Free PostApoc by Liz Worth Page A

hard that he just couldn’t keep anything down. But we never really believed that. He had too much confidence for it to be nerves, and if you were ever hanging out with the band before or after, you probably saw Rattail’s eyes roll all the way up into his head, so far in fact that whole minutes would pass by before you saw him come back again, a testament to just how wasted he could get.
    Another song in and my nausea passes, the belly-deep tail settling enough for another splash of purple and vodka. Someone’s passing around grayline and my dose collects in a chemical drip at the back of my throat; I can feel the slow pull every time I swallow.
    Rattail’s crawling through the next song, almost crying through the words. There is no stage, just a circle of dirt where the concrete floor ends.
    The back of Rattail’s t-shirt is shredding, mostly hanging off his chest, front-heavy. He flops onto his side, a tired dog, and whimpers out a few lines. People around us are electric, with so much heat running between them that it’s melted the soles of their shoes to the floor. Their bodies collide but never move from their places.
    Rattail’s voice might have gone from aluminum thunder to a serrated lullaby but the guitars are still at full roar, still have us in their jaws. Cam’s in front of us, on his knees in the dirt, listening for the quietest words. He’s holding his hair back now, face serious, concentrating on the messages in the music; his knuckles huge and almost black they’re so dirty, an eye drawn on the back of his hand, watching.
    I can’t tell if Shit Kitten’s still playing the same song or if they’ve moved on. It’s all a swirl of destroyed sound now, revving distortion, a razorblade grazing a thin black stocking.
    Rattail’s not moving anymore, hasn’t sang or even whispered a note in I don’t know how long. Feels like it’s been at least an hour but Cam’s inked eye is still staring, unblinking, from the back of his hand. He’s still crouched there, same position. No one could stay like that for so long, could they?
    Cam always says drugs slow your time down because they bring you closer to death, and the closer to death you are the slower everything gets. Time only accelerates when you are at your most alive. By that logic we’ll be dead any minute now.
    The guitars do stop, finally, fade out and disappear like a screen gone to black. The tail’s slipped out of my stomach to twist through the crowd, a purple trail chasing loose hems. Outside, someone’s gotten a fire going. The heat is bright enough to bathe us. It crisps the skin of my face, makes me feel the cleanest I’ve been in weeks.
    A thick fog hangs low over the trees, three-quarters of the way over their peaks. If we weren’t all in t-shirts you could believe it was almost close to something like cold out here. A semicircle of people crowd around the fire. The chanting girl that opened is there, too, sitting on a dented folding chair. I don’t recognize her until the tip of her cigarette lights up her face. Her leather boots are rotted through across the tops where her toes bend, the heels worn into upward curves. The intake of smoke from her cigarette sparks an orange puff of light across the bottom half of her face. At the corner of her eye, crisscrossing up to her temple is a dark sparkle, a charcoal swirl.
    â€œI can paint your face, too,” she says. That’s when I notice she doesn’t blink, that her eyes are only white with black, the eyes of something that once lived in deep water.
    â€œHold this,” she says without waiting for my answer, stubbing the filter of her cigarette between my fingers, telling me I can smoke some if I want. I do.
    The girl goes face down into her bag, digging. Her fingers come out of the dark sack, tips covered in powder, soot. “Ready?” she asks, looks at me, and then she’s at the