El Spithor Vulthus (In the Belly of the Beast)

Chapter Two

Nora came rushing to the bathroom, thrusting the door open. "What are you screaming about?"

I backed away from the toilet. "There's something hairy—" I said, pointing.

My sister looked at me like I was crazy. But she watched the bottom of the toilet for a second, while I stood there frozen. And out came…Nora's guinea pig.

"Flufftop!" she exclaimed, picking it up. "I've been looking everywhere for you! It's time for you to get a ride on the ceiling fan."

As she left the bathroom, she whispered in my ear, "I can't believe you were frightened of a guinea pig. You need to get some nerves, Sherri."

I went back to my room and kicked over my stack of comic books. I had started collecting them ever since I arrived here from Pacifico a year ago. But now I was frustrated. My comics spilled over my floor, and I made a vow not to clean my room till Christmas. Then I saw that the first comic book that had remained in the stack I had kicked over was Killer Hamster.

Killer Hamster happened to be my favorite comic series of all. The protagonist is a homicidial maniac named Alfic who used to be human, but was turned into a hamster by Dr. Benedict, who had promised that together they would become Masters of the Universe. Dr. Benedict was found dead two days after the experiment, and no scientist could discover the cause. He did have marks of a rodent on his neck, though. Alfic had bitten off an arsenic tablet, which does not affect hamsters, and immediately clamped his teeth into the traitor's nape. Sometimes Alfic kills good people, sometimes bad. But the goal of the comic books is to make you cheer for Alfic, no matter how much you care about his victims.

I chose to read this edition of Killer Hamster, dated from four months ago. In this one, Alfic kills an old lady in a shopping mall because he caught her stealing from a gumball machine. He has sympathy for the gumball machine, and after the old lady dies, he says, "Now you should have enough contents to woo another gumball machine. Invite me to your wedding, why don't you?"

When I finished the comic, I felt better. I began work on the history assignment, but soon gave it up for a lost cause. How could anyone expect me to learn the history of Earth's people when I wasn't even born here?

Nora struggled even harder than I did in school. But it didn't matter, for she was prettier than me, both as a human and as a Cadowight. For Cadowights (the most intelligent beings on Pacifico), having three horns, unblemished orange skin, and purple irises made you a dream catch for anyone of the opposite gender. Nora possessed all of these attractive features. I, however, only had two horns, there were green spots all over my flesh (they would've turned black in a couple of years), and yellow irises. There were few female Cadowights uglier than myself at school. I and my friend Marroc sometimes wished we had been plain, rather than ugly. Plainness, albeit unpleasant in itself, is not something you want to turn you eyes away from. It's not particularly wonderful to look at, but neither is it horrible. Vacor Primwoss Chaplain Imisoc Jortwon Illyan Dot, who had five-hundred names in all, was the plainest Cadowight I ever met, and I remember one time Maddoc wrote a note to Vacor begging her to switch bodies with her. This actually could be done on Pacifico, but not on Earth, as I have learnt. Vacor spit in my friend's face.

"Time for dinner!" Mom shouted, as I finished page 23 of Lust for Magic, the book I had to read for English. It was finally getting interesting, and I loathed being interrupted. But Mom would cause me to dream of raining bananas if I didn't eat now, and I wanted to have a normal dream that night. So I put a bookmark in Lust for Magic and ambled downstairs.

We had spaghetti and cheeseballs that night. All three of us were allergic to the flesh of Earthian animals. We learned this on our first day on Earth, when we went to a Wataburger. Nora and I had to go the hospital for a couple of days; we couldn't stop vomiting. For Mom, the effect of meat is less potent, though still horrid. Further, it doesn't matter whether its beef or chicken, but us Malices break out in hives.

"Did you manage to keep our secret for one more day?" Since Mom asked this question every night for a year, it was a sort of a joke now.

"I have not told anyone since Lisa Stotson last April," Nora said. Her friend Lisa had actually pried the information out of her, and the next day she went around telling the school that Nora was insane. Nora broke Lisa's back in a swimming pool two months later, and Lisa never spoke of her again. Nobody cared anyway; Nora was too pretty for it to matter.

"Even Jared doesn't know, Mom, and he's my best friend," I said, just like I said every night.

"Good. I still fear the day when one of us tells where we came from and the listener actually believes."

"It doesn't make any sense to me," I reflected, "that humans are so loath to believe the truth."

"Do you know that most American children your age would not know how to use the word 'loath' in a sentence? Heck, from my studies, most children Nora's age wouldn't know how to use that word."

"Mother, your sociological work impresses me," Nora said sarcastically.

"Nora, you know why we are here. To study the Earthlings and bring back data to FARLO. Cadowights know 90% of every word in their country's national language by the time they are eleven, whereas septuagenarian Americans on average don't know even 70% of their language."

"Mom, you are a fount of knowledge," I said, finishing the last cheeseball on my plate. "What's for dessert?"

"Cactus Flavored Ice-Cream." Mom picked up our plates and carried them to the sink.

"Mom, that's ridiculous."

"Hello?" said Nora, looking at me. "Earth to Sherri? Mother was simply punning. In English, the words 'desert' and 'dessert' are only one letter and one accent in difference. And of course, on Earth deserts are strange places were it only rains once a year."

"I know what a desert is, Nora! I also know that you have a crush on Penguin Reddox!"

"His name isn't Penguin. It's Benjamin."

"He dresses in that odd outfit that makes him look like a penguin, and—"

"It's called a tux, you moron! If you'd just assimilate into Earthian culture—"

"Girls, stop bickering! Go fill a bowl with ice cream and eat it before it melts."

Nora and I went over to the kitchen counter, pushing and shoving one another. We grabbed some bowls from the cabinet, and spoons from a drawer. Then we turned to the ice cream carton, only to find a cactus in it instead of mint chocolate chip Blue Bell.