Lock, Croc and Two Smoking Barrels

Michael didn't regret the choices that led him to the swamp. He regretted not learning a musical instrument. He could break out his guitar or harmonica and fill the swamp with music. Maybe the banjo would have been more thematically appropriate.

This time had really helped Michael appreciate the peace and solitude of the swamp. And the very moment he thought that, Odile jumped up from the floor, poised on all fours, craning her head around.

"What's wrong?" Michael sat up.

"Someone's coming." She hissed. "Go inside."

He hesitated. "Maybe you should go inside and let me deal with him."

Odile looked at him sideways. "What are you going to do to him?"

"Nothing! That's the point. Maybe we shouldn't kill everyone who goes through here."

"If he means us harm, he can hurt you easier than me."

"Who do you think he'll be more confused to see out here?"

Odile broke her eye contact, sighed, took her hat off and hung it on the pier hook near the door. She jumped into the water like a pencil, vanishing into the water with minimum ripples. He imagined she would watch and listen to what went down from below the hut, her eyes and ears just above the water's edge.

A minute passed with no obvious boats or other vessels appearing. Michael was about to call down to Odile that she must have imagined it, but then he caught the shimmering white of a fiberglass rowboat cutting through the muddy waters.

The S.S. Wet Dream approached the hut. Michael was fairly sure you didn't give names to rowboats, but whatever, it's your property. A man in a Yankees jersey rowed while facing away from the front of the boat. (Was that how you were supposed to do it?) As it got closer, he looked over his shoulder and he recognized the man.

Maybe he should have had Odile do the negotiation after all. This was Peter "Pistol Pete" Hogan, someone he wasn't that thrilled to see. He was a man about six-foot-two, overweight, with a buzz cut and a small gap between his front teeth.

Pete looked over his shoulder and saw the hut, and Michael. "Mike?" He asked.

"Hey, Peter." He waved. "Am I glad to see a familiar face."

"What the hell are you doing out here?" Peter asked, trying to maneuver the boat to the dock.

"My boat sank." This felt like the start of one of those conversations where everything he said would be a lie, or at least not the whole truth. "I've been stranded for days."

"Well, that's not what they said back at the pool hall." Peter said. "There's a bounty on you for running off with all the product."

"I did not run off with it. I've still got it. I just couldn't make the meeting. You can take it all back to them."

Peter lived up to his name, pulling his pistol out of his waistband. "I think you're coming with me, too."

Michael put his hands up. "I'd be happy to! I just told you I'm stranded! I want to go home! Just put the gun down!"

"Show me the product's still here and I'll think about it."

"Please, just put the gun away." Michael pleaded. He was not afraid of being shot, but he was afraid what Odile would do if he didn't stop threatening him.

The fiberglass boat started to rock. Two hands reached out of the water and pulled on the fore of the boat. Peter screamed, jumping back to the rising aft of the boat. "It's Swamp Thing!"

"Grab my hand!" Michael reached from the dock and offered his arm to Peter, who accepted it. He jumped to the dock, and the hands left the rim of the boat.

"Where is it?!" Peter shouted, pointing the gun towards the water.

"Don't shoot!" Michael screamed, louder than he meant to, grabbing the barrel of the gun and pulling it away from the water.

"What the hell is your problem?!" Peter tried to get the gun back, but Michael shoved it upwards so it struck Peter across the nose. He released the gun and grabbed his nose.

Odile burst out of the water and climbed up to the dock. She glared at Peter, who didn't even scream this time. Swamp Thing was a girl... and wore pink bikinis.

Odile put her claws around Peter's neck. MIchael rose the gun to Odile. "Don't kill him!" He pleaded.

Turning towards the gun with disgust, Odile swiped it out of his hand, scratching the top of his hand accidentally as she did. "How dare you point this at me?!" She hissed, throwing the gun like a boomerang, twirling sideways as it flew a huge distance before smashing into a tree and sinking into the swamp.

"I'm sorry, I just don't want you to kill--" They were interrupted as Peter got free and pulled out a second pistol and fired it at Odile.

The sound reverberated all across the swamp. All the nearby birds made a hasty retreat into the sky. As the sound faded, all three were still standing. Odile had barely pulled her arm in front of her face, the bullet stopping against her rigid scales.

Peter lowered the gun in shock, but not quick enough to avoid Odile ripping it out of his fingers and throwing it into the swamp. Peter didn't get his finger out of the trigger guard in time, and his finger dislocated at the second metacarpal.

