Image of the Beast and Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  want a physical examination.

  He said, "I'm not in too good a position, it's true.

  But I don't think you could stand much publicity."

  She climbed down off the bed, brushing against him

  with one soft hip, and walked to her dresser. She picked

  up a cigarette, lit it, and then offered him one. He shook

  his head.

  "Then it's a Mexican standoff?"

  "Not unless you give this man the antidote," he said.

  "I don't care what it costs me, I'll raise a howl that'll

  bring this place down around your ears."

  "Very well."

  She opened a drawer while he stood behind her to

  make sure that there was no weapon in it. She picked

  up a large sewing needle from a little depression in

  top of a block of dark-red wood and walked with it to

  the man. She inserted its tip into the jugular vein and

  then walked back to the dresser. By the time she had re-

  placed the needle, Bill was beginning to move his legs

  and his head. A few minutes later, he groaned and then

  he sat up, his feet on the floor. He looked at the naked

  Vivienne and at Childe as if he was not sure what was

  happening.

  Childe said, "Were you conscious?"

  Bill nodded. He was concentrating on Vivienne with a

  peculiar expression.

  "I can't believe it!" he said. "What the hell were you

  doing with me? You pervert!"

  Childe did not understand for a moment. The accu-

  sation seemed so mild compared with what had hap-

  pened. Then he saw that Bill had not witnessed the

  thing issuing from her vagina. He must have believed

  that she had stuck some object up his anus.

  "Your clothes are over there," she said, pointing

  at a chair on the other side of the bed. "Get dressed and

  get out."

  Bill stood up unsteadily and walked around the bed.

  While he dressed clumsily, he said, "I'll have the cops

  down here so fast your heads'll swim. Drugging me!

  Drugging me! What the hell for? What did you intend

  to do?"

  "I wouldn't call in the cops," Childe said. "You heard

  what she said she'd do. You'd end up with all sorts of

  charges flung at you, and, believe me, this woman has

  some powerful connections. Moreover, she is quite

  capable of murder."

  Bill, looking scared, dressed more swiftly.

  Vivienne looked at her wristwatch and said, "Herald

  and I have some things we're eager to discuss. Please

  hurry."

  "Yeah, I'll bet you two perverts do!" Bill said, glar-

  ing at both.

  "For Christ's sake!" Childe said. "I saved your life!"

  Childe watched Vivienne. She was leaning against

  the dresser with her weight on one leg, throwing a hip

  into relief. He hated her. She was so agonizingly beau-

  tiful, so desirable. And so coldly fatal, so monstrous, in

  all senses of that overused and misused word.

  Bill finally had his clothes on, except for his raincoat

  and rubbers. These, Childe supposed, would be in the

  closet in the vestibule downstairs just off the entrance.

  "So long, you queers!" Bill mumbled as he stumbled

  through the door. "I'll see you in jail, you can bet on

  that!"

  Vivienne laughed. Childe wondered if he should go

  with him. Now that he had followed her and was in this

  den of whatever it was that she and her colleagues

  were, he wondered if he had made a very wrong decision.

  It was true he had rescued a victim, but the victim

  was so stupid he did not realize what he had escaped.

  Certainly, he did not seem worth the trouble or the risk.

  Vivienne waited until the front door loudly slammed.

  Then she moved slowly towards him, rolling her hips.

  He backed away, saying, "Keep your distance, Vivi-

  enne. I have no desire for you; you couldn't possibly

  seduce me, if that's what you have in mind."

  She laughed again and sat down on the edge of the

  bed. "No, of course not! But why are you here? We

  left you alone, though we could have killed you easily

  enough at any time. And perhaps we should have, after

  what you did to us."

  "If you were human, you'd understand why."

  "Oh, you mean the monkey sense of curiosity? Let me

  remind you of how Malayans catch monkeys. They put

  food in a jar with a mouth large enough for the monkey

  to get his paw into but too small for him to withdraw

  the hand unless he lets loose of the food. Of course,

  he doesn't let loose, and so the trapper takes him easily."

  "Yes, I know that," he said. "Your analogy may be

  a fairly exact one. I'm here because I still think that

  your bunch had something to do with my wife's disap-

  pearance. I know you denied that, but I can't get it out

  of my mind that you did away with Sybil. You're cer-

  tainly capable of doing that. You're capable of anything

  that's cruel and inhuman."

  "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 am here. And he not only

  does not know who I am, he isn't going to say any-

  thing about me. Not after he considers the possible re-

  percussions, especially the fact that he might be sus-

  pected."

