Structophis Read online

  Something he said must have sunk in, because Blodgett pulled back into the room, eyeing the damaged doorway distrustfully and nudging it with a pudgy finger.

  Markus turned back to his phone. “Let’s see… Oh, right!” He flipped back through his contacts until he found the entry he was looking for: School Contacts—Glasses Girl. He tapped it and put the phone to his ear.

  “Answer… Come on… Come on, answer,” he muttered, watching Blodgett as Blodgett watched him.

  “Hello?” came a wary voice when the call finally connected.

  “Gale? Gale Dekker?” Markus said.

  “Yes? To whom am I speaking?” she said, still clearly unsure.

  “This is Markus.”

  “Markus…”

  “Markus Spiros. From college?”

  “Oh… Oh… Sorry, Markus, new phone. Didn’t have your number in it. So where have you been? Haven’t had a class with you in like three semesters, right?”

  “Yeah. I was going fairly vocational with my training. You went more research, right?”

  “Heh, of course,” she said, as though he’d asked if she still breathed oxygen. “That’s where the action is, Mark my friend. So what’s up?”

  “Did you, by chance, register for that Exotic Megafauna class they were offering last semester?”

  “You know it! Best class in the whole curriculum.”

  “Great. Yes. I thought so. Listen, they didn’t, by chance, cover the uh… hang on… I was looking it up before… Struc… Structophis… dragon thing?”

  “Structophis gastrignae? Of course they did. My third common exam was all about them. Hottest research area in zoology and biology today.” She snorted. “No pun intended.”

  “Right, right. You wouldn’t happen to—no! No! Leave it!” he blurted.

  Blodgett had started to tug at the door frame it had loosened. When Markus yelled, it froze and looked at him but notably did not release the splintered wood.

  “Is something wrong, Mark?” Gale asked.

  “No. No, it’s just—I’m watching my neighbor’s dog,” he looked pointedly at Blodgett, “and it hasn’t learned to behave.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway. What I wanted to know is if you could recommend any good resources for the Structophis… guh…”

  “Structophis gastrignae.”

  “Right. I was looking online, and there’s not a whole lot of reliable info.”

  “There never is. Sure, I can give you the names of some decent texts. It makes for good reading. Fascinating creatures. Though if you’re looking to get into researching them, I’d recommend you save yourself the heartache. I’ve been trying to get some lab time with one for the past eight months…”

  “Yeah, that’s great. If you could just give me those textbook titles…” Markus urged, eyes widening as Blodgett turned its attentions back to the door frame.

  “… and the waiting list is as long as your arm. We’ve got maybe eighteen hundred in the country. Of those, about four hundred are in subspecies that aren’t cleared for academic study, another four hundred are pre-emergence, which makes them no good for study, and the rest are pretty much all on the coasts. You know how many of them are in a flyover state like Colorado?”

  “I really don’t know, Gale, but if you could just give me names of those books—”

  “Zero, Mark. Zero. If you want to get within even a hundred feet of an emerged Structophis gastrignae, you’re going to have to hop a plane to Washington and wait a good three months, if you’re lucky.”

  “Gale, could you—WHAT DID I SAY?!”

  It was too late. Blodgett had wrapped a crusty mitt around the door frame and given it a good hard yank, easily tearing the wood free. It clutched the broken wood like a toddler with a new toy. Clearly delighted with itself, it shouldered its way through the widened doorway, making it significantly wider in the process. It tromped up to Markus, shaking the floor and pushing tables aside along the way.

  “What the heck was that, Mark?” Gale asked.

  “Uh… The dog is making a mess.”

  “Must be a heck of a dog.”

  Markus looked Blodgett in the eye as it tipped its head and glanced at the phone. “Yeah. It’s a very large, very disobedient dog.”

  “So anyway, let me see if I’ve still got my old textbooks somewhere.”

  Blodgett, now near enough to hear the tiny voice coming from the phone, twisted its head to the side and tried to wedge it between Markus’s face and the phone.

  “Cut it out,” he whispered through clenched teeth.

  The creature chirped something in reply and plodded back toward the rear of the bistro.

