An instinct in the back of my brain screams that weightlessness isbad, and I better hold on.
Before I can even brace myself, the car’s front tires hit the ground. Pain explodes as the top of my head cracks on the ceiling. Ripley yelps when she falls from the seat into the footwell. I find her with my hands and duck down over her.
Trees and bushes whip against the car as it speeds down the hill. One of the windows shatters. Bits of glass land in my hair and scrape the backs of my arms. The car goes weightless again when it hits a divot, then crashes back down. Ripley yelps and so do I.
Finally, the car meets something it can’t crush in its path, throwing the both of us into the back of the driver’s seat.
I groan from the pit of my stomach and try to open my eyes. Saliva is thick in my mouth. A searing fire torches my throat. The world is composed of blurry shadows for the brief seconds I manage to open my stinging eyes. Glass shards press into my palms when I prop myself up on the seat.
Sheriff Cory is moaning and slurring, “shit, shit, fucking bitch,” and I know I have to get out, get out, getoutbefore he can get me himself.
I fumble around for the door handle—still locked—but the window above is shattered. I push my backpack and then myself through, and crumple shoulder-first onto the forest floor.
I manage to stand, but Sheriff Cory stumbles out of the car before I can get Ripley. My backpack tumbled down the incline after I pushed it out. I go for it and the hatchet, and trip on the uneven ground. I land hard on my hip.
The sheriff’s blurry shape wavers toward me. He snarls something garbled along the lines of “fucking” and “bitch.”
My fingertips touch a branch. I grip it and slam it into his knee. I’m weak, uncoordinated. It glances along the outside and I think,Oh shit. But then he trips on his own feet and falls back through the open driver’s side door. His head makes a watermelon-on-concretethunkwhen it hits the doorframe. He moans and lies stunned.
I haul myself up and grip the driver’s side door by the open window.
His whole body jerks when I slam the door on his head. I slam it and slam it until he isn’t a person anymore, until the man he once was is reduced to a red smear of meat dripping into the underbrush.
I throw up until I can’t breathe. My whole face is wet with tears and snot and saliva.
The lukewarm water bottle he had in the cup holder helps to clear my eyes. The creek at the bottom of the hill we careened down is even better. I stick my head in, think vaguely about parasites, and gargle until my throat is no longer on fire.
Getting Ripley in is more difficult. She’s confused and squirming, and panics when I dunk her in the deepest part of the creek. I shush her and spill water cupped in my palm over her eyes and snout until she can blink sad what-the-fuck-mom eyes at me without rubbing them with her paws.
We sit on the creek bed—me staring into the water, her trying to sit on my lap. I wrap my arms around her middle and lay my temple on her back.
“Well,” I say, focusing on how her ribs contract under my cheek. “Damn.”
There is nothing in this universe that cannot be classified as either a cause or an effect.
Are you at cause for your own life? Or are you at effect?
Speaker at Ascent’s Discovery Weekend Saturday Dinner
CHAPTER 7
Sheriff Cory is no longer Sheriff Cory.
What used to be the thing that contained the emotions, the memories, the experiences of the man is now… mush. My brain chooses to show me cherry cola slushy sucked through a straw. If I drew it, I’d have to use cheerful, almost cartoonish colors. I gag and breathe through my mouth.
Ripley creeps up to smell him. I shoo her away.
This is the point that freaking out is appropriate, right? Killing ahumanis prime panicking material. He was a living, breathing person who had family, and feelings, and maybe a pet that loved him.
I am not freaking out. I’m not sure I feel anything at all.
Warmth has already started to leech out of his body. So it’s not that bad to feel through his pockets if I don’t look at him. I come away with his keys, a crumpled Starburst wrapper, and an iPhone. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth and swipe up to make an emergency call.
My thumb hovers over the 9. The goblin inside my headwhispers,Don’t. You killed a cop. You call them and they’ll kill you too. They’ll shoot Ripley. You need to run.
Usually, the goblin’s suggestions are the opposite of rational. In this instance he’s right on the money. I just smashed a cop’s head with a car door till he died. It didn’t matter that he’d just murdered a man in front of me. It didn’t matter that he was literally abducting me.Filmingcops has ruined people’s lives. Killing one? Forget about it. I’m as fucked as fucked can get.
I can see it now: my picture splashed across the news, followed by a screenshot of every time I angry-Tweeted about the cops harassing my neighbors, the words “trailer park” said again and again like a jail sentence.
