Duplicity (13 page)

“The water’s turning pink, Albert.” She used her warm hands to run liquid soap into his skin. “You have done very well, so far. I just knew that I had chosen the right man. You should be proud of that fact, Albert.” His
lost treasure
dragged her fingernail down his chest. “Of all the men that live in this town, my sweet, you were by far the strongest, most virile and, of course, you are very cute. I’m so proud of you, Albert. I know that your head must be just bursting with questions.”

His lungs hurt too much to think of a reply. Albert watched her hand dip into the water and felt her fingers wrap around his flaccid penis. He just wished that he’d had the courage to just open his mouth as soon as he had ducked his head under the water. He would be at peace by now. His miserable life and all his problems would be finished.

“Very soon, the rest of my tribe will be here. I can sense them all quickly approaching. They are all so hungry, Albert.”

He gazed into her immaculate face and wondered if the other females all looked like his
lost treasure
. How would he tell one from the other? He then imagined more of her kind rampaging through the buildings. Apart from Frankie and the old woman, they left the patients alone. Now he began to see why.

“I am their queen, Albert. Before we migrated, the others would not dare to go against my wishes. My wish is that these patients all belong to me.” She tightened her grip on his penis. “They’re coming here to feed, my sweet. Time is getting short.” She released him and climbed out of the bath then gently lifted the man out. She pressed her wet body tight against his. “If they find you here, Albert, they’ll eat you as well.”

Chapter Fifteen

Henry Collins stopped just before he reached the end of his street and watched a bright yellow sports car drive past. He turned and watched it speed along the empty road, going way past the speed limit. He shook his head and sighed, wondering just what was so important. He had never even thought about learning to drive. It just seemed like a huge waste of time and money.

Then again, even if he had been insane enough to decide that throwing his hard-earned money down a drain was a splendid idea, he still wouldn’t have dreamed of splashing out on such a flash car. He’d never been very comfortable with anything that could draw attention to himself. Just keeping his head down and getting on with whatever life threw at him had always been the safest bet.

He turned onto his street after the car had disappeared around the corner. At the last minute, Henry had decided to walk home instead of waiting for a bus. He had no desire to bump into anyone else on a bus that may or may not mistake him for somebody else. Thinking about the hassles that he’d been given, he should have just swallowed his uncertainty had caught the bloody thing anyway.

Henry lost count of the amount of complete strangers who’d shouted out his name, threatened to hit him or just glared at Henry on his journey home. What the bloody hell was going on? The bizarre behaviour had certainly blunted his desire to get his rocks off with his wife, he grinned, well maybe just a little bit.

An ice-cold shiver shot down the length of his spine when his mind dragged him back to a few months ago. Henry groaned, remembering the complete panic that had grabbed him when they’d became separated from the tour guide on that caving holiday. He reached out and grabbed a garden fence with both hands to stop him from falling. Henry could sense a huge bubble of strange and alien thoughts, trying to break to down his barrier and flow through into his conscious.

“Stay down there, you bastards,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to know how we managed to get out of that fucking cave. It really doesn’t fucking matter.”

Henry put the experience back into its own mind compartment and jogged towards his house, not giving a shit if any of his neighbours saw him running, they could all fuck themselves. He’d had enough of people glaring at him today to last him a lifetime.

Hopefully, in another few minutes, He would by exploring another dark cave; he intended to stay down there for a long time and didn’t care about getting lost. With a bit of luck, this sudden change in his wife’s sex life would be permanent.

“Good lord, I hope so.”

Henry jumped over his gate and hurried up the garden path. He stopped under the porch and looked up towards his bedroom window, grinning like an idiot. Henry gently pushed open the front door, and decided against shouting out his wife’s name. He wanted to surprise the woman.

The clock on the wall informed him that despite walking home, he’d still made pretty good time. He’d have probably got home only a few minutes earlier than now. “It doesn’t matter.” Henry whispered. “Good things come to those who wait.”

