Ryan Thomas - The Summer I Died

Kicking back, I hit the gaping wound on Skinny Man’s calf, rubbed the heel of my shoe down it and ripped it open wider. At the same time I scratched at his face and tore open the flesh under his eye. He lost his grip on me and I dropped straight to the floor, out of his hands. Groggy and gasping for breath, I lifted myself up as quickly as I could manage and kicked him in the chest, sent him into the bottom stair, which he tripped backwards on. Before he even hit the ground, he was pulling the hand ax free from its loop.

Knowing I was outnumbered two to one at that point, I unfastened the latch on the door and threw myself into the sunlight. I burst through the overgrown front lawn and made for the trees across the street.

I was halfway across the lawn when I looked back and saw Skinny Man coming at me with the hand ax. With the wound in my leg I wasn’t able to run as fast as I needed to and he was gaining on me, either used to the pain in his leg or so afraid of what would happen if I got away he didn’t care. By the time I reached the street he was nearly on top of me, swinging the bloodstained blade at my head. I fell to the cement and rolled out of the way, rolling myself back onto my feet and swinging my fists at him. Again, he tried to play whack-a-mole with my brain, but I managed to get my arms up under his and deflect the blow, our forearms smashing into each other. I kicked at him and he jumped back, putting his weight on his bad leg, which stopped him for a second.

“Stop that crying,” he told me. “If you’re going to act like some fucking superhero least you could do is play the part.”

I hadn’t even realized I was crying; I was too intent on not dying to notice what was going on physically. But as soon as he said it I realized my face was awash in tears. My body was shaking and my legs felt deflated. In front of me, the shirtless, bloodied madman was smiling like he’d released the frightened child inside of me.

Frightened yes, child no.

“Where you gonna go?” he asked. “Nowhere you can run I can’t find you. Butch is a good tracker; he’ll find you in a heartbeat. Best if you just came back over here and took your medicine like a man. In case you forgot, I know where you live, mama’s boy.”

I had forgotten that he still had my driver’s license, that he knew where I lived. Could I make it to Bobtail before he drove to my parent’s house and killed them? Or would he pack up and disappear for a long time, only to resurface ten years from now on my front porch, his little ax in his belt, a new pair of dogs at his heels?

It was driving me mad. He had all his angles covered, knew all the ways to defeat his victim even when he wasn’t around.

“You gonna kill my family like you killed yours!” I screamed.

He stayed back and replied, “Wasn’t me, mama’s boy, I just follow directions, and besides, they were bad. Always snooping in my stuff, nosing around where they shouldn’t be, trying to steal things. That little bitch was trying to steal my soul, sell it to the highest bidder. Kids are the devil’s minions, ya know. But she learned right from wrong when I dragged her behind my truck till her face came off. Yeah, she knew not to do bad things then, with her eyes smeared on the road.”

“You’re fucking crazy!’

“Get back here! Don’t make me drive and pick up yer mama, ’cause I will. I’ll fuck her rotten on top of yer corpse. I’ll fuck her with yer severed limbs. You want that? Either one works for me, as long as somebody is keeping them happy.”

Again with the them and they talk, psychotic babble that would land him in an institution instead of the electric chair. Somewhere deep down I knew that I could never live with that. I couldn’t let him go free, not now, not ever. Murder was the only option. I knew that. In a way I’d known it since waking up in the cellar; I’d been kidding myself it would never come to it. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore, I knew something was owed to Tooth and Jamie. . and myself, too.

As I reached the trees across the street, Skinny Man followed with the ax at the ready. Behind him loomed his house where I could only guess how many hikers and travelers had met their untimely ends in ungodly painful ways. It was almost as if I could look through the walls and see the ghosts of the unfortunate, Jamie’s dismembered torso on the ground in the dark, the empty chains where Tooth had suffered unthinkable pain.

“What’s it gonna be, superhero?”

Suddenly, I stopped. With an early afternoon breeze kissing my blood-streaked, tear-covered face, I watched him come at me a little slower, as if he was wondering what my plan was. There was no plan though, just that I knew I had to kill him. I knew once and for all I couldn’t just run away; I had to seize the opportunity that had been given to me. Given to me by the dice, given to me by years of reading comics, given to me by something higher than my understanding allowed. Given to me by what I had seen in the hallway upstairs.

Do it now, I told myself. Do it while he thinks you’re too weak and scared to attack. For Tooth, for Jamie. Don’t think about it, just do it. Do it for what he took from you, from this world.

And so I did.

From every ounce of my being, hatred welled up like an angry sea, and I rushed him head on. I heard myself scream, “NOOOOO!” but it sounded very far away. Remembering my trick on the boy at the liquor store, I pulled out the gun from my waistband as I charged, and tossed it to him. Reflexively, he went to catch it. But before he could our bodies collided and flew to the ground and I cracked my forehead into his nose, felt his blood erupt into my eyes.

Without thinking, my hand went to the ax he was swinging and stopped its descent toward my neck. My other fist pounded his eyes, pounded his mouth, pounded his broken nose. His punches landed square on my face, though I barely took notice of them. In the melee, my teeth sank into his neck and tore out a chunk of flesh which I spit back into his face. Blinded and choking on his own blood, he flailed like an overturned beetle in a puddle, punching me and trying to get the ax free of my grip, trying to reach with his other hand for the gun which had slid to the curb. Another headbutt dazed him and I wrenched the ax free from his hand. He put both arms over his head to protect himself, and I saw that he was no longer laughing-he was terrified.

Our roles had reversed.

I got off of him and took a step back and just watched him for a few seconds. He took his hands away from his face and looked up at me, the gaping wound in his neck wet and wide like a second mouth.

“What are you gonna do, boy?” he said as blood bubbled out from the hole near his Adam’s apple. He forced a smile I knew was wreaking havoc with his nose, the same stupid grin he sported in the photo upstairs. Upstairs where something else had been with us. “You gonna kill me, here, in the middle of the road?”

I looked around at the surrounding forests. The odds of anyone coming through here were slim. People were already at work, summer school buses had come and gone. We were alone.

“You fucking mama’s boy. You fucking loser. What do you think you can do to me?”

I didn’t even care enough to listen to him; I just kept seeing Tooth and Jamie lying in pools of blood. Those images would be with me forever, ruining my life until the day I died. Would I ever sleep again? Would I ever be happy? No matter what happened in the next few seconds, I would never be the same. I knew I was about to go somewhere I had never dreamed possible. All because of this man, and his sickness, his twisted insanity that had turned me inside out.

Let’s go to California.