Page 28 of If Looks Could Kill

I scrambled out of the cab and stumbled back away from it, bloodless, spineless, helpless. Dissolving. Unsure of the ground beneath my feet. I could not have seen what I had seen.

Nor could I unsee it.

Pretty Pearl, with snakes for hair . A monster out of legend and myth. Out of nightmare.

“Twelve cents,” the cabbie told me, reaching down from atop the wagon for his payment.

My legs trembled, and my vision wavered.

“What’s the matter?” The driver, a short man slightly built, pulled the brake and jumped down. He took in my appearance, probably ashen and pale.

“Hey!” he called out. “This here young lady needs help! Somebody get smelling salts!”

Then he turned toward the cab. I wanted to stop him, to warn him, but I couldn’t move.

He looked into the dark void of the carriage. He slumped forward and fell in. Helpless legs slid out from underneath him. His trunk landed with a thud on the carriage floor.

Pearl’s snakes rose as one, craning over and around her to take in the sight of the fallen man. They darted and danced in unison, like coordinated swallows in an autumn sky.

What had been Pearl gazed down at me, open-mouthed. Horror and exultation, mingled. Red eyes, rimmed with tears. A thin forked tongue darting between her teeth to taste the air.

She was a monster.

Run away, Tabitha. Run, and don’t stop running.

They’ll kill her.

This isn’t your problem. She’s not your problem. Get far, far away from this devilry.

But they’ll kill her.

“What’s going on up there?”

“Get a move on!”

“Whatsamatter, bub? Shake the reins!”

Voices began to clamor. We’d snarled traffic. Passersby were starting to stare.

I pawed the cabbie until I’d flopped him onto his back, his lifeless eyes staring upward.

Medusa. The monster woman with snakes for hair, from Greek myth, whose gaze turned people to—oh my goodness… was he dead ? Was Pearl a murderer ?

I clutched at my own face. Not made of stone. I prodded the cabbie. Not turned to stone.

I began slapping furiously at his cheeks. “Wake up!” I cried. “Wake up!” Nothing.

Pearl leaned forward, crouching down to study her handiwork. She looked like a cat who’d just caught a pigeon. Proud, and with her mouth watering. Good God.

I dealt the cabbie a wallop that would leave a mark if he were alive. “Wake up !”

He stirred, slightly. His breath entered in a snort. He was alive.

Not a murderer, then. But still, they would kill her.

I took Pearl’s hand and pulled her toward me.

She resisted, sniffing at the cabbie.

I took my scarf and wound it around Pearl’s head. When the snakes were concealed enough, I bundled her down the two steps to the ground, sprinkled three nickels over the slowly rousing cabbie’s belly, dragged her up the stoop to our tenement building, and pushed her through the door.