Read Online Dividing Earth: A Novel of Dark Fantasy by Troy Stoops - Free Book Online Page A

took the folder, laid it in her lap. The cover fell back. She gasped, and her internal temperature dropped ten degrees.
    “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” he asked, red-faced, a vein pulsing at his hairline.
    Veronica lurched forward. “George, I can—”
    He lifted a finger. “Don’t tell me you can explain. You can’t.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “That’s better.”
    “What should I do?”
    “Are things alright at home?”
    “They’re . . . okay.”
    “Then why are you ruining your life?”
    Veronica shrugged.
    “You realize I helped push your mortgage through? Did you think Pete wouldn’t call if you were defaulting on the loan I helped you get?”
    “I didn’t . . .,” she began, then burst into tears, burying her face in her hands.
    He scanned a paper while Veronica continued to sob. “Do you have a plan to get these accounts up to date? Have you spoken with the lien holders? Or did you ignore them, thinking they wouldn’t repossess your cars and foreclose on your house?”
    “I don’t—”
    “Does your husband know about any of this?” Then George held his palm up. “Never mind.” He opened a drawer, tossed a checkbook on his desk, slipped a pen from his shirt’s pocket protector and clicked the top. “How much?”
    Her mouth dropped open. The tears began to dry.
    “How much?”
    “About . . . four thousand.”
    George’s eyebrows rose over his spectacles. But he wrote the check, tore it off, and handed it over the desk.
    She hesitated.
    “This is a one time offer.”
    She took it.
    He raised the pen. “Ten percent interest, and I’m taking money out every pay period.”
    Standing, she clamped the check over her heart. “Thank you, thank you so much.”
    “Shut up, Veronica,” he said, pointed at the door. “Get out.”
    5
    So close to Doctor Rectal Peeper’s tee time, Robert Lieber was immediately ushered to a room. He smiled at Marie as she closed the door on him, then climbed up on the vinyl bench. Sliding around, he ripped the tissue paper that lay along it. To his right was a porcelain sink. A book entitled 101 Doctor Jokes was propped atop it. He didn’t think he could find humor while surrounded by such sterility.
    Matt knocked. “You decent?”
    “Wearing nothing but my pubic hair,” joked Robert.
    Matt Robinson entered wearing his perpetual smile, grabbed a stool and plopped his immense body on it. The stool sighed and groaned as he adjusted his weight, but then he eyeballed the knot of sickness beneath Robert’s chin. “What’s up?”
    “You saw it.”
    Matt nodded. He squirmed, repositioning his ass on the stool. “When did you notice?”
    “A colleague pointed it out this morning.”
    “Any tenderness around the swelling?”
    Robert shook his head.
    Matt hopped from the stool, grabbed a clipboard that had a pen chained to it, and wrote. “Any symptoms of maybe flu, a virus?”
    “Been a weird week.”
    “How weird?”
    “Weird enough.”
    “Any constipation?”
    Robert shut his mouth, trying to stop his teeth from chattering. Gooseflesh sprouted along his arms. He nodded, awaited the next question.
    “Night sweats?”
    Again, Robert nodded.
    “Any blackouts?”
    He sighed, then remembered. “I’ve been losing time,” he said, speaking in the voice of a child, the voice that had asked his father what had killed his mother.
    “Has the constipation been recurring?”
    “No, I’ve gone, but—”
    “But what?” asked Matt, hurriedly scribbling on his pad.
    “There’s been blood.”
    Matt looked up.
    “A lot of it.”
    Matt’s brow furrowed, thick lines gathering like thunderheads. He rubbed is goatee, set the pad on the cart behind him. From what looked like a box of Kleenex he removed a set of plastic gloves.
    Robert couldn’t stop shivering, “What is it?”
    Matt snapped the gloves, crimped his hands to make sure they were secure in them. “You’re so dramatic,” he said. “When I saw you three weeks ago, you were fine. If