The Summer I Died

by Ryan C. Thomas

  Butch was sniffing the wound on my leg, whimpering like he was waiting for an okay to take a bite. I hated that dog. I wanted to kill it just as slowly as I wanted to kill Skinny Man.

  “I searched your car and found this,” he said to Tooth. He held up a pay stub. “Mervyn. What the fuck kind of name is that?” He balled it up and tossed it on the floor. Butch ran to it and sniffed it but sensing it wasn’t a fresh kill went and sat by his bowls.

  It hit me that he must have moved the car. No park ranger would come looking for us now.

  From the room behind us came a plea for help. Jamie was awake. Tooth recognized her voice and looked at me with bulging eyes. I wanted to call to her, to tell her to be quiet, but the gag filled my mouth and I didn’t want to piss off Skinny Man. Now more than ever I needed to get out of here before anything happened to Jamie.

  He went up the stairs and returned with an armload of wood which he lit up in the stove. Like a Pavlovian dog, I started sweating, because the last time he did that he tried to cook the mystery woman, and now he had Jamie, and would he cook her right in front of me? After the logs were cracking and popping with flames, he took the shovel off the tool table and placed it back in the fire.

  “Don’t know where you live yet,” he said, waltzing back over to Tooth, “but I’ve got other ways of amusing myself.” He pulled the gun out from the back of his waistband, cocked it, and put it to Tooth’s head. I cringed, expecting my friend’s brains to explode onto the side of my face, but the bastard didn’t pull the trigger. He was just trying to drive us crazy. Instead, he put it in his pocket and held up the dice.

  Tooth was breathing hard, his charred lips singed and gooey like marshmallows that had fallen in a campfire.

  “Oh boy, what to do, what to do. This is always the hard part, deciding where to begin. Never had three fresh ones at the same time before. I kind of feel like a kid in a candy shop. I don’t want to go too fast, though, an opportunity like this should be savored. Had me two before. Had me one and half, too. Fuck, I had me halves scattered all about like the earth was bearing babies. Babies, oh yeah, had me one of them once, too. Pretty little girl with bright blue eyes. So trusting when they’re young, will follow you anywhere you call ’em sweetie and precious. Yeah, that one, I hung her face on my wall to remind me of how precious our time together was. And now I got me three. What to do, what to do. Best to let fate decide for me. You’re one through four,” he said pointing at me. “You’re five through eight,” he said to Tooth, “and the bitch in the back is the rest.” Butch barked a couple times to which Skinny Man replied, “I’ll handle it my way! You stay outta this!”

  He tossed the dice on the ground and they came up a three and a six. Who was nine again? Then my stomach bubbled, my head swam. What was he going to do to Jamie? He was going to rape her, I just knew it. He was going to rape her and beat her and cook her alive. Tooth was thinking the same thing, I could tell. He was yanking his chains away from the wall to no avail.

  Butch barked. Skinny Man screamed, “Just hold on! I only got two hands!”

  My God, he was insane. He was the devil, arguing with his hellhound.

  A shoe flew at my head and missed by an inch. The crazy fuck was getting undressed in front of us. I shook my head, bit the rag to try and rip it in half. The dog kept barking while the maniac tore his pants off. Faster and faster he ripped his wardrobe off and then flung it about the room. Once he was fully naked he squeezed himself and lurched about as if he had no control over his body, as if he was Satan’s marionette.

  As he moved, his tattoos undulated like underwater scenes of hell. I could see them clear as day now: dogs raping women, wolves eating babies. The muscles in his arms and back tightened and flexed, and even though he was skinny, he had a tautness to him. One look and you knew he could lash out at you with rattlesnake reflexes. He took up moaning as he danced, like an engine revving up for take off. When his dancing reached its frenetic peak, his arms and legs snapping this way and that, his moaning a full-on siren, he took a pair of hedge-cutting shears off the table, spun around wildly, ran into the room with Jamie and slammed the door.

  Then for a few moments everything went silent. Tooth and I stopped fighting the chains, just listened. The raspy wheezing of Butch’s breath was all we heard, a scratchy sound like someone raking leaves.

