The Abdominal Snowman

Chastity kept her eyes closed and continued to feign unconsciousness. She needed time to sort out the situation. She was curled on her side, inside on a cave floor, her wrists and ankles tied. Understandable, considering the yetis last encounter with the expedition team. She tested the bindings—they were firm. She wouldn't be able to escape them in time, and even if she did, what would she do after? The sounds of movement were all around her. She was surrounded.

She wasn't dead, though. They could have killed her, gutted her, and cooked her on a spit, but they didn't. So, there was still a chance.

Chastity ran through a mental list of guidelines for cryptid first contact; she could salvage the situation.

She didn't have a chance. A familiar voice shocked her heart into a new, electrified rhythm.

"No! No. Friend. Friend. Vhoona. She is vhoona."

Chastity dropped her unconscious charade and lifted her head from the cave floor.

Her eyes were wide as two of the yeti parted to let thin, familiar man pass between. His mustache was worse for the wear, but the smile underneath was as bright as ever. Professor Adams ran and knelt at her side.

"The blood—the bullets. I thought..." She sat up and leaned her head into her old professor's shoulder.

"Yes, that. I was working on building a vocabulary when some of the team attacked the yeti. One attacked me—me! He tried to knock me out, I assume—bashed me on the back of the head and left me for dead—that dull student whose name I can never remember. He was only in one of my classes. Utterly unremarkable. Some member of his family paid for that new on-campus gymnasium. A garish structure, but it does have a very nice pool. He's only graduating because of that and a generous donation. It's all the scandal in the cryptid annex. He chased me back to the camp—tried to shoot me—shoot me, can you imagine! Where he got a gun, I don't know. But one of my new friends saved me. They're quite strong, you know. It got quite messy.

Chastity thought about splatters and pools of red in the tent. "Very messy," she said as she struggled to work her tied legs into a less uncomfortable position.

A yeti raised a lip to snarl at Chastity. His grip on his spear tightened.

Chastity took her first good look at her captors. They were larger than humans, just like she saw on the security footage. She scanned the group and wondered if the professor's savior was among them. They were clearly of a different stock than the Himalayan species. Their fur was still white, but not as thick. There were no horns spiraling back from the temporal ridges. Their faces were broader and more human in shape with a broader and flatter nose adapted for Antarctic weather. They also had significantly less body fat. Himalayans had large fat pads, but these were noticeably lean and muscular. Most wore rudimentary clothing—loincloths and mukluks roughly sewn from sealskin—and held wooden spears tipped with flaked obsidian.

"No sudden moves, please," Chauncey said as he kneeled beside Chastity. "They aren't sure of your intention. I'd prefer that they not use those spears... Their aim is rather good."

"I'd appreciate it if you would explain to them."

The old man half chuckled, "I would, I would, but I've barely learned enough to say more than friend in a convincing manner. I developed a basic translation dictionary and an adaptive computer algorithm to translate between languages." He paused and pulled a small, rectangular data crystal from his pocket. "I had to vacate the camp quickly. I didn't want to leave it—it's amazingly innovative, and I couldn't stand the thought of Pauline claiming it as her own."

"Pauline is planning more than intellectual property theft," Chastity said. "She's willing to to kill the yeti to get what she really wants. We can use it to explain to them why they have to leave until she's done."

Professor Adams looked at Chastity as if she had suddenly become cerebrally dim. "It's a data crystal, Miss Summers. The translation program won't run on the data crystal alone. It needs a computer system."

"Professor," Chastity said with a smile, "if you can get my wrists untied, I'll introduce you to the best damned computer system on the continent."

"It's me," Alex said, the boast clear in his voice. "She's talking about me."

Professor Adams cocked his head and, for once, was left speechless.

