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. ...

I haven't seen an animal in days. Even the birds are still, and flit from view before I register them. Sometimes a high branch quivers with the ghost of one. What has happened here? What does the forest remember? Some horror, up ahead. Anything. Anything's better than the crushing silence. Bring on the blood rust abattoirs. Bring on the meat eaters. The long empty between rigid pine trunks. Ears prickle at the softest sounds, the rustle of my coat, the hint of footpresses on the needles in thick brown layers. Nothing moves. I cough and I scare myself shitless the sound it's like a gunshot. When my heart settles I find I'm still walking. Still in this eternity. Nothing moves. The wind is dead. Hell's supposed to be a fiery pit of endless torture. But I read once that hell is nothingness. I remember; a short bark of laughter when I read that. I’ll take numb over pain thank-you-very-much. Didn't understand. Now I understand. Hell. The  fo...