Eighty-Six

EIGHTY-SIX

What once was Steve but was now merely meat, arced backward. He hit the ground hard. A splinter of skull landed near Michael’s hand.

Liz watched the corpse dance. Soon the spasms died, but the blood continued to gush.

This is what I would have looked like if I’d shot myself this morning. Or all those other times, she thought. Doing a little tap dance to music nobody else can hear. Going to pulp. Making a darn mess over the carpet that Mum would hate to clean.

“L-l-look wh-what you all d-did,” she sputtered. A line of spittle between her upper and lower lips shook with every word, threatening to snap.

The sounds of her passengers were tortures she could no longer stand, so when she screamed at them to “Stop it,” the words drained her person. Liz could have collapsed, a skeleton without substance. But no, she held true. To Liz’s surprise, the passengers went silent. Still. This power over them kept her flame burning, a glimmer in the skull’s eye socket, flickering movemen