Posted by PK on October 07, 2001 at 17:18:30:
Annette was bored. Or, if not bored, at least restless. Nothing interesting on the forum since
the last brilliant PK story. The problem with those was that as soon as you've finished one
you want another. She felt twitchy, as if she had an itch she couldn't scratch. She could just
turn off the bloody computer and turn on the TV, but American TV is insufferable unless
you're stoned or drunk enough and she was trying to stay off the sauce.
What to do? Listlessly, she considered ordering a pizza. She wasn't really hungry but it would
be something to do. Maybe she could seduce the delivery guy.
Okay, services. She doodled on the keyboard for a bit, calling up ordering services. Links led
anywhere and everywhere and nowhere. Pizzas got her to Monster Pizza, she skipped past it
and then tried to skip back. Damn, missed that turning. Call up a search engine, try to find it
again.
Lots of hits, try to narrow it down. Maybe...
Maybe turn on the TV anyway. Background images and sound. Oh, great, a rerun of 'V'.
Reptilian aliens who ate people. All promises, no delivery.
Or just have a nice, long bath and go to bed. The fun never ends. Her elbow hit her coffee
cup and she scrambled to catch it before it splashed all over the keyboard. "Give me a
fucking break," she muttered. And then, "Ow!" Some of the coffee had gone down her leg,
thank that bastard God it wasn't too hot. A little had made its way to its obviously intended
destination. She tried to mop it away before it did any damage. Murphy I; God 0. If they
weren't in fact the same Person.
And what was THAT on the screen? She couldn't recall how she'd got here. Monster delivery,
enter your selection.
Annette deciphered the menu system with increasing incredulity and - yes - amusement. Oh,
very good! Best one since the Cthulhu site. Select your own Monster. Some sort of fantasy
site, role playing? She surfed the links, slalomed around a few popup farms and stopped at
'Personals'.
Scoot down that list. Here was a good one:
"Alien gentleman, ophidian somatotype, seeks nubile human female with a view to frank and
friendly exchange of views prior to frank and friendly consumption of latter party . E-mail
address withheld for reasons of privacy. Contact via Monster Contact Links, on 'Things'R'Us',
part of the GynoVore ring, subsection 'Order', 'Big Snake'. ID, 'ScalyBigBoy'"
Cedric was bored. Not merely bored so much as stunned with boredom, in a state
approaching awe. It was indeed awful.
"Are you anywhere near finished yet?" he muttered between gritted fangs.
Gwen was still lying naked on the floor, legs asprawl, talking into her mobile phone. The
conversation, what Cedric hadn't been able to tune out, was one of truly astronomical inanity.
This had been going on for half an hour at least. How do they do it? he wondered for the
ninety fifth time. How do they manage to talk incessantly, tirelessly, without any regard for
their surroundings, as it it were a matter of life and death, about nothing at all?
"So, yeah, look, I gotta go. There's this guy here...well, no, not a guy exactly. What? No, it's
not Brad,. I told you we finished. No, I mean it. You still think he's got a thing? Well, I don't so
who gives a shit."
Cedric - and we've been through this before but I'll say it again, it's not exactly his name,
okay - closed his yellow eyes in pain. So sweet, so tasty, so aromatic, so beautiful. A vision.
My fault, he admitted to himself. I let her talk. He wrapped his forked tongue around her
ankle and gave it a gentle tug. "Excuse me," he hissed. "Before we were interrupted..."
"No, look, I really gotta go." Long pause. "Because he's an alien. No, not Brad, this guy here.
He was just about to eat me when you called." Another pause. "Eat me, you know. No, not
like that. No, not fuckin' Brad, get OFF that will you? You want him, you got him. No, I can't.
You tell him." Another pause. "Because the alien - Sedri something like that - no,"
Gwen turned to Cedric. At last, he thought.
"It's not Sid, is it?" she asked.
Cedric's beeper went off. Politely, he ignored it. "No, not Sid," he said, "If fact it's...."
"No, it's not," Gwen said into the phone. "Not Sid. Who's he anyway?"
This is Hell, Cedric thought. Nor am I out of it. It could be hours, possibly days, before this
seemingly interminable conversation ran out of steam. Why? Because it wasn't going
anywhere, it just meandered on its way like a babbling brook or a leaf in the wind.
"So, like I said," Gwen wittered on, I can't tell him tomorrow because this alien guy will have
eaten me by then..."
