Page 19 of Nikolai Petrov

Her lashes flutter as she blinks away tears. “Yes, okay.” My eyes fix on her teeth clasping her pink lower lip between them. “Thank you.”

I press my lips against her temple, then gently urge her from the room with a small push on her lower back. “I’ll be there soon. Do not open the door for anyone, I will open it when I’m done.”

When I hear the soft click of the latch, I can feel my face harden and shoulders set.

“Now, you son of a bitch. Who hired you?”

His legs sit at odd angles beneath his writhing body. The scent of his urine mixes with his fouled cologne and the musty smell of the bed. “Fuck you!” Snot and tears smear his red face.

I squat on my heels next to him, kicking his useless foot away from me. “You are going to die tonight. I will leave it up to you if it is fast, or slow.”

He claws at the bed, a futile attempt to pull his paralyzed lower body from the floor. “They know we’re here. They’re coming for her.”

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” My fingers dig into the hollows of his damp cheeks propping his jaws open as I squeeze his face to look at me. One of his hands untangles from the thin blanket to claw at my grip, but I slap it away.

“My name is, Nikolai Petrov.”

There it is. Paling cheeks, frantic rolling of his eyes, heaving breaths as he tries to pull himself away.

“No! Please! I’ll talk!” The high pitch cracking of his voice could be a teenager’s.

“Yes, you will.” I’m tired of being hunched to his level. My knees aren’t as cooperative as they used to be, despite my regular gym workouts. “Come, let’s get you comfortable.”

Grasping the back of his shirt, I hoist him onto the lumpy bed. Blood streaks across the vomit colored comforter as I pull him so he’s centered.

“P-Please! I don’t know the name! Carlos knows, he was outside. Did you kill him? Of course you killed him. Please! I swear, I don’t know!” His hands flatten on the stained blanket and he manages to move himself an inch closer to the headboard.

“You do a lot of talking without saying anything. Let’s start with what you would know. Who are you?” I slide the tip of my knife beneath his red soaked shirt until it makes a peak over his stomach before it slits away.

“J-Johnny Mitchell.” His eyes are wide as he watches the tip of my knife.

This gutless puke was trying to face fuck my woman.

Mine.

Anger surges through me into a long slice across his quivering belly just above the waistband of his pants. Boiling red purges from the wound as his scream pierces my ears. The rag makes an effective mute as I stuff it into his open mouth. He slumps back onto the flat pillows, his hands trying to stop the pink rolls of his intestines from spilling through the growing hole beneath his belly button.

“Tell me, Johnny Mitchell. Who do you work for?” The thin nylon cord slips easily from my pocket and I draw it out so I can find the center. A jerk of my blade shears it into two equal lengths.

His chin touches his chest as his bloody hand reaches up and pulls the cloth from between his teeth. “I told you, Carlos knew. He’s always the one who talked to him.”

“Hmm. Johnny. I don’t think you are being very truthful with me. A flashy guy like yourself? Taking a back seat?” I step to the side of the bed and loop one end of one of the lengths of rope snugly around the metal brace near the floor.

Let’s see. It seems to be about three feet.

A quick slipknot and I pull his slick right hand into it so it tightens around his wrist, stretching his abdomen and letting more of the bulbous mass of his organs push their way free from the confines of his fileted flesh.

“No, no, no…” His head thrashes as he struggles to hold his bowels within his body with his left hand. “Please! He talked to Carlos!”

The rag goes back into his mouth as his pitch climbs. A congealing pool of blood gathers around him on the mattress, rippling with his frantic panting.

With a measured pace, I wrap his free wrist with the second tie and pull it towards the top corner of the bed so he is splayed and restrained.

Stretching him out opens the gash of his belly letting more of the oozing coils of his guts spread across the bed in a glistening mound.

“I’m going to give you one more chance.” With a quick flick, I cut a section of the cord from the fetid gray curtains and tie it to the end of the string that’s fixed to the stagnant ceiling fan.

The hot wetness of his intestines pulse across my palm as I loosen a length of it from the separating mass. Freeing it from the translucent membrane that is stretching in its struggle to contain his entrails, I pull enough to loop over one of the blades of the fan above us.

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