands, warm and soft, full of potential. He had already seen it in action, and would put it to good use himself soon enough.
What amused him somewhat was the uneven distribution of colour on Reynolds’ skin – a year of working outdoors with the sun and wind against them had given his exposed face and hands the colour of light oak, while the rest of him remained a near porcelain white.
“Your vitamin D level must be appalling.”
He turned himself around, and apart from the nakedness of his back deemed the change to be for the most part complete.
As an added bonus, free of Lummox’s restricted mental capacity, his mind was now clearer, sharper, more like his own self, even if there were a few thoughts he considered somewhat … inappropriate, particularly those concerning the new focus in his life, Lydia Ellis.
But before he could take full advantage of this nice new body he had some refuse to dispose of. He eased the door open and listened.
The doors between the corridor and the lounge were closed, muting the clatter of crockery and someone’s tuneless singing in the galley. Better for him; more chance of getting away and disposing of Reynolds’ remains unseen and unheard. He seized the drop bag and stepped out into the corridor, closing the cabin door behind him.
“Hey Daz. What’cha got there?”
Euterich almost lifted out of his shoes at the unexpected voice behind him - Craig McDougal, zipping up his overalls, on the way back to the lounge after using his lavatory.
Reynolds’ words tripped from his lips. “Er … laundry. Running out of smalls. Don’t fancy going commando and freezing my bollocks off.”
McDougal grinned. “Great, wait there!” He ducked back into his cabin, emerging seconds later with a bundle of underwear, socks, T shirts and a pair of navy overalls, roughly bundled together in a grubby towel.
�
��Stick these in for me while ye’re there will ye,” he said, thrusting the bundle into Euterich’s hands.
“What am I, your fucking slave?”
“Nah, you’re just a decent human being doing his mate a good turn.”
“Fuck off!”
“I owe you one. Cheers mate. I’ll save you a naan bread.” And McDougal ambled back to the galley to continue work, leaving Euterich standing in the corridor, a scowl creasing his forehead until it stood out like rusty guttering, fuming not only at McDougal’s bare arsed cheek, but also at his own foulness of language and behaviour. Reynolds’ influence on him already? That didn’t take long.
He stalked down the corridor, through the swing doors of the hub, down the next hallway to the room housing the washing machines, dryers and irons, left behind because there was no value in taking them off. He thought of dumping McDougal’s stuff on the floor and leaving it to fester until he too ran out of clean underwear and came to deal with it himself, but instead he set a machine going with the gear in it, not because he wanted to, or out of the goodness of his heart, but because if anyone asked where he had been, he would have a legitimate excuse for his absence, one corroborated by McDougal, which would give him time to get rid of Reynolds’ surplus to requirements bones and flesh mouldering in the bag atop the washing machine not three feet away.
Taking care to remain out of sight of the CCTV cameras covering the deck, the location of which he picked from Reynolds’ memories and his own observation, Euterich tossed his dreadful payload over the safety rail and watched it fall away into the heaving grey mass.
He did not hear them splash into the sea two hundred feet below, nor give them a second thought as they sank to the briny depths to join Lonny Dick in providing an extraordinary meal for scavenging fish and crabs.
Chapter 14
Lonny’s absence from the dining table at dinner raised little interest.
Euterich’s playacting illness had convinced Lydia to sign him off work for the afternoon. She prescribed him some medicine and ordered him rest in his cabin. For him not to appear to partake in a hearty meal of spicy chicken curry and rice then, was somewhat expected.
Euterich, however, now in Reynolds skin and keen to join in, helped himself to a moderate portion of the food, despite still feeling a little bloated from his enjoyment of the dear departed’s organ meats, which he found to be in remarkably good condition considering the amount Reynolds smoked, drank, and screwed around.
The curry was aromatic and hot, and he appreciated the sensation of heat on his tongue and at the back of his throat. The generous chunks of tender chicken were much to his liking.
He laughed quietly to himself. If anyone were to ask him what chicken tasted like he could, with an arrow straight face, say, ‘Human,’ and be telling the truth.
Lydia returned from the serving area with her plate. “You made too much rice,” she said. “It’s going to be wasted. It won’t keep. You can’t eat reheated rice. You’ll get food poisoning. You should have measured it out more carefully.”
“We did,” complained Cameron. “We followed the instructions to a T, but it doesn’t matter how careful you are, it is physically impossible not to make too much rice.”
“That’s as maybe, but it means we might go short later.”
“Let’s hope Lummox keeps his bad belly, then. The less he eats, all the more for us.”
All but Lydia laughed.
“Anyone seen him lately?” Eddie asked. “Anyone know if he’s okay?”
“Anyone gie a shit?” mumbled McDougal. “Ye can hang yer washing atwain that idiot’s ears. Theer’s nut’n blowing through theer but fresh air.”
“If he’s taken my advice, he’ll be sleeping it off in his cabin,” said Lydia. “I gave him some Milk of Magnesia to settle his stomach and told him to stick to plain water and not exert himself. He should be fine by morning.”
They returned to their meal, chattering across the table, getting to know each other without really trying, testing each other out, ribbing one another.
