Yellow
Kenneth James Crist
The prisoner sat unmoving and incredulous,
wallowing in his oversized
orange jumpsuit, handcuffed, leg shackled and in belly chains, staring at the
judge as sentence was passed. Guilty on all counts. Guilty of murder in the
first degree. Guilty of carjacking. Guilty of kidnapping. Sentenced to death by
lethal injection. The prisoner maintained his composure for quite a long period
of time, considering. He didn't start screaming until later that evening in his
cell on death row.
"Hey, Sweets, how about some more a that Java?" Larry
Fade held out his cup, rattled it against the saucer as he looked down the
counter to where Joyce, the pretty waitress, was pouring for another customer.
"Keep ya shirt on, okay? Ya ain't the only customer in
here,
ya know." She moved languidly down the counter, taking her time, rolling
her generous hips and cracking her gum, finally reaching Larry's position and
pouring scalding coffee in the general direction of his cup, managing to slop
some on the hand nearest the cup.
"Son of a bitch!" he hissed, yanking his hand back. He
thought he saw a momentary smile play at the corners of her mouth.
Bitch. I oughta wait
til you get off and grab yer ass in the parkin' lot. Then we'd see how cute you
are when I…but he never
finished the thought, as she spoke to him, her lips never moving, her even white
teeth slightly parted, her voice a muted, hissing whisper.
"You fuckin'
bull haulers oughta broom y'selves off and learn some manners 'fore ya come in
here. The stink's makin' me nauseous."
Unbelieving, he glanced up into her face and saw a subtle
shift there,
as though something was under her
face, or behind it, as if her face,
the face that was showing, was only a mask. Then he glanced at her teeth,
grinning from behind shapely, shiny, slick
lips. Did her incisors look longer? Imagination.
It's the goddamn speed…Then he looked at her eyes, and knew the worst. Her
eyes were yellow. He was sure they
had been blue. He'd been coming here for six months, ever since he got this
route, and they were always blue. Almost violet. Now they were yellow. Like a
dog's eyes, almost a urine color. Piss-yellow, yeah, that was it. Inwardly he
shuddered.
He quickly rose and grabbed the check, headed for the
register. Ten
minutes later he was four miles down the road, jamming gears, the live cattle
in back milling around, banging and raising hell.
Larry was a misogynist, a hater of women, a user of women, truly believing in his heart that they were good for
only one thing, and many of them not even good for that. He came by his attitude
honestly, at least. His own mother
was nothing more than a worthless barfly, living on welfare and moving
listlessly from one man to another, always sleeping around and being beaten and
shit on by one drunken bum or another. Larry had no more idea whom his dad
might be than she did.
His sisters? More drunken sluts, both pregnant before
they were
sixteen, one dead now from drugs, the other in prison for setting her own kid
on fire while in a drunken, drugged out state.
In point of fact, Larry had never known any woman he liked more than momentarily, usually while one of them
was giving him head or hip-smacking him to a quick orgasm, usually in the
sleeper of his truck. Twice, he'd been given little presents along with what
he'd paid for. Clap. Gonorrhea. He'd been lucky enough to avoid the syph and
AIDS. The whores that worked the truck stops were known as "Lot
Lizards", and Larry thought that was an apt description. Cold-blooded and
scaly, there was seldom a pretty one, but a guy could usually get as rough as
he wanted. They were used to it.
But this bitch Joyce…again he shuddered as he thought
about what
he'd seen at the truck stop. Or thought
he'd seen. The directions his imagination wanted to take him were not places he
wanted to go…he resolutely refused to believe in such things as demons and shape-changers.
It had to be the drugs. After a while a guy just had to crash somewhere, get
some sleep, before he really crashed.
He made
it almost a hundred
miles before he turned in and shut down at a small, seedy motel two miles off
the Interstate. Mercifully, the motel night manager was a man…
A hundred thousand miles a year. Hundreds of restaurant
meals at
shitty little truck stops, snotty waitresses, some cute, some not so. The life
of a trucker. Larry had started out thinking it oh-so-glamorous. Now it was
just a job, something to keep the wolf from the door.
It was almost a week before he saw her again. A different
truck
stop, this one in Nebraska. It wasn't that it was the same woman. No way it
could have been. And yet, it was. Underneath.
Where it counted.
He saw the shift. He saw the change. She covered it quickly,
but
then smiled slyly at him. She knew he saw it and she didn't care. She'd asked
if he wanted pie after he'd finished his cheeseburger steak. He'd said
something smart-assed about getting too fat…unless she wanted to help him work
it off…and she'd glanced at him and it was there.
Just for a moment. But there was nothing subtle about it. Her eyes had glared
as yellow as those of a lion and he'd seen her teeth, sharp and shiny with her
saliva, almost tasting him…then it was gone as suddenly as it appeared and he'd
felt his guts turn to water.
