Prey by Stefan Petrucha Read Free Book Online Page B

realized that while Koko was real, her fear of him eating her was just as much a fantasy as becoming invisible. The imagination could do many wonderful things, but it could not ever predict the future.
    By the time she returned home she felt stupid and embarrassed. Not because of the OCD—there was nothing she could do about that—but for not talking to her friends. If not Derek, who might make fun of her in his efforts to help, at least she could have spilled her reptilian guts to Lori and Delina.
    In a massive effort to exorcise her demons, she typed out the whole story, full of all the details she could remember and posted it on her MySpace blog.
    It was difficult, conjuring the giant face of Koko and the sight of him chewing, but in the end she succeeded. With a strong feeling of self-satisfaction, she posted the entry.
    It was with even more pleasure that within twenty minutes, she watched the messages of support come rolling in, some from friends at school, some from her therapy group, others from people she knew only as silent voices online.
    You go, girrl!—Numnuts90
    That is *so* brave!:-) Jason 340
    The only lizard you really have to worry about is your reptile brain! Beat it back to the prehistoric age where it belongs! I luv you!—Lori
    Now that u conquered mount monitor, wanna go 2
    Hobson Night?—Derek
    And so on. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the laptop screen, terribly pleased with herself. She felt like she’d survived some horrendous catastrophe, like Hurricane Katrina, instead of just making it through a training session for a part-time job. It was something she learned in therapy, small steps, small triumphs. She was feeling calm, not even thinkingabout the day after tomorrow, when she’d have to go back there again.
    So what was the antidote to fear? Knowledge. Since the computer was booted up and some more messages might come in, she decided to open another window in her browser and Google some more about the devils themselves, monitor lizards. She was surprised at the wealth of information and the huge number of lizard fanciers.
    There were many species, from the dreaded Indonesian Komodo dragon, the ten-footers that ate everything from water buffalo to each other and were known to dig up fresh human graves for a snack, to the Varanus brevicauda , which only grew to about the size of a human finger, tail included. In between, there was the nile monitor, the crocodile monitor, the desert monitor, and the Australian lace monitor, which could grow as long as the Komodo, but wasn’t as heavy.
    But which was Koko?
    Their heads tended to look the same, and now Chelsea was sorry she hadn’t plied Eve Mandisa for more information. Monitor owners (who sometimes called them “companion animals” rather than pets, which Chelsea found a little creepy) all talked abouttheir habitats, but none seemed quite as nice or as big as Koko’s. They mentioned the right temps, the dead rats for the larger lizards.
    The most common “pet” monitors were the Savannah monitor and the Nile monitor, both of which could grow to be more than six feet. Maybe Koko was one of those, but his skin didn’t quite match the olive brown of the Savannah or have the distinct yellow bands of the Nile. There was a larger water monitor that could grow to nine (!) feet and a rare Australian Papuan, the longest lizard in the world, rumored to be able to attain lengths of up to fifteen feet.
    She felt a little tickle, asking her to count. 6, 9, 15. She looked at her room and measured the distance. Six feet was as long as her bed. The image of a lizard in there, waiting for her, flashed in her head, but she beat it back. Nine feet was nearly the width of her ten-by-twelve room. But fifteen feet—something that long couldn’t even fit in here. Unless it curled up and waited for her. The Komodos, she read, would hide in the brush, take a bite out of their prey—a big