They may look a little like angels with their gossamer dragonfly wings folded along the contours of their backs, but they are not. At least, they’re not like any angel I’ve ever seen. Or ever want to.
There’s something twisted about them. They float in a column of clear liquid, and I feel like I’m peering into the disembodied womb of an animal that shouldn’t exist.
Some of them are the size of large men, bulging with muscles despite the fact that they’re curled in the fetal position. Others are smaller as though struggling to survive. A few of them look like they’re sucking their thumbs. I find the human-ness of that gesture particularly disturbing.
From the front, they look human, but from the back and the sides, they look utterly alien. Plump scorpion tails grow out of their tailbones to curl over their heads. They end in needlelike stingers, ready for piercing. The sight of those tails brings back echoes of my nightmare and I shiver.
Most of them have their wings folded, but a few have their wings partially unfurled, spread along the curve of the columns and twitching like they’re dreaming of flying. These are easier to look at than the ones whose scorpion tails are twitching as if they’re dreaming of killing.
Their eyes are closed with what look like underdeveloped eyelids. Their heads are hairless and their skin is nearly transparent, showing the network of veins and musculature beneath. Whatever these things are, they’re not fully developed.
I block as much of this view as I can from my mother. She will freak if she sees any of this. For once, maybe her reaction is the sane one.
I give her a hand signal to wait here for me. I make my face intense so she knows I mean it, but I don’t know if it will do any good. I hope she stays. The last thing I need is her freaking out. I never thought I’d be grateful for her paranoia, but I am. There’s a decent chance she’ll hide in the dark like a rabbit in a hole until I come for her. If something happens, at least she has her cattle prod.
My stomach clenches with icy fear at what I’m about to do. But if Paige is in here, I can’t leave her.
I force myself to step into the cavernous room.
Inside, the air feels cold and clinical. There is a formaldehyde-like smell to the air. A scent I associate with long-dead things trapped in jars on a shelf. I step gingerly between the glass columns to get to the rest of the room.
As I walk by the columns, I notice what look like piles of lumpy cloth and seaweed at the bottom of the tanks. A creepy feeling crawls up my back. I quickly look away, not wanting to look closer.
But when I look away, I see something that curdles my creepy feeling into terror.
One of the beasts holds a woman in a lover’s embrace in its tank. Its tail arches over its head down to the woman, burying its stinger in the back of her neck.
One strap of her party dress has been shoved down her painfully thin shoulder. The scorpion angel’s mouth is buried in her sagging breast. Her skin crinkles against her drying flesh as if all the fluids are being drained from them.
Someone has forced an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. The mask’s black tubes reach up to the tank’s cap, looking like a twisted umbilical cord. Her dark hair is the only thing moving about her. It floats ethereally around the cords and stinger.
Despite the mask, I recognize her. She is the woman whose children and husband waved goodbye to her from the fence when she came into the aerie. The woman who turned to throw a kiss to her family. She looks like she’s aged twenty years since I last saw her a few hours ago. Her face is sallow, her skin sagging over her bones. She’s lost weight. A lot of weight.
Below her floating feet lays a discarded pile of brightly colored material and what I now realize is skin over bones. What I initially mistook for seaweed is actually hair waving gently at the bottom of the tank.
This monster is slowly liquefying her insides and drinking it.
My feet won’t move. I stand like prey waiting for a predator to grab me. Every instinct I have screams at me to run.
Just when I think it couldn’t get any worse, I see her eyes. They look strained and unnatural in their oversized sockets. I imagine a spark of desperation and pain in them. I hope she at least died quickly and painlessly, but I doubt it.
As I’m about to turn away, a cluster of small bubbles escapes from her air mask and floats past her hair.
I freeze. She couldn’t possibly be alive, could she?
But why would someone put an air mask on her if she was dead?
I wait and watch for any signs of life. The only motion I see is caused by the scorpion as it greedily sucks her dry. Her once-vibrant skin shrivels almost before my eyes. Her hair dances in slow sweeps every time the scorpion moves.
Then, another group of air bubbles float up from her mask.