The Grinding Read Free Page A

room,
crashing against the far wall. He crumpled to the ground, unmoving as blood
gushed out of his head.
    “Fuck,” the officer said, pulling his gun. He
aimed, but he didn’t have anything to shoot. The tentacle swung angrily in the
air, back and forth, looking for targets. It picked up six or seven more
people, all at crazy angles who swung loosely except at the point of contact,
as if a thick wire snaked through, holding them in place like Christmas lights.
Outside, more sirens blared.
    The tentacle whipped toward the cop and me. I
ducked as it whooshed over my head. The officer wasn’t as quick, and his face
smashed against the legs of a captured body. He lifted off the ground.
    I scrambled, crab-walking backward toward the
exit, not looking away. The long tentacle lifted over the main mass and broke
apart. People rained down on top of the group, reattaching at the top, turning
the mass into a quivering ball of humanity. People rearranged themselves,
moving in a strange, staccato manner, crawling sideways like flies on a wall.
    I watched in horror as the ball became tighter, a
giant sphere several people thick. I cried out Nif’s name. I couldn’t see her,
but she was in there somewhere, crushed against the others. People in the ball
had obvious injuries, but their faces betrayed no pain. I wondered if they were
dead, or kept alive by whatever force that was doing this.
    Suddenly, six shoots made of people sprouted from
the thing.
    No, not shoots. Legs.
    The legs lifted the mass of sixty or seventy off
the ground, like a giant bug. The heads and necks of the captured at the top of
the legs worked as pivots, audibly cracking as they fell into place. The weight
of the creature—and I was finally seeing it as a single, horrifying
entity—pushed down on those being used as feet, and their legs buckled.
More people crawled down the legs to add support on each side, shoring up where
bones had broken. I watched as one zombiefied person gingerly removed the roller
skates from a girl being used as a foot. The skates clattered to the floor.
    The whole creature lumbered forward, stepping
across the arena track and toward the exit. I huddled in front of the monster
like a rabbit, frozen, not believing what I was seeing.
    I almost puked right there. More officers rushed
in, knocking me down. Like Officer Beefycakes, they stopped and gasped at the
creature.
    That’s when I ran. I stood, and I ran. Even as I fled
from the building and out into the rainy night, I felt empty and guilty for
abandoning her. My overwhelming astonishment at the—whatever the hell
that thing was—was overthrown by the crushing, debilitating shock at
losing Nif so suddenly. Was she in pain? Was she dead?
    I wondered what happened to the police officers. I
didn’t hear gunfire, which I was glad for. More officers pulled up, and the
night filled with sirens and the wails of those who’d lost friends, including
me, punctuated by the clatter of the rain against the corrugated awning at the
entrance to the arena. I only ran a few feet out past the barrier, when I was
blocked by a line of parked police cruisers.
    I barely had time to turn around, look at the
arena, and think, What the hell am I
going to…
    CRASH! The large, double-door entrance to the arena exploded in a blast of wood,
metal, glass, and stucco, showering out into the parking lot. Bits of glass and
metal ripped through the air. I covered my eyes and stumbled onto the hood of a
police cruiser.
    The creature barreled out of the hole in the arena
door, moving like a cockroach. Screams of despair turned to fear as the thing
passed near me and into the small crowd, snagging people and police officers
before they even knew what was happening. Its six legs bogged down in clumps of
frozen bodies. The front legs collapsed, and the thing fell forward, balling up
like a 25-foot hedgehog, rolling right over cars and out into Grant Road. A
small truck screeched as it careened into the thing, but the