Wanna bet? Cedric mused bitterly. Why had he let her take the call? Why, for that matter,
had he taken the name 'Cedric'? He SHOULD have been a 'Sid'. Hissing Sid, Sid Vicious. He
could have interrupted a phone call brusquely with a name like that, but no, a Cedric just
wouldn't.
"No, I told you, his name isn't....what? A hunk? Depends what you go for, I guess. He's kinda
big, anyway. And green."
It was all too much. Cedric gave up and activated his neural commlink. What's that? Well,
imagine the ultimate in hands-free phones, okay? With everything else tied in: Internet
uplink, answering service, microcomputer database and a hell of a portable stereo system.
Walkman + cellphone + PC ++. You don't have to carry it, it's implanted.
"You have messages," his personal organiser told him. Cedric opted for projection, it was
faster, skimming through his e-mail on an internal virtual screen fed into the visual cortex.
The latest, the one that had triggered his pager, got his attention. The semi-sentient
organiser had flagged this one with an icon which, roughly translated from the Srethugarian
symbolism, meant 'HOT BABE!!!".
"Catch you later," he muttered at Gwen "Unless somebody else does." Cedric slipped on
some early Pink Floyd and sychromeshed it to his transporter. Somehow, it wasn't the same
without it. Astronomy Domine worked its way up. Over, under, sideways, down...
[Floating down the sound resounds around the icy waters underground.
Lime and limpid green the sound surrounds the icy waters underground....
To Lucifer Sam...
Jennifer Gentle, you're a witch.]
The sparkles started. Light show for the Star Trek effects he'd built in.
[And that cat's something I can't explain.
Lazing in the foggy dew...
Too much, I won't touch you but then I might.
Here we go,
Ever so
High
Interstellar Overdrive...Ignition. Props away.]
Glittering lights, green scaly flashes, gone. Customised transport at its finest.
"So, like I said..." Gwen burbled on.
Annette switched off the computer and contemplated a bout of solitary self indulgence. Don't
ask. She turned around, scratching herself indecorously under her scanty nightdress. Good
game, she thought.
Then she thought she heard a distant sound of early psychelic rock echoing ever so faintly,
like the horns of Elfland softly blowing, from her switched off stereo system. The air itself
seemed to sparkle. DTs, she thought. Flashback. Pretty cool one though. You could almost
dance to it.
A giant snake materialised in front of her. Something like a snake, anyway. It had a large
mouth, a flickery tongue, and pretty green scales.
I haven't seen that one before, she thought, and then, yes I have.
"ScalyBigBoy?" How could that be?
"I prefer Cedric," said Cedric. "I believe you ordered me? If you didn't, please say now. I'm
not authorised to use this tech level unless my coefficients - conjoints? - invoke me. Invoke?
Archaic usage...but accurate enough..."
I'm babbling, he realised with embarrassment. He was nervous. Hot babe didn't cover it. All
redheads are witches, he remembered. What a lousy introduction..
"I'm here with respect to exchange of views prior to frank and friendly consumption of latter
party, IE you. As requested."
Annette worked that out. "You mean you chat me up before you swallow me?"
"Yes." Cedric was tongue-tied, not a pleasant sensation for an ophidian.
Golly gosh, what a suave and handsome fellow, Annette thought. Woman eating Space
Things are real. Who'd have thought it? Such lustrous scales, green was hardly adequate to
describe them. She felt dishevelled and frowsy in comparison. Ratty old nightgown,
slippers...
"Have I got time to take a shower?" And maybe clip my toenails.
For you, my darling, anything. "Of course," Cedric said.
"No," Gwen explained with the heavy patience of the exasperated adolescent. "He's green
because he's a big snake. Ess En Ay Kay. What, there's an 'e' in that? I'll ask him."
She looked up.
Where'd he go?
"I guess he stepped out. I dunno, maybe the bathroom."
Annette, freshly washed and arrayed in her sexiest negligee, sipped her wine. She'd been
saving it for a special occasion, like suddenly deciding to get pissed as a rat again, and now
seemed like as good a time as any.
"Sure you won't have some?" she offered politely. "I shouldn't really drink alone."
"Better not," said Cedric, equally politely. "It would take rather a lot to affect me seriously -
body mass, you know - and it's not a good idea anyway to be drunk in charge of a personal
transporter. Materialise at random inside something solid, cataclysmic molecular
displacement explosion, that sort of thing. There's a stiff fine." He paused. It wouldn't do to
be unsociable. "Tell you what, pour a little into a saucer and I'll sample the aromatics with my
tongue. I have an acute olfactory sense there."
