Leslie turned through the door without saying a word.
* * *
In its apartment, the Freak looked down at its left arm. There weren’t really that many stripes.
It could never heal the wounds that it inflicted on itself, but scars were something else again. It had offered a sacrifice for mastery of form, and that meant that all the cuts and marks that showed its work could be written over with only a thought. Some things were forever, of course – the damage to its throat from drinking acid, the shortness in the leg from which a ring of bone was cut. But a simple mark from a knife? It was of no consequence. It could become nothing.
But since its return from Missouri, it had left the marks on its arms. The looked like suicide scars – on a less careful creature, might well have been them.
It thought about its ultimate mutability. It thought about its limit – how the damage it did to itself was sacrosanct. Its damage to others? Like scars, those thoughts were once easily swept aside, rinsed from its thoughts with little more effort than it took to wash hands.
Still.
The weak one in the coffin-house, who foiled all its strength.
The strong one in the motel room, flung from the path with such brute cruelty.
Little men, of no consequence.
But the Freak thought of Joe and Leslie and, for a while at least, left marks on its flesh as reminders.
Table of Contents
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
Section 8
Section 9
Section 10
Section 11
Section 12
Section 13
Section 14
Section 15