A SLICE OF LIFE

BY Todd Guilmette AKA Maximillian Todd

Copyright 1994 by GreatFox Productions.

***

A person venturing into the natural world, unaccustomed to its various mysteries and intricate workings, is immediately at a loss. At one time in the history of this world, a human being could walk among nature's creations, finding them as familiar as we would find our structures of living today. But we are no longer attached to some things as we once were. The trees and animals that we once would have welcomed are perceived as dangerous and alien, and the mysteries of nature have fallen into the past.

But there are infinite mysteries within this planet's habitable zones. Some mysteries are easily explained by the usual scientific methods. Some cannot be defined so quickly. These are the slices of life which we explore. These are the stories that we must tell. To keep us moving forward. And into the unknown.

***

The stars were out in perfect clarity, unmasked by haze, when April Simms first felt the touch on her shoulder. She jumped, and laughed nervously after she looked into the dark landscape, and saw nothing there.

"Hmmm," Sheila said, and sipped her hot chocolate. "Was that a chill?"

"Huh," April said, frowning into the trees. "I thought I felt something on my shoulder."

"Oooo, it was a monster in the dark, stalking your every move."

April clicked her tongue. "Right, Sheila. And there's a gorilla behind you, looking down your shirt."

Sheila cried out in mock terror. "Oh! You dirty animal! Find someone your own breed!"

The two girls laughed, and sipped hot chocolate. The two women's little weekend-without-the-men was going absolutely perfectly. Sheila's idea to take a short camping trip into the southern Colorado forest was shaping up to be something worth doing twice.

April and Sheila talked of gossip, and about men in general. After a while, the campfire consumed their attention, and the forest was quiet.

"Girl, I'm falling asleep," Sheila said. She jumped out of her lawn chair, and shook around. "Whoo! It's cold out here."

"Yeah," April said. "But the fire's so nice. I could look at this fire forever."

"Yeah, but don't look into it too long, you'll fall asleep right into it," Sheila said. "Let's crash. The sun's gonna wake me up anyway when it comes through that tent."

April chuckled. "Yeah. Alright. You go on, I'll put out the fire."

"Just leave it to burn, it'll go out."

"Well, if the wind picks up when we're asleep, we'll burn the whole forest down."

Sheila laughed. "Alright. Shove some dirt on it, I'm goin' in."

April nodded, and picked up a bucket which she had placed near the fire pit earlier in the day. Gradually, the water poured onto the fire, and the orange light died down. The ashes hissed loudly as the heat was forced to abandon the wood. She stood for a second, her gaze fixed on the ashes. She heard quiet noises in the forest, and Sheila undressing softly in the tent.

Then, from the tent: "Ooowee! This sleeping bag is cold!"

April laughed. "Well, warm it up, then!" she called back. She turned to walk toward the tent when she felt the touch again. This time, the sensation was lower down, on the side of her arm. Jumping again, she searched the night for any sign of a perpetrator. Not even a moth claimed the deed.

Rubbing her arm, she stared nervously at shadows, and fixed her gaze at anyplace her mind told her a sound had come from. She found nothing that could have caused what she had felt. She rubbed her arm, but there was no unusual sensation anymore. April could not even recall any instance of pain when it had happened; it had just been a touch. Just a touch. Like someone playfully poking you in the arm.

April found her sleeping bag, and fell into an uneasy sleep. She dreamed that someone was chasing her with a hot poker, aiming it at her arm. She could not tell who it was.

***

April heard breakfast cooking on the stove. She rubbed her head, and sat up. Unzipping her bag, she stretched. The sun was indeed out in full, and the canvas walls of the tent illuminated tree branches like an out-of-focus slide show. She sighed, and then felt the touch again. She jerked, and looked at her arm. There were three marks on her arm that looked like burns.

