Image of the Beast and Blown (31 page)

with many moving plates to enable it to progress so ser-
pentinely. Did it have an ophidian skeleton?

He was so numb that it did not occur to him to won-
der how this whole process could come about. He just
accepted it.

Presently, the many-legged cunt, still followed by
the many-legged uterus, walked towards him. The hairy-
back animal bumped into his stomach, staggered back,
half-turned, and bumped along his body. It stopped when
it came into contact with his chin, slid along it and around
to his mouth, where it stopped. He could not see it,
but he had the feeling that it was leaning against his lips.
Its hairs brushed his nose and made him want to sneeze.
The odor from it was clean and faintly musky, and un-
der other circumstances he would have enjoyed it very
much.

The cunt remained by him, pressing on his mouth, as
if it recognized something familiar in its blind and deaf
world. The uterus was nestled against his neck, its wet
skin on his skin.

The snake-thing kept on coming towards him and
then it disappeared around his head. He tried to throw
his head back and to turn it, but he could not. Within
a few seconds, he felt it crawling up over the back of his
head. He wanted to scream, to make a superhuman ef-
fort that would enable him to burst out of his own skin
and run out of the room. Then the thing was coiled up
on his cheek, and the wet beard was tickling the lobe
of his ear.

The voice was tiny and tinny.

The words were unintelligible. They were in that
same language he had heard before, in between French
and Spanish. Like an unnasalized, untruncated French.
An archaic French, perhaps.

The tiny tinny voice raged on. Its forked tongue
flicked against the inner part of his ear.

Suddenly, there was a silence. The body was still
there, but it was motionless. The vagina-thing abruptly
scuttled away with the uterus-thing nosing after it. Vivi-
enne's head appeared from under the bed and stalked
slowly towards him. Her tongue was sticking out from
her lax lips, and her bright eyes stared at him.

Her head stopped a few feet from his eyes. Her eyes

looked up, evidently at the thing on his cheek. Her lips
moved, but no voice issued. This was to be expected,
since she had no lungs. The lungs were twin creatures
lurching like sick dinosaurs along a drying swamp to-
wards the far wall.

Maybe, Childe thought, maybe the thing can lip-
read. Maybe she's giving him instructions for starting
the reassembly process.

But what if there is no reassembly? What if this
is final? What do I know about her or others of her
kind? All were strange, but Vivienne was the strangest.
She did not fit into any categories of vampire or
werewolf or lamia or ghost. Maybe, when the cord is
yanked, the lanyard pulled, she has had it. Surely, she
—her parts that is—can't survive long in this condi-
tion. They have to eat and to excrete, they are as sub-
ject to natural laws as any other creatures, even if they
seem to be unnatural.

There is nothing unnatural in this universe. Anything
that seems so just isn't explained yet. All things can
be explained by natural laws. If you don't know cer-
tain laws, then you think a thing is unnatural.

The snake-thing slid down over his eyes onto the
floor. It crawled to Vivienne's head and coiled there while
the upper part rose to a point a few inches before
her eyes. It swayed back and forth like a cobra, and
sometimes its head turned. Its mouth was working, and
its face was twisted with rage. Only when its head was
turned towards him could Childe hear the faint piping
voice. It was still using the unknown tongue.

Presently it communicated something or it tired of try-
ing to communicate. It turned and crawled to a point
just past his chin. He could not see what it was doing un-
til a moment later. It crawled out past him, towing the
uterus behind it. Its tail had been inserted into the in-
terior and probably was being implanted again.

When it was a little distance past his head, it
stopped and turned again. It crawled back towards him,
stopping with the uterus leaning up against his fore-
head. The vagina moved away, and he was able to
see that the snake-thing was butting it with its head.
Herding it.

When it had the vagina maneuvered into the proper

position, it slipped through from the rear of the vagina
and emerged through the slit. The vagina moved back-
wards as if impelled by telepathy until it was reunited
with the uterus-thing.

Now what? Childe thought, and then he was able
to worry about himself for the first time. Maybe the poi-
son did wear off; maybe Vivienne had been lying about
the necessity of the antidote. She must have wanted to
give Bill an antidote to get him going more quickly.
And at the same time she had administered the poison
that would stop his heart. If she had not lied about that,
of course.

He tried to move but was as unable as before. How-
ever, his thinking and his vision were not as unfocused.

Now he began to be impressed with the utter alien-
ness of the life before him. That a living body could
fall apart into discrete creatures which were mobile
was unthinkable. But there they were. And how did
they survive so long? The blood system, for instance, had
been cut off, sealed into each creature, but the circula-
tion, of course, had stopped. That was easy to see. There
was the heart, its veins and arteries closed up, moving
away from him towards the underside of the bed on
thirty frail legs. Something about it reminded him of
a headless chicken.

But how did these things live without the bringing
in of oxygen and the carrying away of waste? They
had to have some auxiliary source of energy and ex-
cretion. Had to have!

And how did Vivienne manage to hide all these
fissures and cleavages, all these legs and God knew what
other biological mechanisms, in her body? She should
have looked fat and lumpy, but she had not. She
had a superb body and that face, that painfully beau-
tiful face, now walking around on a score of skinny
legs and four support legs from behind her ears!

The snake-thing dragged itself in front of him, trailing
the uterus, in chase of the anus and buttocks. Obviously
it intended to unite with them. But what then? It was
becoming unwieldy and could not corner too many
other pieces and unite before it became too heavy and
too awkward.

