‘He’s at the bottom of the Elliott family’s well. Has been ever since. You’d have known if you ever tried to investigate. But you know the secrets digging would unearth, didn’t you?’
Pete swallows hard and nods.
‘What I want from you, Pete, is a list of names. Everyone who was there that summer, man or child. Everyone you know. I want all of them.’
He shakes his head, and I don’t know if it’s a refusal or panic.
‘I’d think carefully,’ I say, ‘about what you decide to do with the next few minutes.’
The television laughs again.
He pales when I grab his pinkie finger and set the tip in the jaw of the bolt cutters. The finger comes off with asickening crunch and a spray of blood, his scream mingling with the tinny laughter.
It’s a good thing he’s at the far end of the village, and that his neighbours left in their car a while ago. Still, I punch him again anyway.
I want to say I enjoy his pain, but I feel hollow.
When no names come forth, I set the next finger in the cutters. I’m just about to press down when he relents.
‘Okay. Okay. I don’t know many names. Other than the local guys, we tried to keep things as anonymous as we could. There’s Bill. I don’t know his last name. Alan Jeffries. Martin Green. Jimmy.’
He looks green when he glances down at his missing finger.
‘Ummm… uh. There’s more. Just give me a minute.’
I snap the cutters, and another finger tip lands on the floor.
‘Please… Oh god.’
‘Who else?’
There’s a meow off to the side, and I see a chunky ginger cat watching us. Despite his owners crying and begging, the cat seems unfazed. Maybe it hates him as much as I do. I kick a finger tip over to it, and it gladly accepts it like a prize treat, gnawing on it much to Pete’s dismay.
He loses six more fingers, but I only gain threemore names.
Unfortunately, old Pete is starting to wilt. And I can’t have him dying before I’m done with him.
He’s been repeating the same names on a loop for a while now, the words getting less coherent by the second.
He’s given me seven names. Seven men that I intend to look into one by one until I get to whoever this fucker is who’s after my girl.
It’s seven more than I had this morning.
Soft sobs and the cat’s chewing fill the room. I hope he finally regrets everything he’s done now that the past has turned up.
I think about the boy who I could have been if it weren’t for men like him. The man I became because of them.
He did this to me.
When I remove his cock from his boxers, I want to vomit. It’s almost too painful. But he deserves to die like this. I take a knife from his kitchen, grip his dick in my hand, and sever it in one quick swipe.
Huh, I guess knife sharpening must have been one of his domestic duties he kept up with.
He makes sounds I’ll never forget. But that I’ll never regret extracting from him.
It doesn’t take long for him to bleed out, a red puddle growing at the base of the chair.
I sit back down on the coffee table andbreathe.
