Slither - Edward Lee [116]
One big wet hand pinned her chest to the floor, while the other, now, wriggled for her groin. Ruth's legs moved like fifty miles an hour on a stationary bike; she was going nowhere, but her body was trying anyway.
Her senses disconnected. None of her brain bothered to curse Slydes-that big hairy redneck coward-for leaving her here. None of her brain wasted any synaptic energy on the useless regret that if she'd stayed in school, never done drugs, and never gotten involved with creeps like Jonas and Slydes, then maybe she wouldn't be pinned to the floor in this infernal toolshed by a sex-crazed zombie with no penis. Maybe, just maybe, if she'd kept going to church instead of opting out for strip joints and coke at age eighteen, and pennyante tricks in between sugar daddies ...
It seemed likely that she would never have had occasion to meet her noxious death on an island full of giant pink worms.
Ruth didn't bother thinking about any of that.
Instead, she thought this: The fuckin' barbecue fork!
She'd brought it in from outside, hadn't she? More senses shut down as stout fingers began to play inside her womanly orifice. Her auditory faculties didn't register Robb White's ruined efforts to speak:
"Bluckin' blig-tit butch! Gublunna pull bloor gluts out frew bloor plussy!"
Whatever.
Ruth's eye had already caught sight of the barbecue fork, lying not three feet beyond her reach. If I can get this big zombie fucker's hand off me just for ONE SECOND, she realized, I could get that fork!
Something unexpected happened then, almost in synchronicity with the thought. The yellow lids on Robb's glop-for-eyes shot open. His body stiffened as if seized by a sudden pain, and his gestures of molestation ... stopped.
He pulled away. When he pulled his hand out from Ruth's spread legs, it didn't all come out.
The yellow, red-spotted skin peeled off like a rubber glove.
Robb held up the hand in mute, zombie astonishment. His hand was now a raving, shining pink.
He stood up in haste, shaking through a confusion. Then he began to take his skin off like someone taking off clothes.
The "shirt" of yellow skin crinkled wetly as it was removed from Robb's back. The sleeves turned inside out; then the entire mess was tossed away. What existed beneath was more of the same brand-new, clean, raving pink.
The same color as the worms.
The new pink arms, in fact, looked more like fat, sturdy worms themselves. No nipples or navel adorned the chest, just a remnant human musculature covered by fresh-pink- skin.
Even in this utter madness, Ruth was able to think: What the fuckin' FUCK is happening?
A transformation was happening, not that she could've been technically aware of that. After all, she still thought Robb was a zombie. He was actually now a late-cycle mutant. His robust health had allowed him to survive a full mutagenic conversion, his altered genes bidding this successful wedding of human DNA with genetically transfected worm DNA.
Next, Robb pulled off what was left of his scalp, revealing a glistening pink head with an aperture at the top. His head seemed to collapse, the skull cracking heartily, and then that aperture expanded and expelled the chunks of Robb's cranium. Without the support of bones now, the mass of pink flesh on Robb's shoulders distended and looked a lot like one of the eyeless conical heads of the worms.
Two species were merging into one before Ruth's eyes. But there was still the yellow skin from the waist down...
Robb stepped out of it, like stepping out of a pair of pants.
Gleaming pink legs stood V'd over Ruth. What covered Robb now, clearly, was worm skin. Even his toes looked more like the ends of worms than human toes.
But Ruth couldn't have cared less about the toes.
Her eyes shot to Robb's crotch.
What hung there was purely and simply a fat, teninch worm.
Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, Ruth thought.
Now Robb had something to rape her with, and worse still was the fact that the worm ... was erecting.
That's when Ruth grabbed the barbecue