  Then faintly, Jamie spoke. “Please don’t. Oh God, please don’t.” I could hear her hyperventilating. “No. No, please!”

  Then she screamed.

  I went wild. Tooth struggled with all his might but the chains held. Over the dog’s breathing, and our frantic attempt to free ourselves, Jamie’s high-pitched wail cut into my heart, stopped my breath like someone was stamping on my chest.

  She just kept screaming and screaming. Butch was up and pawing at the door, licking his chops. I fought so hard my wrists began to bleed. Maybe thirty seconds went by before the door opened again and Skinny Man came out carrying the hedge-cutting shears and a mound of gore. I felt faint. I had no idea what part of my sister the bloody flesh belonged to, but I knew it was part of her. Tooth was trying to scream around the gag but he wasn’t making any sense. The sores around his mouth split, dribbling more snot-colored pus down the corners of his lips.

  Skinny Man dropped the goop in the dog dish and removed the shovel from the stove. I felt like I was watching it all through the large end of binoculars. It seemed so far away. The glowing shovel, bright red from the fire, left an afterimage in my retina when he went back in the other room.

  I waited with baited breath and it wasn’t long before we heard the faint singe of skin followed by Jamie’s horrific cry. Then he returned, with that sedated look people get after eating a big meal, and put the shovel back in the stove. He scooped up his clothes and went up the stairs. Before he did though, he set the clippers against the wall near the door, as if to remind us of our nightmare.

  Despite the gag, I screamed for Jamie, annunciating as best I could. “Jamie? Jamie, please, talk to me, say something.” I sounded like a drunk with a swollen tongue.

  We waited and listened. There was no response. Was she dead? Did that psycho just kill her? The moment was too much to bear and I threw up. The puke shot around the gag and ran down my shirt. I hadn’t eaten anything in a long time, so most of what came up was bile. The combination of piss and blood and puke collecting on the floor was so foul I figured the stench of the house alone might bring the police.

  The boiler rumbled, the fire crackled, Tooth panted. I stared at the dry puddle of skin that had melted off Mystery Woman and tried not to think of anything.

  I could tell you that time passed, but it didn’t so much pass as jump ahead to another point, everything in between just a black spot in my memory.

  Until, finally, she spoke.

  “Mom,” she said. He words were strained. “Mom. Dad. Please, somebody help me. Oh God, it hurts. It hurts.”

  “Jamie.” Whispering her name in the dark. . I’d never whispered like that before. You know, that kind of whisper where the words become an emotion. The kind of whisper that wakes something inside of you.

  I threw my head back and let my body shake; I don’t know why. I was just so happy she was alive it was more than I could bear.

  Tooth and I exchanged determined looks and I knew what he was thinking, same as he knew what I was thinking. We had always shared the same brain more or less. We were thinking, there’s always a way out, you just have to find it. Neither Batman nor the Silver Surfer were going to save us. This was real life, and if we wanted out we had to do it ourselves. At that point, with myself covered in regurgitated food, and Tooth swollen and burnt, a silent vow passed between us. No more waiting to die. We were going to escape. And if we died trying, then so be it.

  As I leaned back listening to my sister cry, I realized for the first time how much she meant to me. All our fighting and name-calling meant nothing anymore. She was my sister, and I loved her, and if I had to die to save her I was
prepared.

  Near the stove, Butch chomped up the last of her flesh and licked his lips. He pawed the door open, slipped through, and with a grunt he went upstairs.

  I turned back to Tooth and nodded a few times to let him know I was ready and able. I imagined myself with him, in California on the beach, watching the waves roll in. It was serene, and suddenly I felt okay about dying-not the pain part, just the part about not existing. Probably we would never see California, or the outside of this cellar ever again, but I felt okay.

  I caught Tooth’s eyes and followed the motion of his nodding head. It was his way of telling me we had to talk so I started working at the gag. Barbed wire or no, we had to formulate a plan.

