Such Subtlety Of Movement: A What They Eat short story

A subtlety of movement by Gloria Colom

By: Miguel Cruz-Díaz

     She slithered silently, pulsating in the darkness. An insignificant shiver under foreign flesh, fabric and composite layering did not betray her presence in the overwhelming black. Sounds were muffled to her, layers shielded her from the thin atmosphere of the command deck, but she could feel arousing vibrations all around her. The thin cilia that covered her body were alert, slowly throbbing to the scrapping and turning across from where she nested. The flickering lights had gone out, and darkness had swallowed every empty corridor. Shadows coalesced into one black film that devoured the vessel’s interior, but this was meaningless to her. She did not need eyes to see.

      A slight layer of frost covered the surfaces of the ship, yet she did not feel the biting cold. She wore new skin now. The greying flesh she now inhabited had cooled long before. But the heat of her coiled body warmed her, sustained her. Contented. Satiated. Mind and flesh of her host consumed, her ancient form was nourished. Waiting.

     No gore or viscera were to be seen in the command deck. She had been careful. The first mind that she consumed had given her all the information that she needed. She timed her kills. Her discarded hosts littered the lower decks, where she had abandoned them after each feeding. The acrid scents of decomposing flesh lingered behind closed bulkheads were it littered floors, walls and ceiling.

     Memories of exquisite screams filled her senses. Thoughts of pain, fear and anguish in her prey had triggered the sweetness of endorphins that she greedily consumed. Ecstasy. That was what she felt the first time she feasted on one of these new creatures that came from the heavens. Explorers. Scavengers. Desecrators of her resting place, come to pick her nest clean. She had feasted on others like them before, but these were different. Yes, she knew their kind but not their species. They experienced pain in ways that made her tremble with anticipation of the next kill. To extend that pleasure had meant unlearning the old ways of killing those long-dead hosts, back when her world was alive. One by one she tried new ways of inflicting pain, to enhance her pleasure.

     Then a single intruder remained.

     All the better. This last feeding had been slow. Perfect. She still remembered how she had hunted it. So terrified. Alone. Praying to one of its gods as it fumbled with the door locks. It had been almost a mercy to kill it. She tasted its fear before she tasted flesh. She struck fast, the arterial spray bathing her, a crimson mist punctuated by screams as she punctured flesh, muscle and bone. Oh, those screams. It was orgiastic; to slither in so much blood and flesh each time she struck. The smell was intoxicating.
      No, it was more than simple intoxication. It was… exquisite.
      A wave of vibrations stilled her memories and brought her back from her thoughts. She stretched her limbs, snaking all over her nest. Flesh reanimated, unwieldy, alien, but now part of her. She flexed, snaked, and, finally, she was at the ready. Yes, this host would do.
      These creatures, she mused, had a grotesque anatomy. No grace to be found in their limbs, their bizarre symmetry. She resented to be temporarily confined to such an inefficiency of form. Still, she admitted a certain degree of jealousy in one of their features, a thought that struck her as deliciously ironic once the airlock finally hissed open and the rescue crew stepped into the command deck.

Piercing lights shredded night’s domain. They centered on a single solitary figure in a spacesuit. The last passenger of a dead ship slowly raised its arm. Such subtlety of movement, she thought. Strapping herself down had been troublesome, the unfamiliar flesh still a hindrance, but the deception had worked. Yes, she thought about that curious fit of jealousy as the figures closed in around her. A face. Yes, had she a face, she would have smiled.