by R. E. Vance
Willing to let my unintentional gaffe pass for now, she eyes me expectantly. I cannot help but wonder if she’s waiting to see what my nose tastes like.
“Right, where was I?” I ask, taking the hint. “The eighties brought us two true giants in the world of special effects: Stan Winston, who brought us such excellent creations as The Terminator, and Rick Baker, whose work on An American Werewolf in London was truly remarkable.” I idly wonder if there are actual werewolves in the world now and part of me is sad that I won’t be around to find out. “But we must not discount lesser-known visual triumphs such as John Carpenter’s The Thing …” I eye her with some concern, “… which you are not allowed to watch until you are old enough to drive and/or lay eggs—” I frown as a thought strikes me. “Say, why does a reptilian creature give birth to live offspring, anyway?”
My vision dims and fades out, like a defunct television. It’s funny, the things that occupy our mind as the end approaches. “Hey, who turned out the lights?” I quip with what I hope is a reassuring smile to her. “When you discover Doctor Who, you’re going to think that joke is hysterical.”
“Over here!” I hear voices from far away and close up at the same time.
I sigh, readying the shotgun.
“Listen,” I whisper—it’s getting hard to breathe, let alone talk—“you’re in a bad land for those born different: unless you are white, male and Christian, you are going to have to deal with others pissing on you for not being like them—although now that God is AWOL I imagine that last bit is going to become less and less significant.” I wheeze, “But you must never surrender to them. The ‘moral majority’ is, in fact, neither. The world is changing and people fear change almost as much as they fear the unknown, and they hate what they fear. But remain true to who you are, to what you are, because that is the one thing that they cannot take away from you, no matter how hard they try.”
I reach my bloody hand out and grope blindly: tiny shoulder, tiny arm, tiny hand. I take her tiny hand and squeeze it tightly. “And your name. Before this all ends, you deserve a name.” I think, or try to think as best I can given the slight case of death that has befallen me. A single word manages to bob to the surface of my poison-soaked brain.
“Lamia.”
I whisper it with all the conviction and strength that remains in me. “Your name is Lamia.”
In a moment of serendipity, I feel her small fingers curl around my gory hand and squeeze—hard—pressing her face against mine with all the intensity a child can manage. I truly believe she comprehends. I have to believe.
“Run, Lamia,” I whisper, and I’m shocked to discover wetness on my cheek. Am I crying? Is she? I can’t tell and it doesn’t really matter. “Whatever else happens in your life, always remember …
“… don’t be afraid.”
Faintly I hear the crunch of leaves and dead branches and the click of a weapon being cocked. I aim Junior’s shotgun toward the sound, the scent of Budweiser and stale cigarettes high on the wind, and pull the trigger. The shotgun kicks into my ribs, a dull sensation at best, and I topple over as Lamia surges from off my lap to … somewhere away, I hope. The scent of gunpowder and then copper fills the air.
Gotcha, I think with a smile. The leaves on my face feel rough and scratchy, but any sensation is welcome to the state of numbness that Lamia’s poison has left me in.
Forgive her, she knows not what she does, I think.
And then, I don’t think anymore.
Time ceases to have any meaning. Moments and lifetimes are one and the same. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, but neither is there hellfire. I float in that space, that all-encompassing oblivion that seems to exist both within and without. If I still possessed breath, I would be holding it. If I could feel, I would say that the tension is palpable.
And then, sensation begins to creep into my awareness. Thoughts, feelings, heat, pain. At first I wonder if the hellfire was just late in coming. But then I am aware that it is not only localized to just my hand, but that I have hands with a matching body.
And then there is light and it is searing in intensity. I have eyes as well, it seems, that function, and I blink back tears at the intensity of every sensation.
“Ow,” I mumble. My tongue feels thick in my mouth. I am not in Heaven or in Hell, but in a forest. There is a little girl with snakes for hair licking my hand with a forked tongue and watching me with as much a look of grave concern that only a child can muster.
I am confused as I shift my hand and peer at it. It is no longer bloody. There are four fingers and a nub with pink, fresh scar tissue over it. It glistens wetly with her saliva and it burns like alcohol on an open wound. But the burning is a welcome replacement of the numbness from earlier. The bite that she inflicted has likewise faded to a dull white color, healed more completely than my thumb, it seems.
And I am forced to one conclusion:
I am alive.
I sit up and look around. Her and I happen to be the only living creatures about. A few feet away from me, a large man in a hunter’s orange vest is missing most of his upper torso and has a look of surprise on his familiar features: the last of the hunters from the newspaper clipping.
“I hope you died afraid, you son-of-a-bitch,” I rasp. Farther past him I see two more dead men, dressed in camo green and a Larry the Cable Guy T-shirt respectively. Their bodies are all twisted, contorted, locked in whatever final convulsion of pain and fear claimed them: Gorgon venom.
“Nicely done,” I compliment Lamia, who at this point has grown into a toddler. I am unclear on exactly how she has managed to do this, or how she managed to bring me back from the dead by licking the wound she inflicted upon me: anti-venom in her saliva? Magic? Both? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I am alive and she is alive and for the first time in a very, very long time, that matters to me. Life—mine, but especially hers—matters to me, and I am filled with a sensation I do not readily recognize or understand. Purpose? Hope?
“Come on,” I cough, getting to my feet. Her hands are on me, steadying me as best as her tiny frame can. She is certainly a large child at this point, but she is still just a child. “I’m all right,” I mumble. She does not look convinced. Apparently she has come to understand the meaning of “snow job” after all. “I’ll be all right,” I amend. She seems willing to accept this statement.
