Snippet Saturday
From a short story I’m working on.
Independent Artists
By Michele Lee
Panels One and Two (split scene): Our hero leans against a brick wall in a shadowy alley, watching three men climb into luxury sedan.
Panel Three (left vertical): Our hero pushes off the wall, revealing a hand holding a big motherfucking knife.
Panel Four (mid-page focus, 3/4ths widescreen): Car headlights as the vehicle drives down the street.
Panel Five: Our hero steps into the road with the car oncoming.
Panel Six (right corner): Black with dialog bubble. ″What the f—?!″
* * *
They say you get used to pain, and maybe some kinds you do. I don’t think anyone can get used to a Benz fender colliding with the top of your femur at 45 mph. I roll off the hood, my hip taking most of that impact and snapping. My shoulder snaps when I hit the windshield. I roll over the car as the tires squeal to a stop. Hitting the pavement takes out my right ankle. It feels like some asshole peppered the joint with shattered glass, but I stand on it anyway.
It’s just a body after all.
The driver is already out. It makes him easy to reach.
My knife slides into flesh and up, up, hot, tart blood spilling out over my hands and wetting my T shirt. I add a slash to his throat, not sure how effective it is, but I can feel that I’ve hit something important. Then it’s on to round two, rolling over the hood and stabbing out.
Sloppy. I’m sloppy. I’m familiar with the intent to do violence, but unfamiliar with laws of distance and gravity. But his head is the only thing not behind the door, so I stab stab stab and hope to strike gold.
He falls to the ground, gurgling. Or maybe it’s the other one gurgling because Number Two doesn’t move. Not even when I slam the passenger side door and step forward, twisting a bit on his hand.
Number Three has recovered some. Enough to pull a gun and fire desperately at me. Bam. Bam. Bam. The noise echoes off the dead buildings around us as the bullets piece my stomach, chip off a piece off a rib and then goes wild into the night. There’s enough light that I can see this one’s throat, swallowing fear and my blade.
He falls to the ground. I sit on the pavement next to him, ruined ankle tucked under me, and watch him fish-gasp as his blood runs out into the gutter. He can’t understand what’s just happened. I know the feeling. I have moments when I don’t understand how I got here either.
I’m nice enough to wait until he’s good and dead before I cut into his flesh and start to eat.