Rewind

The crack in the door was less than an inch, less than a last bite, but I could see them from where I sat in the next room better than I could see the fingernail I ripped with my teeth and spit onto the frayed crying rug.

“Everything about being here is wrong,” played me, danced in me, but didn’t stick, because the front door was closer than they were and I stayed right where I was, forgetting how I arrived, unaware of the communal pulse beating under the peeling dying paint above us, watching.

Watching the rubber arm band as the puppet master tied it onto her prey. Tighter. Tight enough to do the job of a soldier hunting the enemy. Tighter than a virgin, unsuccessfully promoting fear as I heard the wounded bird say through the crack,

“Will the needle hurt?”

The answer didn’t come and when I witnessed her thin blond head roll back, eyes falling first, greedily, I wished I had run sooner, yesterday, and farther than the milky way, backing myself out the same front door, rewinding all of it on slo-mo, erasing the images of death.