Bring your own salt.

 I can’t breathe. How much longer. Do it. Heart slams so hard against my insides surely it hears me. At the dim end of the rotting structure it stands dead still. One leg suspended. Ears twitch, looking right at me. Long eyelashes. Big, animal eye. I’m in it. Mal’s not, and she has the gun. Do it. Shootititdoesn’tknowgodIhavetobrea– The silence explodes. A streak in the dimness. Blink. It’s gone. Just like that. Blink. Head ringing with the report. Behind the shattered glass the rifle barrel angles down and there is her ghost face framed in the window. Dart forward eagerly. Maybe she hit it. Little knot of hope. Hunched over where the animal was. Maybe there’s blood. Back and forth in a grid. End where its horns tore through the tumbled slats. Maybe there’s a drop. “Stop it.” Mal’s behind me. Stiff. Gun barrel across her hips. “What if you wounded it.” Squinting into the shadows and the clutter on the floor. “No." A drop. That’s all. Anything. Nothing.