It didn’t make any sense. With the temperature down, Koko should be racing for warmth and security.
Without quite realizing what she was doing, Chelsea put her foot down on the first of the fourteen steps. Fearing for Derek, wanting to get to him, she even went down to the thirteenth. On the twelfth, she froze, realizing that every step she took made her more visible from the living room.
And what would she do anyway? Whistle for the lizard? Let Koko chase her back upstairs and hope help would arrive in time? She liked Derek an awful lot, more now than ever, but did she really, really and truly, want to risk being killed for him?
You’ll be eaten, now and forever. You’ll die, alone and terrified.
Even so, she couldn’t leave Derek to Koko and live with herself—if she lived.
Oh, crap, here I go…
She put the cell phone in her pocket, then crouched down on the twelfth step. As it took her weight, it creaked, even more as she lowered her head and surveyed the view through the short slats.
It was probably a trick of fear and memory, but the living room looked different from when she’d fled it. What? Less than half an hour ago? It was almost like a theater set, deliberately arranged to tell its backstory, the setup for the scene to come. The lamp lay on the floor, its burning white bulb pressing against the crushed yellow shade, throwing a wide oval of light across the room and onto the tall windows half covered with frost. The couch had been shoved into a ruffled throw rug, probably when Chelsea and Derek fled for the door. The broken key was even still visible in the lock where she’d snapped it off. The heavy lounge chair Koko had crept up behind and knocked over when he attacked was rolled onto its side. Thankfully, it blocked her view of Dr. Gambinetti, leaving only his legs and feet sticking out.
As she stared sadly at his familiar brown corduroy pants, she thought she saw his black-shoed foot twitch, as if it were tapping in time to Koko’s beating at the closet door. Could he still be alive, or was Koko just rattling the house?
She crept down a few more steps, the eleventh, the tenth, the ninth, until she could actually stick her head ever so slightly over the banister and peer toward the kitchen.
Koko was there, his thick, massive body wedged at an angle in the hallway, his back legs braced against the wall behind him, his front legs halfway up the closet door, scratching away. He looked like a big clay dog, trapped in a house built for midgets. A pile of wood scraps gathered at the floor beneath him, looking almost like the wood shavings in the rabbit pens at work.
Why was he there and not downstairs? Why did he want Derek so badly?
Koko’s head bobbed back and forth as his claws worked. He looked as if he was either tired or engaged in some ritual lizard behavior. Chelsea took some small comfort in the fact that his efforts didn’t seem as steady or ferocious as they had at the door to the bedroom, but really, she couldn’t be sure. She scanned his body for a wound that might have left the blood upstairs, but saw nothing other than muscle and wobbly clay-gray flaps of empty stomach.
Maybe in all the excitement, he hadn’t eaten enough.
On the floor below his hanging gut, though, mixed in with the closet door’s detritus, there was a trail of wet, dark red splotches that led from the base of the closet door all the way back to the kitchen floor. If it wasn’t Koko’s blood, it was Derek’s. His wound must be pretty bad. No wonder he’d passed out.
Maybe that was why Koko hadn’t raced for the basement. The sight of blood meant another wounded victim was waiting. Or maybe his own brain had been fried by all the excitement, and he was choosing aggression over survival.
Chelsea wished she’d read more about the dragons, but the OCD had stopped her, as always. And now, today, in the real world, for all the OCD’s claims about making her safe, if it made her hesitate again at the wrong moment, it might even kill her.
Not that she had a plan of her own, other than the stupid whistle and run idea. She took a final step down, to the eighth stair and just waited. Koko wasn’t through the door yet. Maybe the police would get here before he broke through and Chelsea wouldn’t have to do anything. At least now she could clearly see when the time was right. That would be the smart thing to do. If Koko breached the door she could scream. She probably would scream and Koko would come after her.
It was a decent plan, except for one small detail.
Koko turned and saw her.
