Page 134 of Chaos

Hot black gusts billow inward, mixing into a storm of swirling temperatures.

A coo reaches my ear.

A soft pigeon calling out, scared, desperate.Crooo. Crooo.

There has to be something.

My fingers find a lump of dirt, a leaf, a stray root. Nothing sharp. In the cellar I needed a board until I didn’t when I realized height would do.

Now I need a spade, but there isn’t one.

Now, I’m alone, just me. So where’s the height? Where’s the added leverage to make me stronger than Duane?

I used my fists on Ben back when he told Yorke about Maybe, and it felt so easy, but his hands were cuffed and I was surrounded by an army. Even with poison I couldn’t kill him. But I did yank Scraggle down the stairs. That was me. I did that, even half-starved and sick with an infection and a concussion.

I did that.

Of all things, my fingers touchdown on a box of poison, the plastic-coated box open and empty, powder like sugar falling from the package. Useless now.

Blackness curls at the edges of my vision like ink across water, and my lungs seize. I should play dead maybe, but it’s impossible. My lungs spasm on their own.

My clumsy fingers brush against the poison box again. Someone shouts in the distance and another gun fires. That would be Shane and Ephie and Ben.

I stretch out, reaching for something, anything. My fingers graze over a leaf, a stem more tender than a wet spaghetti noodle, and then a pot, or part of one.

Sharp.

As if sensing my shifted focus, Duane lifts my head and smashes it down again against the stone floor beneath me. My brain rattles. My lips move.

I catch the strained, grunted words. “Almost done.”

My vision rapidly turns to ashes, TV snow, cold flakes, like dust in the cellar.

My fingers fumble, struggle to grip the shard of terracotta, and my thoughts are sticky now, fading away.

A bead of sweat slips down Duane’s cheek, glimmering and wobbling as he curses and sputters.

It catches on the tip of his nose.

Now.

I put every ounce of power into my legs, bracing against the ground, ratcheting up and twisting from the spine, swinging my arm out in an arc, driving straight for Duane’s neck.

The sweat droplet splashes down on my cheek.

The shard sinks into the side of his neck, just behind his adam’s apple, the thin, bumpy skin there.

His grip loosens though, for a single sugar-sweet moment. Oxygen sucks into my lungs, filling them with the smell of greenery and life, making my head spin.

His grip clamps back down, but it’s one handed now, not as tight. The terracotta is still wedged in his neck, a line of dark blood seeping down his skin.

I don’t need stairs to push him down or poison in his food.

My hand goes out again and this time finds, of all things, a chain.

My chain.

My necklace with the pendants still attached.

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