*

Allie stood at the edge of darkness, watching the yeti child wander too far from the flicker of firelight at the far end of the tunnel. It was playing, picking up stones with its tiny hands and laughing as they clacked off the cave ceiling and walls. She had tracked it with frightening ease through the honeycombing caverns. The more her body mutated—because she decided mutation seemed more appropriate than digestion—the stronger this new predatory instinct became, aided by the strengthened perception of the world around her that came with her constantly enhancing senses. They were melding into a newer, stronger kind of knowing—a kind of synesthesia that was overwhelming and intoxicating. Everything below Allie's elbow had rendered to a kind of foreign flesh, a pseudopod that explored shapes both solid and otherwise. Now it was twisted into a disfigured, sinewy hand of sorts, with lengthening tentacles slithering against each other as they sprouted from the trunk of her elbow—it was an alien assemblage meant to clasp and drag—a shape molded in anticipation of what Allie knew had to soon ensue. After her escape from the grotto, when she first realized what was happening to her, she wept in terror; she found a crevice and stared into its depths, her toes teetering over the edge, ready to lean forward and fall, but the hunger wouldn't allow it. Now there was a sense of calm acceptance of what needed to be done to ease the hunger, if only for a while. She stared at the child, who was facing away and distracted by the pile of rocks it was stacking, and took the first step forward.

*

Chastity tried to listen to Professor Adams's instructions, but she caught her attention drifting to one of the yeti males. The others lost interest and drifted back into their daily routine when they determined she wasn't a threat, but this one stayed close. Every time Chastity glanced his way, he was always looking back from his hunkered crouch on the opposite side of the volcanic rock lamp that burned a mix of dried moss and seal blubber.

She couldn't decipher the emotion in the strong features of his face. Suspicion? Determination? Curiosity?

She tried to control her curiosity, but her eyes wouldn't oblige. They lowered and took in the shape of his chest, the flex of his quadriceps, and the outline of other things hidden behind the loincloth.

"Quite extraordinary. Alex, is it?" Professor Adams said as he watched the translation program decompress on Chastity's comm-cuff screen. "How is a program as exquisite as yourself operational on such a limited processor—"

"Please don't," Chastity said as she wiggled her arm free from Professor Adam's grasp. "We don't have time to deal with his ego. It eats up ninety percent of the cuff's battery as is."

"Tsk," Alex pattered. "Jealousy isn't a pretty look for you."

"Just run the program."

"Fine. I just hope you can manage without me. The processor isn't powerful enough to run my program and the translator. I'll be incommunicado while it's running."

"We'll do fine."

The screen flashed a tongue-out smiley and blew a raspberry.

"Alex, please. We don't have time for pouts. The clock is ticking."

The screen went black and bright green letters glowed in the center. Tap to initiate translation sequence.

Chastity tapped the screen. "Professor, do you want the honor?" She nodded at the comm-cuff.

The old man's mustache rose at the corners. He leaned uncomfortably close to the cuff and spoke: "Yes... Hello... Do you understand?"

The comm-cuff speakers produced the rising and falling tones of an unfamiliar language and the side-chatter amongst the yeti stopped and they looked at Chastity and Professor Adams, eyes wide with surprise.

"Please raise a hand if you understand." The words carried an air of authority; it was a phrase he had honed with a thousand repetitions through the years to jolt unresponsive undergraduate students out of the chronic lull of mid-class boredom.

The yeti shared uncertain glances with each other until, finally, a hand slowly rose. Others followed.

"Success!" He clapped his hands with excitement. "Miss Summers, a success! When I publish this in the International Journal of Cryptid Studies that upstart editor Dr. Johannes who called me a past-his-prime gaffer in that despicable opinion piece will turn green. Mock another of my findings after this, I think not!"

"Awesome. Alex, translate: You have to leave," she said looking at the yeti. "People are coming from the camp to hurt you."

The male that had been watching her leaped over the fire and pitched close to Chastity's face and snarled. Her heart raced with a mix of fright and another primal emotion that she couldn't describe, but she held steady. The smell of his musk was strong as he hung close to her, and she started to smell hints of her own pheromones blending with it. He seemed to notice it too.

He growled out a string of sharpened vowels that the cuff immediately translated: "Don't threaten us, girl."

His eyes flicked to the cuff as it spoke, then immediately back to Chastity. He seemed to understand the translation program's basic function. Chastity wasn't surprised. Language. Community. Tool making. The yeti had the hallmarks of an intelligent species.

"I'm no threat," Chastity said in the calmest voice she could manage with a sizeable set of eyeteeth inches away from her face. "I came to help." She nodded toward Professor Adams. "My friend asked me to come, so I did."

The yeti leaned back on its haunches and considered her for a long moment.

