Slag Attack by Andersen Prunty Read Free Book Online

takes a fragment of bone from his rib and a long strand of her hair. The bone becomes a needle and she feeds the hair through its eye.
        Within a few minutes he is all stitched up but strangely flat. She leans toward him and at first he thinks she’s going to kiss him. Instead, she lifts up his eyepatch, encloses her generous lips around the socket and exhales. Shell watches his body inflate and feels her breath move through his insides. He coughs, dragging himself up into a sitting position. He doesn’t feel so sick anymore. In fact, he feels kind of great.
       “ Why?” he asks. “Why all this?”
       “ To get away,” her actual voice is soft yet authoritative.
       “ Away from what?”
       “ Hollow City. I don’t know. Everyone.”
       “ Being adored must be difficult.”
       “ It is if that’s not what you want. Or maybe it’s because it’s the only thing you’ve ever known.”
       “ So you get to just walk away?”
       “ It looks like it. But think about it. You get to be a human again.”
       “ I’ve always been a human.”
       “ You call what you used to do for a living being human?”
        Shell shrugs and says, “It put food on the table,” and feels like The Rotting Man.
       “ I guess you’ll justify it however you see fit.”
       “ Since you’re so pious, how do you justify leaving your city in ruins?”
       “ I’m sure I’ll be back to pick up the pieces. Eventually. They need a little self-sufficiency. Besides, they’re not really in ruins. They’re just crazy because they’ve always had me to look after them. Maybe they’ll grow up.”
       “ Speaking of growing up—I thought you were, you know, diminutive.”
       “ I was. Now I’m not.”
       “ It was Happalance, wasn’t it?”
       “ I shall not tell.”
       “ Yeah, Happalance put you in my eye socket and...”
       “ You can sit here speculating all you want to but I’ve gotta go. There’s a whole world out there to see.”
        She walks down the alley, toward the city street and Shell feels a brief pang of regret. Regret and pity. He fears for her insides and wonders how long it will take them to become devastated and smashed. He hopes they won’t. He hopes the world she wants to see is still here a little bit longer. He stands up, coughs, adjusts his eyepatch and heads home. He has to find a new job.
       

 
    Vincent Severity
       
    Months earlier…
       
    1.
       
    Amber Toulouse gags a little when she turns on the light in the break room. She was going to grab her half-eaten sandwich from the refrigerator but decides to leave it. The break room smells like decay and looks like some kind of maggot infestation has taken hold over in the corner near the trash can. She turns off the light and shuts the door. Let the cleaning crew deal with it. Maggots are not in her job description. She decides she can probably just call it quits and go home.
        She works in the office of Ames Construction. Times are slow. Nobody seems to be building anything. She’s taken like three calls all day and the other lady in the office, Martha Sleeveless, went home around noon. Said she was feeling sick. Amber thought it was more like she was feeling bored and it was a gorgeous Friday and the construction crew hadn’t come in at all today.
        She turns off all the lights in the office and heads to her desk to turn off the computer and radio and grab her purse. As she puts her hand on the radio’s switch, she pauses at the word, “quarantine.” She listens for a couple more seconds.
       “ The Mayor also advised all residents of Scruffington, New York to stay within the town’s perimeters. It is also advised that travelers bypass the city.”
        Hysteria, she thinks, and flips the switch. Just some burg in New York. By Monday, the Mayor will be rolling out a travel brochure for Scruffington. Quarantine would kill the