  “Right, so, as I was saying, maybe—”

  “What was that noise?” Gale asked. Her tone suggested she already knew the answer.

  “A… pigeon?”

  “A pigeon. That’s funny, Mark, because it sounded exactly like the warbling of an adolescent Structophis gastrignae.”

  “It’s a really big pigeon.”

  “Where are you? I’m coming over.”

  “No, no, I just need the textbooks.”

  “Yeah, fine. I’ll bring the textbooks when I come over. Where are you?”

  “Honest, I just need the names so I can—”

  “What? Order them from Amazon? They don’t make these big, fat biology texts as e-books, pal. You’re going to have to go hardcopy and get it delivered. What’re you going to do in the meantime? Just observe? From the sounds of it, you’ve got your hands full. I was planning a thesis on the Structophis gastrignae. You can’t even say it.”

  Blodgette investigated, then dislodged, a shelf of condiments.

  “Oh, great. Red pepper flakes everywhere. Wonderful,” Markus grumbled.

  “Oh, oh! What’s that? Red pepper flake. Hang on… Hang on… I swear I remember you saying your dad or someone owned a restaurant… No, it was your uncle, right? I’ll bet you’re there.”

  “I really think it’s a bad idea for you to come over. It’d be a waste of your time! There’s no Structo-whatever here. Just… give me a primer on what they eat and what to watch out f—”

  “Here we go, Dimitrios’s Bistro, Crested Butte, Colorado. I’ll be there in seventeen minutes, according to Google. See you then.”

  Boop.

  Markus looked at his phone as the screen winked off. He sighed. “Yeah, great. Let’s do that. The more the merrier.”

  He pocketed the phone and turned to Blodgett. The creature had pushed open the door to the storeroom and snagged a cardboard box, fortunately without destroying another doorway. Box in tow, it lumbered into the center of the dining room and plopped down on the floor, knocking a few framed prints from the walls, and tore the top of the box open.

  “Blodgett, listen, I don’t know if you should be messing with the stuff you find in this place. Gale’s coming over and she’ll know what to do.”

  The creature stopped rummaging and looked at Markus while he was talking. Once he was through with the warning, Blodgett blinked once and cheerfully ignored it. The box was full of small tin cans with tomatoes on the label. In proportion to Blodgett, they looked like jelly beans, and the creature treated them in much the same way. Clapping its hand to its open mouth, it popped a half-dozen of the cans inside.

  “Don’t!” Markus yelped.

  Blodgett crunched down and munched happily on the chewy snack. Despite having chomped on something that would give a garbage disposal trouble, the mouthful seemed to go down just fine. After a satisfied gulp, the hungry creature wiped a smear of thick red paste away with the back of its hand and belched lightly. The air filled with the aroma of roasted tomato.

  “Okay… Okay, that’s fine then. Keep doing that. At least that’s only mildly destructive.”

  #

  Twenty minutes, eighteen cans of tomato paste, three canisters of oregano, and six pounds of whole wheat flour later, Blodgett seemed
satisfied. Now it was offering a handful of tins of anchovies to Markus.

  “No, that’s all right. Thanks,” Markus said, waving off the “treat.” “I filled up on assorted canned goods on the way over. I’m stuffed, honest.”

  Blodgett shrugged and popped one of the cans into its mouth. The can squished easily between its still-unseen teeth, but as soon as the juice hit Blodgett’s tongue it became clear this was not as tasty as the last few snacks. A rusty red tongue dangled from its mouth and it spat the half-chewed can of fish to the floor, churring unhappily and lumbering to the mostly trashed back room to tug at the broken sprinkler.

  “It’ll eat raw flour, but even this thing won’t eat anchovies. I’m starting to wonder why they even sell them,” he muttered, making his way to the utility room to turn the water back on so the beast could rinse the taste out of its mouth.

  The twisted pipe began to gush water, and Blodgett eagerly latched on, guzzling at the cool drink. After a minute or two, it turned aside, released a steamy sigh of relief, and wandered back into the dining room.

