Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

Tooth came into the room and sidled up next to my parents like they were his own. He was beaten black and blue, his sunken eyes glaring at me with malice. There was a large purple scar wound around his neck, as if he’d been strangled. Like a magician, he pulled a barking rottweiler out of thin air and began to open the door to my cell. The dog, wild and enraged, started drooling and snapping at me in anticipation of a meal. But before the door opened wide enough for the dog to pass through, Tooth reconsidered his action. He stopped and said, “If you can hear me, just pretend you’re asleep.”

My parents puffed away in a cloud of dust, as did the jail cell and Tooth, and in their place a naked man covered in tattoos danced in the glow of a candle. The dog appeared behind him, its head following his movements.

The man looked like an enchanted stick bug as he floated across the ground, his lanky legs bending like straws. He held something ovoid in his hand, something he repeatedly tossed in the air and cooed to each time he caught it. As the vision became clearer, I saw it was a human head covered in dirt. It was Tooth’s head!

No, it wasn’t.

It was the woman’s head.

And I suddenly realized I was no longer asleep.

I went rigid, my breath caught in my throat. He was here, in the dark with us, with her head. There wasn’t any candle; it was the stove’s embers casting the light. Tooth was whispering so softly I could hardly hear him: “Don’t move, seriously, don’t move.”

Naked, the man rolled the severed head over his body, down to his balls and stuck his dick in its mouth. I shuddered; I was at a loss as to what to do. So I followed Tooth’s advice and pretended I was asleep, even though I was pretty sure he had seen me wake up. Through slitted eyelids, I continued to watch the freak show before me, horrified and mesmerized.

I could see the head’s lifeless eyes, its gaping mouth caked with dried blood. Just hours ago it had been alive, attached to a woman with a real life . Maybe a mother, maybe a wife, someone with dreams and childhood memories. Now it was just an object, a sickening prop that could no more scream than tell you its name.

“I like it when you do that to me,” Skinny Man said to the head, still fucking its lifeless mouth. Then, placing the head on the ground, he began fondling himself. Faster and faster he went at it. Butch snuck up behind him and took the head in his teeth and ran back up the stairs. Still jerking off, Skinny Man came up to me and looked right at me, his hands still stroking his erection. I shut my eyes completely, but even with my eyes closed, I could see him looking into my face. The whiskers of his beard brushed against my lips, tiny needles poking their way into my mouth. A tongue flashed out and licked my lips and I lost it.

I screamed.

That just made him laugh. He laughed and laughed and danced around some more with his dick in his hand.

Our game of opossum now exposed, Tooth shouted at him, “I’m gonna kill you, you dumb fucker!”

But Skinny Man didn’t seem to heed the threat. He grabbed Tooth’s gag and tied it so tight I thought it would cut Tooth’s head in two. “Boy,” he sneered, “you yell at me one more time I will show you your insides.”

Tooth mumbled but couldn’t form any words.

Holding himself and moaning, Skinny Man came on the floor. When he was done, he gave a little shiver and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Now,” he said, “let’s see what we got here.”

He reached up and turned on the light. The room looked like a slaughterhouse. The walls were stained red, blood saturated the floor, a mutilated arm lay near the dog dishes. Skinny Man was covered in prison tattoos, most of them faded. A couple of them showed demonic orgy scenes of animals raping women, or at least that’s what they looked like. He slithered over and stuck his hands in my pockets and pulled out my wallet. Opening it in front of me, he took out my driver’s license and licked it. “Roger,” he said and laughed. “143 Union Avenue. Let me guess, white picket fence, two-car garage. Does Mommy know what a bad boy you’ve been? Maybe I should stop in and let her know where you are.”

“No!” I screamed. “Stay away from her, you fucking maniac. If you touch her I’ll kill you.”

“Enough with the yelling already! You make too much noise. I hate noise.” With that, he put the gag back in my mouth, tying it tight until it felt like my cheeks were tearing. “If I find these rags out again, I’m gonna wrap you with barbed wire.”

Tooth was frantically trying to kick at Skinny Man, but the leg irons barely let him get his feet up.

He reached into my front pocket and played his fingers around near my balls. “And what do we have here.” He pulled out the pair of dice I had taken from my kitchen that morning. “Snake eyes,” he read, and rolled them around in his hand. Next, he fished around in Tooth’s pockets and took the cell phone. He threw it at the wall and it exploded like a firework. My heart sank. Tooth stopped struggling and hung his head. We’d been counting on the phone.

Sensing our defeat, Skinny Man did a little dance back toward the center of the room and stopped. He spun around and muttered something under his breath, looked back at us. “Any of you all see a head, about yay big, with white teeth, long brown hair, pretty mouth? It was here a minute ago.” Then he started laughing again, occasionally flicking his tongue at us.

He searched Tooth’s pockets once more, looking for anything he may have missed, and wound up with Tooth’s driver’s license. “David McNulty,” he said, reading it. “Thirty-two. Shit, you ain’t thirty-two. Where’d you get this, Boston?”

Tooth mumbled.

Skinny Man punched him in the face. “You liar! I don’t like liars.” He went and opened the door to the stove, bent down and reached inside. When he stood up, a pile of glowing embers sat on the fake ID, orange heat pulsating on the surface. They looked like little magic gemstones. In his other hand he rolled the dice about. “Oh boy, oh boy,” he said, “been a while since I made a wager of any kind. You hear that rattle, huh, that’s luck being shook up like juice. You gotta mix it all together and get it just right or else you get too much bad luck and that’s no fun. Or you could get too much good luck, which might seem a good thing, but it just leads you on until it runs out and then you got nothing. Nope, gotta shake it up just right for this game. Roger, you want high or low?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Okay, I’ll decide. You’re low, and yer buddy here is high. Place your bets.”

He bent down and tossed the dice on the ground and I suddenly knew where this was going. He was betting on our fates. Any combination of two through six would represent me-low-and combinations of seven through twelve would represent Tooth-high. The dice came up a five and a three. High.

“That’s too bad,” he said looking at Tooth, whose dazed head was already hanging to the side from the punch. He undid the gag and forced open Tooth’s mouth. I started screaming but my gag was so tight I barely made a noise. He shoved the fiery embers into Tooth’s mouth.

Tooth went crazy, flailing his head, spitting out the embers as well as fresh blood. Skinny Man punched him again and I nearly vomited when I heard the crack of bone. More blood shot from Tooth’s nose and sprayed on Skinny Man’s face like a Pollock painting. The man went back to the stove and collected more of the hot orange gems, came back and punched Tooth in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He thrust the embers in Tooth’s mouth and then, using both hands, he forced Tooth’s mouth to stay shut and tied the gag up again.