by RJ Blain
I liked the idea, so I retreated, gathered the discarded gown, and used it to hide my beautiful, sleek gray body from the camera. It took time to bunch the thin material in front of me, but once set, within a minute, I nosed the fabric across the floor, covered the device, and looked for a way out of the room.
Even closets had ventilation ducts, and I spotted a rather nice one with slits in the ceiling, plenty spacious for a slender beauty such as a myself to slip through. Coiling my tail around the gown and the camera, I dragged my prize along while I began the climb up the shelving unit.
I truly loved being a snake sometimes. With fourteen feet of muscle to work with, it didn’t take long for me to jam my head into the vent. Luckily for me, the filter rested on a frame, making it easy to nose it aside so I could access the ducts. Slithering inside, I dragged the camera and gown behind me. With the camera trapped in the gown, it wouldn’t fit through the gap. Displeased at the inconvenience, I pulled and jerked until the gown tore.
The fish eye camera crashed to the floor and shattered. The shredded ruins of the gown came with me, and I tugged it inside until none of it stuck out of the vent. Pleased with my work, I explored the hospital. Curiously, the ducts opened to second and third floors, pumping cool air into a wide assortment of places, even operating rooms. Many of the rooms had vents near the wall too narrow for me to slither through without having to dislodge the entire cover. The ones leading to the second floor offered the easiest ways to escape, as only a filter and the vent slit blocked my way to freedom.
I just needed to pick the perfect room to stage my escape.
I picked the kitchen, as it had food, it was warm, and it had several ways out. Why the kitchen was on the second floor was beyond me, but rather than questioning the architects, I watched and waited, flicking my tongue out to taste the air.
Someone below cooked meat, and I wanted to dine on it. I’d take it raw, seared, or even charred, but I wanted the meat. I poked my nose through the vent and observed the cooks below. After a few minutes, I determined half the kitchen cooked some form of beef stew while the other half made something with chicken and a lot of vegetables.
In a corner, isolated from the rest of the staff, was a pair of poor sobs making salad. I felt sorry for the people expected to eat the stuff. While I’d eat salad now and then, I had standards. Wilting lettuce, tomatoes that had been ripe a week ago, and almost respectable carrots classified as cruel and unusual punishment. Add in the white, plain dressing masquerading as ranch, and I pitied the patients.
After what felt like an eternity, the staff ferried out the prepared meals, bustling out of the kitchen. In a disgraceful show of waste, they left uncooked meat on the counters, ranging from chunks of stewing beef to raw chicken. I expected someone would come and dispose of it, but I thought they’d at least try to use everything.
A second and third check confirmed the kitchen was abandoned, and I slid out of the vent, angling in the direction of the counter and its pile of delicious red, raw meat. I couldn’t quite reach, so I thumped to the floor, slithered my way to my dinner, and rose up, snatching chunks and swallowing them as fast as I could. I cleaned the cutting board, and still hungry, I crossed the kitchen and stole the chicken, too.
My bulging stomach would make navigating small places difficult, and I cursed myself for my weakness.
On the job, I took a lot of care with what I ate. However amusing, a toxic or noisy fart could sink me, and nothing was worse than having to take a piss during a stake out or while committing a good murder. In about an hour, I’d want to sleep off my dinner, which meant finding a new place to hide or getting out of the building as soon as possible.
Exploring the kitchen, I discovered a supply cart pushed off to the side, filled with plastic tubs meant to be reused. A quick inspection of the wheels and undercarriage revealed plenty of metal braces supporting the frame with gaps large enough for me to squeeze through. As long as no one looked beneath it and spotted my bulging tummy, I’d be free in no time at all.
Chapter Three
The hospital needed to monitor their kitchen staff better. My patience only went so far, and by the time someone returned to the kitchen to begin the cleanup work, I wanted to bite people for their tardiness and lack of care.
No one noticed my theft of the leftover meat. Five people worked to restore the kitchen to rights, and I watched them from my place beneath the cart, the tip of my tail twitching. While tempted to bite over their general incompetence, killing lazy kitchen staff wasn’t part of my general operations.