"What the hell?" April said to herself. She touched the burns gingerly, expecting a bite of pain. There still was none. She brought her arm up and looked at one of the marks. After closer inspection, they looked like small bowls-- smooth indentations in her skin, like someone had poked a fingertip into a ball of clay. April probed one with her finger. The skin inside the bowl was as strong as the rest of the skin on her arm, and she pinched it and rolled it between her fingers. There was no lump under the surface, nothing out of the ordinary. And no pain. After a moment, she went to show it to her friend.

"I don't know," Sheila said after several minutes of thinking. "It looks like something just scooped out a piece of your arm, like an ice cream scoop."

April shuddered. "What do you think could do that?"

"They don't look like bites to me. Or anything else." Sheila's face was almost touching April's arm, and she studied closely.

"Oh my god," April said, suddenly jerking away. "That's what I felt last night."

"Huh?"

"Remember I told you I felt something, like something had touched my arm?"

"You mean, that gorilla?"

"Well, the touches were right in the same places, on my shoulder and--"

Another touch happened just then, and April jumped to her feet, knocking her friend back into the dirt. "Shit!" They both exclaimed.

"Another one just happened! On my other arm." April pulled up her other sleeve. There, as felt just seconds ago, was a new mark. A new scoop.

"What the hell?" Sheila said. "Let's get out of here. It's got to be something biting you."

April was quick to agree, and they packed up their camping equipment. They covered up the fire ashes, loaded Sheila's small jeep, and jumped into it. While they were working, April felt eleven more touches, some on her feet and hands. And one on her neck.

"God," April said. "If one of these get on my face, I'm gonna die."

Sheila drove faster than the signs were telling her along the winding two-lane road, and she did not care. "We'll get to a doctor," she said. "Conejos is an hour away."

"You think it's something biting me?" April asked, feeling a small cluster of scoops on her arm. They felt slightly spongy.

"I don't know. Who knows what could be out in this damn forest? All we got to do is get you to a doctor."

"I'm scared."

"April, they have to know what it is. Just wait until we get there."

April felt many touches during their drive, and when one hit her face, she screamed.

***

"Quiet!" April yelled. "I hear something." She felt a touch on her neck, and heard what sounded like a voice whispering in her head. Another touch came, and the whisper was louder. Then, she understood the voice. It was the same for every touch: a man's voice, deep and raspy, uttering one word.

"No," April said. She heard fear in her voice, and something else. "No."

"What?" Sheila asked, looking too often at her friend. "April, what?"

"He's saying 'Pop'," April said, staring blankly at the dashboard. "Every time it touches, he says 'Pop.'" It was at this time when April started to doubt her senses. She began to think that she was going crazy. She wondered if Sheila was, too.

Sheila could never admit it to her friend, but she was leaning a bit too far toward her door, sitting as far away as possible from April. She thought curses and pleaded to whomever: "Please don't come. Please don't touch me."

The two women arrived in the town of Conejos, and located the clinic. When they approached the receptionist's desk, the nurse asked what the problem was. Then, she looked up. The nurse's eyes seemed to get wider than her face. She hurried down the hallway as fast as her shoes would allow.

In the examination room, April was staring at the floor.

"April?" Sheila had tried to rouse her from her sleep, repeating April's name over and over. Sheila assumed that her friend was asleep. If she wasn't, then she was probably going crazy. Sheila thought that if she was in April's predicament, she probably would have by now.

The doctor closed the examination room door. "Let me see," he said.

To Sheila's surprise, April slowly unbuttoned her shirt herself. The doctor froze momentarily, and half-gaped. He then composed himself, and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. He took a deep breath.

April was incomplete. Every part of her body was affected. There were little bowl-shaped pits everywhere, and some had eaten quite deeply into her skin. In the deeper intrusions, the skin was glossy and smooth, like rubber. The veins and skin layers could be seen perfectly. And on her foot, you could see bone.

April allowed herself to be undressed, and the doctor examined her intensely. April murmured constantly, occasionally giggling. She did not sound good.

The only thing Sheila made out during this time was a couple of sentences.

