Free Shallow Veins (The Obscured Book 1) by Brian Martinez

Mary, bleeding.
    Tears stream down Kevin's face and glide along the place where the fingers meet it. Even the tears, the creature takes. Out of the heating vent a bubbling, oozing surge of shimmering fly's wings gives birth to a woman's mouth on daddy long-leg stilts. "Whyy," the creature asks with the woman's mouth, "wwhy," the fingers sliding away from Kevin's face. He breaths deeply of the air and notices, with tremendous relief, that the mouth looks nothing like Mary's.
    "Please don't hurt my wife. Not her." As he mumbles and begs, the mouth crawls up him on thin spider legs. It stands on his shoulder and leans into his face. Kevin winces from the smell of it.
    "Whyyyyyyy," it whispers, and licks the tears from his cheeks.
    "I can't see if Mary's okay."
    The mouth twitches into a smile, something one might find in a crime scene photo. "Wannntt to seee?"
    Despite understanding what it entails, Kevin nods.
    The fingers wrapped around him slither and slide against each other until the friction is too much; their skin becomes loose and rubs off, grows bubbly scabs that harden and fuse them together into one, thick, opened-up snake of damaged meat. The sound alone, like sped up audiotape of botched medical procedures, makes Kevin taste the rise of bile in the back of his throat.
    The new growth encases Kevin's stomach and pins his arms to his sides, the only thing he can be thankful for that it's not wrapped around his mouth like the last ones were, stifling him, giving him their taste. The creature pushes him onto his feet and drags him around the corner to let him witness its work.
    The scene that meets Kevin is so busy that, at first, he can't make sense of it. Like red static behind the eyes, swirling brown and black. After a moment of adjustment he sees what's become of Officer Banks.
    Held aloft like a crucifixion in space, his body is chopped and divided into pieces which are gobbled up by the creature's various transformations. Where a nerve is extracted, a mouth slurps it up like warm spaghetti. Where blood spurts, another tiny mouth drinks it. And all the while, at the center of it, Officer Banks is still alive.
    Why hasn't he passed out from the shock, Kevin thinks. That poor soul.
    "We keep him awaakke," the woman-mouth-spider says.
    That was odd, Kevin thinks, it was as if the creature answered his thoughts. Obviously by coincidence.
    "No coiiincidennce."
    Kevin remembers the visions, the flashbacks and shared emotions. With heavy heart and confused mind, he understands now- the creature can read his mind when it touches him, the contact opening up a direct channel of communication. Despite its barbaric nature, the creature is in many ways far more advanced than humans.
    Officer Banks receives a new attack: a massive formation shapes itself into a serrated blade and, with one deadly motion like that of a scorpion’s sting, slices through his stomach from one side straight through to the other.
    What’s left of his legs fall free and slump to the ground like a mannequin dropped by a careless department store employee. It would almost be comical, Kevin thinks, if it wasn't awful.
    In the place where his legs were, a clear view opens up to Mary, crouched on the floor, her mind reeling, her face soaked from crying, hands clutched to her mouth- but alive. Kevin is so thankful for this, just this, that he lets out a small laugh like a cough, a reaction he himself doesn't understand. The familiar sound of his voice gets Mary's attention and she looks over to him. Their eyes meet in a moment of understanding.
    Yes, I'm alive. No, I'm not okay. Yes, we'll get through this. We have to get through this. We haven't lived long enough, made love enough times, had children, gone to Japan, built a sandbox, sailed in a boat, seen all one hundred of the greatest movies of all time. It's not time yet. We have to get through this.
    The moment is broken by the remainder of Officer Banks' organs falling out of him.
    Crab-like growths