Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

Being in the kitchen sent my stomach ablaze. The last thing I’d eaten were some eggs at my house before we set out for Bobtail. The refrigerator was sure to have food, I thought, but I didn’t open it. I didn’t trust any of the food in this house. I wouldn’t put it past Skinny Man to poison it somehow.

Ignoring the cramping in my stomach, I ducked low and moved across the kitchen until I was in front of the sink. Over it was a window that looked out into the backyard, and Skinny Man’s voice was coming through it loud and clear. “You bury that back up ’fore someone sees it. And don’t touch that one neither.” There was a pause. “Poor fella, he didn’t deserve to get shot like that. We were probably too quick with that fucking kid, felt like it was over before it began. Unsatisfactory, I tell ya.”

Butch’s black teeth marks in my shin were opening up once again and dripping blood down my ankle. The pain was sensational, making my head throb, but I ignored it and rose up slowly and moved aside the edge of the curtain. Outside, Butch was sitting on the ground under the swing set watching Skinny Man tamp down dirt on a freshly-dug hole. As usual, he had his shirt off, his tattoos like thick veins on his skin. The shovel he carried was different than the one in the stove downstairs. This one was newer, the handle still shiny yellow. On his hip, dangling through a leather loop that fastened to his belt, he wore the hand ax he had so recently removed from Mystery Woman’s skull.

The man was like a walking advertisement for the Tool of the Month Club.

Turning on the sink, I bent down and lapped up some tap water. There were hints of chemicals in it, possibly chlorine and other bacteria-killing agents poured into the reservoir by the city, but I didn’t mind. My throat was dry and sore and it was hard to swallow, but it was the greatest feeling in the world. I filled my empty stomach, gasped for breath, and did it again. Not for too much longer though, a few seconds tops, and then I turned it off. My body demanded more but the house was old, and I feared the pipes might knock and give me away.

Just to be safe I checked the window once more and found Skinny Man was still preoccupied. He hadn’t heard me. I let the curtain fall back and slid down to the floor again. My adrenaline was wearing off, my leg was aching badly, and the grimy tile floor suddenly felt very comfortable, beckoning me to put my head down and sleep. Each time I blinked I saw something different before me: my parents eating dinner, the waves of the Pacific, Jesus playing basketball. Then, like sap down a tree, my back began to drift toward the floor. I was falling asleep and couldn’t stop it. It felt so good.

No, you’ll die, I told myself, and Jamie will die too. Get up!

I slapped myself in the face and when that didn’t work I stuck a finger in the dog bite.

Sweet Lord the pain was intense, like someone peeling back a giant hangnail on my lower body. But it served its purpose. I woke up in a flash and crawled out of the kitchen, trembling as I held the blade of the ax in my hand to avoid any noise. It was damn near pointless since the leg irons jingled so loudly you could hear them in Vermont.

I crawled into a musty, wood-paneled living room that was likewise buried in shadow from drawn curtains. Standing up, fighting the pain in my shin, I saw a couch that looked as if it had been made out of hand-me-down clothes. A collection of notebooks and Polaroid photographs were strewn about on the cushions. I picked one up and immediately threw it down when I saw what it was a picture of. No amount of shaking my head would clear away the image of two little boys on a floor, naked. One had a rottweiler’s prick in his mouth, against his will. The other boy was mutilated, diced, and the second dog was feasting on the remains. Don’t think about it, I told myself. Think about Jamie, think about Jamie and about California and find a fucking phone. Just don’t, whatever you do, think about it.

A water ring-stained coffee table sat in the middle of the floor, covered with dirty dishes and a bowl full of keys. Car keys by the looks of them. Maybe ten different pairs. Quickly, I ran my hand through it, hoping to find Tooth’s Camaro keys, but came up empty. As I was turning away to continue my search for a phone, I noticed something else on the coffee table that made my heart leap.

Under an upturned magazine, poking out like a turtle’s head, was the black muzzle of a gun. I snatched it up and looked at it, and sure enough, it was a 9mm-Tooth’s gun. Shaking so badly I almost dropped the damned thing, I rested the ax against my legs, ejected the gun’s clip like Tooth had shown me and checked for bullets. It was empty. I rummaged about the coffee table in the hopes of finding ammunition but all I found was junk. With a sigh, I slammed the clip back in and tucked the gun in my waistband in case I came across any bullets later.

There was no phone in here either.

Next to a black pipe that ran from a hole in the floor up through the ceiling-no doubt from the stove in the dungeon-was a staircase leading upstairs. I grabbed the banister and hauled myself up. The guy had to have a phone somewhere, didn’t he?

At the top of the stairs I stopped and listened. Skinny Man was still out back talking to Butch and I figured if there wasn’t a phone up here my best bet was to run out the front door into the woods across the street and make for Bobtail. Once he noticed I was gone, he’d be all over the road looking for me, probably send Butch out through the woods just to cover all the trails. The ax would help me, but I was very tired, and its weight was hurting my shoulders. My eyes were stinging from lack of sleep, and fatigue was creeping back up on me.

The stairs ended at the start of a hallway with three rooms-what appeared to be two bedrooms on either side and a bathroom at the end. I went into the bedroom to my right, which turned out to be filled with various boxes of clothes and other belongings. Pocketbooks, backpacks, sleeping bags. There were even a couple bicycles leaning up against one wall. Again, the drawn shades cast the room in a thick darkness, and from what I could see it was phoneless. Cursing under my breath, I turned back toward the hallway and noticed a small knife lying on top of the dresser near the door. It wouldn’t hurt to have as many weapons as possible, I thought. I picked it up and held it flush with the ax handle, so that if I had to I could drop the ax and still be holding the knife.

That’s when I noticed the photo.

It was lying flat on the dresser as well, and behind its cracked glass was a family of three: a mother, father and daughter, all standing next to the swing set that Skinny Man was standing next to right now. The little girl was maybe six or seven, blonde, with a front tooth missing, and she looked happy holding her father’s hand. The mother’s smile looked forced, and dark circles under her eyes spoke of extreme stress. The father was. . well, the father was Skinny Man. The smile that stretched across his face was longer then the Rio Grande. Was this his family? Where were they now? Did they leave him, or did he butcher them as well?

Truth was, I didn’t really care. I put the photo back on the dresser and left.

Skinny Man’s voice carried up to me as I went across the hall and peeked into what was arguably his bedroom. “Soon as I finish this up you’re gonna help me take care of that troublemaker down there, make him wish he was his friend, and I want you to help me out and not give me any lip. What do you mean do him fast? I don’t want to do it fast. We been too hasty with these fuckers. We gonna take our time and do him right.”

I had to find a phone or get out now. In the bedroom, a large four poster bed sat among heaps of more clothing, magazines, notebooks, photographs, and a broken acoustic guitar. On the nightstand beside the bed was a glass of water and some crumpled up pieces of paper. Hanging on the post of the bed was a beat up Red Sox cap. I walked over and took it off, looked at it and knew instantly it was Tooth’s. Holding it brought back the recent events I was trying so hard to block out. The torture, the pain, the way he’d fought till the very end. The way I’d cried and cried through it all, praying the dice would ignore me. We had set out to shoot beer cans and smoke weed, just two friends trying to hold onto a childhood that was slowly disintegrating with age. And then. .