How do you prove something like that? She was small,
a delicate
redhead not more than nineteen or so, but underneath…there was that same thing
he'd seen in New Jersey, that something that had sharp teeth and yellow eyes,
that lived beneath the surface, wearing
the redhead like a costume.
This time
he held his cool a
little bit better. Even left her a tip, then got the hell out of there as
quickly as he could, hustling along on shaky legs across the lot and into the
warmth of the Kenworth's cab. He swore he could feel her cold, knowing stare
upon the back of his neck for forty miles.
By now, of course, he'd realized it was not the drugs. He'd even backed off the dosage and started sleeping
more. But even in sleep…well, there were nightmares, things chasing him…but he
never could quite remember what they were when he awoke.
No, something was going on and he was becoming more and
more
convinced that only he could see it. It was either the same being or thing, or
there were several of them. Maybe a lot
of them.
Was the world being invaded? Was what he was seeing some
vanguard
force of aliens? Maybe what he'd seen on TV one night about UFOs was true-that
aliens were being crossbred with
humans to create a new race, so they could take their place with other races
who traveled the galaxies. Somehow it just didn't fit, though.
Weeks went by and Larry's sightings increased. He saw
her at almost
every truck stop now, and sometimes he'd see her move from one woman to
another. Then came the day when he saw her-or perhaps it would be better-he'd
seen it
move down a whole row of women who were standing in line at a supermarket,
almost a rippling effect. As each woman changed, she would turn and look at
him, then smile that knowing, sly, dangerous smile. Like, "I'm gonna get you, sucka!"
That day he had run screaming from the store, leaving
the cart,
leaving all the things he'd picked out, just running, scrambling into the truck
and highballing it away from there and into the wild, high country of Wyoming.
He had driven on and on, his route forgotten, his load forgotten, rolling for
days, stopping only to fuel on the company credit card and then only when the
station attendants were obviously men.
His thought processes were stilted, his deepest thoughts
and fears
running endlessly in his head like a rat in its exercise wheel, always coming
around to the same conclusion. They were out to get him. They were out to get him.
Not anyone else. Just him.
It was in Montana where the Highway Patrol Trooper stopped
him, a
week after the grocery store incident. The cattle had perished in the trailer
for lack of feed and water and the stench was incredible, the weather being now
quite warm. His company had reported his absence and there had been an all
points out on him and the truck.
The Montana Highway
Patrol should have been more careful, he thought, as he
was escorted into his death row cell. They
should never have worked a female Trooper alone out there. Even then, it
probably wouldn't have been a problem, he was so mentally and physically
exhausted when she stopped him. But when she had him out of the truck and was
walking him back past the trailer full of bloated, fly-blown carcasses, she'd
glanced at him and he'd seen it,
moving back in there, behind her eyes. It was here and they were miles from anywhere.
It would be able to do
anything it wanted, and he could do nothing to keep it at bay. Once he was
trapped in the patrol car with her, with it,
he would be finished.
Before he even had time to think, he'd snatched the sidearm
from
her holster and just before he pulled the trigger, he'd seen at last what it really
looked like. It had made the complete change, right there along a
Montana highway, the rippling giving way to something hideous, something
birthed from Hell itself and the overpowering stench that came off it made even
the truckload of rotting cattle smell sweet by comparison.
Its eyes had been the same, its fangs numerous and teeming
in a
mouth that nearly split the head in half. Its body had been covered with both
scales and hair, the uniform being only an illusion, something it used to hide
its true appearance. It had hissed at
him, its split tongue spraying noxious spit at him and he remembered screaming
like a child as he killed it.
He'd pulled the trigger fifteen times and killed it dead
as a
shitbug. He'd left in the Highway Patrol car and made it less than twenty miles
before they shot out his tires and pulled him from the wreck. The male Troopers
had no trouble with Larry at all. Meek as a lamb, one of them had said on
camera to a CNN crew.
Of course, she'd changed back. That was why he was charged
with
murder. If they could have seen what he saw…well, he reflected, they'd probably
have given him a medal. He had been examined by a court appointed male
psychiatrist and determined competent to stand trial and the rest, as they say,
was history.
Now, of course, there would be the appeal process and
all the legal
infighting before they could legally kill him. It would take years. And here he
would sit, day and night until it was over. But at least he had rid the world
of that thing, whatever it was. He
would be able to sleep and maybe even get his appetite back.
He had been sitting
on the bunk, looking down at the floor for ten minutes when the female
corrections officer came to his cell and called him "sweetie". He'd
looked up and looked into her eyes and she'd smiled at him. And that was when
the screaming began.
