Kill Whitey

I glanced around. Something was tapping against glass. I wasn’t sure where the sound had come from. At first, I thought maybe I’d imagined it. But then I heard it again, louder this time.

Tap-tap-tap…

I scanned my surroundings, studying the buildings, trying to find the source. I spotted movement behind a dirty window on the second floor of a nearby building. I stood up and stared harder. There was a figure behind the grime. It was Sondra, and she wasn’t tapping on the window—she was pounding on it with her fists hard enough to shake the glass. Although my hearing was returning, it was far from normal.

I shuffled out from behind the barrel and limped towards her. She beat the window harder.

“What?” I cupped my ear with my hand. “I can’t hear you, Sondra!”

She pointed at me, shouting something. I couldn’t make it out, so I guessed.

“Me? I’m okay. Don’t worry. Whitey’s dead. Wasn’t so hard to kill, after all. Now come on down before the cops get here.”

She shook her head and pointed again. Her movements were frantic.

“I’m telling you, I’m fine, goddamn it! Now get down here.”

She began yanking on the window, trying to open it. I saw her straining, but it must have been nailed shut. Frustrated, Sondra pointed again and screamed. Then two things dawned on me. The first was that Sondra wasn’t pointing at me.

She was pointing behind me.

And the second thing was that I was a fucking idiot.

“Oh shit…”

Slowly, I turned around.

Whitey’s fist smashed into my jaw. My vision blurred. I stumbled backward, my mouth filling with blood again.

“So, Mr. Gibson, shall we try this once more?”

I swore, and then he hit me again.

seventeen

Blood dribbled down my chin. One of my bottom teeth was loose and it wiggled back and forth when my tongue brushed against it. Doing so brought a fresh wave of pain, so I stopped. I curled my hands into fists, spaced my feet apart, and got ready for the next punch.

Whitey was in bad shape. He looked like he’d been dipped in a vat of blood. There wasn’t an inch of his body that wasn’t crusted with gore. The crotch of his pants was a torn and mangled mess. Sunlight shone through the bullet hole in his forehead, and when he started to swing at me again, I caught a glimpse of the back of his head—except that there was no back. His hair and scalp and skull were missing, replaced with a huge, gaping wound. I could see inside of it, and what I saw could only lead to madness because nobody, descendant of Rasputin or not, could survive such an awful wound. His brains were…scattered. Incomplete. And yet here he was, beating the shit out of me.

I dodged the third blow easily enough. His fist swung past me and I felt the air whoosh by the side of my head. What little hair I had left fluttered in the breeze. Whitey staggered, knocked off balance by his own thrust. Taking advantage of his forward momentum, I threw a punch of my own, aiming for his stomach, and connected hard. My fist sank into his abdomen. Whitey gasped and spit flew from his mouth, but instead of collapsing, he grabbed my wrist and yanked on my arm, twisting it behind me. The pain was excruciating. It felt like he was tearing my arm out of its socket. I fell to my knees, unable to do anything except scream.

Laughing, Whitey wrenched my arm further behind my back and shoved me to the ground. My face flattened against the dirt. Stones dug into my cheeks. Dust filled my mouth and nostrils. I couldn’t breath. His foot slammed down on the back of my neck, holding me in place. His grip on my arm tightened. I managed to twist my head an inch to the side, and sucked in air.

“Let go of me, you fucker!”

“Nyet.”

I coughed. He pushed down harder with his foot.

“There is no time to be cruel,” Whitey said. “No time to torture you, as much as I would like to. So, although it is against my wishes, we will have to make this quick. Pity. I would have enjoyed hurting you, Mr. Gibson. You personify everything that I hate about your country.”

My hearing was still wavering in and out, and I could barely hear him.

“Eat shit and die, you Commie fuck.”

“A perfect example of what I mean. Goodbye, Mr. Gibson. I hope that she was worth it.”

The pressure on the back of my neck went away for a second. I sucked in more air. Dirt filled my lungs. It tasted sweet. Then his foot came crashing down again, right at the base of my skull. My loose tooth ripped free and my mouth filled with warm blood. Before I could spit, something inside my neck popped. It was a terrifying sound. As I groaned, my body went numb. My limbs tingled as if they were asleep. My vision blurred again, and when I blinked, things remained unfocused.

Oh shit, I thought. He fucking broke my neck! I’m paralyzed…