Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

For the first time I looked at my leg. The muscle was ripped open and I could see the muscle striations inside. A small chunk of flesh was torn off and the blood was starting to coagulate just a little. It was so dark it looked like oil.

“Well, what you gonna do, boy?”

His eyes were wild in his gaunt face, his teeth dark yellow, the prison tattoo on his neck was faded but looked like Jesus on the cross pissing on a woman. Mary, it was Mary. And it wasn’t piss. He was insane, sick, and two seconds away from splattering my brains all over the ground. What’s worse, he was enjoying himself.

“Please. . please. .” was all I could manage.

“Please nothing. You should have minded yer own business and stayed away. No one to blame but yerself now.”

I was a piss-drenched child looking at the boogey man. “I won’t tell. I swear to fucking God I won’t tell.”

“Boy, if you don’t shut up and get over this fence you won’t be able to tell because yer mouth will be hanging from that tree over there. Now get up! And stop crying!”

I stood up, sobbing like a girl. I should have let him shoot me, should have taken it fast and clean. But it’s not that easy. You don’t just concede defeat in these circumstances. You take every second you can find and use it to pray for another few seconds. Hope is a cruel bitch.

I climbed over the fence, smearing my blood all over it, and trembled as I stood next to this demon with a gun. On the ground, the now handless woman with the ax in her skull lay staring into oblivion. I envied her.

“Turn around,” he said.

I turned around, half expecting a bullet in the back.

“Now march.”

Struggling against my shock, I put one foot in front of the other and started walking toward the house, dimly aware of the crunching sounds coming from the dog as it gnawed on the hand and bit through the small finger bones. The last thing I remember was feeling a slight sting on the back of my head.

Blackness.

As I swam into existence, I smelled wet cement and mold, heard rain falling outside. My leg was throbbing and my head hurt like Nomar had used it for batting practice. I went to put my hand against it to feel for a lump, but my arm wouldn’t move. I flexed my fingers to make sure it hadn’t fallen asleep and it was working just fine. Slowly, my vision cleared and I took in my surroundings, which consisted mainly of shadows and cement walls. Something cold and hard ringed my neck and I shook my head to free myself from whatever it was.

Excruciating pain exploded inside my skull, so intense I didn’t dare scream. I stayed still until my eyes stopped watering, and the pain ebbed, and then I glanced down to see what the hell I’d tried to shake off and noticed the chains.

Chains?

Have you ever played dodgeball, and had someone hurl the ball at you at mach 5, knowing no matter how fast you move you’re still going to take it head on? That’s how I felt as the very recent past came back to me like a line drive to the nose. When it hit me, and I realized where I was, my body went into a frantic, yet restrained, dance-restrained because the chains that were binding me offered little in the way of movement.

I also noticed I was biting down on something soft that smelled and tasted like oil and ancient piss. I tried to push it out of my mouth with my tongue but it was tied tight around my head, probably the only thing holding my brains in.

“Roger, relax, it’s no use.”

I knew that voice. It was Tooth. Tooth was here with me somewhere. I turned to my left and saw him standing a few feet away. Looking at him, I suddenly knew what my own situation was like. Around his waist, a chain was wrapped tight and fastened to a metal plate in the wall behind him. His hands were handcuffed to the waist chain on either side. A metal collar, like something from an S and M whorehouse, was padlocked around his neck and connected by a chain to the metal plate as well. Two leg irons, again chained to the wall, kept his legs from moving. A brown stained rag was wrapped around his chin, as if he’d not been able to shake it all the way off.

“The chains are too tight and the cuffs are sharp,” he said. “Don’t bother fighting it or you’ll hurt yourself.”

His face looked like roadkill. Dried, crusted blood flaked around every orifice. A small rivulet of crimson meandered down his cheek and disappeared under his chin before it dripped onto his shoulder. What was happening to us? One thing was certain: I was no longer high.

My eyes were adjusting to the gloom and I could see the room somewhat clearly now. Four concrete walls, a dirty concrete floor, cross beams above us with a single light bulb in the middle. A basement. On the right wall, a rusty black boiler chugged quietly, its pipes extending into the ceiling like antennae. Directly across from us stood a door with a cheap gold knob. Pinned to it was a poster of something I couldn’t make out. Against the left wall, at the base, a pair of dog dishes sat surrounded by bits of food. Now that I saw it, I could smell the food as well. It smelled like rancid garbage, and I figured for a man who claimed to love his dogs, he sure didn’t care about them enough to buy some high quality Iams. Next to the dog dishes was an old wood burning stove, the kind used to heat up kettles in the 1800s, its pipe extending up through the ceiling. A tiny wooden table sat next to that with some tools-pliers, box cutters, nails, hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, etcetera-hanging on the pegboard above it.

I looked at Tooth again and tried to speak through the rag but was so scared I couldn’t find any words to say.

“Listen to me,” he said, “this is no joke. We’re in real trouble here. This guy is fucking crazy and I think he killed that woman. I don’t know what to do, but I sure as fuck know if we don’t do it fast we’re going to die. Do you understand?”

I nodded, the surrealism of the moment numbing me. I was scared. Too scared to even care about the absurd number of mosquito bites that were itching like mad.

“I’m scared, too,” he said, as if reading my mind, “and if you need to cry, go for it, but I’m going to need you to be awake and aware when he comes back. I need to get him to release us somehow. As soon as he does I’m going to jump him. You run for that door and don’t stop until you get the cops. My cell phone is in my back pocket. I’ll try and flip it to you, but if I can’t get to it, grab it and run. You understand?”

I nodded again and felt my brain slosh about in my cracked skull. I didn’t remember being hit but I must have been cold-cocked with the gun.

“He left a few minutes ago, after he chained you up. I pretended I was asleep so I could think. I’m betting he went back for the woman’s body.”

Last time I had seen the woman she’d been alive, at least physically. I wondered if he would finish her off, but suddenly remembered him saying something about playing with her first. Oh no, I thought, oh shit. My breathing raced and my blood pumped rapidly. He wasn’t going to kill her; he was going to torture her.

Was he going to torture us ? Or was she an ex-girlfriend or something, someone who in his twisted mind deserved to be tortured? I knew the answer to that one instantly. We were chained up, in a basement, in a madman’s house. I started sobbing. I didn’t want to die.

“Shh,” snapped Tooth. “I hear something. I think he’s coming back.”

Shuffling footsteps grew louder from behind the door, each one followed immediately by a thumping sound. When they got just outside the door they stopped. Keys jingled briefly, began working the lock, and the door flew open.

Covered in a mess of blood, the man-Skinny Man-stood in the doorway like an angry demon late for an appointment. Sweat glistened on his bare chest, which pumped with fury. He put the keys back in his pocket and picked up a bundle of something near his feet. As he dragged it into the room, I saw it was our mystery woman. Her eyes were glazed, her body limp, and I couldn’t tell if she was alive or not. The ax was still sticking out of her head.