Instead of a churning, thumping motor, these clothes discordantly danced to the cacophony of Dynamap monitors beeping, and frantic orders being shouted. The anesthesia dissociated Mitch from the operating room, as though he was peering through a kaleidoscope. The Kentucky Senator certainly had no idea he was the patient about to give birth.
Mitch couldn’t feel much, just a dull numbness where his body had been.
“It’s breaching,” the doctor said.
“What is that?” another voice asked.
“I think it’s a tail.”
Mitch tried to lift his head to look at what they were going on about, but his body was obscured under a sheet. Everyone’s fear seeped through his numbness and made him anxious.
“What’s happening?” His tongue lolled around the words.
“He’s bleeding out, I need three pints, stat!”
Mitch’s ass felt wet like creamy diarrhea in a diaper. A finger wiggled unpleasantly against his butthole. He wanted to itch it but couldn’t find his arms.
A giant head filled his vision—a masked woman in a white coat thrusting her face into view. What beautiful eyes, he thought. Her face shield and mask created an astronaut aesthetic, nothing about her was visible except beautiful, long eyelashes accented by purple eyeliner and hazel irises. What a beauty, he thought, he should invite her for a weekend getaway in St. Croix.
Her eyes were wide she looked terrified.
He could charm her if he could just get his tongue working.
“Mitch, I’m gonna need you to push,” she told him.
He felt the butthole finger prodding his anus harder. He squeezed his sphincter shut while it pushed to invade him. Except now it felt like the finger was on the inside trying to get out, and it felt more like a whole hand flailing around.
“I feel like I’m being raped,” he said calmly. “Please stop it, you dirty girl.”
The anal finger felt like a bowel movement that starts smooth but then grows into excruciating pain as its girth increases. As the bowel movement slid out, it writhed around, as if the turd were a squid. At first, it pinched, causing him to wince. He wondered if this is what the gay sodomites felt. Why would anyone choose to do this?
His sphincter ripped open wider—he could actually hear and feel it tearing as if the sound and sensation were one.
He wailed, “Stop please, stop, it hurts, oh my God, ohhhhhhhhhh!”
His scream became a long ear-piercing wail. He kept hearing one word over and over— “Pull.”
“I’m pulling!”
“Pull harder”
“Pull it out of him!”
Mitch’s vocal cords ripped a scream through the room as a gigantic sloppy wet sound exhaled from his gigantic distended asshole. He felt like he’d been cut in half. The pain was so overwhelming his legs must have been ripped right off leaving him a disembodied torso writhing around–Captain Quint at the end of Jaws.
Senator Moran was sure this was death. He didn’t even feel like repenting for his hateful life, he just wanted it to end.
The last thing Senator Mitch Moran saw was the doctor in the lab coat holding up a pale, fleshy monstrosity with a blobby human head and the body of a worm—it couldn’t be real or alive—but he swore that its unformed milky eyes with dark gray irises looked right at him as he lost consciousness.
FBI Agent Valerie Skylar stood behind containment glass in a soundproofed room, keeping her expression neutral as she watched the creature slither around a small laboratory habitat full of tropical plants, sand, and a little pond about ten feet in diameter.
The creature had dark gray skin stretched over a fleshy almost-human face, like a burn victim who’d been reconstructed too many times by a plastic surgeon. The resemblance ended there—the creature’s neck never ended, it just became the thick, meaty body of a worm.
Valerie numbly accepted the fact she was about to be arrested and spend a long time in federal prison. She was the one who implanted the naga egg in Senator Moran and hundreds of other targets. Why else would she be called to Quantico?
The creature looked up at the one-way glass and paused, staring right at Valerie with dark brown irises surrounded by milky white, human-looking sclera. She shivered involuntarily.
“It looks just like its daddy,” the man beside her quipped dryly.
Valerie enjoyed The Director’s joke, letting a small smile touch her lips. She was terrified.
