Slip (The Slip Trilogy Book 1) by David Estes Read Free Book Online Page A

at his father, who seems to stare right through him. He hasn’t taken another step inside, just hovering in the entrance, like a visitor waiting for an invitation. He’s still too close to the door’s sensors to allow it to automatically shut behind him. What could have happened to make his father feel like a stranger in his own house?
    While Janice operates the food-maker, the boy goes to his toy room and selects his favorite Zoran action figure and an appropriately large and menacing robot for the hero to test his skills against. When he glances back down the hall, Janice is hugging his father, speaking to him in a hushed tone.
    For some reason, it scares him.
    He turns away and goes to his room. A few minutes later, Janice enters with a steaming hot cube of spaghetti. It even has three large, square meatballs—a special treat.
    But even as he eats his favorite food and plays with his favorite toys, he can’t ignore the harsh voices murmuring under his door and into his ears.
    He knows something terrible has happened.
     
    ~~~
     
    They don’t come for his plate. They don’t come to kiss him goodnight or tuck him in. They simply don’t come.
    When he opens his door and peeks out, they don’t hear him, just keep on talking in those whisper-soft voices. The boy is drawn to the conversation; he feels like the white-yellow moths with the papery wings that like to flutter around the lone bulb that lights the backyard in the evening. He creeps to the end of the hall and sits down with his back against the wall, listening.
    Despite their best attempts to cloak their words, the conversation arrives clear and distinct to the boy’s ears now that he’s just around the corner. His father and Janice are sitting on the couch, where he normally watches Zoran on the holo-screen.
    “You have to find a way out. This job will be the death of you.” Janice, her words emphatic.
    “No, Jan, that’s where you’re wrong.” The boy’s never heard his father call Janice ‘Jan.’ But he says the nickname so easily it’s like he’s spoken it a thousand times. “ Leaving the job will be the death of me. But not just me. All of you. They’ll kill all of you.”
    The boy freezes on the word kill . Every muscle in his body is tight, rigid, like he’s stuck in place, glued to the wall and floor.
    “I’m scared, Michael,” Janice says. He remembers the last time she called him that, on his birthday more than a year ago. “When I go home I see Crows in the shadows; I can sense Hawks hovering overhead, watching me. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
    A deep sigh. “No one’s watching you,” his father says. “It’s just your imagination playing tricks.”
    “My imagination feels like reality these days.”
    His father manages a brief laugh. “You’ve always had a creative and overactive mind. But now you should get home. I’ve already programmed the aut-car. It’s a different route than usual, just to be safe.”
    The boy hears the sigh of the couch cushions as they stand up. He knows he should start backtracking to his room, but he’s still frozen, his breaths coming in short bursts through his nose, the word killkillkillkill ringing in his ears.
    Janice and his father pass practically right by him, but they’re focused on the door, not the hallway. And anyway, the hall is dark, cast in shadows—he can see them better than they would be able to see him.
    His father opens the door and Janice lifts to her tiptoes to give him a final hug, squeezing him the way she usually only squeezes the boy. He’s never seen them this…touchy. The boy doesn’t like it, and a momentary snap of anger breaks him from the heavy chains clamping him to the floor.
    “He’s a smart kid,” Janice says. “I can’t hold off his questions forever. Every day I feel more and more unhinged by them.”
    They step back from their embrace, and his father says, “I know. I’ll explain as much as I can to him soon.”
    Janice nods and steps