Slither Read Online Free PDF Page B

unconscious.
    More people were rushing into the room now, demanding to know what was happening. He shouted a warning to them as he searched for the second worm. It had reached the V-neck and was already burrowing into the soft flesh between her breasts. As it gorged itself, its tail still protruded, swaying slightly as if with pleasure.
    Aubrey hesitated, uncertain. Then someone brushed him aside – Veronica Dale from Personnel – and hooked her fingers into the top of Mary’s dress and ripped it open. They had to cut the strap of her bra and hold her breasts apart before Aubrey could get a grip on the worm’s neck. When he pulled it away it left a raw, bleeding patch the size of an old penny; the exposed bone of her rib-cage was clearly visible through the blood.
    The little worm wriggled between his fingers as he stood up. It was a greenish colour, in every way a miniature version of the worms on the newsreel of Matt Parker. Holding it over the metal waste-paper bin, he gradually crushed the life out of it.
    ‘How many are there, for Pete’s sake?’ someone was shouting. ‘How many are there?’
    ‘What’s the panic?’ he grinned; suddenly Aubrey was enjoying himself. ‘They’re easy enough to kill. That one over there – stamp on it!’ He snatched another from the desk top, squashed it between finger and thumb, and dropped it contemptuously into the waste bin. ‘Don’t let them bite you first, though! One of you ring for an ambulance.’
    No more of a menace than ferrets! The Professor had been right. As if to prove it to himself, Aubrey watched one of the worms slithering across the carpet towards Mary, making straight for the flabby white breast which hung out of her torn dress.
    Before it could strike the ground he ground it to death under his shoe. As a boy he’d killed caterpillars the same way.

4
    ‘No more of a menace than ferrets,’ Matt repeated bitterly to himself as he stood stripped to the waist in front of the washbasin. Three months he’d been in hospital while they’d tried to rebuild his face. Several operations … skin grafts. His buttocks still felt sore whenever he sat down; he’d never understand why they’d had to take it from that part of his body.
    ‘Nobody’ll know one end of me from t’other,’ he’d joked with the nurses, trying to hide his resentment. And failing.
    What if his face turned out to be horrific when they removed the bandages, a mass of pink scar-tissue like Frankenstein’s monster, not resembling a face at all? It was a recurring nightmare. He imagined himself released from hospital and making his way home alone through hostile streets, on foot, arriving at last, the street, the house, putting the key in the lock, opening the front door, only to find no one recognized him, not even his own daughter… she screamed when she saw him, covered her eyes.
    That was the real reason he’d insisted on Helen and Jenny being there that afternoon when they cut the bandages off. Helen had refused at first, saying it wasn’t fair on Jenny; she was only nine after all and…
    He’d had to plead with her, but he understood well enough. She was as scared as he was.
    He stared at himself in the mirror above the washbasin, wondering. Only a few more hours. Would his beard grow, or would he remain permanently scarred and smooth-cheeked? At least his voice was now almost normal again, or so the speech therapist had told him.
    The whiteness of the bandages made his eyes seem darker and more penetrating, like the hypnotic gaze of the sewer worms. Or had it been merely his fear that had made themseem that way? While filming in Kenya he’d observed the same disabling fear in the eyes of wildebeeste attacked by lions.
    Yet he could swear these worms had some ruthless power. Those last moments before losing consciousness his mind had keyed into theirs and…
    Fuck!
What the hell did it matter now? He dried himself on the rough towel and went back to his bed. He’d a file of