"My name is Chastity. What is yours?"

"Khor."

Chastity continued. "Khor, the people at the camp are going to send machines. Like the ones flying outside, but bigger and with weapons. They want something in the mountain and they are willing to kill to get it."

The other yeti hovering in the shadows, silent up till this point, began rumbling. They whispered themselves.

Chastity saw the panic in their eyes and movements.

"Once they have it, they will leave and your people can come back. Nothing down there can be worth dying over."

"No," he said, and Chastity wasn't sure which part he was saying it to.

"What is down there?"

Before he could answer, a high-pitched scream echoed in a far tunnel. Chastity didn't need the translator to grasp its meaning.

Khor jumped and ran. Others grabbed up their spears and followed.

"Stay here!" Chastity said to Professor Adams as she grabbed a knot of driftwood from the stack beside the lamp and brushed its end in the burning seal blubber until it caught the flame. Without some kind of light, she would get lost in the snarl of branching paths if she fell too far behind the group.

They were fast, but luckily, they were also loud.

When she caught up, they had already stopped. Their bodies crowded the narrow cave, but most were hunched close to the ground with their spears pointed ahead—their centers of gravity low, primed to attack. In the flickering light, Chastity saw a shadow shape—a woman—crouched over something small, something with downy white hair sprayed with red. Except this woman didn't move entirely like a woman should. There was an oddity in her angles and a plasticity to her movements. She swayed as she crouched, crablike, and tore at the remains of what Chastity realized in horror was a yeti child.

The thing—because in seeing this, Chastity couldn't think of it as anything else now—lifted its head. Short blond, crimson-stained bangs hung in clotted knots over otherworldly eyes that bobbed softly in their sockets. She would have nightmares about those eyes—the color was inhuman, clouded to that of curdled mild, with a proportion that seemed wrong, as if they had sunken deeper into their sockets, leaving the lids to droop inward. Its skin was jaundiced and faded in a translucent way that hinted at the musculature and bony points beneath. And the mouth... Chastity turned her head so she wouldn't have to look at the splatter of wet coagulation that marked the obscene opening.

Chastity was on the verge of vomiting when an unexpected voice startled her bile back down to her gut.

"Dear lord. Miss Murdock—Allie? Is that you?"

Professor Adams. Of course he wouldn't listen to instructions to stay away.

He swallowed a deep, pained breath when he saw the remains of the child, not seeming to register the contorted face of what bent over it. "Oh, Allie. What have you done?"

The thing slithered to its feet and focused on him. Chastity braced herself, ready for it to leap over the blockade of yeti and attack, but it didn't make a move, either toward them or away. The opening that had once been a mouth closed and curled into an exaggerated slit of a grin.

Chastity studied the thing—the black tactical vest jacket and the gore dribbling down its front—at the shapes that still held that of a woman's body, and the shapes that had abandoned it altogether. Professor Adams was right, whatever this thing was it had once been Allie.

And now it wasn't.

Khor held out his hand, palm up, to Chastity and roared: "Fire!"

She lobbed the dying driftwood torch to him without hesitation. He caught it and lunged a step forward at the Allie-thing. Though the wood was still alight, the flame had burned low, to sparking flickers and char. There was little else flammable in the cave. Chastity didn't know how well the yetis' eyes were adapted to the dark of the cave system, but if that fire died, she would be left sightless.

Khor ripped his loincloth off and pressed it to the fire. The rough-woven fabric caught the flame and flared bright. He clenched it tight in his hand and thrust it at the thing.

Chastity's eyes dipped again at that moment—captivated by the newly bared skin and the flex of taut gluteal muscles. The shadow of his manhood swung as he raced forward.

Chastity's attention was pulled back to the thing. Its black chasm of a mouth widened in terror and a snarl. It whipped a tentacled limb at him but pulled back as Khor countered with the fire as a shield. Another yeti threw a spear that flew faster than Chastity could track. It sank into soft flesh with a wet thunk.

It was a hit that would have killed a human

But Allie wasn't exactly human anymore.

She barely recoiled as shaft slid into her chest, through the space a human heart and lung should have resided. If either were still present, Allie didn't seem to need them.

