Dylan Smith

Eye of the Beholder

Jane looked the boy over through cracked goggles. He was rail thin, his belly distended from his short lifetime of hunger. The remains of his cracked lips revealed his rotting teeth, the same color as his sunken eyes. His thin yellow skin, full of bulging blue veins hung from his bones where he lay on the ground. The boy's blood still oozed from the wound on his neck, a deep gash. Jane counted to ten after the boy’s final spasm and adjusted her grip on her rusted, bloody hatchet.