“Yes, someone did this to me, if that’s how you want to put it. They plucked me from the crowd that day in New York and they stripped my old life away from me like the thick layer of country dirt that it was.” It ran its palms along the mottled skin of its arms, tenderly, as though remembering when the flesh had been smooth and perfect. “A little gasoline and a flame, that’s all it took.”
“Miranda,” I said, because I thought maybe saying her name again would bring her back to me, “I thought you left. I thought you left me at that intersection, you’re saying someone took you?”
“Poor Arthur.” I had the feeling it was repeating my name, too, but for a different reason. Lady Alligator regarded me with quiet distaste. “It happens in the city all the time. Women are taken. Sometimes for sex shows, sometimes for… other reasons.” It gestured vaguely to the amber glow of its tiny trailer room.
“You didn’t leave me,” I said. My voice sounded strangely flat. The smell of sex and shit wafted past me again and I tried not to breathe it in.
“We all leave in different ways.” Lady Alligator pursed its lips as if in thought. “If you’re asking did I leave you at that intersection? No. I was taken, like I told you.”
Before I could even let this sink in it went on.
“I had been planning to leave, though, if that makes any difference,” it said, that terrible grin splitting its mouth, all those sharpened teeth glittering in the candlelight. “Surely you noticed my jewelry was gone. And the money. You thought you’d been so clever, dear Arthur, but you’re as predictable as you are boring, and I knew it would be in the bible in the drawer.”
I had been right all along. I had been wrong but somehow I had been right.
“I wanted to get lunch, first. I thought the least you could do was feed me before I went,” Lady Alligator mused, then laughed again. The sound echoed off the tin walls and vibrated in my skull.
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