Kraken Read Free Page B

open and his red corpuscles withdraw from his extremities, as if he’d been sliced apart and his body knew it had to preserve essential organs only.
     
    Will took in every detail, and wondered if his brain had helpfully decided to record it all, so that in every half-peaceful moment in the future it could replay it and remind Will what an idiot he was. Parker’s zipper was half-mast and he was wearing unlaced hiking boots but no socks. The woman’s lips were puffy, and a hickey bloomed on her dark chocolate skin, peeking above the collar of her expensively-cut shirt.
     
    “Will?”
     
    Parker sounded surprised. Will couldn’t seem to find his voice at all. He was watching from somewhere very far away, looking at a stranger make a fool of themselves.
     
    “I thought you weren’t coming,” said Parker.
     
    Well, obviously , thought Will. He wanted to gesture towards the woman, but his arms seemed to temporarily belong to someone else.
     
    The woman stirred uneasily, her face registering concern, as she looked between Will and Parker, and she edged slightly away from the arm around her shoulders.
     
    The silence stretched out.
     
    “Please excuse me,” Will finally rasped out. “I appear to have made an error.”
     
    He made a one-eighty and lurched stiffly down the steps. The beam coming from the front door lit a second short path leading to a small painted gate, not even waist high, so he unlatched it and walked through.
     
    “Hell, no. Will, wait!” Will could hear Parker fumbling with his boots, and didn’t stop.
     
    Only a few steps in and trees blocked all light from the house. The lilies grew thick on each side of the path. Will tripped in the gloom, but the vast bulk of plants cushioned him and held him upright. His hands grew sticky from the touch of the long, crushed leaves.
     
    The swing-clunk of the gate behind him nudged him into a run. He was a kid again, running in the dark from something horrible at his heels. Suddenly space opened around him, the lilies replaced by sparse second-growth forest. Will dodged sharp left and abruptly splashed into an ankle-deep stream. He waded across and clambered up a steep valley hillside. His feet slipped on the dead leaves littering the ground; his shoes designed for city streets, not wilderness. A figure pushed through the lilies on the path behind him somewhere, so he kept climbing, pulling himself up now with his hands, holding onto rough sapling trunks, working by touch.
     
    Will paused for breath. He sat down where he stood, resting one hand on the damp leaves, digging his fingers down into the soil, and wedging his foot into the angle between a tree trunk and the soft ground to stop himself sliding back down. His shoulders heaved, half in tears, half in oxygen deprivation. Will realized he was both shaking, and an idiot.
     
    He had run into an unknown forest, at night, in front of his boyfriend – his ex-boyfriend – and his ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Without his luggage.
     
    Suddenly, painful laughter bubbled up inside Will, and he had to put his other fist into his mouth and bite down hard to stop himself barking out loud guffaws. Now that his breathing had calmed he could hear Parker below him on the valley floor, calling Will’s name. He sounded surprisingly distant. Clearly the only thing to do was get up, walk back down the hill, apologize for being an asshole, beg a bed for the night, and leave in the morning with good grace. There was no other alternative.
     
    Except, Will was startled to realize, he had no intention of doing it. He sat quietly while Parker lurched around in the dark for a good twenty minutes. After a long silence, when it seemed Parker had given up, Will got to his feet and climbed the rest of the hill. His shoes squelched with every step and the soles gave him no traction, so he took them off, tucked his socks inside them, and tied the laces together, hanging them around his neck.
     
    Will rolled his