the path every few feet. She had just been proceeding straight ahead in the dark.
There was no way of telling which of the paths led to the outside.
She snapped the lighter shut and stuck it back in her pocket—and kept moving. All her turns before had been bad choices. This time, she was just going straight ahead. She couldn’t keep going much longer—the exertion was too draining. She had to find a way out, and soon.
In a few minutes, she could hear an odd, wet, slithering sound. Or rather, a series of sounds. She tried to imagine what it could possibly be. If several people were to start dragging around big sacks of wet laundry, it might sound like that…Or perhaps it was just the echoes of water running and trickling…It was hard to tell.
Soon the floor of the tunnel changed. Instead of mud and rocks, she found herself on a smooth, flat surface. The stench in the air was even worse than before.
She felt overhead—no boards or dirt. She was out of the tunnel. Suddenly she had a horrible thought. Had all her wandering led her right back into the mansion?
She stood up, dug out the lighter and flicked it on again. The small wavering flame cast writhing shadows.
She was now in a small cave with a floor of slick gray stone. To one side was a pool with long bones and chunks of raw meat floating in it. Odd, flat, wet things were moving through the pool and around its rim. They were what made that slithering sound. At first she couldn’t tell what they were. They appeared to be shiny blankets—some beige, some pink, some olive-brown—moving aimlessly like misshapen slugs.
One worked its way toward her and she saw it was coated with fine scales, and parts of it were fringed with hair…some parts seemed to be shaped like stockings, and those ended in flattened, boneless toes…
She screamed when she realized that the sluglike creatures were in fact living skins.
She heard something moving in the passage behind her.
Then something hit her on the back of the head, and she passed out.
* * * *
When she woke up, she found herself in a warm, comfortable bed.
Kyle was standing by the bed looking down at her, and so was Kiwi.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“Do not alarm yourself,” Kiwi said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” She put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “Your friend’s uncle brought you to us.”
“Where is that thing—that monster?” Melina said.
Kiwi sighed wearily. “I hope you are not referring to Mrs. Hamogeorgakis. That’s not a nice way to talk about your hostess. Now follow us. It’s time to eat. You’ve been asleep for quite a long time. Surely you must be hungry.”
Kiwi and Kyle then left the room.
Melina got out of bed. Someone had dressed her in a white silk dressing gown.
“Kyle!” she shouted, running after them. “What the hell is going on? I can’t believe you were in on this whole thing.”
In the hallway, the two turned to face her. “Please,” the thin woman said, “there’s no need for raised voices. And we won’t be having any more calls to the police.” She smiled as she looked toward Kyle. “It took quite a while to convince the police that his call was simply a prank. Later he came back, and well—we dealt with him. You know.”
Melina shook her head. “No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?”
“And to think she said you were a clever girl! Haven’t you figured anything out?” Kiwi laughed. “Dear Mrs. Hamogeorgakis should have gone to the sea many centuries ago. But she is in no hurry to do so. So the women of my family have always helped to replace her skin when the scales start to emerge. She heals with amazing speed—she is a living miracle. But the skins become a part of her, so in time, the scales return. The old skins live on after they are replaced, for they have become undying, like her. We put things in their pool for them to…absorb.” Kiwi cocked her head to one side and gazed at Kyle. “Her new look is quite fanciful, yes? Pretty in a different sort of way.”
“Such a lovely boy,” Kyle said in a thick, rumbling, yet distinctly feminine voice. His lips parted in a smile, revealing needle-thin yellow teeth. He turned and walked down the hall.
Melina could see the thick stitches in the back of his neck.
“We wanted to use you,” Kiwi said, “but it’s just as well we didn’t. The scales would have emerged far too soon. Just look what her bite—such a tiny amount of venom!—did to you.”
Gently, she raised the girl’s arm and pulled back the sleeve of the dressing gown.
Fine scales glistened on her forearm, with a slight touch of rainbow iridescence.
“Do not worry. You will make many new friends,” Kiwi said. “In the caves.”
When We Was Flab
Four astounding musicians. Over the years, they have been called Geniuses. Snake-Oil Salesmen. Superstars. Lard-Buckets. Cutie-Pies. Cannibals. Messiahs. Human Devils. No other musical group in the history of rock and roll has ever inspired more commentary or controversy. Personally—until very recently—I have always called them my friends.
They are…The Vittles.
Here are some basic facts about the band, for those of you who have been living in caves or on distant mountain-tops for the past few decades. According to early press releases, they started out as a fresh-faced bunch of kids with guitars, rehearsing in garages and barns in a small rural town in the Midwest. No written records exist concerning their births, grades in school, or any other elements of their early years. That is because after the boys became billionaires, they bought their tiny hometown of Liverpond, Iowa. They paid its citizens to change their names and relocate, and then tore down the buildings and paved over the ruins. Basically, they turned the town into an empty parking lot out in the middle of the cornfields.
A real Nowheres-ville.
None of the boys have ever gone by their real names, whatever those were. Those facts went down with the town of Liverpond. The leader of the group is Popo, the cheery, playful one, he of the bee-stung lips and big puppy-dog eyes. He came up with the tunes, and was usually the lead singer.
Then there’s Jones—the sensitive, poetic one, with his little round glasses and serious demeanor. He wrote most of the lyrics, and even penned a few books of short stories and poetry on the side. Those who have read his work soon come to realize that Jones, like so many poets, has his dark side.
Mongo the drummer is…well, he’s the ugly one, and the first to admit it. His face is mostly nose, and he has enormous eyebrows—and yet, the girls adored him way-back-when, in the same way a child might cherish a scrawny puppy or a kitten with a missing eye.
Gregor was the intellectual mystic. He was intrigued by esoteric philosophies and religions. Girls called him the smart one, and many fell in love with his brooding good looks.
The boys were always a little chunky, and as the years passed, they gained more and more weight—good living does that to people. Along the way, media wags dubbed them…the Flab Four.
They made a few movies along the way, but eventually stopped. The boys only looked even bigger up on the big screen. When their last movie came out—one with several love scenes—an especially sharp-tongued critic commented, “Who wants to watch a documentary on the mating habits of whales?”
The boys did try to lose weight by various means—in fact, that’s how I met them. Years ago, when I was young and needed the money, I worked at a celebrity spa that offered vitamin-enriched colonic irrigations. The Vittles were regular customers, and I learned about the boys inside and out. Later I went into journalism—a line of work not too different from my days at the spa. The boys kept in touch, and even invited me to some of their legendary Hollywood