Raymond Holmes was the Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch of the FBI, an inscrutable man. She felt sure he was assessing her every reaction even as he stared straight ahead into the laboratory. He knew.
All over the United States, men were going through painful pregnancies, laboring for six months, and then giving birth to these things. It wasn’t an actual pregnancy—their bodies were hosts for an egg that nested in the intestinal tract. Attempts to remove the eggs resulted in severe internal damage or fatality, so medical experts required hosts to carry the eggs to term.
Senator Mitch Moran of Kentucky had been the first human to birth a naga. Valerie had put the heat-activated egg into his coffee since she found Mitch to be a toxic rightwing cunt of the highest order. Her clearance authorized all manner of proximity to important men.
Valerie was one member of a nameless terrorist cell in an organization, as far as she knew. She had never met any of the other members. In hindsight, they had monitored and groomed her in various chat groups, message boards, and other social media forums for years before she became active with the cause. It wasn’t an easy decision, but morality meant more to her than the law or an oath.
She would be facing numerous domestic terrorism charges. She accepted her fate when she received the order to appear and found it all worth it.
In sixteen months, the creature had grown into a three-foot-long abomination that slithered as fast as a human jogger.
When FBI scientists collected Senator Mitch Moran’s naga from the hospital, it had a grapefruit-sized head that flopped on the ground, too heavy to move, crying like a human infant while its tail writhed uselessly. Its newborn skin was light gray and translucent. The monstrosity resembled a humongous sperm with elephantiasis of the head.
Valerie had seen the news stories about it, as well as reading a preliminary case file from the lab during her flight to the FBI training center.
Twenty-three hours ago, she’d received orders, boarded a plane six hours later, and now stood in the Forensic Science Research and Training Center at Quantico.
“Your thoughts, Agent Skylar?” The Director asked, his voice soft and kind, belying the hardened exterior of the rigid, pock-marked man with a dark crew cut who had served several tours in the armed forces. He spoke with the quiet dignity of a man who was used to being obeyed.
Valerie wasn’t sure how to respond. She wondered what game The Director was playing.
“It reminds me of the first time I ever saw a blobfish,” she said. “Well, not entirely.”
“Explain.”
“I was around nine or ten, and my mother had taken me to the Maryland zoo. There was this cavernous area with all kinds of dimly lit tanks, and I couldn’t tell you a single other fish out of the hundreds of fish I saw that day.” She paused, looking back into her memory. “The blobfish looked like a floating human head on a fish body.”
“I’ve seen them,” Director Holmes said.
“They had sad faces, and I didn’t want to go anywhere else in the zoo after seeing them—they looked like aquatic people, and they didn’t belong there.”
“The blobfish looked human in a way you could empathize with?” Director Holmes asked.
“After seeing them, I realized none of the animals belonged there.”
Director Holmes shifted his eyes politely to her while she spoke. He looked back at the naga—the name the media had given the creature because of its similarity to the ancient Asian mythologies. “And you feel a similar compassion for this?”
Valerie’s face recoiled. “Uh no—this feels like revulsion,” she said, pausing and aware of his eyes. “I’m disturbed by how human it looks, and also how… not. Preliminary test results said it is deliberate genetic engineering.”
“There have been over twelve thousand reported cases of naga pregnancy in the last year,” The Director said. “And over two thousand successful births, as well as a few dozen deaths.”
Valerie nodded. “Everybody’s seen the headlines.” She was watching the naga slithering indolently around the beach. Its head darted into the bushes with lightning quickness and came back with a mouse clutched between its bulbous lips. The creature bit down suddenly. Valerie could almost feel the sickening crunch of the rodent being crushed by powerful jaws. A rivulet of blood trickled down the naga’s chin as the body disappeared into its mouth.
“Does it disturb you?”
