Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

Skinny Man gave me an I’m-not-playing-around kind of look and pointed at Tooth. “If he don’t shut up, I’m gonna put that shovel in your neck.”

I knew he was serious; hell, he was hoping for it to happen. I wanted to purge my tear ducts of everything inside but was too afraid of the consequences. “Tooth, please,” I mouthed around my gag, “I don’t want to die.”

I don’t know how, but he stopped making noise and composed himself. Tooth wasn’t so much tough as he was just crazy, a lost soul with nothing at stake. Right now, the look in his eyes would send Hannibal Lecter running. But he was also in tremendous pain and the fact he was able to calm down said a lot about his will power. He was going to live through this. I, on the other hand, was going to die like a bitch.

“That’s better,” Skinny Man said. “Noise makes me crazy, hurts my head. And stop calling me names! Acting like you didn’t have that coming, killing my dog and all. Lucky I didn’t shove it up yer ass. I done a girl that way once, split her right up the middle. Oh yeah, the asshole is a pretty flimsy invention, rips like tissue paper.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Tooth said.

“I don’t think so. You’ve got a penance to pay. You shouldn’t have hurt my Sundance! He didn’t do nothing but try to protect me.”

“You’re a half wit.” Tooth’s mouth was full of phlegm and spit.

“No, I’m not. I’m an animal lover is all. I had that dog since he was a pup. Watched him grow up, him and his brother both. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“Why don’t you untie me and I’ll kill the other mutt, too, make everything even-Steven.”

Skinny Man didn’t like that. He gleefully wrenched the shovel from Tooth’s thigh and put it in the fire, the handle sticking out the little iron door. Not a peep came from Tooth.

“Boy,” Skinny Man said, “you in a lot of trouble.”

“We won’t tell,” I pleaded. “Just let us go and we-”

“Shut up, you twit, you’re not going anywhere.”

I glanced at Tooth’s thigh and saw blood gush out like a fountain. The artery had definitely been sliced, and without aid he would drift off into sleep and never wake up. Tooth knew it too; he was looking at his leg with panicked eyes.

Skinny Man cracked his knuckles and looked down at the woman. “Now, where was I?” There was renewed pleasure in his voice. “Oh yeah, our game.”

He went back out the door, up the stairs, and came back a moment later with the saw in his hand and his dog at his heels. The dog came over and sniffed at Tooth’s leg then started licking the blood from the open wound. His dog collar jingled as his tongue flicked up and down.

“Butch, leave him alone and come lay down.”

The dog looked back and forth from his master to the wound a few times, as if deciding which was of greater importance, and finally went and lay down near his bowls. Skinny Man took the saw and cut into the woman’s arm at the shoulder.

“The fuck!” I screamed.

“You son of a bitch!” Tooth said.

With a shit-eating grin, the man hacked through her bone, the sickening zzz zzz echo of the saw filling the sweltering room. I closed my eyes and muttered some kind of prayer even though I wasn’t sure I was even speaking English. Butch started barking, and through all the noise I heard the dog get up and start padding about. I heard Tooth screaming profanities. I heard Skinny Man grunt like he was having trouble getting through the bone. And when I opened my eyes, I saw the arm separate from the body.

I choked back bile. A numbness floated into my mind, a drunk co-pilot taking the helm. My brain just couldn’t wrap around what it was seeing. It just wasn’t real; I would wake up soon. I knew I would because this stuff only happened in dreams.

Skinny Man took the arm and licked the blood flowing from the hacked shoulder. It dribbled down his chin and he laughed like a goblin. He rushed at me and grabbed my face and kissed me, smearing blood all over my mouth. His slick tongue lapped thick, bloody saliva on my eyes. Every bump on his tongue, every whisker on his chin, scratched itself across my face.

Butch was going wild, running and jumping up to get a taste of the arm. He tried to snatch it out of the man’s hands and got a smack for his troubles. “Hold on two secs, will ya?”

Taking the saw again, the madman cut the arm in two and put the pieces in Butch’s dishes. The dog tore at the flesh, shaking his head back and forth until the chunks of flesh pulled away. Then, like a vacuum, he inhaled the meat.

“That is a nasty wound you got there,” Skinny Man said to Tooth. “Lucky for you, I fancy myself a bit of a doctor. Got my first aid badge in the Cub Scouts.”

He bent down and yanked the ax from the woman’s head. It came loose with a gurgling fart as the pressure from the internal bleeding escaped.

And that was enough for me, my brain pulled the plug.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was Skinny Man taking the glowing shovel out of the stove and placing it flat against Tooth’s wound. I heard a sizzling pop of flesh, Tooth’s bloodcurdling scream, and then all was black.

When I came to all was quiet. The rag was in my mouth again, swollen from my drool, or my tears, or both. I sucked it out and swallowed it. The smell hit me next, an eye-watering stench of decomposition, worse than the time I found a dead raccoon in the garbage out back of my house. That raccoon had been in that trashcan for weeks and when I lifted the lid the rot had hit me hard as a punch and almost knocked me over. Fucking-A if this wasn’t a hundred times worse.

My neck ached like I’d been kicked in the esophagus, and my chest felt constricted. When I’d fainted my body had fallen forward and been caught by the collar. It’s a wonder I didn’t snap my neck or choke myself to death. As I stood up, I could feel fresh cuts under my chin from where the collar had cut in.

The macabre realization that I could have died somewhat peacefully washed over me and I didn’t know if I was happy or sad.

The jingle of chains next to me meant Tooth was moving around. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the faint glow coming from the stove door. The wood had burned down to embers but their light was enough to make out the shadow of my best friend.

“Tooth?”

At my voice, the chains stopped. “You awake?” he asked.

Our words were muffled by the rags, but Tooth and I had that connection, that ability to understand each other.

“Yeah,” I replied. “What happened?”

“Oh God, Roger, he cauterized my leg. He burned it shut. This guy is crazy. We have to do something.”

“This is fucked. He sealed your wound? Why? So he can torture us some more?”

Tooth was quiet for a moment and I thought maybe I’d said something he hadn’t thought of. In a funny way, that made me feel bad. Both because I’d just scared him, and because, so far, he’d taken the most damage. But I knew that was just a momentary thing, I was going to get mine, too.

“The girl?” I asked

“He took the body upstairs. I think she was dead. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t moving or breathing or anything, and she’d lost a hell of a lot of blood. The dog ate her arm.”

There was another pause; neither of us knew what to do or say. I used the moment to begin working the rag out of my mouth. The good thing about the rags was that even though they cut off our ability to speak clearly when they were tight, with some tongue and jaw work the material would begin to stretch. They were a poor choice for gags-unless he was hoping the bacteria on them would give us e-coli or something and send us into a fit of poisoning that would have us wishing for death.