  CHAPTER 15

  We worked tirelessly to get the gags out of our mouths, until our jaws were damn near swollen. It was worse for Tooth, because every time he moved his jaw his burnt lips split and bled like squashed cockroaches. And the gags were tight; Skinny Man hadn’t been playing when he tied them. It took about a half hour of mandible work before we loosened them enough to converse coherently. We left them wrapped around our bottom lips so we could put them back in our mouths if we sensed trouble.

  First thing I did was call out to Jamie, to see if she was okay. Her faint response was disheartening. She couldn’t tell it was me; I guess she thought I was Skinny Man because she kept begging me to let her go, saying she wouldn’t tell anyone. It was a familiar plea, and I realized how crazy it sounded when I put myself in our maniac’s shoes.

  I shouted, “Jamie, it’s me, Roger. I’m in the next room. Can you move?”

  She just babbled and cried and told God she hurt. She was alive, but no help to us. I could only imagine what had been done to her. Every time I blinked I saw Butch licking his lips-it made me ill.

  “She doesn’t know it’s you. You’re just scaring her,” Tooth said.

  “Exactly why I want her to know it’s me.”

  “She’s in shock, it won’t register. Worry about the chains first and then we’ll get Jamie.”

  “These chains are welded tight,” I said as I yanked on them. “I can’t break ’em. You make any progress?”

  “No. Plus I can’t feel my leg anymore, feels like I’m floating on air.”

  “Can you move your foot?”

  He shifted his foot just a little. “I guess, but I don’t feel myself doing it. We have to stop this guy.”

  “I’m way ahead of you. But how, when he’s got us bound like this?”

  “I think we’re going about this all wrong. The chains can’t be broken, and he ain’t going to let us out. He wants us tightly wrapped so he can pick at us like leftover turkeys in a fridge. So let’s think about this in a different way. How can we get him while we’re chained up?”

  We looked about the room, reevaluating what we had noticed earlier. Nothing had changed; it was the same dank cellar with a couple of future murder victims chained to the wall. The shovel was in the stove, the hedge shears were against the wall near the table. The boiler still droned its incessant hum. The arm that had been on the ground near the dog dish was stripped bare and covered in dirt. But those few items made little difference toward escaping.

  “This is useless,” I said, “there’s nothing here to help us. He’s crazy but he’s not stupid. Look, he left those shears there to remind us of what he did to my sister. He knows these chains are foolproof and we can’t get out of them.”

  “There’s got to be something. You read a lot of comics, what would someone in our position do to escape?”

  “Fuck, Tooth, this is real. Nobody in a comic would be in this position unless it involved kryptonite chains or laser beams or some piece of science fiction. But this ain’t fiction. Not even the best writers could get a regular hero out of this.” I thought about Batman using his utility belt again. What would he do without it? He’d probably have to rely on Robin to save him or tricking his captor into setting him free. When it came to real life situations, comic writers weren’t all that imaginative. “They’d just write a rusty link into the chains and break it. But these fucking chains are like new. And the cuffs are sharp enough to cut us open.”

  “What about the wall?’

  I looked at the concrete behind me, leaned back against it. It was thick. I couldn’t be certain just how thick, but it was part of the foundation, and based on other foundations I’d seen, it had to be at least twelve inches. We weren’t going to break it, which is what I told Tooth.

  He ignored me and tried to pull his hands through his handcuffs. He did it until it cut into his wrists and blood trickled down the chain. Finally, resignation settled across his face and he gave up and leaned back. “God, I’m tired,” he said.

  So was I. The few minutes I’d been able to sleep had done nothing to revitalize me. And I ached as well. The chains were rubbing away the skin around my wrists, and I could feel blisters forming. My cut wrist stung every time it scraped my bindings. At least I wasn’t alone in that club. It happened to Tooth as well.

  We thought silently for a bit, desperately inventing methods of escape that couldn’t come true without Hollywood special effects or an act of God. If only the chains would break. If only the plates could be pulled from the wall. If only someone would come by so we could yell to them. Anything.