"James, are you going to be there with me? Then, we can make some popcorn. The movie theater kind. Pop, pop, pop."

Sheila frowned. James was April's husband, killed in an accident at the laboratory where he worked. April was talking to a dead man. Sheila tried not to let her mind wander, for it could be more creative at most times than she would like. Glancing at her friend's emaciated body, she at once likened her to a block of swiss cheese. Immediately, she regretted having thought it, but she could not prevent herself from finding some dark humorous angle to this ugly situation.

Again, Sheila looked up. She started, for April had her eyes open, glaring at her with such an intensity that Sheila had to look away. Had she heard her thoughts? Sheila thought. Had she, somehow?

Twenty minutes later, after much prodding by strange instruments and scraping of skin and taking of blood for testing, the doctor conceded that he would have to get transport to Colorado Springs. They would air-lift April to a "better equipped" site. Sheila just nodded, and waited in the lobby.

Sheila was falling into a doze when April started screaming. She tried to run to the exam room, but the doctor quickly blocked her and told her to wait here, please.

April screamed. "Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!"

Sheila slumped into a seat, and started crying softly. She tried to block out the noise, but she couldn't. Jesus, she thought. 'Pop'. Couldn't April's mind have come up with a better word for those things? But it is like popping. Popping out of existence. Where do kernels go when they pop?

Sheila giggled, and quickly stopped herself. She would not become like April. Would not.

The screaming stopped a short time later. Sheila assumed that whatever it was had eaten into April's voicebox. April was still screaming. She just couldn't be heard.

***

The paramedics arrived half-an-hour later. As the stretcher went by, Sheila noticed that the shape under the blanket was too skinny. It didn't look like there was anything below the waist. Sheila watched them move the stretcher into the helicopter, and cried softly.

Just after the helicopter lifted off the parking lot blacktop, another set of blades sliced the mountain air. Sheila looked up as the lobby doors opened. A man and a woman walked in, suit-and-tie.

"Sheila Washington?" the woman asked.

"Yes?"

"I'm Agent Crow, and this is Agent Martin. We're FBI."

"We'd like to talk with you for a moment," the man said.

At first, Sheila didn't say anything. Then, she stood, glaring at these intruders. "What the HELL is going on?"

"Please, Mrs. Washington," the woman tried. "This is a very new thing we're dealing with, and we have to keep--"

Sheila took the other woman's jacket in her fist. She hissed into her nose. "Tell me what is happening."

The other agent spoke quietly. "There is a small animal in these parts of Colorado. It is so small you cannot see it, and it bites with such speed, you do not notice until it is gone."

Sheila relaxed her grip, and the woman agent seemed not too bruised by her attack. Agent Crow spoke with even tones.

"You've heard about No-see-um's? Those little kite-shaped flies that bite so quickly and are gone so fast you cannot swat them? Well, these are not insects. They are tiny mammals, much like miniature bats. Their heads are two times the size of their bodies, and their mouth takes up most of their head. They attack in swarms, and do not let-up."

Agent Martin took up his colleague's trail. "This is a totally new, never-before-seen organism. It's only purpose, like so many other forms of life on this Earth, is to survive. These animals survive by eating flesh. Specifically, human flesh."

"Jesus," Sheila said. She sat down as her legs would no longer support her. Then, she snorted. "Is this some experiment? Some government project gone wrong?"

"No," Agent Martin said. "This one is made by good old Mother Nature herself."

"Come on, Mrs. Washington," Agent Crow said. She nodded toward the helicopter.

Sheila did not see many choices that she could make. If this was really some little animal, the government would be the only ones who would have a chance at stopping it.

The two agents led her out of the clinic doors, and the helicopter blades spun-up. Sheila stared down at the asphalt, letting her hair blow down over her eyes.

When she felt her first touch, she did not jump. The second one came soon after, and she did hear a voice in her head.

2/23/94

revised 9/6/94