SHOOP. Part I

A Story by Hawksmoor

There was the sound of a paradise bird's rough chirrup and then there was a spitting-mad black Mamba sliding out of the light blue cell phone screen. Randy dropped the phone with an ear-splitting shriek, turned, and ran for his life.

The Mamba glided down the cracked sidewalk and across the treacherous stretch of Closterman Avenue. It paused for a moment, flicking its tongue here and there, and then slithered into a dark storm drain, hissing softly as it vanished.

Not a soul, even upon the constantly bustling path of activity that was Closterman Avenue, noticed anything out of the ordinary.

On the sidewalk, the cell phone, now with a splintered screen, chirped again. The words Cone Shell appeared across several large slivers of plastic that made up the biggest part of the screen. With a sound like that of a plunger unstopping a gagged S-bend, a large mollusk, a vividly maroon pattern slathered across its exoskeleton, slipped from the splintered cell phone screen. It swelled as it appeared, gaining more than a foot in length and girth as it shoved itself out of the phone and into the blistering atmosphere of Miami, Florida.

A largely uneventful day passed.

And then it was night.

"She did it again," squawked the tall, slender man in the red Chicago Bulls hat and the worn cotton tank top. His face shined with sweat. The woman who stood at his right shoulder, a pretty streetwalker named Wanda, (of the shining hips that gave the world’s best trips) wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Randy," Wanda whispered. She placed her bejeweled hand on Randy's shoulder, but Randy didn't seem to notice her presence at the moment. "Randy, honey, a bath."

Randy threw the hand off his shoulder with a full-body jerk. He grimaced as he stared at the television screen in front of him, which sat beside the bathroom door on a low desk that was missing a leg on the right side. On the television screen, a pretty black reporter was regaling viewers with the mysteries of the wondrous world of dangerously venomous mollusks.

Randy’s eyes darted back and forth across the TV screen, as if he feared losing sight of some invisible clue as to the whereabouts of the cure to his misery.

"I can't believe she did it again,” he said under his breath. “I told her I'd cut her c**t out with a pen knife if anything like this ever happened again." His eyes were wide and shocked as he spoke to no one in particular. His face contorted and his mind whirled.

"Baby," Wanda said, putting her hand atop his shoulder again, "You stink. A hot bath would make you feel better, yes?"

Wanda had been dealing with Randy for weeks, and though she knew him at least as well as one stranger could know another stranger, (well, a pair of willing strangers with benefits) she felt uneasy now. She was beginning to think that he was losing his grip on reality. Snakes and things emerging from phones. Ridiculous. Of course, she'd dealt with his kind before. Married, crazy, arrogant, they were all the same, men.

She knew her way around situations like this.

"Get your filthy hand off of me, you b***h," said Randy, rounding on Wanda, his right hand cocked back over his shoulder as if he meant to backhand her. "I've got to get to my daughter and wife.”

Wanda produced an understanding smile, but Randy wasn’t fooled, or any less terrified.

“You don’t understand, goddammit!” he screamed, throwing his arms over his head. “They've got cell phones, and she…she has both their numbers!"

Randy bolted to the door of the motel room, peered into the world beyond the dusty peephole, and, seeing nothing that he considered a threat, threw the door open. He vanished into the night, leaving the smell of bright fear and stale sweat behind.

"Well," said Wanda, sitting on the dingy motel bed, "No tip for me, once again."

On the nightstand beside the bed, where she had left it, Wanda's cell phone began to ring.

In a dim room far away, the floor covered wall to wall by a sea of fast food wrappers, empty soda bottles, grime-caked dishes, and filthy clothes, sat an monstrously fat woman. The woman giggled and laid a hand on her stubby chin. On her left thigh was a gargantuan submarine sandwich. The sides of the sandwich dripped dressing onto her impossibly obese lap, but the woman didn't seem to mind. In her pudgy right hand was a silver cell phone. As she ate and giggled, her fingers busied themselves on the number pad. The fingers were horridly sausage-like, yet, they moved with almost blinding speed.

"Maybe a 9.5 earthquake will be my next message to him," she mumbled through the mouthful of bread and meat. "Maybe an atomic 9.5 earthquake will make him leave his life behind and love me."