Free Croak by Gina Damico

for obliterating someone’s right to an everlasting afterlife.” He leaned in almost threateningly. “But that’s not going to happen, is it? You have a job to do now, Lex, and you sure as shit are going to do it. Do you understand?”
    “Yeah, but—” Her mouth felt like a desert. What was wrong with her? Back home, Tyrannosaurus Lex would have had no problem with dishing out this sort of destruction. She would have jumped into the ether in an instant, breezing past these two without a care in the world and maybe even giving them concussions on the way.
    But Lex knew how hollow that badass part of her really was. All those little outbursts of violence—they seemed so empty and meaningless now that she faced a task of such profound importance. Nothing had prepared her for this.
    Lex gazed up at her uncle, the weight and reality of the situation finally sinking in. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
    He nodded warmly, sensing the change in her. “I think you can.”
    Lex licked her lips, looked around at her small circle of compatriots, and tightened her grip on the scythe. Inhaling deeply, she raised it above her head and sliced it down through the air just as Zara had instructed.
    Her body immediately tensed. She hadn’t expected to meet resistance—in the middle of thin air? Still, she kept tearing, remembering to cut the scythe at an angle toward the bottom, until a rip in the fabric of space eerily appeared before her—a defined yet wavy line, like the blurred wetness rising from a highway in the scorching sun.
    “Slide in,” Uncle Mort said.
    Lex eyed the breach. Unsure, she leaned closer and closer until the laws of gravity imploded once more. A whirlwind of invigoration washed over her like a monsoon, drenching every atom of her body.
    Eventually the chaos screeched to a bizarrely silent halt. Frozen in front of her was a middle-aged man on a gurney, his chest cracked open and exposed in all of its shiny, disgusting glory. Lex peered through the smudged air at the sterile white walls, the kind that could only belong to an operating room. A team of doctors and nurses surrounded the man, their faces locked into expressions of worry and determination. One surgeon had cupped his hands around the patient’s heart to massage it back to life.
    His efforts had obviously been fruitless. “Do it!” Zara said to Lex. “It’s safe, go ahead!”
    Lex swallowed, the image of the glistening heart searing itself into her memory. She’d never seen anything so terrifyingly real.
    Wincing, she held up her hand, slowly extended her finger, and touched it to the man’s shoulder.
    A jolt shot through her body with the sheer force and brilliance of an exploding supernova.
    Lex gasped.
    This wasn’t like the ether.
    The ether was giddy and fun, but this—whatever it was—this was
excruciating.
    Both body and mind were racked with an electrical current the likes of which Lex had never experienced—an almost otherworldly sensation pulsing up and down her twitching nerves, tearing into the very depths of her—
    “Lex?” Uncle Mort said.
    She blinked hard as the surge subsided. She threw a desperate glance at her uncle, who for some reason looked impressed rather than concerned. Zara’s expression, on the other hand, was the strangest conglomeration of awe, horror, surprise, jealousy, anger, and the slightest hint of—was it curiosity?
    But it passed just as quickly as it had surfaced, her face melting back into a look of concentration as she finished Culling the glowing Gamma and placed it in the Vessel. “Scythe, now,” Zara instructed.
    Lex could barely breathe. “Wait—I can’t—”
    “Come on.” Zara grabbed Lex’s hand as they simultaneously scythed back into the ether—
    —and out just as fast, this time without Uncle Mort. They now stood in an alley. A homeless person of indeterminable gender lay slumped on the ground.
    “Go,” Zara said.
    “But it burns,” Lex gasped.
    This time Zara’s