He screamed, folding around the wounded finger. "You broke my hand!"

"You tried to kill me!" She bellowed. She turned back sharply at Michael, her head moving so quickly, it would have tossed her hair about if she had any. "Are you satisfied? I didn't kill him!"

"What the hell's going on here, Mike?" Peter called out from inside the hut.

"I didn't know he had two guns! They don't call him Pistols Pete, plural!"

"Is this thing your wife, Mikey? Why are you talking to it?"

"Shut up, Peter, or I'll send her in here to eat you, crotch-first!" Michael yelled. "She'll do it, too! Ain't that right?"

Odile's attention had been distracted for a moment. There was a suitcase sitting in the boat. She turned around, lifting it with her tail and pulling it off the boat. She dropped it on her bed.

"What do you have in here?" She didn't understand the locking mechanism, so Michael opened it.

Inside the old leather suitcase... was more cocaine. Ten kilos of it.

Michael turned to Pistol-less Pete. "You were out here to make a deal, too?"

Peter looked back. "Yeah..."

Chapter 8: Detroit Croc City

It hadn't been the neatest way for Michael to introduce his girlfriend, but a few minutes of calming breaths, awkward introductions, and a flimsy attempt at first aid for Peter's finger followed. Peter's finger was now between two sticks held together with one of his shoelaces. He sat on the bed as the others stood before him.

"They told me to go down this river, go through the swamp, and I'd reach a clearing where they'd meet me to make the exchange. That way, the cops would never know about it."

"That's exactly what they told me." Michael said. "Did you get lost, too?"

"No, man, I got GPS on my phone. This is the right way, but I ran into you guys first."

Michael was now suspicious, but not of Peter. "Odile, you don't have any of the effects from the people you ate, do you? Anything that could be used to ID someone?"

"No." She responded. "If I didn't need it, or couldn't eat it, I threw the rest out into the swamp."

"What about the guns?" Michael persisted. "Where would they be?"

"I just dropped them out back. I don't need them. They're nothing but trouble."

"Could they still be there?"

"Maybe." Odile jumped into the water.

"Mikey, what the hell is she?" Peter asked, now that she was out of earshot.

"She's my friend." Michael answered. "She usually kills trespassers, but not me. Peter, can you think of which members of the gang have disappeared or run off recently?"

Peter rolled his eyes back, thinking, unable to tap his shaved skull as he did when he was thinking. "Laces Luciano, Second Matt, Dig Doug, Golden Sal, Donnie..." He thought harder. "Whistles, Casper... there's been a lot lately, not counting those who got pinched."

A cold silence fell on the muggy hut. "I'm sorry about your brother, Mikey. He got totally railroaded. It's bull."

"He did the crime, now he's doing the time." Michael said shortly.

"At least he's alive." Peter shrugged.

Odile emerged from the water, holding a gun by the barrel. "This was the only one I could see." She pulled herself back onto the dock and brought the gun inside. It was a custom made Desert Eagle with ivory inserts on the handle carved in the shape of a naked woman. The rest of the gun... was gold.

"Golden Sal..." Peter looked horrified. "You killed Golden Sal?!"

"I killed and ate the person who trespassed on my swamp, and then tried to hurt me with this horrible thing." Odile said shamelessly. "If that was Golden Sal, whoever that was, then yes, I did."

"You stupid monster! He had two kids!" Peter spat.

The word 'monster' hit Michael like a dagger, hurting him more than Odile. He jumped to the defensive. "Shut up, Peter. Maybe she's a predator, but Sal killed people for money. He was practically on Florida's Ten Most Wanted list. He was a monster, too."

"Too?" Odile looked at him with a confused, betrayed look.

If ever Michael could take back just a single word, that would be it. He had no response to that, avoiding her hurt, green-eyed gaze.

"I think..." Michael muttered grimly. "that we were sent here on purpose... to encounter Odile... so she would kill and eat us, so the mob could get rid of us."

A long pause. "That's hard to believe." Peter said.

Michael pulled out his Swiss Army knife. He punctured one of the parcels of cocaine he was sent into the swamp with. He scooped a tiny portion of the valuable substance onto the wide plane of the knife, tapped it onto his fingertip and tasted it.

Once the powder touched his lips, Michael started to breathe harder. His chest rose as he huffed, the knife falling from his hand as it rubbed across his scalp from front to back. He held his head as if it would fall off without the support.

