Croak by Gina Damico Page B

ready to smack her, but instead stretched a tight smile across his lips. “I can’t wait to see the look on her face,” he muttered to Zara, who snickered. He turned back to Lex. “You. Hop up onto my back.”
    Lex’s sarcastic smile disappeared. “Huh?”
    “Get onto my back and hold on as tight as you can.”
    She backed away. “Hell no. Last time I did that, you almost splattered me across the pavement.”
    “I know it’s weird, but it’s only for training purposes. Come on.”
    “No way. You’re probably going to fling me into a volcano or something.”
    “If you don’t climb up here right now, I absolutely will.”
    Lex ultimately decided not to test this. She put her hands on her uncle’s shoulders, hopped up off the ground, and tucked her legs into his sides. “And no kicking the yarbles,” he warned.
    “No promises.”
    He secured her grip around his neck. “We’ll take it easy for your first time, start off with a simple geezer. After that, it’s full throttle. Like I said, pay close attention, because it’ll be over before you even know it. But the most important thing is: don’t panic. Don’t scream, don’t close your eyes, and above all, do not let go of me. Do you understand?”
    “Yeah, but—” Lex swallowed, a small lump of nerves now forming in her stomach. What was going on?
    Staring at nothing but each other, Zara and Uncle Mort raised their right arms high above their heads—the sun glittering off something shiny in their hands—then brought them down in unison with a quick slicing motion.
    Lex, meanwhile, continued to survey the scene in apprehension, trying to guess what could possibly warrant all this melodrama. Here they were, standing perfectly still in the middle of a placid, sun-dappled valley, where it seemed as though nothing exciting had ever happened and probably never would—except there was that rustling bush again. Was there someone behind it? Someone watching?
    But it no longer mattered. Lex had been blinked out of existence.

6
     
    Her first sensation was one of dizziness. Lex couldn’t tell which way was up, down, in, or out. Her stomach dropped with a lurch, that disquieting but oddly pleasant feeling one gets on the plunge down the first hill of a roller coaster. She sped through the deepest bowels of space, wormholed through galaxies, the whole of the universe swirling around in one unending vortex.
    She saw colors—every color, even ones beyond the visible spectrum. The air whipping through her lungs—if one could even call it air, it was more like a gale-force wind that ripped and fought its way down her trachea—stung her nostrils like icy mint. Every inch of her skin prickled, the entire arsenal of its nerve endings exploding into a shivery chill.
    But the noise—the noise was deafening. It was as if every sound that had ever been uttered in the history of the world were being played backwards, on maximum volume, at the same time.
    Lex fought hard to make sense of it all, tried to focus the distorted images, to extrapolate a single sound from the cacophony (she thought she might have heard a cow mooing), but eventually she gave up and surrendered to the moment. Exhilarated, she screamed into the void, half shrieking, half laughing.
    Until everything came to a crashing halt.
    Lex couldn’t guess how much time had passed. It could have been seconds, it could have been hours. She looked around, disoriented. The only thing she could really be sure of was her uncle’s neck, still clenched firmly between her arms.
    They were in a dark place. As her vision adjusted, Lex realized that it was a bedroom—cool, quiet, and smelling of musk and chicken soup. Everything seemed blurred around the edges. She scrunched up her eyes.
    Lying asleep on a bed in a near-fetal position was an old woman. Framed photos of grandchildren smiled down from the walls, while a veritable pharmacy of pill bottles stood like a tiny city on her nightstand. It was a peaceful