The head had been busy while he watched the snake-

thing. It had kicked and pushed shoulders and a neck
until they were huddled together in a corner of the room.
Then the head went off in pursuit of various entrail
things while the snake-thing backed into the buttocks
and anus and hooked up as a railroad engine would hook
up several cars with another.

At that moment, he felt the floor vibrate slightly un-
der him. A second later, two large shoes were by his
head. Then the shoes moved on out past him, and he
saw the chauffeur. He was a big man with a skin as
dark as a sunburned Sicilian's, but his features were
Baltic. He had a broad face with high cheekbones and
a high forehead and straight dark hair. The scene be-
fore him did not seem to bother him in the least.

With swift but efficient movements, he began to re-
assemble Vivienne Mabcrough. The parts were placed
together or one inserted into another, and presently she
was stretched out on the floor in a unit. The fissures
closed; the cracks disappeared; the cleavages filled out.
When her skin was again unbroken, he hit her over the
heart with his fist. She gasped for air, breathed for a
while, and then sat up. She was a little unsteady but
waved the hand of the chauffeur away.

The head of the snake-thing came out of her slit
and stared angrily at him.

"Barton," she said, "put him on the bed and undress
him."

Wordlessly, Barton picked Childe up in his arms and
laid him out on the bed. He proceeded to take off all of
Childe's clothes and to hang them up neatly in the closet.
The shoes and socks went under a chair. Childe could
see this because he was able by then to turn his head.
He could not, however, talk.

"You can go now, Barton," Vivienne said.

The big dark man looked emotionlessly at Childe.
Then he said, "Very well, madame," and left.

Childe wondered what his place was in Vivienne's
group. If Barton was wholly of human origin, then he
was one of the vilest collaborators in history. Or in
unhistory, since history, or any human science or sci-
entific discipline, refused to acknowledge the existence,
or the possibility of existence, of these beings.

Vivienne stood over him and bent down so that one
breast hung above his mouth a few inches.

She said, "You frustrated me, my beautiful Herald
Childe, and I don't like to be frustrated. You took away
my Bill, a stupid ass of a man but a great cock. So you
will substitute for him, even though you are now for-
bidden."

He wanted to ask her what she meant by "forbidden"
but could not even open his mouth.

Vivienne kissed him and thrust her tongue into his
mouth and felt his tongue and teeth and gums while she
played with his cock with one hand. Despite himself, he
responded. His penis felt slightly titillated; it warmed
up and swelled a little, if his sense of feel was any indica-
tion.

Vivienne moved herself up then and put her nip-
ple in his mouth, but he was unable to suck on it. If
he had been able, he would have refused. She was the
most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she was
by now far from the most desirable. He did not care
for murdereresses at all, and he loathed her for that
thing coiled in her womb. He hoped it was still there, but
he doubted it. His anus was beginning to contract
in dread of its coming.

Even though he did not suck or tongue it, her nipple
grew large and hard in his mouth. She withdrew it and
put the other one between his lips, and it grew large.
Then she began to kiss his nipples and to stroke his
cheeks with her fingers. She slowly traced her tongue
down his belly, working back and forth and across,
drawing geometric designs with its tip.

When she came to his pubic hairs, she ran her tongue
along the edge of the hairline and then worked her
tongue over the hairs until they were wet. His penis
swelled some more. He did not want it to be affected in
the least by her, but the paralyzing effect of the bite
made him unable to resist. He loathed her and he
wanted to scream at the thought of the snake-thing.
But the loathing and the horror were numbed, far
away. The pleasure of her tongue and lips was the im-
mediate entity.

When he felt her mouth closing around his testicles,
he began to be flooded with a hot sensation. It arose

from under his navel and spread outwards but chiefly to-
wards the base of his penis. When it oozed into his
penis, it filled it out so that it rose up straight and hard.

After a while, she pushed the testicles out with her
tongue and lowered her head over his cock. Her lips
went softly and wetly around the head, and her tongue
pressed against the slit in its end. He groaned deep within
himself and could not repress a desire to move his
hips upward to drive his prick deeper into her mouth.
The desire was all that resulted; his hips remained mo-
tionless.

Vivienne continued to suck on the glans and occa-
sionally to move her head down so that the shaft went in
all the way. The warmth at the base of his penis became
a rod of fire which stretched from the tip of his spine
to the tip of his cock. The heavy gray fluid was mov-
ing slowly, rubbing against excited nerves, towards the
entrance to his shaft.

Suddenly, Vivienne got up and turned around, pre-
senting that lovely back and the egg-shaped buttocks.
She squatted over him and reached down and tenderly
took the head between her fingers. This she guided into
her anus as she lowered herself down on it. The head
stuck in the tight mouth for a minute and then abruptly
slid in. It moved against a warm slick surface until the
flesh of her ass was against his pubic hairs.

She lowered and raised herself slowly several
times, causing him to feel ecstatic. It would hot take
much of this to make him come. And he did not like
buggering. Though he had done it several times to
women who liked it, he had a distaste for it. Now his
repulsion was on the edge of his mind. It bulked large
enough for him to be aware of it, but it did not bother
him.

She stopped on an upward movement, leaving his cock
half in.

Knowing what was about to happen, he mentally
gritted his teeth. The horror did not draw any blood
from his engorged penis, however.

Suddenly, something slipped down over his testicles.
It slid over the sac and under, and something—the
thing's bearded little head, of course—touched his
anus. Then it entered and was pushing into his anus

and then up his rectum. It felt hard and solid and un-
pleasant, as when a doctor stuck a finger up him for a
prostate examination. But this disagreeable sensation
did not last long. Something, perhaps its bite or the sub-
stance released by its bite, turned unpleasantness into a
warm and relaxing feeling.