"It's flour." He wheezed.

Odile blinked. "Yes." She nodded.

"It's flour." He repeated, grabbing the parcel he had sampled.

"Yes, that's what you said it was."

He charged out the door, a trail of "cocaine" dribbling on the wet wood like the gunpowder leaking from a conveniently low-holed barrel in a cartoon. He threw the parcel at the nearest tree, the packet exploding into a cloud of white.

"It's fucking flour!!" He hollered to the heavens.

"Michael, what's the problem?" Odile followed him out.

"I lied when I said it was flour, OK?" Michael turned 180 degrees on his heel. "I didn't want to tell you it was drugs. My brother used to work for this gang, mafia, whatever they are, but now he's in prison. So they said they'd have someone kill my brother in prison unless I helped them do this deal. But apparently, it was all a trick just to send me here so that you would kill me. And they weren't going to throw away a quarter-mil of cocaine for no reason when flour's fifty cents a pound."

Odile looked off, at the white spot on the tree where the flour had stuck to the moist trunk. "I'm glad I didn't kill you then. It's a good thing you said you were a virgin."

"You're a virgin?!" Peter laughed from inside the hut.

"Oh, tell the whole swamp, why don't ya?" Michael cried back.

"Someone out there... in the city... knew about me?" Odile asked nobody in particular.

"You didn't know they were sending people out here on purpose?"

Odile shook her head.

"They used you, sweetheart." Peter had stood up and joined them on the dock. "You were their garbage can."

A pause. Odile's tail swung slowly as she thought. "What now?" She asked.

"Peter, you should go back to the city."

"How? I'm not rowing upstream the whole way."

"Go downstream. There's something down that way."

"How do you know?"

Michael looked at Odile sideways. "Because that's where Odile was getting my food." She turned her head towards him. "Those bananas you found... yeah, bananas do grow in Florida, but not Chiquita bananas with the sticker on them. You've been taking this from somewhere where there some form of civilization. So, I don't think we're as remote as you led me to believe."

"All right, it's true." Odile admitted. "There's a settlement downswamp quite a ways. But I didn't tell you for two reasons. One, you didn't have a boat."

"You sunk my boat!" Michael said. "I just realized, I rented that boat. That's going to cost me a fortune!"

"Two..." She held out two clawed fingers. "It doesn't matter if you had the boat, because the only way I know how to get there is through a narrow water pipe. It's only a few inches wider than my shoulders, upwater, and you'd never make it through. You might be able to find something when you reach the big water, what do you call it—the ocean—maybe you could get there from the ocean, but..." she held up her claws, palms vertical, like there was something at the buffet she didn't like. "I don't do oceans. It's far too deep."

"Why don't you show me the way?" Peter suggested to Odile.

"I'm not going anywhere with you if Michael's not coming with me."

"Then how would I get back? He has the only boat. What, am I going to ride on your back?"

Peter sighed. "Alright, I'll just keep going downstream until I reach the ocean or see something like a road. I still have my phone, so I'll just wait until I get a signal and I'll know I'm near something."

Peter packed up his parcel of fake drugs and sat back down in his boat. "Are you coming, Mikey?"

Michael looked back to Odile, whose lips were pulled together tightly, arms folded below her breasts. "No." He said. "I'm going to stay here for now."

Peter looked at him, trying to keep eye contact as the gentle waves rose and lowered his sight-line. "Why? Why stay here? You have no provisions and no way home. I can't promise I'm coming back to get you."

"I'll be fine." Michael insisted.

With an unconvinced grunt, Peter looked over to Odile. "It's been a pleasure making your acquaintance, young lady."

"You, too, Peter."

"I'm sorry I almost shot you."

"You did, in fact, shoot me."

"Well, I'm sorry for that, too." Peter started to row off, down the stream and hopefully, to return to civilization.

For a little while, the swamp was covered in a cold silence. Odile had returned to her bed, sitting on one end, her tail back in her lap. It was like she was expecting Michael to sit next to her without saying anything.

Eventually, Michael did so, sitting next to her without actually touching her.

"Am I a monster?" She asked quietly.

Michael looked at her, and their eyes met. She wore a gentle frown. Her pupils were wide, her brow low. It pained him to see her look so sad. The word 'monster' was nowhere on his mind, but the word 'angel' fluttered around.

And yet...