The scent from her favourite perfume, drifted in from the living room. The woman was definitely in the mood for some serious action. Bernadette knew just how much the smell of Obsession turned him on. He checked out all the downstairs rooms first before climbing onto the first step. From where he stood, Henry good just about see their bedroom door, she’ll be already in the room, probably spread out on the double bed, wearing very little clothes, waiting for him.

He still couldn’t believe how excited she’d got him with that one phone call. All the problems and strange events that had plagued him since this morning all seemed somehow inconsequential and unimportant. Henry slowly climbed the stairs, still keeping as quiet as a mouse. When the he reached the top step, Henry turned and saw that their bedroom door stood slightly ajar. He saw the foot of their bed; he also caught a flesh of pale skin. Henry thought his grin was going to split his face in two. She was certainly in there.

His heart almost stopped beating when the sound of urgent panting reached his ears. This was just unreal; his wife had already starting without him. He could hardly believe his luck, this was turning out to be better than he imagined. He ran over to the door and pushed it wide open.

Henry’s grin slipped from his face at the vile sight of his Bernadette kneeling on the unmade bed while the large hands of his best friend gripped her hips tight as he repeatedly slammed his own naked body into hers. He watched, fascinated as the man’s sweat drip from his forehead onto her smooth back. The man had his eyes tight shut. He was smiling.

He listened to them both groaning, panting and occasionally, Bernadette let out a soft moan. Henry remembered that noise, she was close to orgasm. It used to take him hours to get her to the stage of climax. Those alien urges rose up once more; this time, he allowed them to burst through into his enraged mind. Henry lifted up both his hands, a little unnerved to see the tips of his fingers slowly expanding, hardening and growing into long hooked claws.

His only desire now was to push the claws deep into William’s back. Shearing through the tender flesh and pulling all the claws down until he reached his thighs. He growled at the back of his throat and advanced on the rutting couple.

William must have heard Henry’s growl. He spun around and yelped. “Oh fuck. Oh hell man, look, Henry, I know how this must look to you.” He attempted to climb off the woman but Bernadette had turned around as well and wrapped both her legs around William’s thighs.

“Henry, don’t just fucking stare at him, you spineless fool.” She shouted. “Come on, kill the bastard!”

Their struggle mesmerised Henry, he stepped across the threshold and slowly approached the pair, noticing that the claws had grown another inch. He raised them up in front of his face, still not quite understanding how he could be changing. The knowledge was there, now pushed against a thin obstacle.  William’s terror struck face drained of blood. The woman behind the man chuckled.

“You are so close to remembering what you really are, Henry. I can sense your bewilderment. Just let your true feelings float to the top.”

Henry caught his breath, he gasped as his thought just detonated and filled his mind with a cascade of alien and bewildering images full of blood and rending flesh and of deep, dark passageways.

The woman sighed, “Oh yes, there you go. Now come on, Henry. Rip this bag of meat apart, let’s dine in style.”

Henry suddenly froze when the sound of a high-pitched shriek filled the room. he forced his hands down to his sides.

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

Henry staggered to the side, spun around, and found himself face to face with another Bernadette glaring at William’s naked body. Her face went through an assortment of expressions when she saw the naked woman. “This has got to be a fucking dream.” She muttered.

The naked Bernadette opened her legs and pushed William off the bed. He picked himself up and scrambled around the carpet, picking up his discarded clothes. Henry watched William trying to force both his feet before he turned his attention back to the two women.

“It’s been a while since I saw you.” the naked woman said. “Did you really think that you’d be able to flee from our tribe?” she laughed. “You did, I can see it in your pretty little face. You should have known that we would have come looking for you two.”

“You’re, you’re me!” Bernadette gasped.

“Ain’t you the fucking smart one? There’s a good reason why we had to feed you two runts animal scraps.” The naked woman climbed off the bed. “You two just can’t process quality meat. I remember voting to end your miserable lives but, I was ignored.” The naked woman sighed. “It’s not too late though.”

