The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove - By Christopher Moore Page 0,25

personality disorder, bipolar type (no "special sauce"). To make the latter you had to fulfill the prerequisite of at least one psychotic event, then hit five out of nine symptoms. It was a much tougher and more subtle form of batshit. Molly's favorite symptom was: "Odd be-liefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms."

The narrator said, "So the magical thinking - that would be that you believe that in another dimension, you actually are Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland?"

"Fucking narrator again," Molly said. "You're not going away, are you? I don't need this symptom."

"You can't really say that your 'magical thinking' affects your behavior, can you?" the narrator asked. "I don't think you can claim that symptom."

"Oh hell no," Molly said. "I'm just out practicing with a broadsword at two in the morning, waiting for the end of civilization so I can claim my rightful identity."

"Simple physical fitness regimen. Everyone's trying to get into shape these days."

"So they can hack apart evil mutants?"

"Sure, Nautilus makes a machine for that. Mutant Master 5000."

"That's a crock."

"Sorry, I'll shut up now."

"I'd appreciate that. I really don't need the 'voices' symptom, thanks."

"You've still got the monster-trailer hallucination outside."

"I thought you were going to shut up."

"Sorry, that's the last you'll hear from me. Really."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

"You said..."

"Sorry."

So without voices all she had to deal with was the hallucination. The trailer was still sitting there, but admittedly, it just looked like a trailer. Molly could imagine trying to tell the shrink at county about it when they admitted her.

"So you saw a trailer?"

"That's right."

"And you live in a trailer park?"

"Yep."

"I see," the shrink would say. And somewhere between those two little words the judgment would be pronounced: crazy.

No, she wasn't going to go that route. She would confront her fears and go forward, just as Kendra had in The Mutant Slayer: Warrior Babes II. She grabbed her sword and left her trailer.

The sirens had subsided now, but she could still see an orange glow from the explosion. Not a nuclear blast, she thought, just some sort of accident. She strode across the lot and stopped about ten feet away from the trailer.

Up close, it looked - well, it looked like a damn trailer. The door was in the wrong place, on the end instead of the side, and the windows were frosty, as if they'd iced over. There was a thin patina of soot over its entire length, but it was a trailer. It didn't look like a monster at all.

She stepped forward and ventured a poke with her sword. The aluminum skin of the trailer seemed to shy away from the sword point. Molly jumped back.

A warm wave of pleasure swept through her body. For a second she forgot why she had come out here and let the wave take her. She poked the trailer again, and again the pleasure wave washed over her, this time even more intense. There was no fear, no tension, just the feeling that this was exactly where she should be - where she should always have been. She dropped her sword and let the feeling take her.

The frosty layer on the trailer's two end windows seemed to lift, revealing the slitlike pupils of two great golden eyes. Then the door began to open, not from side to side, but splitting itself in the middle and opening like a mouth. Molly turned on her heel and ran, wondering even as she went why she hadn't just stayed there by the trailer where everything felt so good.

Estelle

Estelle was wearing a leather fedora, a pair of dark sunglasses, a single lavender sock, and a subtle and satisfied smile. Sometime after her husband had died - after she'd moved to Pine Cove and started taking the antide-pressants, after she'd stopped coloring her hair or giving a damn about her wardrobe - Estelle had vowed that no man would ever see her naked again. At the time, she considered it a fair trade: carnal pleasures, of which there were few, for guilt-free cookies, of which there were many. Now, having broken that vow and lying in her feather bed next to this sweaty, stringy old man, who was teasing her left nipple with his tongue (and who didn't seem to mind that said nipple was leading her breast over her arm rather than jutting skyward like the cupola on the Taj Mahal), Estelle felt like she understood, at last, the Mona Lisa's smile. Mona had been getting some, and she