ARC: Cracked Read Free

news (especially with this haircut). But this is not a place that wants an investigation and I like the message only a rearranged corpse can deliver (Picasso!). Well, a corpse and a message written in blood – just in case I was too subtle:
     
    I am watching .
     
    Underneath it, I prop a little love note to the administration letting them know I know where the bodies are buried – in at least one case, literally. They won’t be calling anyone.
    I’m soul-drunk. The world’s too bright; I feel too strong. A soul doesn’t sit heavy in the gut, but bubbles through the veins like champagne, tingling the nerve endings. For at least an hour it cocoons my brain in cotton, protecting it from the talons of shame and worry. Later they’ll dive back down and dig in their beaks, but for now they can only circle uselessly above. I laugh and sneer, able to forget for now that they’ll have their revenge.
    I stroll down the corridor and the flickering fluorescents celebrate my passing, humming in praise. I spin, bow and hum along. Bloody footprints trail; bloody fingers smear the walls. I reach the door to the stairwell and spin, heading back the way I’d come. I’m in no hurry, because Gideon won’t be. He’s a good wingman and wouldn’t want to interrupt Samson’s fun.
    Which is exactly what I want to discuss.
    I reach a locked doorknob and I snap it off, then the next. Most of the inhabitants won’t run far – they were sent to an insane asylum for a reason, after all. But they have the opportunity and, if they get far enough away, they might end up at a different facility, one with a different philosophy.
    Some I leave in their cages. Even an animal rights activist wouldn’t loose a tiger.
    I’m swollen with the sweetness of Samson’s dark soul, filled with it. Strong with it. It has been too long since I fed the Hunger. Like anyone on a diet, I’ve found that complete abstention never works – it just leads to poor decision-making later. Of course, my binges don’t result in weight gain, but rather indiscriminate homicide. I’d say the stakes are higher, but then a Twinkie would no doubt disagree.
    Hinges creak behind me; then I hear the pitter-pat of bare feet as someone flees, away from me – their savior.
    Come back, we can be friends!
    A door slams. Guess not. Ah, well, Spider-Man didn’t have any friends either.
    Creak-creak, pitter-pat. Another escape.
    Come now, Gideon, investigate!
    I prance, I dance on the gritty floor. Vengeance is sweet, sweet music. I spin, arms outstretched. The walls pass by in a blur of grey-white-grey-white-grey.
    Then, suddenly, a spot of black enters my spinning vision – a figure at the door. The nurse has arrived! I stop and hiss.
    Not Gideon – times three. Three strangers stand at the end of the hall.
    And they are hissing back.
     
     

TWO
     
    Humans don’t hiss. Well, except trashy girls fighting over equally trashy men. But grown men, respectable in black suits, do not hiss at their enemies. I blink and shake my head, trying to clear the fuzzy soul-drunk and, when I open my eyes the strangers are still there, though there’s no hissing. Maybe it was a disapproving hiss, a what-are-you-doing-out-of-your-cage? hiss. Maybe I imagined it, the soul-drunk playing with my mind to turn this into a fight. It’s a violent thing, the soul-drunk.
    The three men stand at the end of the long hallway, in front of the stairs leading down to the ground floor. Respectable-looking men in neat suits with tidily trimmed hair – modern, urban men, incongruous in this dark and dirty dwelling for the insane. The one on the left is short with puffy, soft-dough cheeks, while the one on the right is tall and hawkish. The one in the center has the pitted face of an acne survivor, but is otherwise middle-aged unmemorable. The grey expanse of the narrow hallway separates their skin from my claws and my feet from the exit.
    “What are you doing here?” asks the man in the middle. He