The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

resembled a person, with legs, a backside, and a muscular, tight back. When the creature turned, slowly, to face Clay and his light, he saw its face, which was almost entirely a mouth with two brightly-colored eyes like sunlight, eyes Clay vaguely recalled seeing in reality only once before, but hadn’t since…since…

The figure’s arms were thin, almost skeletal, and stretched toward him. The only noise the creature made was an exhalation, a sigh, extended, low, as though the air was being squeezed from its body with every movement. A slight wheeze, coming from God-knows-where, high-pitched, and unsettling. Clay stepped away from the figure and, without turning to run, backed himself quickly out of the alley. He stepped off the sidewalk and onto the road, unconcerned about potential vehicles or people, his eyes locked on the alley. The creature moved slowly, seemingly to struggle with every step and movement, its body almost too weak to carry the weight of its muscle and bone.

“You’re…what are you?” Clay whispered to himself, happy to hear his own voice amid the wheezy exhale of the creature, which was nearly on him. It grabbed at his clothes, its hands slick with filth, and he struggled to free himself of its grasp. The creature’s mouth found its way over his own, large enough that it even covered Clay’s nose, and he found himself struggling to breathe, the creature exhaling a black, viscous sludge from deep within its gullet. Clay vomited and forced the creature off himself, and wiped the black fluid from his face and did his best to scrape the sludge away.

He rose to his feet and looked around for something to defend himself when he spotted a nearby trash can. He grabbed the lid and held it out like a shield between himself and the creature. “Get back! Stay away!”

Once within striking distance, the creature lunged, but Clay side-stepped it and began raining blows upon it, dropping it to the pavement. Eventually, the creature stopped moving, and Clay, filled with rage, stomped on the back of the creature’s head. Clay flinched at the sound of the creature’s skull smashing from his blows. Flipping onto its back, the creature reached up toward him, almost pleading, its flesh slick with sick, black fluid and blood. Clay stared at its orange eyes, the color seeming to fade. After a moment, he smashed the lid of the garbage can onto the creature’s head, killing it. Clay sat down next to the dead creature to catch his breath. His heart was racing, and he worried that a heart attack wouldn’t be far behind. He eventually steadied himself, pulled himself to his feet, and stared down at the creature, trying to see more of it.

Clay took his phone out and used the flashlight to examine the figure. Those eyes he kept thinking, vaguely familiar and disconcerting all the same. The front of the figure’s body was similar to its back, muscle, sinew, bone, except for its lower regions, where the creature was blessed with a member that was vastly larger than the average man. Clay regarded the creature’s genitalia with confusion, and recognized the clear indication that this figure was, possibly, human in some way.

Turning toward the inferior pizza restaurant that bordered the alley where he found the creature, Clay looked around, checking the empty town for any sign of people (or more creatures), and, using the trashcan lid , smashed in the window of the restaurant, stepping inside once the glass was clear. He needed to gather his thoughts, and wanted to clean up somehow, and remembered the bathroom was down the hall from the counter, so he moved slowly and slipped into the men’s room.

Once inside, he noted how relatively clean it was compared to the dusty and vacant restaurant. Using his phone’s light, he examined his face in the mirror, and took some time to look at the fluid the creature had spewed all over him. He noticed redness around his mouth and nose, where the creature’s mouth started enveloping him. The redness was accompanied by a soreness he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager, that summer, after meeting the boy in the pizza place. Summer nights spent at the bluff overlooking town when Clay’s dad was working late. Other nights spent along the banks of the Hudson River. Nights Clay and the boy hoped would last forever, but Clay knew, deep down, couldn’t.

When he turned the sink on, he was surprised to see clear water after about five seconds of brown, and washed his face, hands, and more. He wiped his suit the best he could but realized that it was a lost cause and stepped back into the pizza restaurant.

He walked behind the counter and imagined he’d find something better than a trash can lid to protect himself in the kitchen, so he slipped inside. On the stoves and burners, there were pots of rotted food, long-since cooked and forgotten, the smell hanging heavy in the air, accompanied by the buzzing of flies or gnats. He looked around, pulled his tie off and slipped it into his pocket, and found a chef’s knife along with a small meat cleaver. He had seen tough guys use meat cleavers a million times in movies and figured that it would be easy to defend one’s self with it, so, he tucked the knife in his belt, and, with his briefcase in one hand and the cleaver in the other, exited the pizza place.

The only way out of town would be back to the train station, and he remembered that the last train out would be stopping in about an hour, so he had plenty of time to make it back, board, and settle in before heading back to Grand Central Station.

Where is everybody? he wondered, but with the empty stillness of silence that met his every inquiry, down every alleyway, into every open store, he never received an answer.

He started back down the road out of town but