Snails
by Alistair Rey
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
A stone gargoyle perches atop the entrance of the medical college, fixing me with a darting gaze. I give it a glance and then wave through the window to the orderly who yawns and pushes a button. The door swings back onto a long hall. The facility is in a poor state. Ivy-clad tendrils creep along the walls. and weeds sprout from cracks in the tile floor. The elevator to the basement is like a coffin. A pool of fresh blood glistens on the floor.
“Had a little spill,” the man operating the lift explains. He stares apologetically at the stain.
The elevator opens, and a wave of stagnant air hits me. Soft light penetrates the frosted panes of glass lining the corridor, bleeding into the darkness. An electric insect zapper periodically crackles in the distance.
I enter the morgue to find a sleep-deprived extern slumped over a desk. The faces of the cadavers laid out on the examining tables reflect the overhead fluorescent light. Dried insect cocoons are placed on some of the eyes, indicating the person recently died.
I’m beckoned from the back by a lonely-looking man of indeterminate age.
“We’ve got something that’s in your field of expertise,” he says with a sullen face.
He glances down at the chart in his hands. Squinting, he looks like a mouse in a lab coat. I scan the room nervously trying not to meet his stare and end up fixing my eyes on the backlit X-ray scans adorning the wall.
“Follow me,” he says and walks into the next room, not looking back to see if I follow.
He leads me to an examination table. A large white sheet drapes over a massive object. With deliberate movements, the doctor pulls back the sheet, uncovering a giant snail. It must weigh about three-hundred pounds and be as big as a human. Its cold, membranous flesh looks shiny in the electric light.
“Where did this come from?” I ask, staring at the gigantic mollusc.
“It was found in the underground this morning by two boys,” the doctor says as he scratches the side of his nose with a pen. “They hauled it up and then contacted us.”
I extend my arm, wanting to touch its green marbled skin.
“Careful,” warns the doctor. “It was alive this morning when they found it.”
“It is dead now?”
He shrugs. “It hasn’t shown any signs of life since they brought it in, but I’d still take precaution.”
I draw my hand back, still wanting to touch the thing. Its large shell coils in an intricate spiral; limp antennae hang like flaccid ribbons of flesh. A slimy liquid coats the table beneath it, covering the reflective silver in a shallow film of mucus.
“What do you want me to do with it?”
The doctor looks at me with pasty eyes. “You were called in to examine it,” he says, giving the charts another glance. “Your call.”
“I’ll need a scalpel and some surgical instruments for vivisection.”
The doctor nods and returns with everything I’ve requested. He lays the instruments out in a neat row, each aligned according to size and function on a silver pan. I thrust my hands into latex gloves, my palms immediately becoming sweaty. I pick up the scalpel and decide where to cut first. I pierce the animal’s elongated neck, and a stream of syrupy blood spills onto the table, anaemic green in color. The sticky residue coats my hands as I dig further into the incision.
The shell is hard and requires the use of a surgical saw. I hack away large chunks, prying off the animal’s protective armour. Inside, I encounter a peculiar sight. The long, thick body I expected to find is not there. In its place are hundreds of snails, proportionate to the ordinary garden variety. Unlike the main specimen, they are not dead and crawl about the interior cavity. Pulling back the last section of shell, a wave of snails slides over the organs of the larger host and spills onto the examination room floor. They immediately start inching along the tile at a sluggish pace, like you might expect any snail to do.
As I crouch down to get a closer look, though, I can see something is wrong. The cluster is becoming agitated, moiling like an ant colony. Suddenly, one shoots into the air like a bullet, heading straight for my head as I dodge left. A second one shoots up, then a third. A surge of tiny beasts attaches itself to my face, sending me to the ground. I feel small teeth gnaw into my face and arms, tearing away pieces of flesh in their dripping mouths.
The doctors rush in as my screams echo down the corridor. They gather round, watching me twitch and kick as the animals devour me.
“Snails!” they scream. “Snails!”
The snails leap into the air, attaching themselves to the walls and ceiling, blanketing the entire room. Fastened to the doors, they corner us all. The doctors rush about in panic, white lab coats riddled with greenish-black stains.
“Snails! Snails!”
As my ears fill with a revolting, sucking noise, I realize they are not shrieks of terror. The voices are measured, almost sermonic. It sounds like a chant, a prayer, an invocation.
Snails. Snails. Snails . . .
I try to scream, and my mouth fills with a mass of churning bodies. I see the doctors shrouded in undulating molluscs, their lips mouthing the word “snails, snails” as tongues are eaten away and the ceiling collapses in a rain of shells and small, vicious teeth.