She shrugged, disgusted as the naga chewed and blood dripped onto the sand. “Yes…” she trailed off, thinking carefully. “I’m not surprised that something like this happened. Humans are always playing God, tampering with nature.” She turned to The Director with her practiced poker face. “What did they expect?”
“The strange thing is that this parasite only targets males, many of them high profile.”
“I read that, I guess it’s passed through contact,” she said, a little too quickly. She forced herself to slow down and act more natural. Maybe The Director didn’t know she was involved—otherwise wouldn’t she have been arrested already? “It probably can’t survive in a female gastrointestinal system. There are physiological differences—”
Director Holmes turned to sharply interrupt as he pierced her with his eyes. “And the part we have withheld from the media thus far is that ninety-nine point six one three percent of the time, the hosts are politically leaning to the far right, vocal proponents against abortion and women’s rights to bodily autonomy.”
Valerie feigned shock, avoiding his gaze. She stared at the naga as it slithered off the beach and into the water, its head protruding while its tail propelled it along, like a water snake. Its head dipped, vanishing below the surface with hardly a splash, followed by the tail. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. “Sounds like it’s being spread deliberately by demographic,” she said. “Some sort of domestic terrorist organization, perhaps.”
Director Holmes nodded in her periphery. “You did your Master’s in bioengineering, Agent Skylar,” he said.
She squirmed inwardly much like the naga squirmed around its birthing tank. “Bachelor’s in bioengineering. My master’s is in criminal justice,” she corrected, knowing full well that Holmes knew. She watched the gentle ripples on the pond return to stillness, then she turned and looked defiantly in The Director’s eyes. “What now, Director Holmes?”
“Please, call me Raymond.” He smiled, lifting his hand and causing her to flinch. He gently placed it on her shoulder and gave her a light squeeze. “Don’t worry, I covered your trail. Or should I say tail?” The corners of his lips lifted at that.
“Sir?” she said, suspecting a trap to get her to confess.
“You were careful, but there are levels of surveillance that agents don’t have clearance or knowledge about. I’ve identified three cells, and I know there are at least fifty.”
Valerie stared, still not trusting him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“You don’t have to say anything. The fact of the matter is that I am a patriot, and I intend to be on the right side of history, as gruesome as it is this time around.” He looked back at the habitat where there was no sign of the naga.
She had been careful. There’s no way they could concretely know anything. He was fishing. “Director—uh, Raymond, it sounds like you’re implicating me somehow in—”
He waved his hand and cut her off. “I’m putting you in charge of security inspection for high profile targets… to ensure these cocksuckers get their own special naga parasite delivered directly into their intestine, do not pass go.” He smiled, shaking his head. “Sometimes checks and balances fail, and it is necessary to… correct the system from within.” His smile looked unnatural, like a huge crack splitting a concrete wall in half. “It’s fucking brilliant, you know.”
“I would never do that,” Valerie said. If Director Holmes wanted to get her close to primary targets, then she would use this to her advantage.
It had to be a trap. She couldn’t dare believe that an Executive Assistant Director of the FBI wanted to help an underground network of illegal freedom fighters. She didn’t know the names of anyone within her cell, nor their addresses, and all communication was handled through coded messages. Her cell provided her with dormant eggs. Even if he spied on her, he wouldn’t catch the others.
“Follow me,” The Director said, swiping his card in front of the scanner to unlock the door to the lab.
They entered an airlocked room that blasted them with ultraviolet light that opened into the room hosting the naga habitat. The habitat itself took up most of the room, a thigh-high plexi barrier separated the two agents from the tropical soil and plants along the edge.
“Henry,” The Director called. Nothing moved. He took something from his pocket and tossed it into the pond.
Moments later, a child’s head appeared with a little splash, watching them. Its ashen skin made it look like an African child, and anyone watching would think this was an actual human treading water staring at her intently.
“Henry!” The Director said again in the happy voice one would use when talking to a dog.
