Pinprick by Matthew Cash Read Free Book Online Page B

rotting smell filled the stall.
    The vet was a skinny man who didn’t look capable of the job he was about to do but he had delivered hundreds of calves in the village over the last ten years.
    “Come on then let’s do this,” Jack said as he led the vet into the stall.
    The vet pulled on some thick rubber gloves and crouched at the cow’s hind quarters.
    “Right,” he said in a baritone voice that didn’t suit him, “hold the head and her middle.”
    Jack opted for the end furthest away from the rank shitty smell and got his arms around the animal’s neck. Vic slumped his weight over the cow’s chest and back. The cow’s eyes were level with Jack’s and he noticed a dull lifeless matt finish to them he had only seen in the dying. He didn’t fancy its chances, poor thing.
    Hopefully we’ll save the calf , he thought knowing that Vic was thinking about how much money he would lose and the subsequent consequences of that predicament. The sweat ran rivets down his shirt and clung to his back.
    When the vet put his hand inside her, the cow cried out in pain and tried to stand. It took all of the two men’s strength just to keep the animal on the ground. The noise it made was like no other laboured noise any of them had heard before, at least, not from a cow. It sounded like some kind of wildcat, like a mountain lion or panther.
    It’s going to die for certain , Jack thought, as he gritted his teeth and held the animal tight.
    He could hear the vet panting and struggling but felt lucky that he couldn’t see anything as Vic was in the way. A revolting tearing sound came from the cow’s rear end, followed by a sickening squelch. At once the smell intensified to such immensity that the three men hurled themselves backwards away from the cow. Jack fell to his knees and vomited onto the hay covered floor. Vic stood, one hand resting on the stall wall for support, violently retching. Jack saw the vet sat on his haunches, his face ashen grey. He was staring at the newly born calf.
    The cow’s behind was a ragged bloody mess. Dark red arterial blood flowed freely from its gaping torn vagina and a thick disgusting pale green pus oozed and mixed with the shit and the blood. Lying on the ground was a gelatinous sack of black blood and pus. The vet came to his senses and leapt up to try and see if the calf was alive inside the amniotic sack. He prised apart the gloopy substance to uncover the calf.
    “My God!” the vet exclaimed as the head of the calf flopped on to the hay. Its eye sockets were alive with maggots, its tongue half eaten and black with necrosis.
    As the three men stared in horror, oblivious to the shrieks and wails from Vic’s wife and daughter, the mother cow lifted its head once then dropped it to the floor with a thud. Its shallow breathing stopped as it finally died.
    “Jesus-fucking-Christ!” The vet screamed as the calf started moving. The black, half rotten thing twitched about on the floor and made a feeble attempt to get to its feet. It dragged itself towards its mother, mewling strangely from a half decomposed mouth. When it tried to suckle at its dead mother’s udder Jack puked himself empty. Vic ran to the door.
    “Where are you going?” Jack spluttered.
    Vic turned and looked at the abomination before him suckling dead milk and watching as it spilled from the calf’s semi-formed throat.
    “To get my fucking gun!”

Chapter Four
     
    Jennifer didn’t agree with her dad’s views on her uncle Shane. Why was everyone so horrible to him about something that happened twenty years ago, that wasn’t even his fault? Uncle Shane would never kill his friends, who would? She admired him for surviving this long with the social stigma. Especially seeing as he was famous. In his postcards, Uncle Shane called it, ‘being in the public eye’.
    She rolled over on the bed and fished around in her bedside cabinet and pulled out a thick plastic purple folder. It was full of newspaper cuttings and a