  “If this is going to be a long-term thing, I’m going to have to teach you to turn off the water when you’re done,” he said, heading to the utility room.

  He’d only just finished turning off the flow to the sprinklers when an overenthusiastic knock rattled the door.

  “Mark! Mark, it’s Gale! Lemme in! Come on!” called Gale from the other side of the door.

  The sudden racket startled Blodgett. The creature jumped, shaking the whole building when it landed, then thundered back through the much-abused door to the place where the pizza oven had originally been. Once there, it crouched down and tucked its head and arms in as best it could, like a turtle trying to pull into its shell. Though it certainly looked more like a pizza oven now than when it was standing, the illusion wasn’t exactly convincing, particularly with the metal plates rattling together as the creature trembled like a pup.

  “Seriously, Blodgett?” Markus snickered.

  He opened the door and was nearly trampled by an eager young woman with an armload of textbooks and notepads.

  Gale was twenty-five years old and pleasantly plump, though with the energy of a caffeinated preschooler. Perhaps as a side effect of her intended career as a large-animal researcher, she tended to dress like a handler at a zoo, with khaki cargo shorts and a dark blue tee with a zebra-as-barcode logo on the front. Her youthful enthusiasm was underscored by a set of anachronistic braces and a pair of round-rimmed glasses that were almost comically oversized.

  She slammed the door behind her. “Where is it? Where’s the—jeez, this place is a mess.”

  “Yes, apparently that tends to happen when there’s a giant animal loose in an eatery. It’s in the back there, through the newly renovated doorway. You might have to look closely. It’s a master of camouflage,” he said flatly.

  He took two steps forward to lead her there, but she blasted past him, fumbling for the camera slung around behind her. Behind him he heard another female voice, one that was withered yet piercing in a way that only an elderly woman can manage.

  “Markus? Markus Spiros, is that you I hear down there?”

  “Crap… That’s Mrs. Penny, the lady upstairs. I’m surprised she hasn’t called the cops already, with the racket I’ve been making. I’ve got to take care of this. Are you going to be okay in here?”

  Rather than an answer, a series of camera flashes and exclamations of scientific excitement came from the back room.

  “… Yeah, you’ll be fine.” He pulled open the door and stepped outside. “Mrs. Penny! I’m glad I caught you! I, uh… hope the construction isn’t bothering you. Big problem with the plumbing, gotta gut the whole kitchen…”

  #

  He talked to Mrs. Penny for four or five minutes, which was probably the record for shortest conversation he’d ever had with her; but knowing Gale and Blodgett were together in the other room was a strong impetus to keep it short. While he was reasonably sure Blodgett wouldn’t do anything unfortunate to the girl, he was less sure Gale would be able to restrain herself from terrorizing the poor thing with her boundless curiosity and zeal for investigation.

  “Okay, hopefully we’ll get this wrapped up quickly, Mrs. Penny. Thank you!” Markus said, slipping back in the door and locking it. “Boy,” he said, turning away from the door, “I’m actually kind of proud of the story I came up… with.”

  Gale was standing directly in front of him, arms crossed and a look of righteous fury in her eyes. Despite being a full foot shorter than him, she managed to achieve a remarkable level of intimidation.

  “What did you do to that poor creature?” she demanded viciously.

  “Whoa, I didn’t do anything, Gale. Honest!”

  “Obviously! There are clear signs of neglect! No wonder you didn’t want me to come over. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t turn you in for animal cruelty!”

  “Because until a few minutes before I called you, I hadn’t set foot in this place in years!” he said. “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?! Look at it! It’s terrified!”

  Markus looked through the door to the kitchen. Sure enough, Blodgett was still rattling with anxiety. He walked up to the clattering mass.

  “Blodgett? Buddy?” he offered.

  Blodgett blinked its eyes open, then lunged forward to wrap Markus in a tight, hot, relieved hug.

  “This does not strike me as the result of abuse,” Markus wheezed as he tried to pull himself free.

  The creature spied Gale and tensed a bit. It released Markus, spinning him around by the shoulders and huddling “behind” him as though Markus would protect it from Gale.