Annette found a saucer and poured. Honour and social amenities satisfied, the atmosphere
became palpably more relaxed. One problem remained.
"Would you do me a very great favour?" Cedric asked.
Annette gestured easily. "Why not? What?"
"I hate to ask..."
"I have to make a call," Cedric said. "It won't take long."
"No, like I said, I was playing this game, y'know, on the net? Yeah, like a video game only
different. Tomb Raider? No, not really. Anyway, I sort of picked getting eaten by a snake.
Then he was here. It was kinda weird, but cool. Like being in that movie with Tommy Lee
Jones. Or the one with the giant bugs. So he says he's gonna eat me and I get naked and
then he's just, like, gone."
"Go ahead," Annette sighed, tossing him the phone.
"No need, thanks," Cedric replied. He activated his commlink and composed a brief
message, then sent it. Fire and forget packet transmission, basically the same as Terran e-
mail. "All done."
Somewhere, in the labyrinth of cyberspace, a fateful message travelled to its destination as
the pair became better aquainted.
"Glad to hear it." Annette picked up the phone and threw it out of the window. My kind of girl,
Cedric thought. "Now, how's your wine?"
"Robust," Cedric said, "And adequate. But, to be brutally frank, a little unsubtle. It pales into
insignificance compared to the heady, nay the divine essences of your own fragrant person."
Great Ophiuchi, that was corn on wheels, Cedric thought. Fortunately, his date didn't seem to
mind. It's the sincerity that counts, he thought, not the precise mode of expression.
"Gone, like not here. Yeah, he really was here. You don't believe me, call it up yourself. It's
WWW dot something. Yeah, okay, I'll look. Computer's still on." Gwen stood up and looked.
"Shit, I can't spell that, I'll send it." She relapsed into her sprawl, face down, tender feet
kicking at the air. "So I guess I can tell whatsisface..."
They were getting on famously. Cedric's initial jitters had evaporated.
"Feet first, of course, I want to enjoy it for as long as possible."
"I couldn't agree more. It's so much nicer to consume my prey - no offense.."
"None taken."
"Alive and preferably NOT kicking. Speaking of which - not that I want to rush you - should
we get started?"
Annette stood up and pulled the negligee over her head. Cedric's tongue would have hung
out, in fact it did, but it had been already in a manner of speaking. It detracted from the
impact of the gesture. His eyes should have popped out, but they remained no more or less
protuberant than usual.He felt he had to add something. What could he say?
"Would you like some music on?" Annette asked.
What would be appropriate for a meal of this quality? Bach? Mozart? Saint-Saens? Led
Zeppelin?
"Early Floyd," Cedric mumbled. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Then 'Careful with
That Axe Eugene', the BBC sessions. Live."
"Okay," Annette said. "Except I don't have them."
"No problem," Cedric said, relieved. "I have." It was simple to activate the primitive sound
system by EM pulse and feed the amp's input from his sound files via his comm.
'Julia dream'? Skip back.
"NO I AM NOT STILL FUCKING HIM. Jeeezus, will you get OFF that? Just because I'll still
BE here....gimme a BREAK!"
Annette, back to the floor, slipped her feet into Cedric's mouth as the music whispered
seductive insanities. She sipped from her second glass of wine, or was it the third? Some of
it spilled over her breasts. Sauce. Would he get drunk on her? She giggled.
Cedric realised in a burst of inspiration what he should have said. A distillation of
gastronomic appreciation into one pithy phrase.
"Mmmmmm......FOOOOOOOD......"
Annette tingled. Don't ask where.
Gwen twisted onto her back, phone still clutched firmly in hand like a security blanket. "I just
said..."
"Hey, there's something.....what the fuck are YOU?"
"Call me Cedric's locum," the batrachian apparition enunciated. "Not exactly an infraction, I
didn't teleport or use a weapon." It grabbed Gwen's ankle. "Just a hot tip..I came in through
the door. You just didn't notice."
"..N'other big green guy," Gwen babbled into the phone. "Sorta frog..."
"Aldebaranian."
"Algebran. Looks like the whole space alien thing is back, just tell....HEY!!! You cut me off!
You can't just...ohhhh.....oookay..."
Albert, as we've previously noted, had never been particularly good at chat up lines. Witty
repartee was simply not his forte and he always ended up in the kitchen at parties. Not for
him the bon mot.
He just ate her.