They both froze, like ex-lovers embarrassed to run into each other at the same party. He focused on her face and they locked eyes.
His tongue flicked out twice, three times. Did he know? Did his reptile brain realize it was her fault the house had gotten so cold?
Leaning against the door like that, with his head at least five feet in the air, he looked almost human. But then his front legs slid off the door, one at a time, thudding on the hall’s flower-patterned linoleum floor. Down on all fours he looked anything but human. He didn’t look animal, either. He didn’t look like anything that had any right to be alive. He looked like a dinosaur, a dragon, a primal force of nature. Something you had to make a statue to, or else.
His first steps toward her were slow, as if he were tired, or wounded, or freezing, or all of those. His head pivoted to remain fixed on her as he moved in inches. But then, without any pause, without any tensing of muscle, he darted across the floor toward the stairs with a sudden, startling burst of speed.
I’ve got to run! I’ve got to run now! Chelsea thought as she stared at the ten-foot blur. Up the stairs! Into a room, any room!
She would have made it too, had not the voice of the OCD rode the pulse of panic into her brain.
Count the tiles in the ceiling!
And, caught off guard, for a precious second, she obeyed.
2, 4, 6, 8.
She’d reached ten before she wrested control of her body back. By then Koko was at the base of the stairs and still moving fast. In seconds, he’d be upon her. She’d never make it up the stairs before he scrambled his 150 pounds on top of her 120, and brought her down. She’d be carrion.
She put both hands on the banister and leaped over it. By the time Koko had reached the spot where she’d stood, she was landing with a crash on the hallway floor.
Koko flung his body against the railing. It cracked and splintered. She looked up in time to see his snout and neck burst through as if the posts were toothpicks.
Now she ran. She ran full tilt down the hallway, nearly slipping on Derek’s blood, into the kitchen where the air was thick with the heavy smell of gas. Not knowing where Koko was, not knowing how close he was behind her, she spun herself in the only direction available, toward the basement door. She threw it open. The moist, hot air from below slapped her in the face. She pulled her head back and then half fell, half ran down the stairs.
She looked around. Screaming her frustration into the moist air, she turned the dials for the heat and the humidity down to zero. The misting machine coughed once before falling silent. As she heard Koko coming down the stairs, she grabbed the only weapon available, the mechanical claw, and ran for her last hiding place, Koko’s cage. Without really stopping to consider how Koko could have gotten out, she unbolted the door and dove in among the dirt and plants.
As the lizard curved itself around the base of the stairs, Chelsea reached through the wire above the Plexiglas and slid the bolt back into place, locking herself inside.
Koko ambled into the center of the ten-by-twelve area, taking up much of it. He raised his head and twisted it curiously, regarding her. It was almost as if he were admiring the irony: he outside in the human world, she stuck in there.
“Get out! Go away!” she screamed at him from behind the protective wall. She shook the claw at him threateningly. “I’ll kill you!”
He hissed at her. You and what army?
He stepped forward, craning his neck into the glow from the three heat lamps. Great, now he’d be all warm and cozy.
Not if Chelsea had anything to say about it. Swinging the metal claw like a club, she smashed the heat lamp closest to her. There was a flash as a shower of glass hit his water dish.
Koko hissed.
“Didn’t like that, eh? How about this then?”
She swung at the second. “Screw you, Koko! You hear me? Screw you!”
Koko hissed and reared at the second flash and breaking glass. When Chelsea smashed the third light, he slammed both front claws into the Plexiglas door. He stood there, propped up on his back legs, looking totally pissed in spite of his Kermit grin, as she destroyed the orange bulb.
Now the only lights in the basement were the recessed fluorescents that covered the part of the room Koko was in. They made his gray skin look a little green. Chelsea was in semidarkness, panting, waiting, stretching her ears to see if there were sirens coming.
Where were they?
