Read Online Impossible Places by Alan Dean Foster - Free Book Online Page B

deprived yourself for too long, have put yourself outside pleasure for no reason. Devour, and delight in us.”
    He blinked, clapping his hands over his ears. The microcassette recorder slipped from his fingers to strike the unyielding, Hawaiian Punch–stained floor. Its cover popped open and the tape flew out. Pained, he knelt to recover it.
    Something landed on his back.
    Forgetting the recorder, he reached around wildly. Something soft and sticky squished between his fingers. The tactile sensation was oddly sensuous. Terrified, he found himself staring down at a handful of smashed, bloodred lunch-box cherry pie that contained no cherries and no pie. It oozed from between his fingers, the unctuous crimson gunk packing in beneath his fingernails.
    “Eat me,” the glutinous mass urged him. “Suck me up. You’ll like it.”
    With a cry, he rose and flung the fragments of pseudo-pie as far as he could—but some of it stuck to his fingers anyway. Stumbling backward, he crashed into the nearest shelves. Flailing wildly, he brought down on top of himself piles of chips, stacks of Cheetos, heavy lumps of sponge cake and devil’s food cake and white cake and lemon cake differentiated solely by the type of artificial coloring and flavoring they contained.
    They were all over him now, moving, surging lugubriously to and fro; those strange molecules he’d discovered boldly asserting themselves. They wanted, cried out, demanded to be consumed. He struggled beneath their empty weight and tried to scream for help, but the eight-year-olds who could have rescued him were tucked snug in their beds far from the shuttered market.
    Looking down, he saw bags of pretzels and honey-roasted Cornnuts splitting open; their overbaked, over-saturated, oversalted entrails spilling across his chest and legs. He kicked wildly, sending crumbs flying but unable to get to his feet. His arms and chest were slowly disappearing beneath thick cords of plaster-white creme and dark imitation fudge filling.
    His eyes widened as he saw them humping sinuously toward his face; death reduced to spongy sweet bland-ness. They crammed themselves into his mouth, shoving his lips apart, forcing themselves down his throat. He continued to struggle, to fight, but it was useless. They overwhelmed him, relentless and unyielding in their desire to please, to slavishly gratify the basest of human desires.
    The light began to fade from his eyes. He’d been careless, he realized. Unwilling to envision what they were capable of. But who could have imagined? Did even the bioengineers who’d given impetus to such syrupy mutations imagine what the ultimate result of their work might be? He doubted it. Surely the lethal reality he was experiencing exceeded even their capacious greed.
    He was going, going—but at least he wouldn’t die hungry.
    “Gawddamn! What a mess.”
    The officer wrinkled his nose at the sight and its attending smell. Forensics was finishing up, making way for the coroner. Their jobs were relatively straightforward.
    It was the mortician he didn’t envy.
    The coroner’s assistant was writing on a pad. The officer nodded to him. They knew each other well.
    “Kerwin.”
    “Hey, man.” The assistant looked up. “Ever see anything like this before?”
    The cop shook his head. “What do you think happened?”
    The coroner glanced up the aisle. “Off what I’m used to seeing on the street, my first guess is that he swallowed a twelve-gauge shell that went off inside him, but there’s no sign of powder or shell fragments. I’m beginning to think he just overbinged and self-destructed. Gastrointestinally speaking.”
    “The hell you say. Look at him.”
    “I’d rather not. At least, no more than I have to.” The coroner’s reluctance was understandable. Most of what had once reposed in the cavity between the dead man’s sternum and crotch lay scattered across the supermarket floor and shelves, shockingly vivid amidst the frozen, undulating sea