Zana’s Reviews > Indigent > Status Update

“Knowingly, deliberately, he brought up his hands, thin nails digging into thick skin as he opened his chest. Bloodless and clean as flesh parted.

Easy, like butter under a hot knife.

No pain. None for a long, long time as they writhed out of him, his head falling back, gray eyes staring blankly out as the matter and mass of his body left him. Twisted out in a hungry flood around his wasted legs to gorge.”

Wth

“Cyril with his left hand mutilated, standing over her. Even now, they didn’t know if it had been an accident, a moment of weakness, or if Cyril had done it on purpose. Fed his daughter from his body like Athena sprouting from the skull of Zeus.”

Ewww

“On his bad hand, rash-covered and bandaged, a thin white line arched against his skin. Touched the first knuckle… straightened itself out again… Languid and waving…

A worm.”

🤮

‘“This is Atlanta Urgent Care,” came the voice on the other end. A woman, robotic and pleasant. A Black girl trying to sound white. Obvious. Why did they do that? Why did they have to do that?’

Damn

‘It’d be a cute grandbaby if they got together, good hair and nice light skin and big eyes. Her dad would have something to say about it, but he always did. She could hear it now, him sitting in that rickety swing out front, ranting. Squeak. “I didn’t go to fuckin’ ‘Nam for my grandbaby to fuck some goddamn gook.” Squeak.’

😬

Wait so who got eaten??

“Michaels had woken up that morning in his Midtown Atlanta condo to a litany of emails from the IDPD, panicking about worms. Worms, for God’s sake.

It was the South—every other redneck walking around the Wal-Mart probably had worms.”

Damn lol

“B4 had hardly been any better, everything chemical-tasting and dangerous. Cyril’s throat had closed up, poisoned viscera falling out of numb lips as Leena pounded him on the back, and Ari had lost feeling in his tongue, his mouth a senseless pit, like it’d been injected with lidocaine.”

🤮

“...B12 was a ticking time bomb. They’d opened the ribs and found his insides gawking at them, black-marbled and oily and tumorous. It was a miracle they’d gotten to him before his own body did. Barely edible. And even if they tried—and they did try—it came right back up.”

🤢

“If he was better with people, he would sell them, get enough money for a motel and some new clothes....”

👁️👄👁️