Six Inches Thick Read online

  The ooze has surrounded her. It rolls up over her fingers and her arms, then over her chest and over the lower half of her face. It carries the birds up close. Her eyes roll around in their sockets, beginning to understand what they see. The pigeons have no feathers left at all. They’re not even real. Their bodies form and melt and reform again. Their skin is nothing more than a web, held together by strings of clear, stretchy grease. She can see her blood passing between them, being shared by each shapeless body as it is sucked away from her.

  Above her, the pale thing is ascending and beginning to tremble. It heaves its body around the room, seemingly swollen to its limit. The black spots inside of it slosh around and begin to sink. Then suddenly its whole mass jerks back and a fresh, wide hole appears in its side. From which there’s a torrential discharge, followed by the birthing of something long and ridged and hard.

  The new thing’s body slithers across the floor, entangled in long strands of afterbirth. Its whole body appears to split in half, revealing a vile grin filled with the same endless sea of teeth. It approaches her from below, hiding beneath her waist. She looks down over her hips but cannot determine if it’s made from metal or bone or both.

  Climbing above her, it thrashes about and produces another sound. It shakes her whole body, but her ears hear nothing at all. Its mouth spreads open further, letting her see that its teeth continue all the way down its throat. It lunges forward and comes for her face.

  As its jaws wrap around her, she closes her eyes and waits. She sees some sunlight. It streams in through what used to be the roof high above her and holds her gently. She lives a lifetime spent in summer, and for that instant she feels safe. She feels the warmth running across her face and lets it soak in. She tries to remember walking along the curb earlier this morning, recounting the game she was playing with her feet. She thinks about the silly conversation she had with her breasts. She thinks about that band shirt she threw off the roof that is probably lying somewhere out in the field.

  And she thinks about her daddy’s twenty bucks. She tries to smile, but she can no longer feel anything. It’s all gone. Her face has been ripped off and swallowed. Her chest is being eaten now. All that’s left is to rub the little, yellow ring on her finger buried in the mud at her side.

  And laugh at everyone else that had to go to work today.