Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

it went. The beetle disappeared from sight as it followed the braid down to where it was attached to Melinda’s head. It reappeared on top of her head, ran over her forehead, onto her nose, and before the woman was even aware it was happening, the beetle crawled into her right nostril and vanished up her nose.

Melinda’s braid flailed about wildly as her shriek grew into a scream. Blood gushed from both nostrils, and she brought her hands to her face and pressed them against her nose in a vain attempt to stop the flow. Lori leaned back against the ground, took a two-handed grip on the Gravedigger Special, and aimed it squarely at Melinda’s chest. But before she could fire, Melinda’s screaming became a high-pitched ululation, and her body began spasming. Fresh gouts of blood jetted from her nose, her eyes rolled white, and she collapsed to the ground. Her braid continued moving for a moment, then it too fell still. An instant later, the beetle emerged from Melinda’s left ear. It was coated with thick blood, but the rain washed the gore off the insect. The beetle took to the air, flew toward Lori, landed on her head and once more nestled in her hair. She thought she knew what the insect had done. It had entered through Melinda’s nostril, burrowed its way up into her brain, and started eating as fast as it could. A nasty way to go, but at least it had been fast and she hadn’t wasted another tooth-bullet. She still had three.

She looked at the house across the street and saw more Shadowkin had climbed onto the roof to watch the action. There were ten now, maybe a dozen. And there were Shadowkin on some of the other roofs too.

She’d been so focused on Melinda that she’d lost track of the others. She looked around and saw Reeny and Brian standing off to the side, watching and waiting. She saw Justin and Larry grappling with each other. Justin gripped Larry’s shoulders and Larry had his hands around the other man’s throat. Justin’s neck was so swollen with tumors that Larry’s fingers had sunk so far into the spongy discolored flesh that they weren’t visible. Larry’s features were scrunched up with effort and his arms were shaking. He was putting everything he had into strangling Justin. For his part, Justin kept his hands on Larry’s shoulders, gripping them tight, yes, but not in a way that would cause any damage. Why wasn’t he fighting back?An instant later Lori understood why.

Justin let out a violent cough and a spray of black particles hit Larry’s face. Larry drew in a reflexive breath, and then he began coughing too.

“Fuck,” Lori said softly.

Larry let go of Justin’s throat and stepped back. He kept coughing, so violently now that his entire body shuddered.

Lori didn’t think. She raised the Gravedigger Special and fired. A tooth discharged from the gun’s barrel, streaked across the yard, and buried itself between Justin’s shoulder blades. She expected him to cry out in agony as the pain stored in the tooth was released into his system. But he didn’t. Instead, he simply fell apart. He collapsed into a pile of tumors – no blood, no bones, just a mound of obscene growths of varying sizes that lay on the grass, getting struck by rain that could never cleanse or purify them.

Lori was horrified by the way Justin died, but she was more concerned for Larry. He was coughing so hard that she feared he couldn’t breathe. She ran to him, forgetting for the moment about Reeny and Brian. When she reached Larry, she put her free hand on his back, as if that would do any good at this point. She looked down at the ground and saw dark blood on the grass, dissipating in the rain. More joined it as Larry coughed, splatters thick as mucus, and that’s when she knew it was too late for him.

His coughing subsided somewhat and he managed to look at her. His mouth was smeared with red, and his eyes were bloodshot, the capillaries broken from the violent exertions of his coughing. He smiled weakly. “I just…wanted to help.”

He coughed one last time, blood spraying the leather jacket of his that Lori wore, and then he collapsed into the grass, bloodshot eyes unblinking as rainwater pelted them.

Lori felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, and then she drew in a shuddering gasp of air and released it in a loud sob. She fell on her knees next to Larry, folded her body over his, wrapped her arms around him. His death was her fault, just as Edgar’s was. She hadn’t hurt Larry intentionally, of course, but that distinction meant dick right now. He was dead, and she was to blame.

“You look really sad.”

She glanced up and saw Brian standing close by, smiling at her. Reeny stood next to him, her expression unreadable. Brian’s smile widened.

“I like it,” he said. “It’s funny.”

The Gravedigger Special – which Lori still held – had two rounds left. One for Brian and one for Reeny. Lori’s grief over Larry’s death flared into anger, at herself, the Cabal, this whole damn fucked-up situation, and she saw Brian and Reeny as symbolizing everything that had turned to shit in her life.

The Shadowkin crouched on the rooftops across the street leaned forward, as if eager to see what would happen next.

Lori intended to fire the bone gun two last times, but before she could squeeze the trigger, headlight beams illuminated the three of them. They all turned to look as a BMW pulled into the Dhawans’ driveway. The driver parked, and when he got out of the car and stepped into the rain, Lori saw that it was Aashrita’s father. Saakar Dhawan was a gastroenterologist in his early sixties, a tall man with a goatee that was still primarily black. He wore a gray suit and tie, and