The naga slithered to the shore where its serpentine tail pushed it onto the sand. Raymond reached down and picked it up. The naga nuzzled its nose against his as its tail wrapped around his arm. Valerie watched in mild horror and confusion.
“This is Valerie,” The Director said. “In a way, she’s kind of like your mother.”
The naga turned to stare at her. A pointed tongue stuck out of its mouth for a moment, wavering back and forth as it tasted the air.
Valerie’s brain shut down so many different ways from the wrongness and craziness of what she was witnessing. “It’s sentient?”
“All animals are sentient,” Raymond said.
“Of course,” she snorted. “But, I mean, it’s conscious—it understands language?”
It craned its neck towards her, licking the air again. Then its lips spread in what looked like a smile.
“Don’t tell that thing I’m its mother,” she said.
Its eyes widened and it tilted its head upward, flaring three grotesque red holes in its neck. The naga made a clicking noise and sprayed water from the gills over the ground in front of it.
“No, Henry!” Raymond said. “That’s absolutely rude, and you know it.”
The naga tilted its head back down and the gill slits disappeared. The monster stared balefully at Valerie.
“Henry understands a lot of words,” The Director said. “So, to be fair to him—you were rude first, he doesn’t like to be called a thing.”
Valerie stepped back, eyes widening in horror. She had been spreading eggs without any real thought to what had been created. She’d been excited to give these control freak men a taste of their own medicine. “I’m sorry, Henry,” she forced the words out like she forced a smile. “Does it have teeth?” That was the next horrific question that had entered her head.
The naga opened its mouth, the teeth were scattered and extremely sharp, tiny fangs like carpentry nails protruded from its gums.
“Oh God,” she said. Valerie had been so sure she was going to prison, and it just hit her, she was going to be okay. Her muscles felt weak and tired, and she took a deep breath, bending down and putting her hands on her knees.
“Are you okay?” Raymond asked.
“Fine,” she said. “Just realizing the repercussions of… these… naga.”
The monster made a clicking noise. Valerie’s head shot up in alarm, thinking it was about to spray her.
Click click click, went its gills. Its brown eyes looked down inquisitively at her as it tried to lick her with its creepy tongue. Raymond leaned in closer so the naga was a foot and a half away.
Valerie wanted to tell him to get it away from her, but she forced herself to look at it. She didn’t want to touch it, but she felt like she should. The teeth in its mouth would rip her flesh open if it wanted to—she was worried that it could see how much she loathed it and would somehow bite her because of that.
“Sorry, it’s not you,” she said to the creature.
As if reading her mind, Raymond said, “Come here, Henry, you’re beautiful.” He pursed his lips and made a clicking sound.
Henry turned at that and leaned in, letting its lips pucker against Raymond’s. Valerie half expected to see its tongue dart into The Director’s mouth, thankfully it didn’t. Raymond nuzzled noses with it, and she could see he felt joy and a bond with the creature.
“You kind of are his mother,” Raymond said, looking at her with a mischievous smile that barely touched his lips.
“Please, can we not talk about that right now,” she said. “Senator Moran is his mother.” She shot The Director a look, disliking the conversation, and wanting out of the lab.
Director Holmes smiled at her. “We’ve kept the media in the dark to study the lifeform. It shares ninety-seven percent of its DNA with humans, which means…” He looked at her, waiting for her to finish the thought.
“It’s protected by State and Federal fetal statutes…” Her mouth hung open as he nodded. “Chimps and bonobos share ninety-nine percent of human DNA, so why aren’t they protected?”
“They didn’t come out of a human?” Raymond said it as a question. “Anyway, the House has already voted that the naga is protected as a human lifeform. Tomorrow the Democratically controlled Senate will hear the testimony of the scientists about human DNA, and the human intelligence being shown by the naga brain,” Raymond told her. “It is factually undeniable that this lifeform must be considered human.”
That hit her like a gut punch. “I would certainly disagree, based on my experience here,” she said.