  "Suspected of what?" she said, her eyes widening.

  Before he could reply, she said, "I doubt that hell

  say anything to anybody."

  "What do you mean?" he said, although he thought

  he knew what she was going to say.

  She looked at her watch and said, "He ought to be

  dying of a heart attack about now."

  She looked up at him and smiled again. "So pale! So

  shocked! What did you expect, you babe in the woods?

  Did you think I'd let him go so he could talk to the

  police? I could make him regret it, of course, with

  charges that would put him 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 be around him. He leaped at her, his hands

  outstretched, and she tried to roll away from him on

  the bed to the other side, but he seized her ankle. He

  dragged her to him, although she slammed one heel

  into his shoulder. He leaned down between her legs and

  thrust three fingers into the wet vagina and probed.

  Something fiery touched one of his fingers, and he

  knew he had been bitten, but he plunged his hand in

  as far as he could.

  Vivienne screamed with the pain then, but he kept

  the hand in and, despite the agony of more bites on

  his other fingers, managed to seize that tiny head. It

  was slippery, and it resisted, but it came on out of her

  cunt, its mouth working, the minute teeth glittering in the

  light, its eyes looking like red jewels stuck into its

  bearded doll face.

  He pressed his left shoulder against her right leg to

  keep it from kicking him and brace
d his right shoul-

  der against her other leg. She reached down and grabbed

  his hair and pulled, and the pain was so intense he almost

  let loose of the thing. But he clung to it and then threw

  himself backward as hard as he could. The snakelike

  body shot out from the slit while the tiny mouth screamed

  like a rabbit dying.

  As he fell on his back on the floor, he saw the tail

  slide out of the slit. It came loose much easier than he

  had thought it would. Perhaps he had 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 the tail, and Vivienne was down on the floor by

  him writhing and screaming.

  He jumped up and threw the thing away. Its slimy

  muscle-packed body and the grease-soaked head and

  unadulterated viciousness of the face and eyes were so

  loathsome he was afraid he was going to vomit.

  The body soared across the bed, hit the other edge,

  flopped, and then slithered off the edge to fall out of sight.

  Vivienne quit screaming, though her skin was gray

  and her eyes were great areas of white with violet

  islets. She said, "Now you've done it! I hope I can get

  back together again!"

  He said, "What?"

  He was having difficulty standing. The pain in his

  fingers was lessening, but that was because a numbness

  was shooting up his arm and down his side. The room

  was beginning to be blurred, and Vivienne's white

  body with the auburn triangle between the legs and

  torn fleshy roots hanging out of the slit was starting to

  spin and, at the same time, to recede.

  "You wouldn't understand, you stupid human!"

  He sank to his knees and then sat down, lowering him-

  self with one arm that threatened to turn into rubber

  under him. Vivienne's pubis was directly under his eyes,

  so he saw what was happening despite the increasing

  fuzziness of vision.

  The skin was splitting along the hairline of the pubis.

  The split became a definite and deep cleavage as if in-

  visible knives were cutting into her and the operators

  of the knives intended to scoop out the vagina and the

  womb in one section.

  Cracks were appearing across her waist, across her

  thighs, her knees, her calves, and her feet.

  He bent over to see more clearly. There were cracks

  on her wrists, her elbows, around her breasts, her neck.

  She looked like a china doll that had fallen onto a

  cement sidewalk.

  When he looked back at her cunt, it had walked out

  of the space it had occupied between her legs. It was

  staggering on its own legs, a score or more of needle-

  thin many-jointed members with a red-flesh color. Its

  back was the pubis, the rich auburn hair, the slit, and

  the mound of Venus. Its underside was the protective

  coating of the vaginal canal. The uterus came next on

  its many tiny legs, following the vagina as if it hoped

  to reconnect.

  Out from the cavity left by the exodus came other

  organs, some of which he recognized. That knot and

  fold of flesh certainly must be the fallopian tube and

  ovary, and that, what the hell was that?

  By then the cleavages around the base of the breasts

  had met, and the breasts reeled off the steep slope of the

  ribs and fell down, turning over. One landed on its legs

  and scuttled off, but the other breast lay on its back—

  its front, actually—and kicked its many red spider legs

  until it succeeded in getting on its feet—so-called.

  The belly had split across and down, as had the upper

  part of the trunk. The anus and the two cheeks of

  the buttocks crawled off. The legs of this creature were

  thicker but the weight of the flesh seemed to be al-

  most too much. It moved slowly, whereas the hands,

  using the fingers as legs, ran across the room quickly

  and disappeared under the bed.

