Manx- Drive-By

  Tires whined shrilly on the asphalt. Her paralysis broke. Or maybe she had never been paralyzed. Maybe her muscles and nerves—the meat and wiring—had always understood what the conscious mind didn’t want to know, that it was already too late to get out of the way. She bolted across the lot, toward Wayne, some unformed, absurd notion in her head that she could get to him, pull him into the woods, into safety. She crossed in front of the Wraith. An icy light rose around her. The engine roared. She glanced sidelong, thinking, Please let me be ready, and the car was there, the grille so close that her heart seemed to fill her mouth. He was not aiming the Rolls at her but instead rushing up alongside and past her. He had one hand on the wheel and was stretching his upper body out the open window. The wind sucked his black hair back from his high, bare brow. His eyes were wide and avid with hilarity, and there was a look of triumphant joy stamped across his face. In his right hand, he held a silver hammer as big as God.

  She did not feel the mallet connect with the back of her neck. There was a sound, like she had stepped on a lightbulb, a pop and a crack. She saw a flash, a white, brilliant blink of light. Her fedora whirled away like a tossed Frisbee. Her feet continued racing over the blacktop, but when she looked down they were pedaling in air. She had been lifted right off the ground.

  Maggie hit the side of the car as she came down. She spun and struck the asphalt and rolled, arms flying. She went over and over and wound up against the far curb, on her back. Her cheek was pressed to the rough blacktop. Poor Maggie, Maggie thought, with genuine if somewhat muted sympathy.

  She found she could not lift her head or even turn it. At the periphery of her vision, she could see that her left leg was bent inward at the knee, the hinge folding in a direction in which it was never meant to go.

- Christmasland: Here, Iowa