I only killed people who deserved it, after I vetted their guilt and methodically researched their methods. Then I came up with a plan to make them suffer as their victims had suffered. My way worked; twice, the police had marked the wrong people as the killers, and I’d found the truth poking my serpentine nose where it didn’t belong.
Those jobs had been the hardest, as I championed the innocent while proving without shadow of a doubt the guilt of my victims.
Headlines of the slayings haunted me for months after each of those hits, making the national American news. There’d been an entire episode of a crime show dedicated to one of my murders, one I watched with glee. The show writers had almost gotten it right—almost. They had painted me as a man.
Me, a man? By default, I broke the rule about being a model-pretty princess, although I could pass muster with my mother when I pulled out all the stops. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t pretty in the traditional sense, either. My mother liked telling me I was a queen without a kingdom, the cold beauty of a sword unsheathed for battle and destined for conquest.
Her Royal Majesty really needed to stop thinking about conquering things all the time, using me as an excuse to do it. I sure as hell couldn’t inherit her kingdom. I could barely swim. I supposed she conquered islands across her territory to give me a place to rule from, should she die or make a run for the hills. Fortunately for me, mermaids lived a long time. My grandparents and their grandparents still lived, happy to have abdicate their crowns to the next in line. After a few hundred years of putting up with the bullshit involved with ruling a kingdom as vast as theirs, I didn’t blame them for ditching the job.
I counted my blessings they hadn’t visited me in years. I’d been five the last time I’d seen them, and as I was no longer interesting to them, they went about their business and left me to mine. Of course, Her Royal Majesty had trusted them to watch me for a whole week and they had left after the first day. Maybe that had something to do with them no longer visiting me. My mother hadn’t been happy about that for some reason.
I thought my grandparents had had the right idea. They had bored me, I had bored them, so it made sense they had gone to find something better to do with their time.
I spent the rest of my wait considering therapy, coming to the conclusion I probably needed a psychiatrist far more than my mother. I did have a rather gruesome hobby of killing people. All she did was conquer small islands so I could live on them. Most of the islands didn’t even have inhabitants. Well, the one did, but the tourists had found the whole hostile takeover amusing, especially when the ladies discovered mermen were infertile except during spawning season.
When in human form, mermen liked prettying themselves up almost as much as they enjoyed sharing a bed with human women.
Overnight, my island had gotten very popular for some reason. I supposed I needed to thank my mother for conquering a profitable place for me to live; the resort was like a palace, although most of the staff had no idea I was actually a princess. When I was perfectly honest about it, it was one of my favorite places in the world, and I even booked my own room pretending I didn’t have the best suite all to myself if I wanted it.
Unfortunately, it was also a favored spot for the mermen to visit, and once one of them saw me, they blabbed. I suspected they’d helped my mother enforce one of the more annoying chapters in the Modern Guide to Being a Princess, the one that insisted princesses remain v
irgins until married.
That rule my lovely mother had broken by having me in the first place, as she didn’t have a ring on her finger, not that mermaids wore rings. Mermen marked their territory with their teeth, leaving a nice set of scars on their mermaid to declare she belonged to someone. The mermaids left their marks, too—and enforced their claim with the threat of biting off something most mermen were rather fond of.
I was almost a hundred percent certain no one had gotten their teeth on my mother. Almost. If someone had, he’d put his teeth somewhere rather private, and if so, I didn’t want to know anything about it.
Did the kitchen have any poison? Indulging in a large swallow of some toxic substance seemed a lot safer than thinking about my mother like that.
Fortunately for me, before I could continue my downward spiral into parent-induced insanity, the kitchen staff finished cleaning, and one of them took my cart on a stroll. I kept my coils lifted, safe from the wheels, and watched the floor so my scales wouldn’t rasp against the tiles. An elevator took us to the ground floor, and from there, to an indoor garage, up a ramp, and into a waiting truck.
