“No more of that,” Tim grunted reaching across the man to grasp the rope fastening him to the wall. A thin line of blood trickled down the man’s forehead toward his ear, its red path capturing Tim’s attention. The teen stopped, reached a shaking hand out and touched the small wound with the tip of his middle finger. The man flinched.
“You’re bleeding,” Tim said raising the blood-dabbed finger toward his face. The urge to put the tip of his finger into his mouth, to taste the man’s life, made him run his tongue across his parted lips. He inched the finger toward his mouth, saliva flooding his tongue in anticipation, but stopped. He didn’t know where this man had been, no concept of his habits or what diseases he carried like a sewer rat. Tim hastily wiped his finger on the man’s grubby coat: likely not the first blood stain to grace its surface.
With the impulse passed, he returned his attention to the job of tightening the ropes to keep the man’s noise-making to a minimum. The man might get away if he untied him, so instead Tim took up the slack by tying more knots, these ones of a type appearing in no boy scout handbook: improvised, ungainly, but effective.
“There.”
Tim leaned back on his haunches to examine his work. The man’s hands and feet were bound directly together, making his body into the shape of a bow, his appendages in turn tied tight against the wall allowing for no movement. “That should hold you.”
The man stared, his breath drawn in short, sharp bursts. Whatever substance brought him here in the first place, then clouded his senses as it left his system, was gone. Fear, anger, helplessness replaced it, all showing plainly in his rheumy eyes. The birds and the squirrels and the Albertsons’ dog didn’t show emotions like this and they brought an excitement to Tim he’d never felt before. His hand shook as he picked up the sheers, but not because of nerves. His breath shortened, but not due to anxiety. A shiver ran up his spine, but not in fear. They felt good — all of them. And he liked it.
He reached for the man’s pinkie again, but this time he clenched both hands into fists. Tim couldn’t blame him: he’d have done the same thing. It didn’t irk him in the least. He brought the handle of the sheers down sharply on the man’s wrist and his fist popped open like an expertly shucked oyster. Tim grabbed his little finger before it went back into hiding.
“Don’t worry.” Tim smiled in the comforting manner his father used on him when he was about to lie to him. “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.”
Tim slid the blades of the sheers around the finger. The man’s body stiffened and he squirmed to get away, but the ropes held tight. Snot bubbled out of his nose with the force of his breathing; his head banged against the floor. Tim’s jaw tightened, ready for the effort of cutting through flesh and tendon and bone as he squeezed the handles of the sheers.
The finger came off more easily than he’d expected.
Tim knelt down at the edge of the flower garden, the dampness of the moist earth at its edge soaking into the knees of his jeans. With his right hand, he dug into the soil, dirt clogging the space under fingernails in need of trimming a week ago. In his other hand he held his prize tight in his fist. Luckily, the man lost consciousness with the pain of having his finger amputated, so only the chirp of crickets and the whoosh of his own pulse in his ears interrupted the quiet night. Tim excavated a hole three inches wide by five inches long and six inches deep: big enough to conceal his trophy but an easy enough job to dig it up again should he want to see what state it was in.
With the mini trench complete, he rocked back, sitting on his feet, and held the finger out in front of him, examining it as best the darkness allowed. He studied the finger nail chewed ragged, the dirt-clogged fingerprint, the wrinkles at the knuckles now caked with blood. He spun it in his fingers, considering it from every angle the way a prospector might have assessed a new-found nugget. He breathed deep through his nose, caught the scent of the fresh-turned earth, of decaying leaves and fresh cut lawn, and, he imagined, the coppery scent of blood.
“Tim?”
His father’s voice and its proximity so close behind him startled Tim into dropping the finger. His eyes followed its path as if it tumbled to the ground in slow motion, watching it come to rest on the small pile of dirt beside his makeshift grave.
“What the fuck are you doing out here? How long does it take to put away a goddamn rake?”
“Nothing.” Tim’s heart felt as though it had climbed into his throat, clogging it. His eyes remained on the finger and he wondered if his father saw it but didn’t realize what it was. “I… I found a bulb lying around and I was planting it.”
“Yeah right. I better not find out you been sneaking my magazines in the shed, jerking off again.”
Anger flared in Tim. Three years ago his father caught him with his dick in his hand and a Hustler spread out on the floor of the shed and he wouldn’t let him forget it. Women didn’t do it for Tim, he’d done it because he thought teenage boys were supposed to do such things. His true fantasies were far different than other boys’: bloodier, more violent.
The sound of his father’s feet moving in the grass flushed the anger out of him, replaced it with panic at the surety he would check inside the shed to see if any of his magazines were ruined with his sons ejaculate.
“No, Dad. I swear. I haven’t touched your mags.”
“Better fucking not.”
The steps halted and Tim noticed the slur in his father’s voice. Drunkenness made him lazier then usuaclass="underline" he wouldn’t waste the time going into the shed when more beer awaited him inside the house. Tim let out his breath and looked over his shoulder at his father, reassuring him he hadn’t been masturbating, but the flat of the man’s hand catching him in the side of the head, setting his ear ringing, stopped him.
“Get your ass inside.”
His father’s footsteps retreated across the lawn and Tim knelt by the garden choked with rage and grief. Once more, the asshole ruined one of the great moments of his life.
He plucked the finger out of the pile, dropped it in the hole, and unceremoniously covered it with dirt.
The next day, the temperature dropped another degree toward winter but the sun still shone. Tim stood in the middle of the back lawn with the blue plastic tarpaulin folded into a two by two square tucked under his arm. His father left for work hours ago, his mother likely went down the street to see Mr. Perry where she disappeared a couple of times a week: everyone pretended they didn’t know about her visits, but sometimes cheeks are turned to preserve the status quo. Kyle was at school, where Tim should have been at ten-thirty in the morning on a Monday, but the anticipation, all those hours of listening to teachers he hated while he fidgeted in his chair, fantasizing about taking the nameless man apart, would have been too much for him. He strode across the lawn, noticing a few leaves from the neighbours maple had made their way into their backyard. His father would complain about them later, cursing the bastards who lived next door, then make Tim rake again.
At the shed door, he stopped, stared at the flaking paint as though he might look hard enough to see through it at the man inside, spy on him without his knowledge. He shifted one foot to the other, the tarp crinkling under his arm with the movement. Removing the man’s finger produced more blood than expected, so he needed to take precautions to keep from making too much mess this time.
This time, he planned to remove more than a finger.
He breathed deep to settle the tickle of excitement and nausea brewing in the bottom of his gut and wondered if a surgeon felt similarly before carving into a patient. He closed his eyes and let the breeze which would deposit more leaves in his yard, bringing with them more yard work, play across his face, calming him, bringing him the peace he needed to do his work. When he’d settled it to a dull ache, he opened his eyes again, reached out and pushed the door open. The squeak of the hinges and the sun flooding the small building made the man lying bound on the floor tense, his body going rigid. He writhed, struggling to look over his shoulder. Tim caught the man’s eye, saw his wild look of desperation and stepped through the door. The shed smelled worse than before, multiplied by more excrement and hours of fermentation.