Fanny yanked the skin of her head and face down to pool around her neck, as if it were a fucking snood, as if her face were nothing more complex than a mask discarded.
A harsh exhale escaped Griffin. I melted against his back as I spied over his shoulder.
Beneath the mask…Fuck me, beneath the mask … was something without a single doubtnot human.
She was a pasty, grayish, uh,creaturewith shiny skin and more teeth than a freaking prehistoric shark. They spread to occupy the space where her nose, mouth, and chin were on her “Fanny” face. A tongue, long as a giraffe’s but pointy, slithered out. Above her mouth were two eyes that reminded me again of a shark’s, mostly for their unfeeling look.
With a bone-chilling creak, she unhinged her jaw like a snake’s and stretched her maw until that’s all her head was. Evenher eyes disappeared somewhere behind it, and terrifying, sharp teeth was all there was to see. A goopy, gray slime slid down to gather at the base of her teeth, along what perhaps passed for gums.
As if the sight weren’t paralyzing enough, shescreeched. It was the sound I imagined a fox made when being slaughtered.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” Layla was back to chanting without end.
The five of us huddled together. I trembled.
Monster-Fanny sprinted forward on her Birks with a flourish of flowered fabric.
“Run!” Brady shouted. “Fuckingrun!”
We pivoted and bolted, as agile as deer bounding away from the predator who had them pinned in its hungry sights.
We put hundreds of feet between us and her—it—before I realized my mistake. Before it hit me like a big-rig truck going twenty over the speed limit.
“Bobo,” I said on a panicked wheeze as I whirled around while Hunt and Griffin zipped past.
Brady and Layla sailed by.
I sprinted in the opposite direction.
My sweet boy was hunched over his strong haunches, his muscles coiled for attack.
He was covering our retreat.
I hadn’t ordered him to run, dammit, and I should have. He always obeyed my commands.
I ran faster than I ever had before.
And still I could already tell I’d be too slow.
Griffin shouted my name. So did the others.
Their footfalls pounded after me.
I stumbled and lunged forward, doing what I could to eat up the distance that separated me from my dog.
I had to watch as Bobo launched himself at Fanny.
She backhanded him across the head so hard that he flew against Clyde, slammed hard against steel, and slumped to the ground without so much as a pained whimper.
As I screamed at her to stop, Monster-Fanny spun toward him, grabbed for Bobo with normal-woman hands, and tossed him up into the air as if he didn’t weigh sixty pounds.
Her head was all nasty teeth and nastier tongue.
Bobo slid through her teeth as if through a welcoming tunnel.
They snapped shut behind him.
The cunt swallowed my dog whole.
