My Black Beast Read Online Free PDF Page A

from was an exercise that felt more like slipping
towards insanity than making real progress. She hadn’t spoken, he
realized. Did she understand English? Did she understand any
language? Maybe she was one of those… like Mowgli in The Jungle
Book. Those kids that are raised by animals. That would explain her
freaky strength.
    It was about a half hour after he’d left the
shower that he heard the door open and soft, quick footsteps run
across the hall. If he’d had the TV on, he wouldn’t have heard any
of it, but mostly he’d just been staring at the ceiling. The run
was brief and ended with the quiet but quick closing of the
bathroom door. Lowell thought better of going to try to talk to
her. He heard the sink come on and let go a relieved
sigh.
    Maybe she was washing her hands after working
up a nice syrup lather. Or doing who knows what. He turned on the
TV so she’d have some level of privacy and maybe even feel safe
moving back across to the bedroom.
    Another half hour passed before the girl moved
back to the bedroom. Lowell imagined she must’ve peeked out a dozen
times. The hours passed uneventfully after that and when early
afternoon hit, the need for some lunch presented itself.
    Lowell did maybe three or four cycles of the
kitchen before he decided that there was nothing to cook. There was
a Chinese place that was always solid and he figured the food would
be sort of non-offensive enough that he couldn’t really go wrong.
She knew how to work a sink if not a flushing toilet.
    The call was always sped along by the fact
that he’d been ordering from them for ages. The first few times
were a bit of work from that combination of a language barrier and
the impressive quality of cellphone communications. His order was
pretty standard, though, and adding things on went smoothly. There
was the standard Yuxiang chicken, which he took extra spicy, and he
added a fried rice with shrimp and a few other things, in case she
was allergic. She had murdered some kind of demon lizard and eaten
the burrito without complaint so he figured meat was probably a
safe bet.
    Within a half hour, the food arrived and there
was an awkward, overly smiley exchange of signatures and food. He
always tipped the Chinese delivery guy well and it had tended to
pay off with quick delivery and hot food.
    The bag was pretty hefty. It always seemed as
though the delivery guy was in a competition with himself to fill a
single plastic bag with as much food as he could manage. Still, the
sauce was never spilled when it got to the door, so whatever he was
doing it was working.
    Lowell knocked on the door and heard the usual
shuffling. When he opened it, the girl was not under the covers as
she had been that morning but sitting on the bed with cautious
eyes. They narrowed as he stepped into the room with the bag. He
was a few steps from the bed when she started to move with him
noticing.
    “ Look, I don’t know if you eat…
well, I know you eat. But I got some Chinese food. I figured that’s
probably fine, yeah?”
    His eyes were on the bag in his hands which he
was holding open when a rough but small hand came across his cheek.
He looked up, bewildered. The girl was at the edge of the bed and
she’d reached out to touch his face. What do you even do in a
situation like this? Keep calm. First. This was… probably
good.
    She looked him over without ever meeting his
eyes. His chin first, where the beard had been. She touched it and
squeezed and moved to his hair looking over his head as though he
were some sort of new creature that needed close inspection. When
she’d finished touching his head as she liked her eyes darted
around his face, almost confused. Then the smell caught
her.
    The girl glanced down at the bag and pulled
the first styrofoam container off the top. She retreated on to the
bed and sat down in the center, inspecting the small
box.
    Lowell moved to his chair as she looked it
over. There were forks in the bag so he wouldn’t