Gracie worked the afternoon shift at Viper’s Dirt Bikes in Houston. To all the dirt bike bros in Texas, she was the Viper Dirt Bike Babe.

            Gracie got off work right after the shop closed, around 8 p.m. One day an amateur dirt bike rider named Zane was idling in his truck waiting for her. Back at his house, he had all the dirt bike magazines featuring pictures of Gracie in her famous pink camouflaged bikini top and cut-off shorts. He also had the special edition bikini dirt bike babes calendar and even a life-size poster of Gracie naked next to a dirt bike. In the poster, her knee was up on the leather seat. Her thighs looked great. Her tits were perfection.

            Zane recognized Gracie immediately. He exited his truck and went up to her. Grabbing her arm, he said, “Come on for a ride, Gracie?” Then he tossed her in the back of his truck, tied her up like a piece of livestock, and drove off to his biker shack of a home.

            The next day, Gracie was back at work as usual. Guys filtered in all day long looking for their dirt bike swag. Some of them asked for Gracie to sign their magazines or calendars. She was right in the middle of signing the latest copy of Dirt Biker Hotties when a detective walked up to the register.

            “I’m detective Grover,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, ma’am.”

            “Hey, back off, dude,” said the guy getting his magazine signed. “Whatever this chick did— Don’t you know dirt bike babes don’t abide by no laws?”

            The detective scowled, evidently reassessing the situation.

            “You see this girl here?” asked the biker guy, holding up the magazine open to a page of a bikini girl riding a dirt bike in a beer ad. “That’s Bobbi O’Hare. She killed three dudes, robbed a bank, stole a Mercedes, and cheated on her taxes—big time. All within like six months, bro.”

            “So did she, like, get busted?” asked Gracie.

            “Hell no,” said the guy. “Zero consequences. Look at her. In that bikini? On that bike? She’s too hot!”

            “I still got to ask you a few questions,” the detective said.

            “Sure,” said Gracie. “What’s up?”

            The guy with the magazine laughed and smiled wildly at Gracie. As he left, he patted the detective on the shoulder with animated sympathy. “Good luck, bro,” he said.

            The detective wanted to know about Zane. He’d last been seen parked outside her shop. And this morning his body had washed up in the Buffalo Bayou.

            “Yeah, like, y’all can do your investigation and all,” said Gracie, “but there’s really not much of a mystery about it.” She held her shoulders back proudly, gaining confidence as she thought back to the magazine guy’s story about Bobbi O’Hare.

            “Okay,” said the detected. “Well, go on.”

            “So, thing is, that fellow Zane? He came here to rape me. He kidnapped me and took me to his house where he had all sorts of dirt bike paraphernalia and also pictures of me laid out like a shrine. He’d planned a sort of ceremonial dirt bike babe rape, ya know, to try to get better riding skills. Because I guess banging a dirt bike babe does that for you?”

            The detected gave Gracie a sort of hungry-eyed look, up and down. “Okay, and then?” he said, clearing his throat.

            “Well, see, I waited till he was all drunk, because he was getting me drunk, too. And then when he came at me, I bit him on the neck. He was dead, just like that, so I tossed him into the Mother Bayou.”

            “You’re going to have to come with me,” said the detective.

            “No way,” said Gracie, firmly. “You heard that guy with the magazine. Us dirt bike babes, we do what we want.”

            The detective reached for his handcuffs. “You’re under arrest,” he said.

            Gracie didn’t resist. Instead, she turned into a giant turquoise snake, slithered around his body, and sunk her fangs into the back of his neck.

            A group of dirt biker dudes entered the shop just as Gracie transformed back into a woman. She was naked with her clothes in a pile on the floor.

            “Hell yeah, bros,” said one of the new guys.

            “Looks like the viper chick just got some!” said another.

            They started reaching out and pinching each other’s arms, saying, “Viper!”

            Gracie dressed slowly, not making much of an effort to cover her breasts. She turned to the side and then to the back and then faced forward as she dressed, swinging her hair around, making a show of it.

            “What are you going to do with the body, Gracie?” asked one of the biker dudes.

            “Same as I always do, I guess. Throw it to the bayou.”

            “What was he trying to do,” asked one of the guys, inspecting the dead body with the hand cuffs lying nearby, “…arrest you?”

            “Yeah. Trying to.”

            “Fucking idiot. Serves him right!”

            “I’d say,” said Gracie, patting down her blouse.

            “Same thing happened to that other dirt biker babe—you know, Spider Babe—last week,” said one of the guys. He held up a magazine spread of Spider Babe in a black bikini reclining over a dirt bike in a tropical jungle. “Just last week Spider killed five cops when they tried to ticket her for speeding.”

            After the guys had done some shopping and had gotten their calendars and magazines signed, they hung around by the door, whispering amongst themselves, laughing nervously, and giving each other “viper” pinches on the arm. They were all quite visibly red in the face and aroused.

            “Do it, bro!” they were saying.

            “Do it! Ask her!”

            “No… You ask her!”

            Finally, one of the guys walked up to Gracie.

            “Hey, Gracie,” he said, grinning sheepishly and sweating with arousal. “Can you bite me? Just a little?”

            “Sure,” said Gracie. She made a malevolent face and hissed. Then she reached out and pinched his arm. “Viper!” she said.

Duke Moon plays in bands in Anchorage, Alaska. He writes fiction on the road.