Read Earth Man for Free Online Page B

like that to me at all. If anything, it was more child-like, higher pitch. More alien.”
    Phil finished his beer and walked over to the garbage can and threw it out. 
    “You mean like those little bug-eyed things?” Phil asked.
    “ Yeah, the ass-probers.”
    “ Did you get probed?”
    “ Hell no.”
    “ Well there’s some good news right there. So what happened in the hospital?”
    “ Did you see it? The thing, the creature?”
    “ No, but I overheard the nurses talking about it. Some kind of burn victim, or deformed freak or something.”
    “ It was a man; at least it was at first. I could see it happening, the change, like right in front of me. From a man into something else, something horrible. It tried to kill me. It chopped off my arm.”
    “ What??”
    Phil grabbed the arm as Danny held it up. Unable to pull Danny closer from a sitting position, Phil stood up, took off his hat and tossed it on the curb and took Danny ’s arm in both his hands.
    Taking the thumb, Phil moved it around, rubbing the skin.
    “Where’s the scar?” Phil asked, turning the hand back and forth.
    “ I told you it re-grew, I lost the whole hand, man!”
    “ This is totally and completely crazy. It’s impossible.”
    Phil sat back do wn, put his hat back on and opened another beer. Danny stood up while Phil tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. Regeneration. That was more serious than just hearing voices; this was a serious breach of the rules of the universe. People just did not grow limbs back. People did not get attacked by monsters either, but the exact nature of this monster was still up in the air. A mutated human was not that far outside Phil’s realm of possibility, after all people were born with defects all the time. A new hand meant something else; it meant that things were changing in the world and that the rules were being remade.
    The missing injury on Danny ’s old hand was caused by a violent football accident. As the quarterback Danny was hit hard by a strong offensive rush. Phil had been one of the linebackers and had slipped in the mud, letting his man slip past. The horrible weather caused his whole defensive line to crumble and Danny had been mobbed by multiple members of the opposing team. Even with his teammates helping, he was buried beneath a mass of bodies. One of the players had stepped on his thumb, bending it back and snapping the bone. The skin had stretched back and torn open and the surgery to repair the muscle tissue and regain use of the thumb had left a scar as well. There had been no permanent injuries but it had taken months before his hand recuperated. The scar was there long after their football careers, and their career aspirations had moved on. To see that scar, that childhood reminder of the boys they were, wiped away by some strange supernatural force, really hurt Phil in a way he could not explain. It was a piece of their shared history that was now gone forever.
                  “The voices I keep hearing, they aren’t mean or scary. They’re distorted and distant, but they seem more frustrated than anything else.”
    The two men sat silently for a moment, watching a pick-up drive slowly by. The driver of the Ford truck, a woman, gave them a curious glance but kept on driving.
    “ I’m going to have to explain all this to Helen too when I get home.” Danny said, sighing deeply.
    “ How’s she doing? Is she pissed at me?”
    “ No. She’s been an angel, actually. I figured she was waiting until I was up and around and back home before she went off.”
    For some reason Phil found hi mself thinking about God as Danny paced back and forth and that was when an idea struck him.
    “ Angels. Satan. God and Satan.”
    Phil jumped up, spilling his beer slightly as he grabbed Danny.
    “Now you’re sounding like the voices, Phil.”
    “ No I mean look, we heard voices in the forest and SOMETHING happened to you. Now you are drawn to this weird thing in the