Page 77 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“The middle one.” Percy pulled a heaving Joe into his arms and kissed his forehead, running a shaking hand through his sweaty hair as they both caught their breath. “But just touch it gent?—”
Althea slammed her foot down hard and she, Percy, Joe, and the hand were all thrown forward, the latter flying off the knife and splatting, smearing a bloody trail down the windscreen and landing with a flop, fingers up and twitching. Althea, naturally, screamed, “What the fuck is that?”
To which Percy replied, “It’s fine. It doesn’t belong to any of us.”
“Well, who the fuck does it belong to?” Althea yelled.
Joe coughed heavily and attempted to sit up, but was prevented by both dizziness and Percy’s unrelenting arms, so he only fell back to Percy’s lap.
Percy shoved the hilt of his dagger towards Althea. “Stab it for me, would you?”
She recoiled in some consternation. “No, I will not stab it for you!”
“Damn it, I’ll do it myself!” He glanced down at Joe, about to shift him off, but it was a double-take like never before and he found himself instantly, thoroughly frozen. What mattered a zombie hand when you suddenly realise that perhaps the greater part of all the beauty in the world is right there at your knee. A cold sweat overtook Percy as he swept Joe’s hair back from his eyes, closed, his long eyelashes wet from his near-death struggle, and placed his hand on his flushed cheek. “Are you all right, beautiful?”
Joe must have attempted to speak, as there was a small, annoyingly sensual rumble in the back of his throat, but the full pink lips murmured nothing at all, and his hand tightened on Percy’s thigh. “Christ, I love you so much,” Percy whispered. He felt Joe strengthen his grip and move that much closer into him. And that was about the time he was hit with the realisation of how very close Joe had just come to death, unseen and unheard, on his watch. And that was when Percy’s soul turned all but black.
He pulled out his gun and aimed for the hand.
Joe rasped out a protest as Percy let off three deafening shots into the dash where the hand had been but a second earlier. With increasing fury, he shouted, “Out!” repeatedly, and ultimately physically manoeuvred Joe and Althea from the car as roughly and quickly as his emotional overwhelm demanded. Both dropped to the dirt where Percy shoved them as he slammed the door. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it in record speed, then threw a bag at their feet. Colourful notes of money were swept into the desert night as he wrenched two guns free, taking a new one in each hand and waving them wildly at his bewildered passengers, the lit end of his smoke emphasising every word he spoke. “It’s time for this bastard to die.”
Joe took a gun, uncertainly but immediately. Althea only stared at the other gun, not moving a muscle. “Gun!” Percy shouted, shocking her into slow action, but Joe pulled the gun out of Percy’s hand before she could reach it.
“Stop it,” Joe rasped, but instead, Percy puffed a disgusted spurt of smoke out the side of his mouth, turned, and shot a barrage of bullets through the car door. Joe reached an arm around Althea, covering one ear and pulling her other against his shoulder as Percy approached the car, circled the car, shot low, as though the thing might be on the floor, but all he really wanted was to destroy something. The hand, most certainly, but whatever else he could destroy along the way would do almost as well. He shot the doors with a satisfying jagged row of holes. The back passenger window was blown in. He shot through the roof, through his own window, and moved back around to the front. The gun clicked empty, so he hurled it hard against the windshield, cracking it, then pulled the fourth gun free.
“Percy, Stop,” Joe tried, but Percy couldn’t hear, and he would have ignored him, anyway. He wrenched open the front passenger door and shot down through the seat twice. Downthrough his own seat twice. He opened the back door, aimed at nothing in particular, then quieted.
He stood perfectly still, seeing nothing, thinking nothing, being utterly absent for a few seconds, then he remembered his cigarette. He reached a trembling hand up and took the deepest breath he had taken all day, then he crouched down and carefully surveyed the once-luxurious interior.
It still retained the new car smell, which surprised him. New car and gunpowder. He leaned in, took out his blade, and jabbed it beneath the front seat. It met nothing. He moved further in, trying under his own seat. Still nothing. He examined the front half of the car and failed to find a thing, so he sank into the back seat with a full-body sigh.
Not his finest moment, arguably. But not his worst by far. And certainly forgivable, no doubt, because there was a thing of death lurking nearby, and things of death need to be shot. Or stabbed.
Even so, he decided it might be a good time to appraise Joe and Althea of the situation, perhaps even apologise for the outburst, so he opened his mouth, inhaled deeply to speak, and retched violently.
The fingers clawed their way through his lips, deeper and deeper. An index finger, a middle finger, a ring finger, all pushing down on his tongue. The taste of cheap cigarettes, a tang of copper, and god knew what else incited his gag reflex more savagely than the pressure itself. He reached mechanically for an arm, a wrist, something, and met only the slimy stump, over and over. In foul desperation, he threw himself out the open car door, getting a mouthful of coarse sand for his trouble. Coarse sand and zombie fingers, because the thing still would not relent, and it pushed and pushed and inched its way down his throat.
Percy thought to aim his gun and blow the hand from his face, but even in the heat of crisis he realised what a beautifulface it was and how badly marred it would be by gunpowder burn, so he made several attempts, one after the other, to shove it off with his hand, or to reach for his dagger, always to no avail.
Joe was there now, pulling at the thing. There was a distinct snap as he broke one of its fingers, but it only seemed to use that as an opportunity to slide further in. Percy tried to alert Joe to the fact that breaking the fingers may not be the best course of action, but his words were garbled by the dead fingernails scratching at his throat, his cheeks, all over and under his tongue. He heard another snap. Percy doubled over again with the desperate and unfulfilled urge to vomit, rolling in the sand with the thing, wondering exactly what the game plan was for the zombie hand. Was he to choke on it? Was he to have his entrails grasped and pulled out through his mouth? Was the plan to break through his innards with the sharp nails and squeeze his heart until it stopped?
Percy finally got a hold of the dagger. He rolled onto his back, working it up and up from his chin, the thing wriggling all the while, and with the kind of care one reserves for those they wish to die especially horribly, he thrust it directly and precisely through the palm.
An unspeakable quantity of warm, tangy, salty, metallic blood flooded Percy’s mouth, and though the appendage fell to the ground, Percy went with it, rolling, throwing up chips, sand and blood, all while attempting to yell further instructions at Joe.
Joe was on his knees next to Percy, rubbing his back and doing his best to calm him, yet he was sorely inexperienced at calming people whose throats have been assaulted by severed mitts, and that showed.
Thankfully, Althea, who had recovered from her earlier shock, took Percy’s knife, and did as he had bid her do some time before, stabbing the thing through the middle, pinning itto the ground. She watched in disgust as it wriggled, and no one would have called it a scream as such, but a strange wheezing, squeezing sound escaped from the wrist, and it took everything she had to keep the knife pressed down and not recoil from the absurd abomination.
Percy soon recovered the privilege of speech, and with blood still streaming down his chin, yelled, “Good girl, Althea! Let me at the fucker!” She obliged quickly, and it was with a scarlet grin that he took control of the knife and the hand. “Now you pay.”
Joe watched the maniacal look of evil pleasure sweep over Percy’s face. “Do you think maybe we should just keep going? Because there’s a very good chance Cleo’s on her way.”
Althea cast a worried eye over the car. “Do you think this thing’s gonna move?”
Joe shook his head ever so slightly, but said, “Yeah. Of course it will. How much damage do you think a few bullets could do?”
“A lot,” was the sharp answer.