The naga tilted his head up and made a gurgling in the gills. How the fuck did that nasty little thing understand what they were saying?
“Henry!” Raymond barked, causing the naga to stop, its eyes going wide, the way a cat’s eyes do when it’s playing. She wondered if The Director had ever smacked it. Raymond looked up at her again with that smile playing across his eyes. “Agent Skylar, your next assignment will be returning Henry to his birth parents. I thought it would only be fitting.”
Senator Mitch Moran lived in a six-thousand square foot brick tudor in Hurstbourne, Kentucky, in a posh neighborhood that was more modest than she would expect. The houses were million-dollar homes, but surprisingly close together. If she’d spent 2.3 million on a home, she certainly wouldn’t want to be in talking distance of her neighbors.
As the quaint, tree-lined street wended its way up a hill and around a bend, she immediately knew which house belonged to the senator: a crowd of picketers, mostly women, stood out front holding signs and chanting.
Valerie laughed unbidden as her unmarked black Charger cruised close enough that she could see the signs. “Every Life Has Value”, “Protect Human Life”, “Pro Man Pro Child”.
“Oh boy, you’ve already got a following, Henry,” she muttered, knowing the naga couldn’t hear her from its spot in the trunk. There was no way she was letting that thing ride up front with her.
In the week that had passed between the lab and now, Valerie had thought a lot about this clusterfuck she’d helped start. The nation had gone bonkers over the news that naga were not only considered protected but had also been afforded human rights.
Even with a background in genetic sciences, she just couldn’t understand how the politicians could vote for this snake monster to be human.
Valerie had cried tears of laughter watching the implanted men whine about being forced to carry naga to term, but also a darker, unsettled feeling simmered inside her at what this meant for the future of her species. Men all across the nation were already up in arms demanding special abortion rights for naga pregnancies.
Late night talk show hosts, cartoonists, and comedians were having a field day. “Ass baby” was the most common nomenclature used by memesters; “Poop snake” was a close second. “Nagger” was vulgar slang that would get you Facebook banned. Fox News referred to the creature as “The N-word.”
The nation was fascinated by the naga. A large proportion of liberals were excited to embrace them as a new human lifeform. Conservatives retaliated with a series of absurd cartoons featuring prominent people on the left having sex with naga, and what the babies would look like.
A small but vocal sector of trans women clamored to be implanted with naga eggs, regaling social media about what a blessing it would be to experience pregnancy and carry a naga to term. The private sector hadn’t gotten a hold of naga eggs yet, but any day Valerie knew some soulless corporate snakes would be raking it in off naga fertility specialists.
As she approached Senator Moran’s house, the protestors faced her, chanting something. When she eased into the driveway, the women parted, thrusting their signs in front of her car, trying to force her to agree with their pro-naga rhetoric.
“No more strife, it’s a life. No more strife, it’s a life,” chanted the women. Valerie couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the way protestors always created pedantic nursery rhymes.
The driveway ended behind the house at a four-car garage. Valerie parked out of sight of the protesting mob. She opened the trunk and carefully grabbed the handle of the tinted plexi case containing Henry Moran.
She glanced down and thought she could see its ugly monster face peering at her through the tinted plastic. A queasy shudder went through her.
Senator Moran’s wife, Rachel, stoically opened the door. Dressed in an orange sun dress, hair styled, and makeup in place. Mitch’s wife was a Chinese businesswoman from a powerful, wealthy family who helped him secure his power.
“Hi, I’m Agent Skylar,” she said.
“Hi,” Rachel Moran said in a clipped tone. They had already been notified of the delivery. “Come in,” the woman said after a moment. “I’m Rachel Moran.”
As Valerie stepped into the mud room, Senator Moran entered, looking like he’d aged twenty years in the short time since she’d put the naga egg into his coffee. “Leave your shoes on,” Mitch said wearily. “You look well, Agent Skylar. I trust the bureau has been treating you better than it’s treating me?”
