Trinity Read Online Free Page B

man’s fucking hand out of his fucking mouth. He gagged and tears sprang up in his eyes.
    The lid was off the jar, and the man poured it at TJ’s face, mostly hitting his open mouth, but also gushing into his nose, down his chin, up into his eyes. It tasted like nail polish remover, like acetone. He screamed, but it came out as a gurgle.
    It wasn’t tequila, but there was a worm, and it was in his mouth now. The man had moved around behind him, gotten both of his arms, held them back there and kept his head pulled back because now the hand on his chin was gone.
    The thing in his mouth was longer than his tongue, about half as wide, and it was alive, because it was moving, plunging towards the back of his throat, blocking up the airway, Jesus Christ he couldn’t breathe! It was soft and hard all at the same time, expanding and contracting, not down his throat but up into his sinuses. He gagged, his airways were suddenly clear and he sucked in the sweet spring air, but he could feel it up behind his nose, like a pisser of an allergy attack, but one that moved and squirmed and settled itself in like it was getting comfortable.
    Tears streamed from TJ’s eyes as he dropped onto his shredded butt, and when he pleaded with the man to get it out, his voice sounded high and nasal.
    The man let him go, stepped back and wiped his hands on his jeans. The city boy patted TJ’s head, like he was a dog or something, and then took off. TJ turned, slow and stupid, in the direction the man ran to. His head feeling like it weighed a million pounds. Was there something out there? The light from the bike made it seem so dark everywhere else.
    TJ sat, focusing on breathing. It was okay, he was okay.
    And then darkness.

4

    With a pulsing drone, Val woke from a white dream with the empty click of Rich’s shotgun echoing in his ears. It took a moment for him to gather his bearings. All he could remember from the dream was the color white, vague looming beings backlit by a light so bright they were reduced to long vertical shapes. His pulse raced, blood pounding in his ears. White . He sat up in the darkness and took a mental inventory. This wasn’t his cell, the air was much too fresh here, filled with quiet night sounds like birds and wind whistling through rocky outcroppings and rustling the scrub brush. The hum he’d carried with him all evening was stronger here, like sitting too close to the speakers at a rock show…but without the actual volume. All low-end, and nothing else. After the white of the dream, the night’s darkness was absolute, and it took Val another moment to realize he wasn’t indoors anywhere, but out on a grassy plain in the shadow of a pinyon pine. He closed his eyes, half hoping he’d wake up in his own bed, letting his eyes adjust to the night. When he opened them again it didn’t seem quite so black, but the half moon was obscured behind scrolling tendrils of dark clouds.
    It was like being inside a subwoofer, padded and muffled. Almost loud, but not.
    He sat for a moment, trying to acclimate himself to the vibrations that buffeted him. When he looked down he saw dark blood on his hand, and saw a long scratch. He stood up—the pressure of the hum made it hard to move—and noticed he was only wearing his boxers, what he’d gone to sleep in. They were white, and he’d touched them at some point with his bloody hand, leaving a streaky palm print. Val shivered in the dark. The desert got cold at night. So, now to figure out where the hell he was and how he’d gotten here. Ignore the hum, just ignore the hum. It permeated him, rattled his fillings like chewing on tinfoil. He’d sleepwalked before, but only in his jail cell, and hadn’t gotten far in an eight by eight room. It was one of those things he assumed he would be done with now he was free.
    It had been a long while since he’d been out here in this brush, but it came back to him. He was off his mother’s property, this had been a goat farm when