Page 67 of If Looks Could Kill
The sharpness of detail in which she sees him changed by the passage of time is disconcerting. This is a dream, isn’t it? Is it possible, Pearl wonders, that I am really here?
But he ishim.
The prior Pearl would run. What she is now creeps closer, closer. He hears her, hears the song of her crown, but still he scans the darkness, turning back and forth, finding nothing.
She is invisible to him. Good. She draws closer still.
Rage bursts in her chest at the nearer sight of his face, the wetness of his lips, the hair in his nostrils, the sinews of his neck. She lives again the scenes of terror his face conjures.
Never again. Not her, not anyone. This ends. She will end it. She will enjoy ending it.
Now.
She curls her fingers before her face and watches them elongate, watches claws unsheathe themselves from where petal-pink fingernails once grew. She tastes the blood on her lips where fangs erupt from her gums to pierce her own mouth. She feels her throat toughen and thicken. Feels a throbbing on her scalp as her snakes swell, stretch, inflate, unhinge their jaws.
She flings out her hands, throws back her head, and drinks in the cold air of night. It tingles with shards of ice. It sparkles on her tongue. It floods her body with drive. She is unstoppable now.
The man in the corner convulses. “Who’s there?”
She takes a loud step forward, then another.
Her power rests upon her like a cloak. Like a thundercloud.
She will exact her own past sufferings upon him. She will infiltrate his mind. Leave him a cringing worm, forever glancing over his shoulder. Dreading dark rooms. Feeling unsafe alone. Never again knowing a night’s restful sleep.
Guilt and shame should already have done this to him. They would, if there were justice.
Sheis justice now. Her hour of vengeance has come at last.
It won’t do for her to remain invisible. She throws open a pair of wooden shutters to allow in the light of a swollen moon. Then she swoops down till her face is inches from his.
It takes him a second to register, to adjust to the new light and see what’s before him.
“Boo,” she says.
He shrieks and shields his face with a fluttering hand. She cackles with laughter as her snakes weave and lunge at him.
The dark yellow stink of urine meets her nostrils, followed by the fetid stench of feces. His bladder and bowels couldn’t withstand his fright. He has soiled himself.
She laughs all the more. Well done, O manly one.
“Do you remember me?” she whispers.
He is staring at her. Into her eyes, then up to the writhing mass of serpents spilling down over them. His chin disappears into the flesh of his neck as he shakes his head once.
“Because I remember you,” she told him. “So I’d like you to remember me. Like this.”
She slides her tongue across her fangs, tasting blood, and smiles. Perhapsit’s the devil’s own smile when freshly damned souls reach hell. Her snakes shoot toward him, poker-straight. Cocked and loaded weapons. Chained dogs straining at the leash.
He whimpers as her claws slowly graze his face. She has no need to leave a mark.
And there it is. A dawn of recognition. He knows what she is now—she sees the word “Medusa” form upon his lips—and he recognizes, too, beyond the gruesome mask, a trace of the confused and frightened girl she once was, years ago.
Your sins catch up to you on Judgment Day.
His eyes roll back in his head. His body falls slack, slumped against the wall, his neck at a harsh angle. Unconscious with fear.
And Pearl is conscious once more. Alone in that stiflingly warm room at that woman’s house, on that strange, secluded street. Hundreds of miles from her father’s barn. Awake, alone, and disappointed that she can’t complete her retribution upon that sack of pig manure.
