The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

more. "Look, folks, you shouldn't be here. I'm not sure it's safe. Some people have gone missing."
    "Oh, that poor boy," Margie said.
    "Yes and maybe some others. I have to ask you all to take your meeting somewhere else, please."
    The group looked disappointed. One of the men, a portly bald fellow in his fifties, puffed himself up and stepped forward. "Constable, we have the right to worship when and where we please."
    "I'm just thinking of your safety," Theo said.
    "This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom, and…"
    Theo stepped up to the man and loomed over him with all of his six-foot-six frame, "Then start praying that I don't throw you in jail with the biggest horniest sodomite the county jail has to offer, which is what I'm going to do if you all don't go home right now."
    "Smooth," Gabe said.
    Make him roll over and pee on himself, Skinner thought.
    The bald man made a harumph sound and turned to the group."Let's meet at the church to discuss the removal of our local law enforcement official."
    "Yeah, get in line," Theo said. He watched as the group dispersed to their cars and drove away.
    When the last one pulled out Gabe said, "Theories?"
    Theo shook his head. "Everyone in this town is nuts. I'm going to check Molly's trailer, but I doubt she's there. Do you want me to take you home to shower and change clothes before your date?"
    Gabe looked down at his stained work pants and safari shirt. "Do you think I should?"
    "Gabe, you're the only guy I know that makes me look suave."
    "You're coming along, right?"
    "Casanova," Theo said. "Compared to you, I feel like Casanova."
    "What?" Gabe said. "It's fried chicken night at H.P.'s."
    Steve Steve lay under a stand of cypress trees, his new lover snuggled up to his right foreleg snoring softly.
    He let his tongue slide out and the tip just brushed her bare back. She moaned and nuzzled closer to his leg. She tasted pretty good. But he had eaten all those other warmbloods and he wasn't really hungry.
    When he had been a female, some fifty years ago, and going back another five thousand, he had become accustomed to eating his lovers after mating. That's just how it was done. But as a male, he wasn't sure. He hadn't mated with his own species since he'd become male, and so the instinct to become passive after mating was new to him. He just didn't feel like eating the warmblood. She had made him feel better, and for some reason, he could see the pictures of her thoughts instead of just sending his own signals. He sensed no fear in her, and no need to send the signal to draw her to him.Strange for a warmblood.
    He lay his head down on the bed of cypress needles to sleep and let his wounds heal. He could eat her later. Somewhere in the back of his brain, as he fell asleep, a fear alarm went off. In five thousand years of life, he had never conceived of the concept of later or before, only now. His DNA had rechained itself many times, adapted to changes without waiting for the life cycles of generations – he was a unique organism in that way – but the concept of time, of memory beyond the cellular level, was a new adaptation. Through his contact with Molly he was evolving consciousness, and like the pragmatic mechanism that it is, nature was trying to warn him. The nightmare was about to have a nightmare.
    Val Is this a date? Val sat alone at a table in the back of H.P.'s Cafe. She'd ordered a glass of a local chardonnay and was trying to form an opinion about it that would reflect the appropriate disgust, but unfortunately, it was quite good. She was wearing light evening makeup and an understated raw silk suit in indigo with a single string of pearls so as not to clash too badly with her date, who she knew would be in jeans or cotton khaki.Her date? If this is a date, how far have I sunk?she asked herself. This tacky little cafe in this tacky little town, waiting for a man who had probably never worn a tux or a Rolex, and she was looking forward to it.
    No, it's not a date. It's just dinner. It's sustenance. It's, for once, not eating alone. Slumming in the land of the folksy and the neighborly, that's what it is. It's a satirical performance art experience; call it The Bourgeois Fried Chicken Follies. It was one thing to read her journals over coffee in the local cafe, but dinner?
    Gabe Fenton came through the front door and Val felt her pulse quicken. She smiled in spite of herself as she watched the waitress point to her table. Then Theo Crowe