The foot-sound was the first thing that caught their attention: the big sucking slorp of a giant foot yanking itself out of ankle-deep mud. Their heads jerked up and their mouths opened to yell warnings – spilling lovely fresh foliage everywhere, barely cropped – but it was all too late to even start, let alone make it in time, and so the last sound was the inevitable big meaty THUNK of her mouth driving directly through scale, skin, meat, muscles, and finally a good chunk of bone.
It was a good sound and it tasted like sweet salty red.
The rest of the meaties ran away from the lakeside waving their long tails and worbling their fat floppy alarms and it was good, so very good, that with the adrenaline in her veins and the red in her mouth and the tingle in her teeth she reared upright and sang the murder-song, which sounded like this:
I. AM. HERE!
I. AM. HAPPY!
I DID A MURDER!
ME! I DID!
THIS MADE ME HAPPY!
MURDER! MURDER! MURDER MURDER YAAAAAAAAY MURDER!
DON’T MESS WITH ME!
A lot of it was subsonic and rumbly and was done with her mouth closed, hiding her six-inch banana-teeth behind her gums while her saliva wiped off the spicy red from them. It built up her appetite to excruciating levels and she made short, sharp work of the meaty’s body when she was done.
Nothing like the murder-song to make your appetite surge.
After that she went for a nap, and she dreamed, and her dreams, like her, were big. Forty foot long (not her feet: her feet were bigger), fifteen foot high, with a head like a refrigerator filled with teeth and a pair of eagle eyes backed to a turkey vulture’s nose for trouble. A lovely set of equipment for any tyrant lizard king, awake or asleep.
Her dream was simple and powerful and it went like so:
***
There were a bunch of meaties by a lakeside and she ran up to them but her feet stuck in the mud and they slid away from her without using their legs. She tried singing the murder-song and they all fell over dead but kept sliding and then she fell over and into the lake and the lake was upside-down and inside-out, so she was in the middle of a dry hill while everything else was swimming in the water and she was by herself until
***
she woke up.
Well. What the heck did THAT mean?
It was raining now, and she wondered if she’d woken up because the water was trickling into her nose. She snorted phlegm in a little yellow flume and shook her head free of dampness and doubt.
Why must her head be full of odd ideas when she slept? Something must be bringing them into her body when she wasn’t looking; maybe the meaty had been full of bad ideas. It hadn’t been able to hear her when she was creeping up on it so clearly its head wasn’t a sensible one. Best not to dwell on it but to simply move through it.
After she had a little more of it for breakfast.
A big full belly refilled, a nap taken, a rain ended, a drink at the lake (she checked to make sure it wasn’t inside-out OR upside-down first: it was neither), and she was fit as a fiddlehead fern and taking a stroll through the woods, peeing on things so nobody else got clever ideas about hunting ‘round these parts. Little things sang in the trees and bushes; big things sang in the blue sky; the air smelled like urine and promise, and she realized that since she was happy as a clam she too should sing the happy-song, which sounded like this:
I AM HAPPY.
OH SO HAPPY.
OH SO HAPPY AND RUMBLY AND FULL.
I MURDERED YESTERDAY AND ATE TODAY AND SLEPT AND NOW I’M HAVING A NICE SLOW WALK
OH SO HAPPY THAT I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT’S REAL
And as she walked and sang the low deep quivering notes of the happy-song her mind left her body to do its own things and it made up its own story and it went like so:
***
She was walking through the forest and all the trees were made of meat but then they blew away and standing there was a very pretty man and they bobbed their heads and wiggled their tails at each other and sang the happy-song and made many romantic memories. Then they built a little nest and they raised a little clutch and they all lived together a very little much until she was lying starved and expiring in a pile of smouldering rubble somewhere which really jolted her
***
out of her daydream.
That surely wasn’t what she’d been planning to fantasize of. At least, not the last bit. Meeting a very pretty man sounded nice. Expiring in a pile of smouldering rubble sounded not at all pleasant and VERY unfitting of the happy-song.
Which she had stopped singing at some point, she realized.
Well. That was unhappying in and of itself, and now the day was ruined. The small things in the trees and bushes seemed whiny; the sky was empty and smirking, and even the urine in the air no longer filled her with pride. The absence of the happy-song was merely the last straw, and so she sulked her way along the remainder of this stretch of her border, peeing with duty rather than joy. Stay out of my way, it said. I’m in a bad mood and I’ve got big sharp teeth. Don’t mess with me. Unless you’re meaties in which case please please please come in; there’s a nice lake here and I’ll only eat some of you a little lot.
She was tired early. Not even proper-tired in her muscles after a nice day with lots of fun that ended in lots of food; weighty-tired, inside herself, like she’d eaten a rock even though she’d never tried doing that again after the one experiment with a pebble when she was a baby. It dragged her down and made her eyes close and the world shrink and she found the nearest little thicket that offered some protection from the nighttime rains she could smell on the horizon and as she pulled herself towards it she curled her tongue and arced her neck and uttered the first notes of her lonely-song, which sounded like this:
I AM ALL BY MYSELF
ALONE
THAT SUCKS
PLEASE IF YOU’RE NICE COME SEE ME AND WE CAN HANG OUT
FOR A WHILE
IF YOU’RE INTO THAT AND I LIKE YOU
I PROMISE I’M LONELY BUT NOT IN A SAD WAY JUST A TRAGIC ONE
THESE ARE DISTINCT THINGS
I AM VERY VERY LONELY
She sang the lonely-song a lot these days. Those days too, come to think of it. After she was done she laid down and set her jawbone to the ground to listen for the vibration of someone else.
Then she fell asleep and pretended she’d meant to do that, although she surely hadn’t meant to have a nightmare. It was a very direct and unsubtle nightmare, and it went like so:
***
She dropped dead in a burning gulch and fell asleep and a cliff fell on her and jumped up and down for ever and ever and ever and ever until the wind blew it away and let her nose stick out. Then a passing stubby little meaty with two legs and no tail at all waddled by and pulled her out and dragged her away for other meaties to look at and even though she was terribly, terribly thin they made her stand straight up and show her thin bones to them and made silly, sloppy meaty calls that let their mouths fall open and their tongues slap around – ridiculous! Grotesque! Grossssss!
They had no decency at all, they had no fear at all, they had no SONGS at all, and they wouldn’t stop, they just went on and on and on and on and on and
***
she woke up with a start and a snort and a little blurt of a song-stub that wasn’t very friendly AT ALL.
Her dreams were awful these days. That was the sixth time she’d had the same one, and if she were capable of counting she would be even more peeved.
But it was a new dawn, a new day, and she could see a little herd of meaties grazing on the lovely fresh foliage down at the lakeside, unaware of her presence.
She’d go and have breakfast. And if she felt like sleeping after this and found herself dreaming again, maybe this time she could try and see what would happen if she got up and ate the little two-legged meaties.
Maybe then they’d stop making all those stupid noises.
It was a good, comforting, comfortable thought, and as she prowled down towards the lakeside she could already feel the happy tingle of the murder-song warming itself in the back of her throat.
She wished this moment could last forever.