Slither - Edward Lee [52]
I stayed, she knew. I slept on the floor-I'm positive.
And if she'd slept on the floor .. .
How did she wind up in the woods?
When she leaned up, more shock hit her: she was still naked. She almost shrieked when she brushed some bugs off her thighs and stomach, then thought Fuck! and flicked a slimy tree frog out of her belly button. Dismay shot her head around; then she saw that she lay less than fifty feet from the shed. Sunlight struggled down through high branches. The door to the shed remained open.
My clothes must still be in there, she realized. She wiped sweat off her brow and smacked her lips. Yuck! Her mouth tasted dry and stale, and her stomach squirmed to remind her how hungry she was. Jonas's asskicking pot always leaves some ass-kicking munchies. She was probably dehydrated, too. In this heat? Even last night it didn't feel as though the temperature had dropped below eighty. And I slept in it. In the fuckin' woods?
She must've been so stoned, she'd tried to walk back to the boat, but then passed out. It was the only explanation. When she looked down more closely at herself, it almost seemed as if she'd been laid out deliberately: legs spread wide, arms out, flat on her back and nude. But when she tried to get up-
"Oww! Fuck!"
Her hands flew to her bare heels, which suddenly barked in pain when she'd dragged them across the ground.
Her heels were scuffed bloody, and her buttocks and bottoms of her thighs sparkled in pain, too.
What the fuck happened to me?
She helped herself up, blinking her confusion through the headache. Now her eyes scanned back toward the shed and she saw two lines coming from the doorway and ending-
Exactly where her heels had been.
"This is fucked up! I didn't pass out in the fuckin' woods! Somebody dragged me here! They dragged me out of the shed and left me!"
But who? And why?
Jonas? Slydes? Why would they do that? Or maybe one of those nature photographers, she thought, but that didn't make sense either.
Then she thought again of her position. Like she'd been deliberately laid out spread legged-in wait of something.
Like bait, came the next, odder thought. Somebody left me here on purpose ...
The rustling chopped off her remaining thoughts. Just a few feet away, she noticed leaves moving on the ground. I don't need this fuckin' shit!
She ran back to the shed and slammed the rickety door.
"Fuck!" she exclaimed yet again.
Ruth's less than complex mind crapped out on further contemplations. Dread and terror left her winded. We just need to get the fuck off this fuck-hole shit-bird island, was about the most sophisticated assessment she could make of her situation.
And whatever had been outside rustling beneath the leaves ...
Ruth didn't think about it.
The heat inside the shed wrung more sweat from her pores, which plipped like rain on the dry wood floor, leaving dots. Fuck! You could cook pizzas in here! Her marijuana hangover hindered her as she pulled her shorts and top back on. It was so hot she paused a moment and leaned against the wall.
And noticed that the spots her sweat had made on the floor-
Ruth stared.
-were moving.
She steadied herself, squinting.
Her vision shifted further: dehydration, fatigue, mental trauma, and now the oppressive heat all conglomerating. Was she seeing double?
More ... spots seemed to be converging on the spots that her sweat had left. The more she stared, the more clear it became.
The spots were moving.
Fuckin' Jonas! He must've laced that pot with PCP or opium!
Ruth needed to know that; she needed an explanation that her mind could fathom. So she walked shakily to the middle of the floor, put her hands on her knees, and leaned over. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and focused.
Some of the spots weren't drops of sweat. They were beetles or something-snot yellow with tiny red dots.
They encroached on the sweat drops, as if to drink. Then some of them began to inch toward Ruth's feet.
"Fuck this shit, man!" she declared and stumbled