She stepped back and felt something hard under her foot. Looking down, she saw the frayed remains of the dog collar and remembered how Aristotle had snuck in. Maybe she could squeeze out? She looked up at the small window, at the piece of wood Derek had shoved there. The window she could manage, but what about the bars?
No. It was hopeless. She just wasn’t as small as a little dog.
Where was Koko, anyway? She’d taken her eyes off him while she was looking at the window, and now he was nowhere to be seen. Had he gone back upstairs? Was he sitting in some shadow?
A quiet rustling made her turn to look behind her. The only thing there was the big nest made of sticks and straw and leaves that Koko traditionally sat on. She looked in horror as the whole nest shook.
It was only then she realized, eyes widening, exactly how Koko had gotten out. The big lizard hadn’t been sitting on top of the habitat’s dirt all that time, he was covering a hole he’d dug. There, out of sight, at some point, he scratched at the Plexiglas until he was able to slip into the small space between the Plexiglas and the cinderblock, and now could come and go as he pleased.
As the living hill rose, Chelsea scrambled across the dirt and twigs and headed for the locked door, each frantic move she made slowed by the moist earth and plants. Reaching her goal, she stood on tiptoes and jammed her arm through the wire, letting its sharp ends cut her skin as she reached for the bolt. She threw the door open with her weight and spilled out onto the floor.
At her back, she saw Koko following. She kicked the door shut, stood and slammed the bolt into place just as he hit the thick Plexiglas with all 150 pounds. The wall shook and creaked. White dust fell from the recessed ceiling. Koko stared at her a second as she raced for the stairs. A few steps up, she saw his tail again vanish under his nest.
As she reached the kitchen, she heard him on the steps. Now she knew just how sophisticated he was. An animal would back off, stay in the nest, but Koko, Koko was just pissed now and out for revenge. Worse, rejuvenated by what heat he’d enjoyed down there, he was moving faster. It was all she could do to barrel into the kitchen table, knocking it over and falling in the process.
As his great form swept into the kitchen, she dove behind the table for cover. Koko slammed into it, pushing it and Chelsea up against the locked rear door of the house, slamming her head against the wood. He clawed, bit and pushed against the Formica table top, trying to gain purchase on its slick surface. All he really had to do was grab the side of the table and pull. How long would it take for him to figure that out?
Sobbing, she surveyed the little triangle her world had become, how tiny it was, how limited, exactly as Dr. Gambinetti had warned if she kept listening to her OCD. It was just this little space now, shared with some of the junk on the table that had been spilled to the floor and been pushed here along with her. Some mail, paper clips, overturned salt and pepper shakers…
…and matches.
The air was cooler near the drafty door, the gas was not as thick as it had been in the rest of the room, but she still smelled it. All of a sudden, Derek’s plan to blow his way out didn’t seem so stupid. Maybe because now it was the only idea.
The table slammed her again as Koko pounded it. She scooped the matches up in her hand and tore one off.
As she did, the OCD screamed at her.
No, don’t! You’ll die! Count the scratches on the floor! Wash your hands until they’re raw! Count all the dust motes in the house, but don’t ever light that match! You’ll die! You’ll burn, and burning is the worst way, the worst way to go.
But then Koko’s claws and Kermit head came over the top of the table and looked down at her in what she imagined was an expression of triumph. So she did it, she flicked the match in the book, saw the spark catch and burst into flame, saw the flame grow faster and hotter than she could have imagined.
As the growing white flame hit the rest of the matches, she tossed the whole book up and over Koko’s head. He twisted his head up. For a moment she was afraid he was going to bite it and put it out, but he didn’t. He just watched.
Maybe he was just a dumb, hungry lizard after all.
As the kitchen erupted in a blinding ball of white light, she figured that if she died, at least it would be better than listening to that damn voice in her head every day, at the very least, dying in this white heat would be faster and more merciful than even the jaws of the lizard.
At least Koko should be happy. It was warm again. Hot, really. Hot enough for a monster from hell.