Page 134 of If Looks Could Kill
Firelight dances along the walls as the papers crackle with flame.
“Here! Stop that!” he cries.
Suddenly, he has her pinned to him once more, her back against his chest, his arm around her neck, clamping her to him. She feels the cold knife at her throat.
To me, she commands her snakes. The smell of smoke fills the dungeon.
And oh, the bliss, as the transformation comes. Her eyes roll back in her head. She tastes her lip. Blood. Yessss.
Now, she orders them. Get him.
She is them and they are her, and so she feels it, tastes it, moves her jaw in concert with her darlings as they attack. As they sink their fangs into the prickly flesh of his face. As they pump their venom into his sickly-tasting blood.
He howls with rage and pushes her away from him. Her serpents will not let go, so bits of him come along for the ride. Some fangs are left behind, and she winces with the pain. He buries his face in his hands and curses as though he’s been doused with acid.
Another crash sounds in the distance. No time to look.
She deals him a backhanded blow with her pipe, and he buckles over with a grunt. She uses the pause to gather more bits of paper and wood and coal, broken crates and dropped kindling, the detritus of a cellar floor, and heap it onto her little fire.
It flares and warms the wetness of blood soaking down her dress. She sees the red and quails. Dying. She’s dying. Let me die slowly, she prays. Give me just time enough to end this.
Every Man Jack(Early Morning, Tuesday, December 4, 1888)
She stung him. Like a hive of hornets, she stung his face. He isn’t sure how. Fingernails, he supposes. She’s got some kind of weapon, too. He has to get that away first. But this fire she’s building will cook them all if it spreads, and bring the whole house down upon them, dead landlords and all. If he survives it, he’ll hang for it, curse her.
He lumbers to his feet and finds a shovel. One swing should be enough. He winds up like a baseball batter.
She yanks the sheet out from under his feet, and he topples, landing hard on his tailbone. It knocks the wind from his lungs, and he gasps in terror. He can’t breathe.
And she is on him. Her face hovers inches from his own. She holds the lamp close so he can see what she is, what she has become.
Snakes encircle her in a venomous halo. A wrathful crown. Her wicked eyes laugh. Her forked tongue thinks it tastes victory in the air.
Her too? How many of these snake women are there?
His vision narrows to a dark tunnel. Well, he has survived these before, though this one has murder in her eyes.
“Little Francis,” a familiar voice tells him. “Look what you made me do.”
He sinks into the oblivion of the past.
He cowers in the corner, by the hearth. A pot of something gray bubbles on its hook over the fire. His father stands in the doorway as cold air swirls around him into the smoky room. He is bloodshot with drink and furious at the squalor he finds there. A swarm of runny-nosed children. A bucket of greasy dishes. The tang of urine in the air mixing with the flatulent odor of boiling cabbage.
Young Francis is frightened. He wails a shrill cry. His father’s eyes narrow.
Sharp voices rise. His mother orders the older girls out. His father yells at the boys to look lively. Only Francis remains, crouching by the fire, in soiled pants, to watch as his father socks his mother. Her chin flies up, her head snaps back, and her skull hits the corner of the hutch. She lands hard on the floor, stunned, and his father slams a chair against a doorframe.
Young Francis opens his mouth to scream. His mother makes eye contact with him.No. Not now, little Francis. Be still; in God’s name, be still.
But his fear is too great. He can’t swallow it down. He wails in terror.
His father raises a hand and approaches, squatting down by the hearth for a better angle.
“Leave the bairn alone,” his mother calls. “Hit me if you like, but leave him be.”
His father rises and turns toward his wife.
His eleven-year-old sister, Elizabeth, darts into the room, seizes her baby brother, and flees with him to the temporary safety of a cold bedroom.
