Page 59 of Silent Schemes
He shrieks, the sound biting at the tiles.
I yank the tooth. Blood, spit, and something black fly out onto the floor.
I keep going. Each time, I say a name.
“Jimmy. Eight years old.”
Pop.
“Lisa. Nine.”
Pop.
He thrashes, feet drumming the radiator, but Sienna presses her heel onto his shin, pinning him.
When I finish with the teeth, I move to the hands.
“These fingers,” I say, “typed the texts that ruined them.”
I lay his hand flat, splay the fingers.
Vise-grip pliers.
Sienna steadies his wrist while I clamp down on the pinky.
Snap.
His scream echoes down the corridor, but no one comes.
No one ever does.
One by one.
Each finger, each bone.
By the third, he’s a puddle of piss and prayers.
At the thumb, I pause.
Wipe the blood from my signet ring on his shirt. Lean in close.
“This is what I am,” I whisper. “Not a king. Not a savior. Just a man who finishes things.” Rearing my fist back, I drive it intohis face, again and again, until there’s a wet crunch and he looks more dead than alive, his screams turn into gurgles.
He passes out before I’m done.
I step back and breathe slowly.
Sienna is standing perfectly still.
Her shoes are glazed with a new spray of blood, and a single fleck of flesh sits on the arch.
She looks at me, nostrils flared at the stench.
“Still want to play?” I ask.
She checks her reflection in a cracked cabinet door, then plucks a molar from her hairline and holds it up to the light.
She grins, teeth bloody.
