Tongue Tied
Sitting alongside him the pale-green humanoid let out a small hiss, her clawed hand lightly brushing his bare shoulders. Her scaled palm scraped roughly against his flesh, cold to the touch. Months before that very same sensation would have repelled him, but now he found that he more than welcomed the physical contact; It reminded him of home.
She slid closer. Their hips touched and he looked up at her. She returned his gaze, her face expressionless (her species lack the proper muscle to make such minute movements), her eyes unblinking and it was these that drew him. Set deep under hooded eye-ridges, they were pupil-less and impossibly black. Even blacker, he thought than the depths of space itself. In that darkness he could discern not only a reflection of his haggard self, but a kaleidoscope of vivid hues that formed and then reformed into indefinite and unknowable shapes. He could lose himself in those eyes.
Gracefully she dipped down and to his surprise kissed his cheek. A profusion of red seeped under his well-bronzed skin. His fingers tentatively came up and touched the spot lightly. He blink swiftly, regaining his senses and smiled at her. A sad smile, his only type since his ship had crash landed onto this desolate planet. Survival in an alien world had its costs. Sanity, he found, was one of them. Sometimes he’d find himself curled up in the dusty soil shoulders heaving, silent sobs racking his broad chest. Sometimes he’d disappear across the horizon for days, weeks, and return battle-scared and bruised as if he’d been fighting the whole damned planet. And even in all those moments when he lost himself, still she waited here for him, ever patient and accepting in her own silent way.
Now he turned to face her, his eyes once again searching hers, questioning them. All this time he had counseled himself with the thought of returning home, even after the hyper-engine blew and somehow he lost all eight nuclear fuses in the surrounding desert. All this time he’d felt alone on this wasteland and here she was. A stranger turn companion, not lost like him but a long-time resident, free to come and go as she pleased. Yet here she was, still by his side. Always by his side.
Slowly he leaned forward. She leaned in to meet him, her dark purple tongue tentatively testing the air. His lips touched her thin, scaled ones. He parted his lips and with a shiver he felt her thick serpentine tongue pressing against his, probing his mouth. She leaned in harder, forcing his mouth open wider and suddenly he was choking on her tongue as it slid past his uvula and down his throat. He tried to push her away, but her nimble claws fingers held his wrists tightly to her chest. He thrashed wildly, confusion and fear mingling with pain as a dozen of her tiny, re-curved retractable fangs sunk fast and deep into his lips and gums. She pressed even harder now, drawing blood that seeped in between the corners of their enmeshed mouths. Her tongue slithered past his pharynx and into his esophagus. Revulsion twisted his features as he felt her tongue undulate, pumping something inside of him. His stomach heaved and he felt lightheaded. His vision began to disintegrate and he knew he was going to faint.
Abruptly she pulled back, her tongue snapping out of his inner organs and back into her mouth with dizzying speed. She released her hold on him and he leaned over quickly, heaving. Tears stung his eyes as he retched again and again, spitting up nothing but frothy white stomach acid and the blood from his punctured lips. The weight in his organs refused to budge and with a sick thrill of horror he realized that she had deposited her eggs into his vital organs. Short of surgery, he would not be able to force them up and out. Now he was on his knees, once again on all fours, immersed in the never-ending dust that covered the planet’s entire rocky terrain. Trembling at her clawed and scaly feet, he implored her with bleary, swollen eyes. She cocked her head, a smiling playing its way across her face as if her accosting him was nothing but pleasant. No, he dully realized, it was a trick of his increasingly disordered mind; snakes always look as if they’re smiling. She had chosen him as her temporary mate and deposited her burden-now his. He was a vessel, a means for an end, not a lover.
Now he choked on tears rather than bile It was her way, or rather, her kinds way. What can a reptile know of loneliness, of love? It was his folly, not hers. His mistake. He was only human, after all.
(P.S. I totally drew a picture of the Reptile gal in this short story...As well as the male version of the species. I'll post 'em soon, promise!)