Page 8 of Choke

Seamus nods frantically as tears stream down his face.

“Hmm, I’m not sure if I believe you,” I say, bringing the freshly severed finger to my nose, the coppery tang of his blood assaulting my nostrils. Shrill screams echo off the concrete walls of the garage as I tear the duct tape from Seamus’s mouth. “I think you can give it more conviction. Go on, Seamus, convince me you’ve learned your lesson. Give me an Oscar-caliber performance.”

“You’re a-ah-a fuck-in’ psy-cho,” Seamus stutters in pain.

The knife slips from my hand, hitting the edge of my boot before it clangs against the concrete slab floor. “Goddammit, Seamus, you almost made me damage my new boots.”

“How is that my fault?” Seamus demands, his voice shaking as tears glide down his chubby cheeks.

Our eyes lock as a smile plays on my lips. “Seamus, do you now see the correlation? If you hadn’t been so rude, you wouldn’t be in this predicament, and I wouldn’t have pulled out my knives.”

With a thin, sharp, paring knife in hand, I approach the whimpering idiot, offering my most charming smile and pointing the tip of the blade toward him. “So you see, dear Seamus, this whole situation is completely of your doing.”

“Okay, man,” Seamus stammers, sweat beading on his forehead, his breath ragged. “I’m sorry. Whatever happened, it was my fault.”

I step closer, filling my lungs with the putrid air before exhaling deeply. “That,” I say as I raise the paring knife and stab him in the cheek, “is not how you apologize.”

Seamus screams, “God, please!”

“God doesn’t answer prayers for the holy. Why would you assume he’d ever hear your call? You’re missing brain cells, aren't you, lad?”

“Why are you doing this? I don’t even know who you are. What do you want? Money?”

“Money has never motivated me. I despise it.” The blade scrapes against my bottom lip as I contemplate my answer. “Actually, no. That’s hypocritical since I have money. Money was the be-all and end-all for me at one point. I was on the brink of destitution, and money was a beaconing light.”

My hands glide over the various knives on my table, all of which I've purchased during my travels. Some people collect mugs. I collect sharp, pointy weapons. There was a time when I worried about where my next meal was coming from. Now, I could fly to Morocco for couscous if the fancy took me. “That’s when money matters, you know. When you’re desperate. Life and death is when it matters. I see rich guys with their pathetic goals of wanting to live on Mars. Those guys are vacant. They need money because they have nothing else. Who fucking needs three hundred billion dollars? It’s gross when you think about it. Kids are being bombed, starved, and beaten across the globe, and those bastards are out there playing power games instead of using their resources to help.”

I stab Seamus again. “On second thought, it wasn’t money. The money was a bonus. I wanted revenge on the man who raped my mother.”

Seamus releases a symphony of grotesque screams as I abandon the blade in his cheek and walk back to my table. Taking out my phone, I open the app and watch as a pretty girl with long dark hair huddles on a leather sofa, her piercing green eyes glued to the pages of a book. She’s reading East of Eden today. All the books she consumes are about the disparity between the rich and the poor. I suppose it would make sense for her to be preoccupied with such thoughts, given that she witnessed the brutality of it every day at her job.

“She’s beautiful, don’t you think?” I shove the screen in Seamus’s face.

“She’s hot,” Seamus says.

I push the blade further into his flesh. “I asked you if she was beautiful, Seamus.”

Seamus screams before panting illegible words. “I. Said. She’s. Hot.”

“I don’t like you calling her that.”

“Fine, ugly!” he bellows.

“Stick out your tongue,” I demand.

“What? No.”

Frustration takes over. I place the blade of the chef’s knife between my teeth, plug his nose with one hand, and grip the tip of his tongue with the other, yanking it out of his mouth. I release his nostrils, allowing him to breathe. “When I was younger, I spoke back to someone out of turn and had an entire bar of Ivory soap shoved into my mouth. They forced me to let the soap disintegrate completely before I could spit it out. It was an atrocious incident. I was nine, but I’ll tell you, I never dared to talk back again. If you’d had the same experience, would you have learned some manners?”

Seamus thrashes his head as he squirms in a futile effort to get away from me. A strangled gasp escapes his throat as he utters unintelligible words. “I dot now hat you re alking out?”

“Earlier today, you ran into a young woman, and instead of saying sorry, you berated her by demanding she watch where she was going. That wouldn’t have been so offensive to me, but then you added one tiny word, and that insult forced me to do this.” I slam the blade down on Seamus’s tongue and slice it off, allowing it to fall into the palm of my hand. “Who’s the bitch now, Seamus?”

Seamus’s screams resemble those of a wild animal rather than a human male.

“You behaved like an animal, and I’ve now ensured that you sound like one.”

Seamus’s body goes limp, tumbling onto the cold cement.

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