The word chokes off as something snaps around my throat.
My hands shoot up. I claw at the vine, nails scraping slick skin that doesn’t give. It tightens, crushing my windpipe. Air disappears. My chest screams for breath.
The pumpkin-headed thing tilts its carved face, studying me. Watching me panic. The grin shines under the bulb, amused.
Another vine wraps around my chest and yanks me into the air. My boots skid, slick with pumpkin oil and pulp. I slam into the side of the grinder. Pain explodes through my ribs. Breath blasts out of me in a broken grunt.
The grinder never slows.
The hopper gapes open, packed with shredded rind and stringy guts. Inside, steel teeth spin in a blur, chewing everything to sludge. The whole machine shakes like it’s starving.
I kick. Thrash. My heel connects with metal. Nothing. I try to scream but it comes out thin.
“Stop.” The word scrapes out of me.
A vine lashes around my throat and squeezes. Spots burst behind my eyes. Another coils my wrists and pins them hardagainst my ribs. Something in my shoulder pops. Sap smears across my skin, sticky and sweet. The smell turns sour. Rot and fuel and something burned.
“Please—”
The vine at my jaw jerks tight and forces my mouth open so wide it burns. My head snaps forward.
Down.
Toward the hopper.
The blades scream inches from my face. Orange spray hits my cheeks. Hot flecks sting my eyes. The vibration rattles through my skull and buzzes behind my teeth until I think they’ll crack.
I grab the rim. My fingers slide in pulp. I dig in harder. Nails bend back. One tears clean off. I howl. Skin splits. Metal bites into bone.
The vines don’t rush it.
They drag me forward an inch at a time.
The machine breathes hot against my face. It pulls at me. Tugs my hair. My shirt. My skin. The pitch shifts when my weight tips over the edge. The grinder catches fabric first. My shirt jerks tight across my chest, crushing my ribs.
For a second, I hang there.
I can still pull back. I can kill Dixon myself for his shit fertilizer.
Then the vines slam me down.
The sound is wrong. Not one clean crunch. A series of wet pops and snaps, like sticks breaking underwater. My vision explodes white. Pain flares for a heartbeat, sharp and absolute.
Then it drops out.
There’s only noise. Grinding. Churning. The machine chewing through meat and bone like it always has.
Heat floods through me. Pressure. Then nothing at all.
The grinder keeps roaring, faithful to the end, as whatever’s left of my head disappears into the bucket below.
NINE
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
SHAUN
The words land between us,heavy and electric, and suddenly the music fades into the background.