Other spears were raised and ready. Chastity wondered if the tenth stab wouldn't be any more effective than the first. The Allie-thing didn't seem fazed by the threat of it. The only thing that she—it—seemed to have any reaction to was the fire.

But the yeti didn't mean to incapacitate or kill with their spears. They wanted to impale it—herd it.

Outnumbered, the thing grabbed the spear that had run it through and snapped it before retreated into the darkness.

The sound of it scuttling away faded and Chastity's mind found itself sucked into a whirlwind of morbid inquisitiveness. This creature was something completely new. Nothing like it had ever been described in the cryptid literature. Was it a creature? A cryptid? An infection? Something parasitic? Symbiotic?

The mystery died mid-thought when the yeti circled the remains of the child and began a low, rhythmic rumbling. It wasn't threatening like before—it was somber, a dirge or a sad lullaby for a child who died young. There was no interpretation; the translation algorithm stayed silent, either out of respect or an inability to process.

One yeti, a female, kneeled and reached out with a tremulous hand to touch the tiny body. Chastity winced as Khor seized the thick hair at the nape of her neck and pitched her away. She landed far away with a heartrending wail and pounded the cave floor with clenched fists. Some eyes turned away as he dropped the smoldering remains of the loincloth on the body, but Chastity didn't. The fire flared high and burned a color that only vaguely bordered the yellow-orange of a normal flame. In this brighter light Chastity saw movement. At first she thought what she saw in the child's torn flesh was an illusion caused by the flickering flame—a trick of light or shadows dancing along spittle and raw edges. But it wasn't. Some residue that had been left crawled in the open, wet recesses of the child's abdomen and chest; it rose and fell and made a whistling sizzle as the fire charred and consumed it.

*

Chastity left when they began tossing oil and kindling on top of the body. She was already sick with the smell of burnt fur in her nose. She didn't know if she could stand adding the sizzle of flesh to it. Chauncey was oblivious to her as she rose and left his side. He was engrossed in his work, mumbling observations to himself, furiously scribbling in a notepad pulled from one of his many pockets, and mapping and noting everything he could about the scene. Just like any cryptozoologist worth his or her salt would. She was in the midst of something completely new—something more important than a yeti tribe where a tribe shouldn't be. Whatever had happened to Allie could open new areas of research. There would be book tours—speaking engagements. A Nobel Prize in Cryptozoology would be almost guaranteed.

Chastity couldn't make herself care. If she never rose above an insignificant footnote in the whole mess, it would be fine as far as she was concerned She just wandered back the way she came, opposite the direction of worldwide acclaim, back toward the cavern she had woken in.

Away from the pyre's light the cave system darkened, but Chastity's eyes had adjusted to the blacks and greys, and she had a decent sense of direction and made it with minimal stumbling.

When she made her way back she found Khor, sitting alone, cross-legged by the fire, dipping his hand in a shallow basin of water and melting snow that rested in his lap. He hadn't replaced his loincloth and Chastity felt a mix of shame and curious interest as she walked by, peeking from the corner of her eye at the narrow gap between his abdomen and the basin on his lap, trying to get a glimpse of the piece of him that was hidden beneath, the part that she had only seen in shadows earlier. Now that she had a moment to indulge her growing interest, she did. A layer of fine white hair covered his chest, defining pectoral muscles that tightened and relaxed ever so slightly at the edges as he swirled his hand in the water basin. The hair continued on and trailed down in a fine line between his abdominal muscle, and thickened like human pubic hair as it approached—

She stopped when she realized that, while he hadn't raised his head, his eyes were upturned toward her.

"You smell different than the others," he said.

The comm-cuff translated the words without any hint of emotion, but the wariness was clear in Khor's voice.

Chastity immediately caught the earthy scent of green grass and damp soil. The smell of her genetically modified pheromones. It hung in the air, stronger than usual.

She sat down across the fire from him.

"I do," she said, not sure how to explain the last year of her life, or time travel or trans-species gene splicing or a mad scientist's experiments to someone whose level of technology centered mainly on fire building. "A bad person poisoned me. It changed me."

Khor nodded and his sense of uncertainty lessened. "Fuzzy-lipped man trusts you."

Chastity smiled at the fuzzy-lipped translation. "He called me here. Something bad was happening and needed help."