El Spithor Vulthus (In the Belly of the Beast)

Chapter Five

I took a tentative step forward. For some reason, I felt nothing under my foot. But Marcia's continued yells reminded me that I had more important things to worry about. I put my other foot on the black grass.

And fell…and fell…and fell.

After what felt like twenty minutes, my feet finally touched something solid. Oddly enough, I did not change position while I was falling, nor when I landed. It was like there was a sudden loss of gravity.

I tried to look about, but it was all dark. Marcia had ceased shrieking. Briefly, I wished I could turn into a Vinswayon carbor, a reptile that could see in the dark. Then, I noticed a lambent glow emanating from a distant source ahead. I advanced toward it.

I was almost there, when something came down on me. I dropped Marcia, who squealed in fright as I tried to get whatever was on top of me off. Then, lights appeared all over the room, and I realized that a net now trapped Marcia and me.

Marcia tried to peck at the net, the ends of which were wrapped around some tables. I had to duck as I went toward the tables and attempted to lift them, to no avail.

"That won't work. The tables are glued to the floor," said a voice that startled me.

I jumped to my feet, only to fall back down since the net did not allow me to stand up straight, except in the very middle, and I was on one of its edges. Undaunted, I looked around for the speaker, and saw a slim human (or so he appeared) wearing purple robes and a ski mask. "Who are you?" I asked.

"Oh, my name is of no importance to you," he said. "But I will tell you what I am. You see standing before you a sturnrat. I exist in every dimension, and on every habitable planet. On Pacifico, I am called the Hithocorpus. On Earth, I am something far worse."

I gasped. To think that Mom was right all along! The black grass led me into a trap set by the Hithocorpus…instinctively, my cylindrical upper limbs grabbed hold of my horns. I couldn't bear the thought of being any uglier than I already was.

"It seems you have come on a feast day," the sturnrat said.

"You want my horn," I said, quietly.

"Oh, no, Cadowight. You're ugly enough as it is. In fact, I would prefer you to permit me give you the one thing you've always wanted, the ability to have your ugliness invisible to everybody else."

"You'd do that?" I was ready to thank the Hithocorpus for being so generous.

"Sure! All it would take is for you to climb into my mouth, when we meet either on Earth or Pacifico, and I'll swallow you. No one will see your ugliness if you're in my belly."

This made me so angry that I wanted to drill my horn into him. Then I thought, I can use my horns to break out of this net! I brought them upwards and tried to use them like knives. Nothing happened.

"Ah, foolish Cadowight. My net is too strong for your horns. And even if you were able to escape, you'd have to fight me. And I wouldn't lose."

You would if I turned you into vanilla, I thought.

"Anyhow, for the feast," continued the strunrat, "I only want to eat the little ducky-girl here. You, Cadowight, can go home free, for today."

The sturnrat pulled out his (its?) own knife and began cutting part of the net. Without thinking, I turned my horns on the sturnrat's hands. It laughed, a cold hard laugh that shook my nerves. "Cadowight, you amuse me. Your horns hurt me not at all. Even if you had three of them, they would give me no pain."

This hurt me, for it was another slight on my ugliness. I then breathed seductively on his hands. But they didn't turn to vanilla, and this gave the sturnrat an opportunity to stab my tongue with its knife. I yelped in pain, but he or it or whatever just kept laughing.

Once the hole was big enough to pull Marcia through, the sturnrat tossed aside its knife. Then it reached in for Marcia, but she rolled away. The sturnrat would have to cut another hole.

But he didn't. He just pulled something out of one of his pockets, slipping it on his finger. It was a ring, and Marcia was bedazzled by it, for even as a duck with wheels, she still could not resist jewelry. She rolled toward it, hypnotized.

I had to do something quick, for I didn't want her to be eaten by the sturnrat. If I had to eat her myself, it would be better. So I did the one thing I could think of. I breathed seductively on her, causing her to turn into vanilla.

"Curse you, Cadowight! How did you know that my species can't eat vanilla?"

"I didn't," I said. "I would've taken a bite out of her before you grabbed her, but only as a vanilla beast."

"You actually would've eaten her?" The sturnrat snarled. "Darn it. If I had known that, I would've pretended I could eat vanilla for a few seconds, so that you would've snapped at her for nothing. But no matter," it said, and I could hear it smiling from behind its ski mask. "What you have done is irreversible. Somebody will eat her. And I will eat you, sooner or later."

I gulped. Then rage entered my throat, and I would've released it verbally, but I felt a tingling sensation coursing through my body. This time I felt like I was being dragged upward. Two minutes later, I was on the SAC floor, and the human Marcia was next to me, only she was still vanilla.

Mr. Vortex looked around the room. "Look's like only five made it back." One of the boys was missing "But," he stared at Marcia, "what happened here? Miss Malice, please explain."