She smiled at his joke. “Mostly.”
“Coffee?” Mitch asked.
“No, thanks, got any tea?”
“Yes, of course,” Rachel said.
“Agent Skylar, have you met my wife, Rachel?”
“Briefly,” Valerie said.
“Nice to meet you, dear,” Rachel said. “I wish the circumstances were different.”
“Me too,” Valerie said.
Their mudroom opened into a south-facing greenhouse with three-ply glass and racks of plants, as well as potted trees, some of which stood taller than her head.
“Lovely rhododendrons,” Valerie commented.
“Thank you.”
The greenhouse had a feeling of walking through a warm jungle which gave way to the Moran’s massive, high-ceilinged kitchen. “Have a seat,” Mitch gestured to an island that was almost the size of Valerie’s entire kitchen. On one side it had a sink and an eight-burner stove complete with a grill, and the other end stools lining three sides of it.
“This is Henry,” Valerie said, setting the carrying case on the island. “Apparently you… um… birthed him.”
Mitch blanched at the memory, sitting kitty-corner to her and staring at the container. “I don’t care what they say, the thing is a parasite. It’s like giving rights to a fucking tapeworm,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “It’s gross.” She hated this man for such a long time, but she truly felt sympathy for him now. Despite the fact he had opposed gay rights, supported corporations over workers, and had done everything he could in his twenty-three-year Senate career to derail women’s bodily autonomy.
Mitch sat on his stool, shoulders slumped, focusing on the darkened plastic. “I think I see it in there.”
“Do you prefer jasmine, green, English breakfast, or some herbal?” Rachel called from the walk-in pantry.
“Do you have anything with ginger—a lemon or orange ginger maybe?”
“I’ve got spicy ginger, and I could add a slice of lemon?”
“That sounds perfect, Rachel, thank you,” Valerie replied. “I’m really sorry you’re still dealing with this, Senator Moran.”
“Mitch, please,” he said.
I only wanted you to have to give birth to it, not pay for its college, she wanted to say.
“It’s temporary, believe me,” he told her. “The snowflakes are just trying to gloat, and the Christians are easily manipulated idiots. They’ll figure it out soon enough.”
“Hopefully.” Sitting in the kitchen of Senate Minority Leader Mitch Moran, delivering to him the naga who he had given birth to because of her, was a moment she had looked forward to. Instead, she felt disturbed at how horrific everything about this moment was for everyone involved.
Mitch carried this thing to term and became the laughingstock of the country for the last two years. Valerie felt like he’d paid a lot of karma off, and all she could see was a defeated, hospitable old man who was a product of his generation.
“What are you going to do in the meantime?” Valerie asked.
The senator let out a loud exhale, like a hissing noise. “We had a… habitat… made for it. There were required specs and all that.”
Rachel set the tea kettle on the stove nearby and the burner clicked to life. She dutifully set three mugs from a nearby cupboard on the island beside the stove and stood there waiting for it to boil.
Mitch gazed dismally into space. He was in his seventies and resembled what you would get if you crossed a turkey with a man—tiny neck, weak chin, and a face ruled by jowls, making his eyes seem bulgy.
Rachel, on the other hand, was in her early fifties, a still-beautiful woman who looked about 40 and knew her place in this household.
“Why don’t you let the snake boy out of his cage?” Mitch said, perking up. “Maybe he will escape into a crawly hole under the house and get eaten by a cat.”
Valerie smiled. “You know I can’t do that, sir,” she said. A brief silence passed and then she said, “But you could, Senator.”
Mitch perked up, raising his eyebrows. He looked at his wife, and then his eyes leveled on the carrying case. “I like it,” he said. “One thing is sure, I am not going to be taken down by a bunch of neoliberal Marxists just because they’re dumb enough to think this tapeworm is a person.”
“Do you have children, Agent Skylar?” Rachel asked.
