Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

“That’ll shut you up,” Skinny Man said. “I warned you, didn’t I!” He stepped back and admired his handiwork, nodding acceptance. “Okay, enough bullshit. It’s time to play.” He took the dice out of his pockets and held them down to Butch, who sniffed them eagerly. “Blow on ’em for me, honey.” He thought that was something awful funny and broke into that cackling laugh again. He rolled a six.

“This just ain’t your day is it, Mervyn.”

Tooth was beside himself, his slashed face swollen, his charred, cut lips transforming him into something entirely alien. This was not the Tooth I knew. This was biology at its basest, and lacerated skin was only the beginning. All around where his cheek was slashed, bone and sinew peeked out.

Skinny Man took up the duffel bag again and pulled out a butcher’s knife.

“No,” I begged. “Please. Please, leave us alone. We didn’t mean to trespass, we didn’t know. We never meant to do anything wrong.”

“It’s a little late for apologies, don’t you think?”

He reached out and undid Tooth pants.

“Wait,” I said. “Wait. I’ve got money, I’ve got lots of money.”

Skinny Man spun to me and put the knife to my eye, pushed the point into my flesh just under my lower eyelashes, but not enough to pierce anything. “You speak again, I cut your sister’s throat. You all wanted to interrupt my last game, be superheroes, so now you got to take her spot. Fair is fair. Now where was I?”

He pulled down Tooth’s pants and tore off his boxer shorts. Tooth’s dick had shrunk in fear and his scrotum was as tight against his groin as a walnut.

Skinny Man went dazed again, started touching himself as he looked at Tooth’s genitals. He started to dance a bit, rubbing himself harder and harder. Then he licked his lips and looked at Butch, who was licking his own chops.

“Who’s hungry?” he asked. Butch barked.

Skinny Man lunged, grabbed Tooth’s dick, and sliced it off.

Tooth screamed, the razors opening his cheeks back to his ears. His bowels let loose and evacuated all over the floor, piss spraying out like it was coming from a showerhead.

From the back room Jamie screamed and I followed her lead.

Skinny Man took the wormish body part and tossed it into Butch’s dog dish. The dog walked over and sniffed it and sank his teeth into it, bit it in half and swallowed the pieces. Once again, this was followed by a quick repair job from the blazing shovel, which Skinny Man pressed against Tooth’s stumped, bloody groin. Smoke rose as the hair and flesh fused shut.

Tooth passed out.

Skinny Man put the shovel back in the stove and shot me a smile. “Back in a bit,” he said.

The collar around Tooth’s neck caught him as he fainted and swung him side to side, slowly. I thought for sure his neck would break, but his chin was taking most of his weight. He was alive, though I wasn’t sure how long that would last. His naked lower half was bubbled with third degree burns, and fluids were leaking out like lava from a cracked volcano wall.

Upstairs, Skinny Man was stomping around and talking loudly to someone, no doubt Butch. It sounded like they were arguing about something: a day of the week, laundry, other nonsense that meant nothing-or everything-depending on how you looked at it. This went on for several minutes and then I heard the door to the driveway open and Skinny Man go out, slamming it behind him. Faintly, I heard a car motor start and fade into the distance.

We were alone.

If we didn’t get out now we might not ever. “Help! Anyone! Help us!” I yelled. I didn’t know how long he’d be gone for and I had to try the obvious. “Please, somebody, help me!” I waited and tried again, but still got no response.

“Tooth,” I said, “You’ve got to stand up. The chain is going to choke you.”

He didn’t respond, just hung there with his eyes closed, his feet dragging through his own feces. He looked like a monster, an unrecognizable mass of contusions. The razor wire had done its job and I imagined you could flip his head open and use his skull as a bowl.

I pulled on the chains again, hoping they might have loosened in the past few hours, but my wishful thinking was squashed like a bug; the chains were fortified links of imprisonment. Tooth was onto something before, about figuring out how to get Skinny Man while still in our binds, and right before he came downstairs, Tooth had that proverbial lightbulb over his head. Unfortunately, I hadn’t the faintest idea what he had thought of.

I had to think, and I had to do it outside the box. Tooth had tried to yank his wrist through the cuffs, ripped a chunk of skin off, and beamed. But I knew he’d never get his hand through in one piece. What was his plan?

I was wracking my brain when I heard the car return, tires crunching on the gravel driveway. Shit, that was fast. Or was it? Time didn’t measure the same to me anymore; the seconds lasted hours and the hours blurred into a single frozen moment. The driveway door opened and keys jingled down the stairs, stopped behind the sunset photo. For a brief moment Skinny Man just stood there, listening. There was nothing to hear though-Tooth was out, Jamie was crying softly and incoherently, and I was quietly listening. What was he hoping to hear? Us making plans? Then it dawned on me: he was just playing around. Coming down the stairs as loud as he did, he knew I must have heard him. Like the incident with the gun, he was just messing with my head.

Sure enough, the door unlocked and Skinny Man came back into the room carrying a brand new roll of duct tape in his hands. Butch followed him in and went and sat by his dishes.

“Should have done this first I guess,” he said. “Some people just love to say ‘I told you so.’”

He tore off a piece and slammed it over Tooth’s mouth, covering the razor wire. The blood, saliva and pus made the tape slick and he had to put a few pieces on, wrapping it around the entire head before it would stick. He did me next, pressing it against my face so tight I thought my head would cave in. Having to breathe solely through my nose accentuated the stench of the room, which was beyond anything I’d ever dreamt possible. Dead fish in a hot trunk would have smelled better. Next, he disappeared into the back room and muffled Jamie’s cries. When he came out he put his hands on his hips and stared at Butch.

“Are you satisfied now?”

The dog sat like a bump on a log, obviously aware that his master’s brains were made of diarrhea. But Skinny Man gave a little chuckle, and for the first time I thought maybe he was just messing with us. Maybe the whole talking-to-the-dog thing was a ruse in case we escaped. I tried to remember if Son of Sam had pleaded insanity, but I couldn’t recall.

He came over and picked Tooth’s Red Sox cap off the floor, brushed it off and put it back on Tooth’s head. “Should’ve known you was a Red Sox fan. Never met an asshole that wasn’t. Hear tell that Red Sox fans are the most loyal fans around, but if you ask me, anyone who roots for these losers year after year after year, that ain’t loyalty, that’s just plain ignorance.”

Tooth made a little snuffle and blinked his eyes. I prayed for him to wake up, at least so he wouldn’t choke. But then I thought better he choke than get butchered any more. God, was I really giving in?

Blood was seeping out around the tape on Tooth’s face and running down his chin. It reminded me of a movie I’d seen, Force Ten From Navarone , where Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw were trying to blow up a dam. When they blew the dynamite, little cracks zig-zagged along the dam wall. The water trickled out slowly at first and they thought they’d failed the mission, but slowly the cracks widened until the whole dam broke apart and fell into the river. I almost expected Tooth’s head to do that now, just crumble apart and spill his brains down his shoulders. But Skinny Man must have seen the same movie, because he took out a pocket knife and poked a hole through the tape into Tooth’s mouth, letting the blood run out and pool on the floor.