I would’ve thought anything dealing with food would’ve been transported in a refrigerated vehicle, but I ended up packed in with a bunch of boxes, the humid air smothering. Waiting until several men shut the doors, I untangled myself from the frame and explored my getaway truck. A lazy packer meant lots of spaces between the boxes, and I hid behind a few, close enough to the doors I could make my escape at the first opportunity, but not so close I’d be spotted.
For not actually having a plan, it had gone off without a hitch. Hissing my satisfaction, I settled in to wait. The truck bounced and rattled as it increased its speed. Within a few minutes, the driver killed the engine, someone opened the back, and promptly wandered away.
I was surrounded by idiots.
Darkness and rain-slicked asphalt greeted me, and I bailed from my getaway vehicle, lifting my head for a better look around. I darted across an empty parking lot to where it met the curb, hissing my displeasure at the miserable weather. Once on the grass, I coiled up and took a better look around.
I recognized the discount fruit and vegetable market, a hefty hike from my apartment. It would take me the better part of two or three hours to reach Lake Superior’s shores near my home. Hissing my discontent, I went about it, determined to sleep in my own bed and lick my wounds—and toss back a few painkillers to banish my headache.
The entire way, I kept close to the curb and used my dark gray body to hide in the shadows and avoid drawing attention to myself. Most times, I rather enjoyed my length, but when I wanted to be subtle, I envied average black mambas, which averaged between six and nine feet long. Fortunately, the streets were mostly empty, and I pegged the time at between two to four in the morning. At four, the morning rush hour started, and I definitely didn’t want to be caught outside when dawn came.
Sometimes, I really hated Minnesota. No matter what time of year, when it rained, it got too cold for me, and it didn’t matter if I had skin or scales. By the time I reached the two-story apartment building several blocks from the water, I wanted to hibernate for a month. Hibernation, however, wasn’t in the cards.
A pissy Terrance stood on my doorstep arguing with my suspected father, one Mr. Shiny Shoes, who I recognized from his snakes and his wet, shiny shoes.
A brief eavesdrop informed me Terrance refused to indulge in Mr. Shiny Shoes’s base desire to petrify my front door and smash his way inside. I’d have to make my mother give the merman a raise. Petrifying and smashing my door in would lose me my security deposit, and if they cost me my security deposit, I’d be pissed.
So much for heading to my nice bed, popping painkillers, and taking a nap. At least I’d get the jump on them. I took the long way around to the back of the apartment building, climbed the rain spout, and entered my apartment through a two-inch hole I’d drilled through the wall behind the pipe and had covered with several metal plates I could nose out of the way to let myself in and out as I pleased. Infiltration complete, I went into my bedroom, shifted, quietly changed into my pajamas, and tip-toed my way to my front door to listen to the two outside devolve into one-word, single-celled amoebas.
Men. Why couldn’t they expand their discussion beyond childish yes and no battles of stubborn pride? Under the cover of them snarling at each other, I unlocked my door, yanked it open, sided with Terrance, and barked, “No. Go away. You’ll wake the neighbors and the dead down the block.”
I shut the door with a firm thump and engaged the locks—both of them.
“Princess Tulip!” Terrance must have been reading the Modern Guide to Being a Princess, too, as he had mastered wailing.
“Have you been in there the whole time?” Mr. Shiny Shoes demanded.
“Are you going to stay out there and bother me all night long if I don’t let you in?”
“Yes,” both replied.
I thought about it, and ultimately, curiosity got the better of me. Unlocking my door, I opened it just enough to indicate they could enter. “Fine. But if you even think about dragging me back to that prison, I’m going to test out how many of my mother’s stupid rules I can break in five minutes.”
“Haven’t you broken enough of them for one day?” Terrance complained, stepping inside before dipping into a short bow. “Your Highness.”
“You fucking owe me a lollipop, Terrance. I’m pretty sure you’re the reason I didn’t get one.”
