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

push free from the creature, crustacean shells made of bone and cartilage and arterial puppet strings, and rush forth to gather the organs and legs up. Greedily they pull at the organs and limbs, pinch them in their deformed claws and scuttle away, pushing at each other, fighting to be first to bring the prizes back to their master, as if they don't have their own minds but rather a shared mind with simple, individual instincts.
    These are the kinds of things Kevin has to focus on or go insane. Try to figure a thing out, put his mind to it. Open up the panels. Strip the wires.
     
     
    **
     
     
    Butcher and Elaine stand by her blue truck, which was formerly his blue truck until he gave it to her. She'd refused it at first, until he insisted he wanted Jake taken to school in something which could survive her driving.
    Jake sits in the passenger seat with a book in his lap.
    “You could have called,” Butcher says.
    “You told me not to.”
    “Our eight-year-old running away is an exception. Any emergency is an exception, you know that.”
    “Sure, until you argue with me over what's an emergency.”
    Butcher's shirt is ringed with sweat, his eyes sunken in. “So you're still drinking,” she says.
    He frowns at her. “Don't.”
    “It's out of concern. Are you still getting the headaches?”
    “I said don't, and what I meant is, don't.”
    “I only went through with the divorce so you would take the time to get better.”
    Officer Stroud walks around them on the way to her cruiser. Franklin nods at her and waits until she passes before he starts talking again. “So you keep reminding me,” he says in a lower voice.
    “I'm at a loss here, Franklin. We're together and you suffer. We're apart and you suffer. I want to help you but I don't know how.”
    “Don't worry about me. Worry about keeping an eye on our son.”
    “That's not fair.”
    “Isn't it? I didn't fight for custody because I thought he was better off living with you. But now, now I'm starting to think otherwise.”
    “How dare you?”
    “Because he's all I've got,” Butcher shouts. He catches himself. Elaine is taken aback. “Because he's all I've got,” he repeats quieter. “So if you really want to help me? Stay away.”
    He walks back to the station doors.
    “Stay far away.”
     
     
    **
     
     
    Officer Banks shouldn't be alive. He breathes because his lungs haven't fallen out. He has thoughts because his brain hasn't been removed by teeth and claws. He sees because mouths haven't sucked his eyes from the sockets.
    The rubbery tubes pull themselves out of his throat and slip clear of his mouth, leaving it free to work again. He would scream except he doesn't have the energy, and so the only thing that comes from him is a wheezing gasp, a sound for the sake of sound, because he knows very soon he'll never make another sound again, not in this life, and he thinks he should give it one more try, that he owes it to himself to take every second he has left to try, to say something, to be something, to be a human being, God damn it, with a brain and a personality who was here and did some things worth remembering.
    One of the thicker appendages moves toward his face, stopping just an inch from it. Out of its hollow end something pushes forward as if defecated. Instead of shit, a face. A soft face, pruned the way skin gets after being in the water too long. The face is one he hasn't seen in a long time but is unmistakeable: a child who went missing a few months ago from a neighboring town. An unsolved case that never made any sense until now. Banks tries to recall the boy's name but the best he can do is be sure it started with an R.
    R's face says, "Youu will jjoin The Self nnow. It is an honorr to jjoin the sellf. Youu arre honoredd." The voice isn't a child's at all.
    Officer Banks summons every bit of strength he has left, all he'll ever have again, and pushes it into his lungs for one last whisper.
    He says, "Fuck you, kid."
    The child's