Ryan Thomas: The Summer I Died

Tooth’s one and only goal in life: to get away from the shitty hand he’d been dealt and start fresh. Now he wasn’t in California; he was in a shallow grave in some lunatic’s backyard. I had to do this for him.

“Look at you, crying like a pansy. Shit, you can’t hurt me, you’re coming back to my place whether you like it or not.”

True, I was still crying, but it wasn’t out of fear anymore-it was for what I had lost, what I would never regain. What I had been made into, like so many comic book heroes I had hung on my walls growing up. I was crying because I was now a monster.

Roger Huntington was dead.

With tears dripping into my bleeding lips, I reached into my pockets and pulled out the dice that Skinny Man had been so fond of.

“We gonna play a game? That’s good, I like games,” he said.

I held them in my hand, two red dice that seemed at home in the smears of blood in my palm. Skinny Man was on his feet now, one hand over the hole in his neck, the other a fist by his side. He turned and saw the gun he’d been reaching for and began to hobble over to it. It was empty, but I didn’t care. I squeezed the dice against the ax handle and cleared my mind of anything and everything. Except California-I would go there one way or another.

I limped over to Skinny Man and waited while he bent down to pick up the gun. With a triumphant, “Ah,” he grabbed it, spun around and pointed it at me. And that’s when I swung the ax.

With a crunch, it wedged into the right side of his face, splitting open his cheek, lodging in his jawbone and exploding his teeth out toward the lawn. The thick blade locked his upper and lower jaws together so that the gurgle of surprise came straight from his throat. Both his body and the gun fell to the ground, bounced on the cement. I put my foot on his face and yanked out the ax, which came loose with a squeak. A fountain of blood spit up around the white, exposed bone. He reached up for me, but I grabbed his hand, placed it on the road, and swung the ax at it. The blade went straight through with one clean cut. I tossed the hand out toward the middle of the road. The only sounds he seemed able to make were grunts and blood-filled coughs. I grabbed his other hand and swung the ax down on it, taking it off in two chops. He was looking at me with more fear than I had ever seen a man convey before, and I wanted to end him right there, but I owed something to Tooth and Jamie. So I swung the ax at his bare chest and it sank into his breastplate with a thud. His body lurched, and he tried to grab me but his stumps couldn’t get a hold. I pulled the ax out and watched blood ooze from the fissure in the bestiality tattoo covering his chest

“You did this!” I screamed. “Why! Why did you do this!” I was crying so hard it was like looking through saran wrap.

Something over my shoulder caught his attention, and I spun around as a brown station wagon drove down the street. It came at us slowly, as if it was concerned about hitting us. Maybe it thought we were a couple kids wrestling or something. But then I saw recognition in the driver’s eyes, a small old lady with pearl white hair. She slammed on the gas and sped away.

I looked around me and saw the forest and the street, but at the same time I was having those flashes of California-the beach, the palm trees, so free, so warm, beckoning for me to stay, to never go back to New Hampshire. But I wasn’t finished.

Skinny Man sat up waving his arms like two snakes, his half-butchered head tilted to the side. My tears were stinging my eyes now, I could hear myself crying. I swung the ax again, swung it into his shoulder and began to take his arm off of his body. I had to pull it out and repeat it several times before I got through the bone, before the arm actually came off, after which I tossed it out into the street near the hands. His eyes glazed over and I knew he was near death, so I swung the ax at his head and sank it into his forehead over his right eye. The skull split wide open, the eye fell out. He fell back to the ground with the ax still protruding. His legs kicked a little, and he blinked at me with his left eye while his mouth tried to form words. I dropped the dice onto his chest and screamed. At first no sound came out, as if I’d forgotten how to use vocal cords. Then, in one giant rush of air, my scream erupted into the heavens above. I screamed so loud it hurt my own ears. I screamed until my muscles burned with exertion. I screamed with everything I had in me, purging myself of every ounce of sanity. I screamed for so long I tasted blood. I was still screaming, my head thrown toward God, when the police car pulled to a stop several feet down the road.

“Get on the ground right now!”

I kept screaming, my tears dripping on the cement like rain. The cop was ducked behind his car door, arms outstretched, with his gun aimed at me. He clicked the radio receiver on his shoulder and spoke quickly, “Officer needs assistance, now! I’ve got a ten-fifty. . uh. . a ten-thirty-seven. . fuck, I don’t know what I got! Somebody just get to Highridge Way right now!”

“Teddy? That you?” came a static-laden reply. “Hold on, I’m on my way.”

“I said lay down, motherfucker!” he yelled, turning his attention back to me. “Don’t make me fucking shoot you. Get on the ground and kiss the fucking dirt or I will empty your brains onto the road. NOW!”

He could have started firing for all I cared. I was somewhere else. I was in California eating ice cream and drawing superheroes.

Again he called over his radio. “I need an ambulance out here right now. And somebody tell the chief.” Slowly, he came around the door with his gun still trained on my head. Probably he wanted to shoot me, get a medal for his bravery, win a trip to the capital to meet the governor. “Stop fucking screaming and lay down, I will not tell you again!”

Did he really think I was listening to him? Hell, did I even care if he shot me at this point? Yeah, I guess I did. Truth was, part of me was just tired, both physically and mentally, to the point I’d been seeing things for a while, but the other part of me knew that Tooth and Jamie would want me to live. I didn’t want to die; I was just too messed up to do anything about it.

He stopped a few feet away from me, leaned forward and took a long hard look at my handiwork. “What have you done? What the flying fuck is that? You sick fucking maniac. I ought to shoot you right now. Oh, my God, what did you do? Where’s his arm? Where are-” He had finally noticed the body parts in the street. He clicked on his radio again. “Hurry up! Now!”

Finally, all my voice ran out, and I sat with my mouth gaping open, saliva dribbling down my chin, not making a peep. The officer could see that his threats were useless; he could tell I wasn’t right. For a moment he just stared at me muttering “What the hell,” and I stared back, and he didn’t know what to make of me. I think he was starting to put something together though, like he could see the difference in age between me and Skinny Man, could see the disgusting tattoos on his torso, could see the piss stains on my shorts, the dried blood on my body and the leg irons on my ankles. His angry expression turned to confusion and caution. I think he was adding it up.

Suddenly, Skinny Man’s body jumped. I don’t know if it was nerves or if he was still alive or what, but the officer screamed, “Holy shit!” and sprinted back to his car. His hands shaking, the gun trembling, he hid behind his door once more. But Skinny Man didn’t move after that. Maybe it was his soul trying to escape toward heaven, and the movement had been the devil yanking it back through his ass toward hell.

“Sir?” Officer Teddy called. “Sir, are you alive? If you can hear me, make a movement, anything to let me know you’re alive.”