Puzzle Box Marionette

	“Here, catch!” he said, tossing me the keys to the family sedan as we left the flat. “Just a ride outside Cardiff in the country and back before nightfall.”
	I was excited. Sixteen and finally learning to drive outside of the parking structure. Father made a short yelp of surprise as I nearly missed the keys as they bounced off the cast on my left arm, catching them with my foot then tossing them up, bouncing them off my chest and snatching them from midair. One of the upsides of being built like a carving board, I suppose (that and the years of playing football, from which I was suspended after clotheslining a goalie who broke said arm after I slipped on a particularly slippery patch of saturated field--I regret nothing). If I had my mother’s bust maybe I could have saved a step. Mother and my little sister Liliandra gave me a round of applause as they sat in the back seat, father sitting shotgun with a sigh of relief--or preparation, I could never be sure. I looked to the sun as it sat low in the bright, cloudless sky and sent a prayer to the distance. “Today is a good day,” I whispered, tossing my braid over my shoulder and stepped into the driver’s side. With a twist of the wrist, I started the ignition, then stubbed my nose on the steering wheel after Lili pummeled the back of my seat, at which point slurs and obscenities ripped from my throat like wild fire until dad suddenly took away the keys and mother threatened to send Liliandra to bed without dessert at which point there was tears and stares from several joggers walking past our flat. Eventually we made it on the road. Don’t ask how but there may have been pleading involved.
	Everyone made fun of dad for buying an American auto, but he didn’t mind. It was a bargain buy, how could he resist? Right after the market collapsed, of course it was. 
Silly old panther.
	My father was a melanistic ounce and my mother a more typical variety. I take after her and Lili is more of a blend with mother’s fur tone and father’s ebon hair and bright blue eyes. Luckily, Lili did not acquire father’s astigmatism. 
	The drive was rather uneventful. I learned how to parallel park in a lonely parking lot--albeit poorly--and practiced signaling with my arms, which may have confused onlookers more than anything else, and we stopped to pick up some frozen custard. 
I had raspberry truffle--my favorite.
	“Lulu, why do you like raspberry so much?” my sister would ask me. “Its so tart and makes your face go like this,” Lili paused to make a rude face, “like a starfishy.”
	“I just do.”
	“Stop that Lulu, your face will stay that way if your not careful,” mother chided. “Mind your cone, sweetie.”
	I licked my spoon as I contemplated simply drinking the rest of my plastic dish. “Well what do you like about s’mores so much?”
	“Because s’mores are just the best! It’s some... and then some more!”
	“Clearly your logic is flawless, Lili.”
	“It’s a no-brainer!”
	“You’re a no-brainer, Lili!”
	“Muuuum! Lulu called me a-”
	“I heard her. Lulu, apologize to your sister for calling her names. And both of you apologize to yourselves. Black coffee is clearly the best custard of all!” Father chuckled.
	Lili and I recoiled in horror before declaring with a single triumphant roar of, “Eeeewww!” Father just shook his head as he took a moment to breathe. I’m fairly certain he held his breath this entire time. Or maybe it was just the blueberry.
	We got back in the sedan and before I turned the car on I leaned forward and avoided Lili’s kick. “Ha!”
	“What did I tell you?!”
	I swept my tail back and brushed it against Lili’s face and she immediately grappled the large fluffy thing, pulling it to her body. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”
	“You’re learning!” I adjusted the rear view and she nodded meaningfully to mother. “I’m training her.”
	“Lili, stop treating your sister like a pet.”
	She smirked and cuddled against my tail. “I make no promises.”
	“Sweetie, stop letting Liliandra watch your procedurals would you, please.”
	“I pity the fool!”
	Father sighed. “Yes, dear.”
	Like I said: uneventful.
	That is, until the drive home. The hills were rather intense on the route we took, as were the smells from the nearby farms. And as the sun was beginning to set and the orange haze colored everything with the same brush as it faded into indigo behind us, and I hurried to roll the window up. 
	“Do you see that?” father asked, pausing to clean his glasses.
	“See what?” I replied, distracted by the window crank. 
	“That lorry. It’s moving awfully fast, isn’t it?”
	“Bloody bast-er, I mean...”
	“Leave it.” Dad said. “Focus on the road.”
	That’s when I should have known something was wrong. Father never let my swearing slide. But I just kept turning that crank. I didn’t even notice that I was drifting ever so slightly to the right. 
	“Sweetie...”
	“What the hell is he doing?”
	In my periphery I saw the lights getting closer up and down every hill again and again.
	“Sweetheart...”
	“What the hell is he doing?!”
	Then we reached a straight-away and it was unavoidable. The lorry was drifting right as well. All the way.
	“Hit the horn, Luncia.”
	It had no reaction, the monster just kept barreling towards us without halt, starting to ebb towards our left berm guard. I heard Lili awake with a start, mumbling between a yawn.
	“Nonononononono...”
	“Luncia! Baby, look out!”
	“NONONONONONO...”
	“PULL OVER!” father screamed as he smacked my right arm from the wheel and grasped it, slamming the car into the berm, but there wasn’t enough time as the sounds of screaming were trampled by the explosion of metal, rubber, plastic and fire as shrapnel howled through the evening sky, glass shrieking through space as truth and reality were shattered by the smells of blood, oil, burning hair, fur, and flesh, and the foul smell from the nearby farms only far, far too near.