McDougal said something incomprehensible; McAllister swore and threw a piece of naan bread at him. McDougal scowled at him. “Wa’s yoor problem, Mac?”
“At’s yoo,” said McAllister, exaggerating McDougal’s broad Aberdonian accent. “We dinnae ken wit her bletherin’ aboot win ye gabs oan like a sheep shaggin’ teuchter. Nae-one can unnerstan’ a fuckin’ word.” He then switched to pure cut glass English. “Why can you not speak proper – like what we do?” Everyone laughed and the piece of bread returned.
“Shut yer gob, Mac, afair I shut it fer ye!”
“What did he say?” said Euterich innocently, sending McAllister into gales of laughter.
“You see,” McAllister howled. “Even a slob like Daz can’t make moss nor sand of your highland fling.”
“Yer nuttin’ bu’ a bunch o’ smartarse fucking racists,” retorted McDougal, his insulted Celtic temper inflamed. “We cannae all hae the benefit of a fancy yoo-niversity edication. Just ‘cause yoo hae sae hoity toity degree, Mac, is nae excuse fer makkin’ fun of us lesser mortals.”
Euterich’s ears pricked up.
McAllister? A graduate? University education? There was a surprise. In what subject? Something deep and meaningful he hoped. Not like Brewer’s psychology claptrap. Did he read? Did he like the opera or the theatre? God, make it so.
Reynolds worshipped the holy trinity of machismo, football, women and cars, and not necessarily in that order, already proving himself to be an uncouth troglodyte in both thought and deed, and having to act and speak and think like him went totally against the grain and disturbed Euterich deeply. Less than four hours in this body and he was already looking for something better.
“Ye go’ summat tae add, Mister Reynolds?”
He realised he’d been staring across the table at McDougal and shook his head. “Nope.”
“Gud.” McDougal huffed, sniffed and scowled at his near empty plate before taking a slab of naan and wiping it around to soak up every last drop of the pungent curry sauce.
Using Reynolds’ least offensive tone, Euterich addressed McAllister. “What … er … degree have you got, Jock, just as a matter of interest?”
In other words, could you be my next candidate?
Education had not, however, given McAllister good table manners. He stuffed a fistful of the greasy naan into his mouth, filling it to capacity. “Arts and humanities,” he said, chewing on it as he spoke. “You know, history, literature, philosophy and all that pretentious shit?”
“Yeah. All that pretentious shit.” Euterich smiled affably.
Maybe not … yet.
Apart from the occasions when he needed to concentrate on assimilating a new body, or when he had to endure enforced semi-hibernation, Euterich did not require much in the way of sleep.
He indulged himself purely because he enjoyed the sensation. He liked the feeling of drifting off into the dark, of exploring the space behind his eyes, and it gave him time to think … and tonight thoughts of Lydia would carry him into the arms of Morpheus. But not yet.
First he would take some time in the quiet and the dark to go over the information he had accrued about the others, to help him choose which one would have the privilege of being the next stepping stone into Eddie Capstan when the time came.
He considered each man at a time, trying not to let Reynolds’ base opinions cloud his judgement.
Old man Brewer was a conundrum, in a class of his own. He had impeccable manners, and when he had something to say, which wasn’t often, he spoke as if he had marbles in his mouth, being something of a posh intel-ec-chewal. Too old and too distinguished for a woman like Lydia, whom he suspected might like a bit of rough now and again.
Like Reynolds?
No. Not that rough. He had stepped into the body of a shit of the lowest order; rude, uncouth, primitive. Not a step up the evolutionary ladder from Lonny Dick, more of a sideways lurch.
What a
bout Duncan Cameron? A decent sort by all accounts; a hard worker if a tad argumentative and opinionated. A tick in the mental ‘possible’ box for him.
Shaw? Capstan’s lapdog. Too young for her, but if Capstan trusted him, she might too. Another possibility.
He had already gleaned some interesting facts about McAllister to be considered; McDougal he couldn’t really tell. They were an odd pair those two, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with their jocular horseplay at the table, in a huddle at every possible opportunity, laughing and talking and joking like naughty schoolboys.
They watched movies together, played snooker together. Eating, drinking … sleeping together?
Now here was an interesting notion. It wasn’t unknown for gay relationships to blossom in a male dominated environment.
He would have to spend more time with them to find out. It wasn’t something he had much personal knowledge of. Perhaps now might be the time to find out. New experiences were often a welcome distraction from the banal, particularly if they were pleasurable.
When he finally fell asleep, he still had not made his decision.
Chapter 15
Lonny still did not appear for breakfast the next day.
“I’ll call in on him and see how he is,” said Lydia, assuming him to be following her medical instructions and keeping to his sick bed.
Her knock on Lonny’s cabin door brought no response. She knocked again. “Lonny? It’s Miss Ellis? Can I come in and see how you are?”
No reply.
More tapping. “Lonny? Are you okay?”
“Problem?” said Lawrence Brewer, emerging from his cabin after changing into his work clothes.
“He’s not answering,” she said. “I don’t want to just go in, in case he’s … you know. Would you mind?”
“Not at all.” Brewer rapped on Lonny’s door. “Hey, Lonny, it’s Lawrence Brewer. Make yourself decent, I’m coming in. Okay?”
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