Mr. Shiny Shoes followed my mother’s head of security into my apartment, and unlike the first time I’d seen him, his black mambas draped over his shoulders, snoozing as far as I could tell. Lucky bastards. I’d show them all I was a better black mamba. Maybe Mr. Shiny Shoes had a baker’s dozen, but I could eat his for breakfast.
“Really, Your Highness? You don’t need a lollipop.” Terrance took a long look at my living room, most of his attention focusing on my couch and coffee table, which still had the ruins of my breakfast on it. “You need a maid.”
Shooting the merman a glare, I snatched the dirty plate, scraped it, and dumped it in the sink along with the rest of my dishes. At least they didn’t smell—I’d made a point of rinsing them off with dish soap before my ill-fated outing to kill my target. My close proximity to my sink put me in easy reach of my dart gun, which could deliver enough sedative to take them out far faster than they could react. I even had some rather lethal ones hidden around in case of emergency. I hadn’t enjoyed the process of milking my own fangs for venom, but I found the results worthwhile.
“It’s not like I was expecting company or a mail bomb today,” I countered, opening the door beneath the sink to get my dish gloves and my dart gun. Temptation, thy name was Terrance—and dear old dad, who had purchased me from my mother for a dollar. Death was too good of a fate for my parents, so I’d enjoy a long life of torturing them, beginning with a little humiliation. Thus armed, I slapped the rubber gloves to the countertop. “In case it has slipped your notice, I’m an adult.”
“You’re a mailman.” Scorn dripped from Terrance’s words, relieving me of any guilt from what I was about to do to him. “You have been caught in the blast of what, five mail bombs now? You’re not just a mailman. You’re a cursed mailman.”
“I prefer the term courier.” I faked a sniffle. “At least make sure the door’s locked if you’re going to be bothering me. I’ve got enough of a headache without having to worry about any unwanted visitors.”
Mr. Shiny Shoes turned to check the door, and his movement drew Terrance’s attention away from me.
If Terrance found out how many hours I’d spent at a gun range over the years, he would’ve been proud of me. One dart would fully knock someone out within a minute or two, rendering them helpless within a few heartbeats. I nailed both men in the shoulder, smiling while they stiffened. So close to the brain, it wouldn’t take long for them to fall prey to the drug. Terrance even managed to raise his hand to reach for the little d
art embedded in his skin, swaying on his feet. With dart gun in hand, I strolled to them, ready to help them to the floor so they wouldn’t get hurt.
Mr. Shiny Shoes almost managed to turn before he slumped, and I caught hold of his suit in a fisted hand, easing his descent. Terrance didn’t last much longer, and I caught most of his weight with my shoulder, kneeling between them and chuckling softly while they fought to retain consciousness.
I smiled and patted my mother’s head of security on the cheek. “Next time, remember I’m a big girl, ne? Nighty night, Terrance.” Sliding my gaze to Mr. Shiny Shoes, I waved. “Nighty night to you, too, Mr. Shiny Shoes. Nice meeting you. Have a nice nap.”
I gave my victims five minutes to make certain they were fully under before I went to work. First, I removed the darts and checked the wounds to confirm they weren’t bleeding much. Once confident I hadn’t done permanent damage, I relieved them of their jackets and unbuttoned their shirts. As far as sedatives went, the one I favored packed a punch, but it tended to make my victims sweat. Partial nudity would be a lot more comfortable for them, and it’d make them both ask questions. After I dragged them in front of the air conditioner to keep them cool until they woke up, I drew little kisses on them in bright red lipstick to add to their morning dose of panic.
To my relief, both kept their cell phones and wallets in their jackets, and I relieved Terrance of four guns so he wouldn’t shoot someone—me—when he woke up. Suspicious, I patted him down and even checked his shoes, discovering a little derringer hidden in his sock.
Sneaky Terrance. I claimed the tiny, one-round gun as punishment for letting me get the drop on him so easily.
I gave them both a check over, timed their pulses, and determined they would emerge from sedation without issue. I had a counter handy if something went south, and I even had a few emergency tricks up my sleeve, but I preferred a slick, clean job—one that didn’t result in my victim needing a trip to the hospital.