Excerpt

A cluck

Smack.

The face muddles with pudgy curiosity. Dwarfed fingers (Where's the arm?) wiggle in a half-wave.

Sense of spiraling. A twitch to rise, to fly, thick muscles rippling. A scream builds and chokes.

The face smiles.

Dry, burning throat. Pain slices through the shoulders.

A candle floats before the child, her idiot grin widening, fingertips shimmering in the flame.

Then darkness.

* * * *

It woke, gasping from the fire raging in Its back. Its jaw clamped against pain It before had only observed. Its eyes opened as the pain eased slightly.

The idiot-faced girl--eight, nine? grinned, head angled curiously. "You an angel. Daddy said."

Three stubby, deformed fingers wriggled within a crater in the girl's left shoulder. She lay on her side amidst a tangle of yellowed sheets, her right leg a withered stub poking out from multicolored shorts.

It opened Its mouth to speak to the girl, but only a rasp of sound escaped. It grimaced and shifted, pain drilling through Its shoulders. With the pain came the realization of unfamiliar lightness. It squinted against the dimness of the room. A single light shone before a blank concrete wall. Its gaze circled, found all the walls windowless. Beyond the girl's bed, stairs led into deeper darkness.

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