Slither - Edward Lee [0]
"The living legend of literary mayhem. Read him if you dare!"
-Richard Laymon, author of The Cellar
"Edward Lee's writing is fast and mean as a chain saw revved to full-tilt boogie."
-Jack Ketchum, author of Off Season
"Lee pulls no punches."
Fangoria
"The hardest of the hardcore horror writers."
-Cemetery Dance
"Lee excels with his creativity and almost trademark depictions of violence and gruesomeness."
-Horror World
THE SLITHERING THING
"I found the hose!" Howie bellowed, running back around the corner. He held the long length in one hand. "fiam it o-" But then he stopped.
"Howie," Leona said with the sickest feeling in her life churning in her belly. "That isn't the hose..."
It hung limp until the moment she'd said that, almost as if it had sensed the trigger of Howie's fear. His eyes snapped down...
Then the "hose" began to move...
Vaguely pink, glistening skin. About an inch thick. It extended from his hand, behind him, its other end still on the other side of the shack. Howie tried to drop the grotesque thing but it was already too late for that. In the space of that synaptic second, the creature energized and wrapped around Howie's upper torso-
Then Howie was dressed in the thing, wearing it like a corselet. His scream was severed when more of its length coiled about his neck. Howie fell over.
His eyes still registered images as his vision clouded, and then the thing's head made itself plain: slightly tapered, less like asnake and more like a worm.
A pink hole dilated-a mouth opening?-then a thinner pink tube of something fleshy slipped out and-
"Howie!" Leona screamed.
-slithered down Howie's throat.
Other Leisure books by Edward Lee:
THE BACKWOODS
FLESH GOTHIC
MESSENGER
INFERNAL ANGEL
MONSTROSITY
CITY INFERNAL
SLITHER
EDWARD LEE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to: Mike Anthony and Michael Kennedy for my wonderful Header movie, Bob Strauss for indefatigable proofing; Cedric Perez for tech stuff; Shay Prentiss and Christine Torres; Noel and Lance at X Ray Productions; Jen and Monica from Rue Morgue; Kelli and Kelly from Horror Web; Sascha Mamczak and Francis Hoch; Juan Carlos Poujade; Barry Anderson, Thomas Deja, Aaron Williams, Christine Morgan, Nick Yak. Also Kathy, Mindi, Pam, Tess, and Wendy.
PROLOGUE
When Carol noticed the two ticks attached to her nipples, she very understandably screamed.
She screamed right into Howie's face.
Parrots screeched, lifting off from palm trees; other animals tore away through the brambles. Were he not so shocked himself, it might even have occurred to Howie that Carol's scream barely sounded human. It sounded, instead, machinelike: a bad bearing in a highrpm motor.
"Ticks!" Carol shrieked after the scream.
Howie stared at the breasts he'd been dying to see all month, and then his mouth fell open. He thought: Holy Jesus God Almighty! What are those THINGS?
And the things-barely the size of jelly beansseemed to be quivering.... .
Are they ... are they really ticks?
"Get them off, get them off, get them off, Howie!" She shuddered against the tree, her smart and very expensive Victoria's Secret "tankini" top on the ground. All that remained in the way of apparel were stylish hot-pink Converse tennis shoes and the tiny floral bikini bottom. Howie had spent the entirety of his junior year yearning to see her like this ...
But not while she's screaming bloody murder with two-two-two THINGS on her nipples!
She slid down to the ground, probably close to clinical shock now. "Relax, relax!" He tried to calm her. "Don't pass out! I don't think they're ticks and I don't think they're leeches...."
What, then?
Slugs?
Carol's face was paling. Her body began to convulse like slow electrocution.
Oh, shit! Howie hunkered down, gingerly cupped one tangerine-firm breast, and tweezed one of the things off her left nipple.
It didn't let go at first, and he couldn't help but imagine the tiniest mandibular hooks sunk into the tender nipple-tip, drawing out blood. When it finally came off, a few minute specks of blood