	“Sweetie... where are you? Baby... my baby... 
Don’t cry.”

	The explosion from the tanker is when I woke up. My ears rang from the sound of Lili’s screaming only she wasn’t screaming now. I felt wetness running down my tail and I felt her there, pulled into a ball; her heart was racing. I heard her sobs as well as the crackling of fire, tinkling of falling glass, and in the distance, crickets out in the soggy fields. 
	The way she grasped me hurt. 
	Then I tried to look around. Everything was black. I reached up with my left hand and felt my face and it was wet with blood, but also not blood. Like tears but much too wet. I tried moving my right arm by couldn’t. 
	Two broken arms--just my luck. 
	Hesitantly, I reached up and touched my eye and immediately screamed at the pain the shot everywhere as jagged glass sliced open my fingertips and my right eye shot open. Everything was red. Everything was pain and madness and half the car was... gone. Just... gone. Glass, metal and greasy smears covered the road. Nothing I could make sense of at that moment other than an object lying there. Just lying there. Then I looked down at my right shoulder and saw meat and exposed tendons dangling from bone, flesh shredded like clothing, wrinkled and loose and all ending in burning black my brain refused to accept what it had seen while searing the image in my memory. My shirt was tattered, mostly gone, several patches of fur singed in places. And everything fell into place, reality set in: the entire right side of the car was gone. My parents were in that side of the car. Just... gone. I panicked and tried to pull away from the wreckage until I saw what was to see of the trap that what was left of my legs were and my legs and trapped and crushed dying dying I’m gonna die I don’t wanna die please someone help me I just my legs I wanna die my arm please just kill me let me die let me die let me die I don’t wanna-
	“Am I dead, Lulu?” my sister asked between shuddering gasps.
	“Lili.” Lili. Breathe breathe mouth not nose stay awake awake for Lili for her my eye can’t see I can’t die but I wanna die. Live. Breathe and live. “You’re gonna be okay.”
	“Mommy.”
	“It’s Lulu, your sister. I’m okay.”
	“Mommy keeps looking at me.”
	I looked up at the shattered rear view mirror, hanging by a thread and saw the vinyl seats covered in brown and black and red and saw that Lili was looking down. Her blue eyes met mine in a thousand fragmented pieces. Hey compound eyes looked at me, looked through me. 
She was sitting up. She’d always been.
	“She’s looking at me.” Tears rolled down her blood-stained face, marring the spatter in fine rivulets as a shadow in the darkness sat in her lap reflecting the firelight in fine pinpoints.

	“MAKE HER STOP LOOKING AT ME!”