76...

The wailing spin of the Cadillac was coming to a slow finale. The car went up on two wheels for a moment and then came down with a crash. Quicker than most would have thought possible, Alexis yanked the keys out of the ignition, flung her seatbelt away and was across the bench seat in one fluid motion.
She didn't realize it until she was on top of him, but in the thrashing of the car, Matthew had managed to lodge his own knife a good inch and a half into his side. He was grimacing like some sort of rabid and ravaged animal as he tried to remove it. This did not deter Alexis in the least. She held the curving tail of the metal lizard key ring out of her fingers like a pewter claw and went for his face.
Matthew let out a howl as the blunt end of the thing dug into the flesh of his temple. With his right hand, he pawed at the knife sticking out of him, with his left he attempted to land blows on Alexis' face. He was terrible with his left hand so little fell, but it wouldn't have mattered much anyway. Alexis was well within a pulsing red haze, finally riding that wave of bloody instinct, and it would take more than feeble punches to the face to snap her back.
She pulled strongly on the key chain, dragging it slowly across the upper part of his face. She didn't hear his animal shrieking, the flood of high pitched tongues that erupted from his mouth, but she felt the jerk and burst of warm fluid on her hand as the lizard's tail ruined his left eye.
Matthew pulled at the knife with an uncontrolled flailing and managed to dislodge it. He put one hand over his eye socket and brandished the knife, red with his own blood, with the other. He was screaming, muttering, slavering, but Alexis heard none of it. Everything in her ears was a soft static white noise of a radio temporarily between stations. Alexis calmly slipped her necklace from out of her pocket.
The knife hand began a swing, plunging the blade towards Alexis’ neck. She dodged to the right, but the thing was still going to land straight in her back at the end of that arc. When Matthew’s hand snagged on the seat belt though, the knife left his hand, twirling forwards, the handle bouncing lamely off of Alexis’ shoulder. Before Matthew could voice his disappointed growl, that growl was cut off by a chain wrapping around his neck.
Matthew was shocked by just how quickly the air cut off; one moment there was labored breathing, the next nothing coming in. He began to thrash wildly, but Alexis hung on like a seasoned rodeo rider.
Alexis barely felt movement beneath her, she only watched his bulging eye, his face turning a further shade of scarlet as she tightened the steel loop around his throat. She could see him struggling to say something, but she only slowly shook her head with a cold smile laid delicately on her face.
“No,” she said quietly and with a frost just around the edges. It was enough to make him stop thrashing around for a moment and stare at her face.
“I’m past tired of listening to you talk,” she again said softly. “I just want you take this in before that square of darkness overtakes what’s left of your vision and you never see anything again. Your ridiculous life amounted to nothing.”
There was only enough strength in him to make a lame swipe at her straining hands before his gaze looked up over her shoulder, fixed on something and then faded. There was no moment of recognition, no last look of fear, there was just the extinguishing of some indefinable light.