Henry watched her skin start to split in over a dozen places, revealing rigid plates of dark brown bone like material. He heard William moan and dart into the corner of the bedroom.

The fully clothed Bernadette took a step forward into the room and looked over at Henry. “I remember now.”

He nodded. “So do I.”

“Get out of here.” Bernadette looked at the shaking figure beside the bed, “and you, William, move it.”

William was already halfway dressed. He reached across the carpet, grabbed his shoes and pushed past both women.

“I love you, Henry. Don’t forget me.” Her skin began to roughen up as well. “It was great while it lasted.”

Henry’s old survival instinct rose to the surface. He ran through both women and dived out of the door. William had already reached the bottom of the stairs Henry saw him just stood there, giving up towards him. The two women had now fully transformed into their original appearance. They both resembled lumps of granite, carved into a rough human form. That’s just what he looked like beneath this fragile coating of soft tissue. They silently ripped into each other, tearing off pieces of each other’s flesh. He watched the fight for another few moments before grabbing the handle and closing the door. If either of them saw him observing, his life would be measured in seconds. Their rage had already reached its height.. He instinctively knew that if either of them saw him, they’d both kill him and then fight over his carcass.

Henry turned around and slowly walked down the stairs, allowing William’s grovelling apologies to wash over him. Somehow, his best friend’s betrayal now seemed a little insignificant.

“She promised me that you wouldn’t be home for bloody hours. She said you’d gone out on an errand. I honestly never meant to hurt you, Henry. You have to believe me.” William fell to his knees. “How was I supposed to know that your wife had an identical twin sister? Oh fuck, I mean. Bollocks, that didn’t come out right.”

Henry gazed at his hand then slammed it against the wall, feeling the plaster crumble beneath his skin, watching in fascination as it slowly changed colour to match the wallpaper, even down to the texture. “William, forget about it. She wasn’t even my wife. Neither of them are.” He looked in amusement at the man staring at Henry’s hand. William’s jaw looked as though it was hanging by a thread. “You seem a little distracted.”

“What the hell are you?” He stammered.

He took his hand off the wall, watching fragments of crumbled plaster fall onto the carpet. He walked down the remaining steps, pleased at seeing William stumble over to the outside door.

“Henry and Bernadette are both dead, William. They didn’t get out of that cave.” He sat down on the bottom step. “I don’t have a clue what we are called. The tribe or our species have a name. Well, at least they never bothered to share it with me of my sister.”

“Wait, you mean your wife is your sister as well?”

Henry sighed.

“The others in our tribe shunned us. We were the weakest, the runts. All we had were each other, William. They left us to fend for ourselves. We mainly scavenged or sometimes stole from the other members of the tribe.”

“We were at the base of a crevice when the unthinkable happened. It was our favourite place to look for food, William. A huge colony of bats used to roost at the top of the crevice and every so often a young bat, one that had yet to master flight, slipped and fell, getting stuck in the accumulated layers of bat shit. The two bodies landed right next to us.” Henry shrugged. “Both myself and my sister knew that we should have just left them there and moved away before the rest of the tribe had found their down. We were looking at sacred meat. Even if we took a single bite, the others would have slaughtered us on the spot. We could hear them skittering down the walls.”

William pushed his feet into his shoes. “This is so hard to take in, man.”

“The last meal that I had was a rotten lizard egg and I gave most of that to my sister. We both looked at all that meat, our stomachs growled. My sister looked at me and I looked at her. All that meat just lying there, we couldn’t help ourselves.”

William screamed out when something crashed into the bedroom door.

Henry stood up. He looked up, towards the door then walked past William. “Are you staying here? It’s likely that they will both tear each other to bits. If one of them does survive though, she’ll be very hungry.” He opened the door and stepped out into the garden. The others were spread around the town, he could smell them now. “William, there’s something you should know. Our tribe aren’t just here to look for their missing tribe members. Despite not being that many of us left, the others couldn’t really give a shit about us two.”