Valerie shook her head. “No, I—uh…” She trailed off, remembering a time long before the bureau and her graduate degree. “I had a stillbirth.”
“Oh honey, I’m so sorry!”
“Thank you, it was a long time ago.”
The memory writhed deep inside where she had sealed it. Valerie closed her eyes for a moment. She’d also had an abortion during college, never telling the father because he was an abusive prick, flushing him and his offspring out of her life at the same time. That had been an easy decision for her, and she thought of mentioning it to jab at the senator. No point, though. She looked at Mitch and caught his eyes on her, leering with too much interest. The senator looked away.
He stood and wandered over to the case. “How the hell does this thing open?”
“There,” Valerie said, pointing to the clips that held the top closed.
Mitch flipped the clips. His eyes bulged wider as the top lid opened and he laid eyes on the naga.
“This your first time seeing it?” Valerie asked.
“Yes, sort of, I saw it when it came out… they held it up. It was the grossest thing I have ever seen…”
“It can understand us,” Valerie cautioned.
“It can?”
She nodded, but Mitch wasn’t looking at her.
“God, you’re horrific,” Mitch told it. “This looks like something out of Aliens, when those things burst out of the stomach. How the fuck can they say it’s a human?”
“Disgusting,” Rachel said, her face going pale as she stared at the container. Valerie knew Rachel couldn’t see the naga from her vantage.
Then slowly its bulbous, bald head lifted from the top of the container, like a jack in the box. Valerie half expected to see it lunge at the senator. It tasted the air and looked around. Its eyes looked at Mitch, then Valerie, then Rachel, and then it turned back to Valerie and studied her.
“These are your parents, Henry,” she told it, unable to resist.
“I’m not its parent,” Rachel said.
“Neither am I!” Mitch protested.
Henry just watched Valerie for several terrible seconds.
“This is not happening,” Mitch muttered. “This fucking thing is not staying with us.”
The teapot began to scream and the naga shrunk back into the safety of its case. Then its head peeked up in the direction of the noise, eyes widening as it saw the steam rising from the pot.
“Goddamn it, I’m done!” Mitch roared, walking over to the teapot as Rachel reached for it. “No, honey. Give me that!”
He grabbed the pot.
“Senator Moran—I have to advise you that this is considered a human life—” Valerie started to say.
“You can arrest me then, goddammit,” he snarled, stalking fiercely towards the naga case sitting on his kitchen island.
“Honey, I don’t think you should—”
Without hesitation, Mitch poured the teapot spout right into the little case, dumping the boiling water as fast as it would empty. A high-pitched shriek sounded from the mouth of the naga and, quick as a snake, a gray blur leaped through the air and the naga head attached itself to Senator Moran’s face.
“Oh my god!” Rachel screamed as Mitch dropped the pot with a loud clatter.
“Goddamn!” Mitch roared. Blood leaked down his jowls. He grabbed its tail, trying to yank it off as the tail coiled around his neck. Its head was about half the size of the senator’s. “Get it off me!” his voice choked as the air was squeezed out of him.
Valerie ran to help him as he wailed, but when she tried pulling on the creature, the senator’s skin made a sickening tearing sound and his scream rose in pitch. Mitch’s eyes had tears in them as he pleaded with her. “Help me!”
The naga opened its mouth as Mitch spoke, readjusting its bite to sink its upper teeth right inside the senator’s mouth like a deranged kiss. The upper lip of the naga was now inside Mitch’s mouth its teeth pinning his tongue. Raw gashes leaked like blood faucets from his jowly jawline. Mitch’s eyes bulged. He couldn’t form syllables with the naga in his mouth. Instead, he babbled consonants while blood poured down his face and gurgled in his throat.
Henry pushed its head deeper into Mitch’s mouth as if it were trying to crawl down his throat, the senator’s jaw forced open freakishly wide by the naga’s skull until it made a grotesque popping sound.