"Odile... if you are like a monster in any way... it might be in how quickly you can be provoked to kill someone for entering your swamp."

"They're trespassing. They're on my water."

"Well, they don't know that. But you're not a wild animal. And they are people with lives and human rights. Maybe you should just let them pass through."

"Am I supposed to let them hurt me or shoot at me?"

"Oh, hell no." Michael shook his head. "Then you go ahead and protect yourself, and if that includes killing them, so be it. And then, if you want to eat them, that's fine, too. At least you're not killing for sport like a hunter. But if someone doesn't mean you any harm, leave them be."

"But that's just it, isn't it?" Odile shook her head. "Once city folk see me, it's their natural reaction to try to hurt or kill me. Just like the second you had the gun in your hand, you pointed it right at me."

"I'm so sorry about that, Odile. I swear I wasn't going to shoot you. I just panicked. You're so tough, and I'm weak and soft and stupid."

"I thought you were different from the others..." Odile pouted.

"I am, I swear!" Michael had an idea. "You know how you broke Peter's finger on the gun?" He picked up Golden Sal's hideously gaudy gun to demonstrate. "It was because he had his finger on the trigger here. This is what fires the gun, this finger switch down here. When you jerked it out of his hands, his finger got caught in the trigger guard and you broke it."

Michael set down the gun and showed Odile his hands. Other than the diagonal scratches on his hands, all his fingers were intact. "I did not have my finger on the trigger. I really wasn't going to shoot you. I just didn't want you to kill him."

Odile looked at the scratch on his hands, holding them tenderly. "I didn't... mean to hurt you..." She said softly.

"I know you didn't. It's OK." He put his hand around her and pulled her close. "I swear, I never meant to hurt you."

They rested there for a few moments, both breathing hard, trying to control their emotions. At some point soon after, maybe it was seconds, maybe a minute, but not long after, they were kissing as passionately as their incompatible teeth and tongues allowed. They held each other's heads, Odile gently running her webbed fingers through his sweaty hair.

Falling over onto the bed, Michael maneuvered his way on top. He licked the soft tissue of her neck and shoulders before pulling the bikini off her right breast and planting his lips on it. He circled the nipple with his tongue as his other hand clutched at the other breast. Suckling and ticking it, the nipple grew hard and swelled in his mouth as he sucked it.

Odile pressed her breasts together around his face, and she rubbed his face against the soft, yet slightly leathery flesh. His hand slipped downward, past her belly button and underneath her bikini bottoms.

One finger found the cold aperture between her legs, and a second finger followed it inside. Odile let out a shocked moan as he pushed his fingers in and out before pressing them in all the way in, up to his knuckle. He pressed upwards, against the uppermost wall of her insides. Odile's breath grew faster and her moans louder as she worked his fingers inside her, her head rocking back and her tail waving about unevenly.

Odile gasped and held it, her only body movement secondary motion from Michael's hand. Her eyes closed, she looked very close to the edge, so Michael sped up his fingers. She was motionless for a solid minute, her tits shaking gently in time with his motion. He slowed down, looking over to her.

Her head came back up like a turtle's emerging from its shell. "Don't stop." She panted, and brought her head back down and kept her breath held. Michael kept going, as hard as he felt she'd be comfortable with. He brought his head back towards her breasts and licked her tits, taking each nipple gently between his teeth and pulling them up away from her ribs until their weight pulled them back to her.

Odile let out a single loud orgasmic grunt, followed by several cute, dizzy moans. Michael's fingers gently slowed to a stop, easily sliding out of her, a single gossamer thread of crystal fluid hanging between the two fingers, shimmering with moisture.

Michael moved to get on top of Odile, but she grabbed him and threw him down to the bed first, spreading out on top of him. She looked really happy.

"You..." She purred. "could have done that this whole time?"

Wow. Somehow, everything about Odile somehow turned out more confusing than the question of her creation or existence, even sex.

"I suppose I could have."

"Why'd you wait?" She asked. "That was fun."

Michael's boner throbbed expectantly in his jeans, the Speedo probably the only reason he didn't have a massive dark dot where the tip of his penis threatened to tear out of them like the Incredible Hulk. "Yes, it was." Odile kissed his neck and came to rest atop him, her tits pressed against his chest and thumping heart.

He waited her to make some sort of comment about how much his second brain had grown, and how much they learned that day. But she was fast asleep, her cold-blooded metabolism exhausted by that orgasm.