Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

“Jumping Jesus, that fucker was starting to stink like my Aunt Gretchen’s ass sores.” It was Skinny Man, bounding down the stairs with Butch in tow. His limp prick swished back and forth like a broken watch hand. He was dirty, like he’d been digging, and the sonofabitch was wearing Tooth’s Red Sox hat. I put the spike behind my lower back and pressed my body against the wall to hold it there.

“I put him next to Sundance, so the dog can get his revenge,” he said. “Better late than never, you know. And Sundance, he don’t like people that mess with him. He’s a mean mother when he gets mad. Like this one time, delivery man comes to the door, and Sundance he’s all barking and fixing to bite the guy’s nuts off. But the guy figures he’s safe because Sundance is behind the screen door and all, so he yells, ‘Shut up, you smelly mutt!’ And Sundance, you know what he did? He goes around the back and opens the back door and runs around to the front and bites the fucker in the ass. Tore a chunk right out. The guy’s screaming and hollering for me to get the dog off him. But at that point it was out of my hands. Butch comes tearing through the house right behind Sundance, sees his brother having so much fun, and goes right for the neck. BAM! Just like that. Boy, we had fun with the fella, didn’t we, Butch? Say, you ever seen one of these?”

He held up a short, slick, tube-like object. It was grayish-white where it wasn’t covered in blood, and ringed with ridges.

“It’s called a trachea. Interesting, I think. It’s Butch’s favorite. Here, boy, here ya go.”

The dog took it and went over to his dish and put it on the floor. This seemed pretty amusing to Skinny Man, whose cackle filled the room. “What’s the matter with you? You look like you got a pole up yer ass.” He walked over to the dice, shooed away some flies and picked them up.

“I suppose you know what that looks like.” I cursed myself for replying. What if he grabbed me and I dropped the spike? I wasn’t thinking worth a shit.

“Actually I don’t, but we got time enough to find out. Where’s that duct tape?”

“Who was she?” I asked.

He looked at me funny, then hit on what I was talking about. “That bitch? She was probably someone’s girlfriend or wife or mother. I don’t really know, I didn’t ask.”

“Why did you kill her?”

“What is this, a Barbra Walters special? What do you care?”

“I just want to know what she did to you, what we did to you, why you’re doing this.”

“You’re just stalling. But it won’t help you because I’m in the mood for walking, not talking.”

“I want to know.” I really did want to know, but I was also stalling.

Skinny Man got kind of sullen and put his nose to mine and breathed into my mouth. “Because if I don’t they get mad at me, hurt me. Even right now they’re listening and if they hear what I’m telling you they’re gonna be pissed. And if they get pissed nothing I do to you is gonna satisfy them. They’ll just make me go on and on. Oh, son, I really wish you hadn’t come here, but what can I do about it now?”

Who was they ? The dogs? The flies? Ghosts? But then he chuckled and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. Did he ever stop laughing? Psychiatrists might classify it as a nervous tic, but somehow, I knew he was truly finding pleasure in all this pain. That, on some deep level, scared me more than anything.

“My odds are looking good this time,” he said as he played with the dice. “Fifty-fifty chance I roll your number. You want odds or evens?”

“I want you to die.” I didn’t know where that came from, it just burst out before I could stop it. I figured he’d slug me for it and I drop the spike and then all would be lost, but he didn’t seem to mind. I’m sure he’d heard it all before.

“You’re kind of an oddball, so I’ll make you evens.”

In his own head, he was the funniest thing since the whoopie cushion, and that last remark must have been his coup de grace because he doubled over and snorted a bunch. “Get it?” he asked, still choking on his laughter, “’cause you’re odd. . see. . and I said even. Get it? Shit, boy, don’t you ever laugh? They say it’s good for the soul, ya know. Aw, forget it, you’re no fun.”

He tossed the dice at my chest and they bounced across the floor like two kids playing tag. I couldn’t see the numbers where they landed, but Skinny Man looked really pissed when he looked at them.

“Fine,” he said, coming over and looking at me. “Fine. I’m a patient man, I am. Good things come to those who wait, I tell ya. And when she’s gone you ain’t gonna have no easy out. You fucking freak!”

He bent down and scooped up all his torture toys and started wiggling. He had to catch a couple small knives as they escaped his grasp, but he held them tightly and went over into Jamie’s room. Within seconds she was crying. My chest went tight and breathing came hard. She was alive, and I thanked God for that, but was it worth it, was this really living?

I dropped the spike back into my hand and thought frantically about what to do. The links in the chains might be breakable, though my only experience in handcuffs before this told me not to get my hopes up. Still, without another choice, I jammed the tip of the spike into one of the links and tried to bend it. But it was no use. I needed a fulcrum point, some way to pry at the link without moving the chain. The wall, I thought, use the wall. I put the spike against the wall and leaned back against it, and held it still with my hand. It was a tricky position to maintain, but the wall provided reinforcement, and when I thrust my body backward, the spike drove in the link. The cuff ripped into my wrist and it felt like my bones were mashing. Ever so little, I could see the link warping, but at this rate I’d either break my wrist or die an old man before I got free.

“What you got there?”

I jumped at the voice, dropped the spike to the floor.

“When did you get that?” Skinny Man asked, holding a small knife in his hand that was covered in Jamie’s hair and dripping blood. “You’re a real sneaky Pete, ain’t ya. But I believe that belongs to me.”

He snatched it up and hit me on the head with it. The blow rang through my skull and lodged behind my eyes.

“I forgot something upstairs. If I come back and find you doing anything funny I’m gonna cut your ears off and sew them into your sister.”

He took off up the stairs, leaving me alone with Jamie’s screeching pleas for death. Well, not entirely alone-Butch was sniffing at the door to Jamie’s room, riled up by the noise and jonesing for flesh.

While Jamie cried, Butch whined and shot me a sad face as if to ask whether I could open the door for him. The dog had no manners. He gave up after a minute and went and lay near his dishes again, eyes glued to the door, his collar jingling against a piece of bone as he stretched out.

Dog collar.

Like a slap across the face something hit me. Something out of left field I had never noticed before. Butch was wearing a dog collar. I mean, I had noticed it all along, but it hadn’t meant anything before. It never registered. But dog collars had buckles, and one part of a buckle was the small arm. Small enough, say, to fit into a cuff lock?

I was still pretty sure I’d never pick the lock. Fuck, I was so drained I probably couldn’t do it with the key. But hope was still squatting in my brain, like a shit-faced drunk in an empty Beverly Hills estate, stretched out on the wraparound couch drinking fine aged bourbon, feet up on the wall, scratching his ass with a priceless antique rapier. In control is what I’m getting at. Making it impossible to sit still.