Henry’s tail writhed, the tip frantically whipping Mitch’s face as he tried to grab it, but then he lost his balance and fell, striking his head against the granite corner of the island on the way down.
“Shoot it!” Rachel screamed.
“I can’t!” Agent Skylar said. “I’ll hit him!”
“Use this!” Rachel Hhanded her a huge chopping knife from a block nearby.
Mitch flailed weakly on the ground, a lake of blood pooling underneath him, rivulets spider-webbing outward as they spread along the grooves between tiles.
“Hmmp memmn!” Mitch moaned.
“Henry, release the senator now or I will have to use deadly force!” Agent Skylar commanded authoritatively, stepping forward with the knife.
The naga unclasped itself from Senator Moran’s face, slithering away out of sight on the other side of the island.
“Shoot it!” Rachel yelled, half-sobbing half-shrieking.
“It’s against the law,” Valerie told her.
“It tried to kill my husband,” Rachel stepped around the island towards Mitch, eyes wildly searching for the naga.
“He tried to kill it first,” Valerie said. “The naga was protecting itself. I’m an eyewitness to that…”
“You fucking bitch!” Rachel said.
Valerie shrugged. “The law is the law. Bring me dish towels, we need pressure on these wounds.”
Agent Skylar pulled out her phone and dialed 911. “I’ve got a United States Senator in need of immediate medical attention, bleeding from multiple punctures as well as lacerated head trauma.” She relayed the address and hung up. Mitch looked like he’d stuck his face in a plate of spaghetti. “You’re gonna be okay,” she told him, looking down into his panicked eyes as she knelt and held towels to his wounds. Craning her neck, she could see the gigantic gash fauceting blood from the back of his head. The towels saturated and she had to swap them after a couple of minutes.
While tending to Senator Moran’s gruesome wounds, she felt a case of nerves that the naga could lunge out at any moment and attach itself to her face. She knew it didn’t like her.
A clicking noise nearby alerted Valerie to the naga’s presence. She looked over and there was Henry, coiled around a stool leg and watching her intently. Half of its head had swollen where the boiling water struck it, blanched to a pale color, scales puffing out like fleshy soap bubbles. Shedding, she realized, the damaged skin was curling up off its head and would soon fall off. One of its eyes was swollen to a slit, lending Henry’s face an even more sinister emotion. Valerie felt her heart thudding. Senator Moran’s head on her lap made it impossible to reach her weapon. She tried shifting him, but the senator let out a horrid groan.
The naga opened its mouth wide, baring those sharp teeth, and crossed the floor toward her, stopping three feet away. The Senator’s wife shrieked in terror and ran to the pantry.
“You should go, Henry,” Valerie said. “They can’t love you.”
Henry stared at her, gave a slow blink with its one good eye, and nodded its head. Then the naga puckered its lips the way Director Holmes had done and made two strange clicks with its mouth.
Valerie braced herself to wrap the naga in a towel if it lunged. Instead, Henry bobbed its head in some semblance of a nod, then slithered off across the floor towards the greenhouse.
Valerie exhaled loudly in relief, looking down at the senator as he gurgled on the blood filling his mouth. “Sshhh, don’t talk,” she said, hearing the distant sirens approaching. She saw his eyes losing focus and knew he wasn’t long for this world. “It’s okay,” she said, staring at this horrible man who had done so much damage during his never-ending career in politics. He didn’t even look afraid, and she realized he was in shock. She swapped out the second towel from behind his head for a third, not caring that the blood had gotten on her pant legs. She said good riddance from her eyes to his, but she wasn’t cruel enough to sneer at the man in his last moments.
Senator Moran looked up into the pretty eyes of Agent Skylar as she tried to stop him from bleeding out. He liked her eyes, She looked beautiful, he thought. He remembered finding her attractive when they met before, right before he’d gotten pregnant with the snake. Mitch was never one to forget a pretty face. Maybe he would invite her to St. Croix.