  The head was also walking towards the underside of

  the bed. It was lifted off the floor by legs about three

  inches high and perhaps a sixteenth of an inch thick.

  Four longer legs that had sprouted from behind her

  ears supported the head and kept it from falling to one

  side or another. Vivienne's eyes were open and blinking,

  so that she seemed to be as aware in this state as she was

  in the other. She did not, however, look at Childe.

  He felt sick, but he did not think he was going to

  vomit. If he was, he could not feel anything churning

  up. His insides were too numb for anything except a

  vague feeling of queasiness.

  He fell over on his side and could not get up again

  no matter how hard he struggled. Or tried to struggle,

  rather, because his efforts were all mental. His mus-

  cles, as far as he could tell, failed to respond with

  even a tremor.

  24

  When he saw the golfball-sized head of the thing poke

  out from beyond the end of the bed, Childe realized

  what he had done. By yanking so savagely on that

  thing, he had jerked it loose from some base in her body,

  probably in her 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 burro dolls—

  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 fell apart, and all her goodies, separate entities,

  spilled out. And began a walk that only a Bosch could

  paint.

  Now the thing was gliding snakelike towards him, its

  forepart raised off the ground and the slimy, goateed,

  shark-toothed, scimitar-nosed, garnet-eyed head was

  pointed at him. Its mouth was writhing, and a piping

  was issuing from the invisible lips.

  Childe could do nothing but lie on his side, his eyes

  fixed on the approaching thing. He wondered what it

  had in mind for him. Its bite was poisonous, and while

  its poison had paralyzed Bill but left his sexual organs

  active, it might be fatal if he were bitten again. More-

  over, Vivienne said an antidote had to be given, and

  she, as far as he knew, was the only one who could do

  that. But not while she was in this condition.

  A glob of coiled intestines crossed before him, cutting

  off his view of the snake-thing. Behind it came the

  spinal area, a flesh centipede. This reeled blindly into

  a foot, which was traveling upside down, its sole pointed

  towards the ceiling, while twenty legs bore it to wherever

  it was going. The spine and the foot fell over on their

  side and kicked their legs for a while before managing

  to get back up.

  The snake-thing crawled nearer. Childe watched it and

  speculated on whether or not its underside was equipped

  with many moving plates to enable it to progress so ser-

&nb
sp; pentinely. Did it have an ophidian skeleton?

  He was so numb that it did not occur to him to won-

  der how this whole process could come about. He just

  accepted it.

  Presently, the many-legged cunt, still followed by

  the many-legged uterus, walked towards him. The hairy-

  back animal bumped into his stomach, staggered back,

  half-turned, and bumped along his body. It stopped when

  it came into contact with his chin, slid along it and around

  to his mouth, where it stopped. He could not see it,

  but he had the feeling that it was leaning against his lips.

  Its hairs brushed his nose and made him want to sneeze.

  The odor from it was clean and faintly musky, and un-

  der other circumstances he would have enjoyed it very

  much.

  The cunt remained by him, pressing on his mouth, as

  if it recognized something familiar in its blind and deaf

  world. The uterus was nestled against his neck, its wet

  skin on his skin.

  The snake-thing kept on coming towards him and

  then it disappeared around his head. He tried to throw

  his head back and to turn it, but he could not. Within

  a few seconds, he felt it crawling up over the back of his

  head. He wanted to scream, to make a superhuman ef-

  fort that would enable him to burst out of his own skin

  and run out of the room. Then the thing was coiled up

  on his cheek, and the wet beard was tickling the lobe

  of his ear.

  The voice was tiny and tinny.

  The words were unintelligible. They were in that

  same language he had heard before, in between French

  and Spanish. Like an unnasalized, untruncated French.

  An archaic French, perhaps.

  The tiny tinny voice raged on. Its forked tongue

  flicked against the inner part of his ear.

  Suddenly, there was a silence. The body was still

  there, but it was motionless. The vagina-thing abruptly

  scuttled away with the uterus-thing nosing after it. Vivi-

  enne's head appeared from under the bed and stalked

  slowly towards him. Her tongue was sticking out from

  her lax lips, and her bright eyes stared at him.

  Her head stopped a few feet from his eyes. Her eyes

  looked up, evidently at the thing on his cheek. Her lips

  moved, but no voice issued. This was to be expected,

  since she had no lungs. The lungs were twin creatures