  “I think it just doesn’t like strangers. Blodgett and I… we’ve sort of got a history that I didn’t know about.”

  Gale’s expression eased, but only slightly. “Fine… but… get it out here into the light.”

  It took some coaxing by the hand, but Markus managed to lead the creature back into the dining room. On the way out it snagged the sooty old delivery jacket and clutched it like a security blanket.

  “Look, you see this?” Gale said, indicating the crusty brown skin of Blodgett’s arm. “It should look more like rising dough than a pretzel. This is a clear sign of overheating.”

  “Really?” Markus said, looking with concern at Blodgett. “Is it… is it bad? Is it going to be okay? Does it need treatment?”

  “It isn’t good,” Gale said, dragging out a textbook and flipping through. “At this level, there should be only cosmetic damage. But a few more days and it could have been far worse. Your specimen here… Blodgett, is it? … is in the early stages of its escalating exothermic transition. Until it develops heat vents, it’s going to have to manually regulate its heat levels both internally and externally with water much more often than an adult. Ideally it would have a body of cool water to drink and soak in as needed.”

  “Right now we’ve just got the busted sprinkler system.”

  “It’ll do in a pinch, but you’ll need to improve that. What have you been feeding it?”

  “Back when I thought it was just an oven, it was chunk charcoal. Since I found it this way, mostly whole canned goods and bags of flour. I can’t imagine that’s very healthy for it.”

  “Well, it’s not ideal, but it’s pretty close, actually.” She leafed through the text. “At this stage, you’ll want to wean off charcoal, which is basically baby food, and make the switch to kiln-dried hardwood and assorted unprocessed ores. Mostly… iron, zinc, tin, and copper. Plus, whatever dried herbs best suit its tastes. This oven is less than ideal. Solid metal is far too rigid for proper development, but that damage is done, unfortunately. Hence the squat build and crinkled neck and tail.”

  As Gale, now calmer, failed to maul the poor defenseless beast, Blodgett began to very slowly become more at ease. Still from the safety of its hiding place behind Markus, the creature crouched down and pl
ucked up a can of anchovies, tossing them forward as a peace offering.

  “Oh, thank you!” Gale said brightly, placing down her textbook to pick up the tin. “That’s very generous.”

  “You actually like anchovies?” Markus said.

  “Sure, they’re great,” she said, peeling back the lid to pluck out one of the salty fish and pop it into her mouth. “Usually I don’t eat them straight, but I wouldn’t want to appear ungrateful.” She turned to Blodgett and rubbed her stomach theatrically. “Mmm. Very good.”

  “You’re weirder than I remember…”

  “You know, you’ve got to find a home for this little lady.”

  “Little lady? It’s a female?”

  “Well, I mean, the sexual dimorphism in the Structophis gastrignae is virtually nonexistent. There’s some evidence to suggest the species may be hermaphroditic at birth. But at full adulthood they often choose to present as male or female, at the very least. Studies have shown a correlation between certain behaviors and apparent genders.” She held up the tin of anchovies. “This is one of them. Did it try to feed you?”

  “Uh… Yeah, actually.”

  “Then best guess right now is we’ve got a she, not an it. At least until she tells us otherwise.”

  “Ah… So I guess I should be going with Blodgette instead of Blodgett.”

  “Whatever you like. But like I was saying, you need to find a home for her.”

  “Yeah… I guess so. Who would I call to handle that? Do I hand her over to a preservation program or—”

  “No, you don’t understand. You need to find her a home. She’s your responsibility now.”

  “Why me? I barely knew she existed until today.”

  “Because she’s comfortable with you. Markus, this creature probably only fully emerged a few days ago. One of the most remarkable things about Structophis gastrignae is the true emergence period. Right now Blodgette is probably somewhere in the vicinity of a five-year-old human, mentally. By this time next year she’ll be closer to a ten-year-old. And within two years she’ll have caught up to us and stabilized there. Imagine collapsing your whole childhood into two years. This is a phenomenally important time in Blodgette’s psychological development. And if you’re already a trusted figure, then for the next two years, you’re the papa.”