I walk, her small scaly hand in my disfigured but more or less intact one, and she slithers beside me. I experience a moment of normalcy that is dizzying given the bizarreness of the situation: for a moment, the bodies, the scent of blood and gunpowder, all of that fades away, and I am simply a man holding his little girl’s hand and taking a stroll through the woods.
The realization that she has become my little girl nearly drives me to my knees, but it is no less true: like it or not, we two “monsters” have adopted each other. I am now a parent—absentee God help us both.
In my reverie, I nearly trip over one of the bodies as we depart. Lamia gives me a reproving look: Pay attention to where you’re going!, it seems to say to me.
“Sorry,” I reply, “I was just thinking … Kill a person that looks like a monster and you’re a ‘local hero,’ but kill a monster that looks like a person and ‘everyone loses their mind!’ ” I finish in my best Ledger impression. “I guess it’s all perspective.”
Lamia does not look impressed with my insight and I get the impression that she is not going to make this easy on me. But then, I did not expect her to.
We have made it back to the truck. Lamia’s mother is still within. I don’t know if she is old enough to comprehend the sight of her own mother’s corpse, but I do know that no child should have to.
“Wait here,” I instruct, and if my words do not quite translate, my tone does. Lamia waits off to the side as I stagger toward the truck. A thorough examination of the interior of the cab turns up what I’m looking for: a bandana, a half-finished quart of Jack Daniels and a lighter. I soak the
cloth in alcohol as I make my way to the rear of the vehicle, steadying myself on it as I am not nearly as spry as I would like to be at the moment. Removing the gas cap, I stuff the sodden cloth into the gas tank as far as it will go, gripping the last six inches awkwardly in my freshly-healed hand.
The task is done, finally, and I stop to regard the body of Lamia’s mother. Very deliberately, I reach out and close those fearful eyes. Reaching into my pocket, I find some loose change. A pair of pennies are placed upon her eyelids and, finally, she does not look terrified or in agony, but in a state of something resembling peace.
I raise the bottle in toast to her, her memory, her spirit, wherever it may roam. “I’m sorry,” I apologize on behalf of the entire human race, and then I add, “I’ll do my best by her.” Lamia, and perhaps her dead mother, the once-great Snake Lady, knows who I’m talking about; there is a singularity to the moment, this eulogy, and context is well established. I take a long pull from the bottle—it’s the opposite of smooth but it does steady my nerves some—and I place it, with the utmost care, in the crook of her arm: a final parting gift from this world to the next. “In case Charon’s prices have gone up,” I whisper to her.
And then I light the cloth in the gas tank. It catches on the first go and burns brightly. I haul ass back to Lamia and take several steps back and away.
Lamia is eying me impatiently. She does not know what the holdup is, and I am not convinced that she gives a damn. I cannot help but wonder if she gets that from her mother.
“Wait for it,” I assure her.
The explosion knocks us both backward as the truck goes up. A great roiling gout of flame, red and orange and black, roars up toward the night sky like the phoenix rising. Lamia’s eyes go wide and her mouth drops open. For a moment I’m concerned that the noise has frightened or upset her.
“You all right?” I ask.
And then she grins, a manic gleeful grin, and her eyes glitter with delight as the fire dances in them. Do it again! Do it again! her whole demeanor cries out.
I laugh and I marvel and how good it feels to laugh and I stroke her head. The serpents that crown her head have awakened and one of them hisses at me, sounding less than pleased. Lamia casually gives it a resounding smack! with her hand with no more care than a person would brush an errant lock of hair from their eyes, and the matter is resolved. She then takes my hand and squeezes it, and we watch the makeshift pyre burn together. Lamia’s mother will never again be anyone’s trophy. I can take some comfort in that.
The hornets in my head have ceased—a newspaper article no longer haunts the space behind my eyes and I believe in my heart that I will sleep well tonight (or as well as any new parent does) and that my dreams will not be disturbed by monsters and the innocent women they killed.
But we’ve had enough of Southern hospitality to last us a while. Like Columbus, there is a new world to be explored and I should very much like to see it. Lamia, her mother and myself have all been through Hell, and though not all of us emerged, those of us that did remain alive, however maimed in body and spirit.
“Come on, kiddo.” I pull her away from the fire, to go out of the woods and back to the parking lot where I know there are other vehicles. “Time to go.”
She is reluctant to leave, and I wonder: Does she understand the significance of what is happening here? Or is it simply a case of “Fire pretty!” inside her child’s mind? Truthfully, I don’t think any parent really understands what goes on inside their offspring’s head, human or gorgon. Maybe that’s something we all have in common.
And if there is room in this new world for two vastly different races to have one thing in common, then maybe somewhere there’s a place where they have more. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but after the Hell we’ve both been through, some common ground sounds just like Paradise.
—Stay Tuned. Lamia will return with her own series!—
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Author Bio:
R.E. Vance lives in Edinburgh with his wife, soon to be born child and imaginary dog where he enjoys a beautiful city, whisky and long walks. All he really wants is to quit his job and write stories based in Paradise Lot. All he really hopes for is that his child-to-be is born healthy (ten fingers, ten toes and at least two eyes will do) and that eventually he can can get a real dog so that he can have an excuse to go on even more long walks.
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Bonus Content:
OK—so we’re accumulating quite the cast and growing quite the world … a world that cannot be contained by just following Jean-Luc’s story. That’s why I’m in the process of writing a series of short stories that will NEVER BE SOLD, and are reserved for fans of the series.
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