  Jamie was still crying. Mostly it was a low murmur, but at times it was worse. She would call for my mother or father, and that’s when I felt hopeless. I gave up thinking about escape and sort of floated out of my body, thinking about other things like how no one would ever know what happened to us. How the dog would eat us and shit us out in a small hole in the yard. How my parents would spend the rest of their lives hoping some day we’d walk in the front door saying, “Hi, sorry we were gone so long, just went sightseeing for a while, but we’re back now, what’s for dinner?” Then Jamie’s voice brought me back, because she said my name.

  “I’m here!” I shouted.

  But she didn’t respond. She was just going out of her mind, calling out any name that was lodged in her subconscious. Tooth met my eyes and then looked away, unsure how to console me. If we got out of this, the therapy we would undergo would be unearthly.

  “I lied to you, Roger.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. “What do you mean? About what?”

  “I kind of dig your sister. I was going to try and fuck her when you went back to school. I’m sorry. I’m only human, and your sister is hot.”

  I was mad. I couldn’t believe he would do that to me. I couldn’t believe he was even bringing it up right now. “You sonofabitch. Why do you have to screw every girl you see? She’s my sister.”

  “It’s funny, you guys have been at each other’s throats for years, now all of a sudden you come back from school and you’re all Mr. Protective. Why the change? You really care about her, huh?”

  “Yeah, I know, I never thought I’d see the day. I guess it’s because I’ve been at school. College guys only think of one thing.”

  “Was it any different in high school?” he asked.

  “No, but the difference is college girls give it up. And sometimes assholes think that because a girl has sex it means she’ll do it with anyone. A girl in my dorm was raped last semester. She didn’t come back this year.”

  I didn’t tell him it was the one I had a crush on, with the Star Wars poster, or that it was her own boyfriend who raped her. I didn’t want to talk about it. When I came home and saw Jamie, saw how much she’d changed in those few months, with her tight clothes and low cut jeans, it made me think of what went on at college campuses all over the world. Tooth was right-Jamie was good looking, and he was exactly the kind of guy that would hurt her.

  “If it means anything, I wouldn’t have fucked her and chucked her, I would have. . I mean. .”

  But I think her cries got to him, because he suddenly jerked on the chains until he was almost out of breath.

  “Shit! We can’t give up,” he said. “This can’t be
our fate. No way, motherfucker, no way. We’re going to get out of here and go out West, sit under some palm trees and watch the waves.”

  I thought about that, not the waves and palm trees, but fate. Like I said before, I wasn’t religious, although I was turning fast. I didn’t believe there was a cosmic plan, I just felt that shit happened and you dealt with it. But if fate existed, why was it our fate to become dog food? What end would it serve?

  I thought about what Tooth’s father had said, about everyone having a purpose, but I couldn’t figure out how it applied to us. What was Skinny Man’s purpose? He’d already killed one person we knew of, bragged about some others and most likely was going to finish us off, too. What possible purpose was there for him on our planet?

  “You’re not giving up on me, are you, Roger? That better not be defeat I sense in you.”

  I almost said yes. “No.”

  Still struggling, Tooth tried to pull his hand through his cuffs again, and this time he pulled so hard a spout of blood arced into the air. There was no way for me to duck out of its way so it landed on my shoulder. “Nhhhnn!” He ground his teeth and kept pulling and pulling until a flap of skin hung around his palm like a piece of luncheon meat. He was in tremendous pain but he was smiling.

  “Are you okay?” I asked like a fucking idiot. “What are you doing, committing suicide?”

  “No, but I think I know a way out.”

  “What, skin yourself? The cuffs are too tight. Even if you flayed your flesh, you wouldn’t get your bone through it.”

  The cut looked bad, but luckily it was on the back of his wrist, away from the artery.

  “These cuffs are really sharp, like he purposefully sharpened them.”

  “No shit. What’s your point?”

  He just kept staring at me like he’d won the lottery. I thought maybe he was starting to go a little insane. They say you do in situations like ours. Or maybe all that beer in his system had dulled his nervous system and he couldn’t feel pain anymore. If alcohol consumption was a power Tooth was a superhero all right. Then again, maybe he had figured something out. I was about to ask him when he shushed me and motioned toward the ceiling. Dust was falling in time with footsteps. Skinny Man was walking to the stairs.