Filaria - Brent Hayward [53]
Most of the others in her group were similarly adorned, to varying degrees of intricacy and colour. No inked markings Phister had ever seen before on a person’s skin had been as clear or as detailed as these.
The proffered item, in contrast with the gang’s apparel, and in contrast to the girl’s own presence, was nondescript: a brown rod, subtly notched and ridged, as long as Phister’s index finger.
After a moment’s hesitation, during which he glanced over to try to meet McCreedy’s hooded, cloudy, and increasingly unreadable eyes, Phister let go of the dash to take the baton —
Which vanished with an audible pop before his fingers could touch it.
Someone tittered.
Too smitten, too perturbed by hormones and hunger and lack of sleep, too preoccupied with calculations of his chances to score with this girl to show the appropriate level of impression, worldly Young Phister continued to grin affably and was about to attempt a comment when the air all around him began to shimmer. His skin crawled with green sparks. As his vision darkened — suddenly terrified — he did manage to say something — more of a yelp than the witty aside he was hoping for — and promptly fell forward in the passenger seat to strike his head soundly on the rollbar. His tongue seemed to swell to four times its normal size. Lolling, it filled his mouth. Spit drooled down to the grimy car floor. He could do nothing but watch it drip.
From the driver’s seat, McCreedy hissed impatiently at this latest in a long chain of inconveniences. “Now fuckin what? You killed him, you crazy bitch?”
Young Phister, as he slumped, dying, understood his final betrayal. This turn of events had been the expected result all along: he was the butt of a joke, victim of a prank. Here lays a sucker, he thought, killed while his fool heart had begun another of its short and futile flights.
Vision continued to fade until a small point of focus: hyperdetailed snarls of damp blue lint by the worn toe of his right boot. There were instants of agony, each one greater than the last, erupting from every pore of Phister’s skin. He managed to claw through and lift one clenched hand to his own throat, rigid fingers shaking, before pain and everything else around him suddenly vanished —
He stood, entirely placid, in an equally serene and well-lit room.
No longer in the car.
No longer with the girl.
Her group of tough friends had vanished.
As had that vine-wreathed place he and McCreedy had found upon emerging, cautiously, from the lift pod. Thick foliage had crawled over the floors and the walls and the ceilings. When they’d driven, the car crunched it undertire.
But there were no leaves in this place.
He took a deep, cool breath.
Unnaturally clean, here. Music played from an unseen source: a light, tinkling tune on an instrument he could not identify nor, perhaps, had even heard before, yet these sounds were deeply soothing, as if they supplied some long-lost, fundamental element missing from his chemistry.
Tiny braziers, burning on the polished floor around the perimeter of the room, gave off equally unfamiliar scents. There was no furniture to speak of. He felt good. Well-fed and content. These feelings were as foreign as the sounds and smells.
Before him stood a second woman. Had she materialized while he was looking about, appearing as he turned his attentions toward her? Or was she there when he first came to this strange room? Odd that he wasn’t sure.
Older than the beautiful girl, this woman was dressed in a pale green suit. She also had lots of hair — red hair, if he had to give it a colour — piled up on her head. Plenty of teeth, too, when she smiled. Which she was doing, her face sort of frozen that way.
He was sure getting used to the sight of these wet white bones