Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
own shattering skull—all of it was disgustingly familiar,
one of the last steps in a nightlong dance that had
somehow never acknowledged its own end.
“You killed us,” Shutty said, stating the obvious.
Still smiling, Kleck pointed the rifle at her.
“Can I really kill them all?” he grinned.
Shutty’s body, or whatever it was now, made ready
to respond the way it had every night for four weeks or
more. She could feel the features of her face prepare to
disintegrate from the forthcoming onslaught of highspeed
lead.
“Please don’t! Please!” she heard herself say, disgusted
she would beg at the last. But then a voice
pierced the faded playback, “You don’t have to go
through this again!”
This time, rather than an intrusion, the forceful
tone was a lifeline. Somehow, Shutty grabbed onto it
and pulled herself back.
The room was different now. Most of the bad
furnishings were gone. Dennison was here, still weak,
still struggling to stand. Even Jobe was back, sitting on
the bed, cradling his head in his hands, though the
death wounds seemed faded. He was crushed that—for
all his honed physicality, which had earned him prize
after prize, both in sports and socially—he’d been
unable to prevent his own destruction by a metal slug
set in motion by the index finger of a pathetic geek.
This shattered his ego. No more the bully, no more the
chosen son, he wept like a lost babe. It looked as if even
Kleck pitied him.
Bilka wrapped a long arm around Jobe, mechanically
comforting him as she also wept.
Enraged, Shutty grabbed Kleck and spun him around,
but an odd effect followed. Part of him still had the gun,
part of him was still firing in the room—flash, flash,
flash, body, body, body—but another part of him had
turned to face her.
“You killed us!” she said again.
“Uh, yeah.” Kleck said.
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HAUNTING THE DEAD
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