“You know?”
He lit the cigarette and put out the lighter. “I hired you.”
I stared at him, bewildered. “You hired me? To rob you? Of something you didn’t even have?”
“How else was I going to get you into my house?”
It was fortunate that I was already on the ground, because if I had been standing, I probably would have fallen. “What? You’re some kind of vigilante? Set up a criminal with a bogus theft then give him to the police? Look, I made a mistake, but I’m not a bad man. I’m just desperate. Please!”
He gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “You think I care?”
“Then why would you want me here?”
He was silent again, long enough that I was afraid he might not respond at all. Finally he spoke. “Do you hunt?”
“What?”
“There are two ways to hunt. Two very different ways. The first, the more sporting of the two, frankly, is to pursue your prey. You learn their habits, you learn their tells, and you go get them. It’s exhilarating. But it’s dangerous. I started with whores. If you’re going to hunt human, that’s the best place to start. It’s not like they sign in and out. It’s not like anyone expects to be able to reach them whenever they want. So if one disappears, it’s going to be a little while before anyone notices. Eventually, after the first few, word starts to get around. Heads start turning; people start paying attention. The more you take, the riskier it gets.”
I felt lightheaded, confused. I understood what the man was saying, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.
He smiled at my expression. “When I’d learned the skills, when I’d mastered my craft, I started going after more dangerous prey. You wouldn’t believe the exhilaration. In my prime, boy, in my prime I was a god.”
I swallowed in fear, backing away from the man as much as the cage would allow. He was mad. He was completely mad.
“Eventually, as I got older, less able to endure the pursuit, I realized that I’d have to settle for what I could pull off. I had to fall back on the second type of hunting. The kind where you bring the prey to you.”
The light was off on the front porch, the deadbolt undone. I got in quickly, without anyone seeing me. No one would ask who I was or what had happened. The carpet had padded my footsteps; they’d pad the steps of someone sneaking up behind me. The darkened upstairs that hid me, had hid him. The entire house was a trap.
I felt my mouth go dry, and my mind raced, searching for something he’d forgotten, something he’d missed. I hadn’t told anyone I was coming, except the man who’d hired me. I’d been careful not to approach the house until I was sure nobody was on the street to watch me.
“My car!” I blurted. “When they look for me, they’ll find my car near here. Let me go, and I’ll just go. I’ll take my car, and I’ll disappear.”
There was a soft chuckle from the man in front of me.
“Where do you think I’ve been for the last hour?”
I heard the rattle of keys in his hand. “I work in a junkyard. By this afternoon your car will be reduced to a few valuable parts and a crushed cube of steel. And as for you. In a few days there won’t be enough of you left to identify. In fact, in a few days the only thing that will tie you and I together in any way at all, are these keys. I know. I know. I should get rid of them. But we all need our mementoes, don’t we?”
With that he reached over and flipped the switch, bathing the room in light.
There was another cage in the room, across from me, empty but for bloodstains. And there was a table in the middle of the room with leather straps and an array of things I didn’t want to think about.
But the thing that caught my eye, the thing that froze me in stark horror, was the wall across the room from me. The wall was covered in tiny, perfectly spaced hooks, from floor to ceiling, from one side to the other. And on almost every single hook, there was a set of keys.
The man watched me for a moment, enjoying my terror. Then he turned, walked casually over to the wall, and placed my keys on one of the few remaining open hooks.
My eyes remained fixed on that spot. Even after he had gone, shutting the light off behind him, leaving me alone in the darkness.
***
Return to Table of Contents
A Gambling Man
Connor groaned as he was lifted from the floor and carried to the lone chair sitting at his kitchen table.
He offered no resistance as one of the men tied his right arm down. A small corner of his mind screamed at him that something bad was coming. Something worse than the beating he’d just endured. But Connor couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. Everything hurt. Breathing hurt. Not breathing hurt. It hurt to think about how much he hurt.
One of the men left the room. The other was busy somewhere nearby, looking through drawers, by the sound of it.
Connor wondered if the man was looking for money. There wasn’t any. Connor would have been happy to pay anything he had.
After a few seconds, he felt one of the thugs grab his hair and pull his head back. A wad of dirty, knotted cloth slipped between his teeth causing him to gag. The thug released his hair, and Connor sagged back down.
Then more noise. The second man returned.
Someone grabbed Connor’s left arm and pulled it forcefully onto the table. A hand grabbed Connor’s hair and tilted his face so that he could see what was happening.
“Mr. Gruber is very upset.” The thug holding his hand shook his head in disappointment. “You owe him money. A lot of money. And you haven’t paid anything in over a month. Mr. Gruber is worried that you aren’t taking your debt seriously.”
Connor tried to talk, but between the pain and the gag, nothing came out.
“Mr. Gruber is a reasonable man, but faced with an unreasonable situation, he feels that he needs to make his position clear.”
The thug lifted a pair of garden shears into view. Connor didn’t remember seeing them before. They were too big to fit into a pocket, and Connor wondered briefly how the men had brought them in without him seeing.
The man behind Connor grabbed him around the chest and braced, while the man in front pulled Connor’s pinky out of his fist and set the mouth of the sheers around it.
Connor stared, not certain what to make of it, but convinced that he didn’t have enough energy even to cry out.
He was wrong.
As the sheers closed, all other pain was forgotten. Connor’s body spasmed, and he tried desperately to pull away from the source of his agony. The world went red, then white, and every muscle in his body trembled from effort.
After what felt like forever, Connor collapsed in his seat, sobbing through the gag.
His eyes half open and watering, he watched as the man who had just maimed him lifted his finger and tossed it across the apartment into the sink.
“Mr. Gruber wants to remind you that you have nine more fingers. He’s giving you one week to come up with the money. After that, he’s taking the rest and a lot more. He wants his money, but if he has to make an example out of you, it’s going to be the kind of example people remember for the rest of their lives.”
The thug moved the shears towards Connor, who tried to twist away from the offending implement but found himself unable, thanks to the continued grip of the man behind him.
The shears pressed against the flesh of his right arm, slipping under the twine that held it to the chair, then snapping down.
Connor slumped forward, his head coming to rest on the rough surface of the table. He made a soft whimpering sound as the two men walked out of the room, shutting the door behind them.
Connor pressed the palm of his right hand against the stump that had been his left pinky and cried into the table.
After some time, it occurred to him that the men hadn’t locked the door behind them. There wasn’t really anything in the apartment worth stealing, but in
a neighborhood like this one, there was no telling who might come wandering through an unlocked front door and what they might want.
Still pressing his hand against his bleeding finger, he forced himself up and stumbled to the door to lock it.
Connor leaned his head against the wall, wheezing from the effort.
When he turned around, he was surprised to find a man sitting at his table, holding his severed pinky.
“You’d think that a smart business man like Mr. Gruber would know how hard it is for a man to come up with seventy-five thousand dollars in seven days, much less when he has to spend an entire day recovering from a beating like that.”
Connor stared at the intruder blankly for several seconds, trying to sort out if someone had snuck in before he could lock the door or if he was hallucinating. He looked kind of like a hallucination, what with the jet black suit and tinted shades, but Connor had been hurt before, at least this badly, and he’d never started seeing things.
In the end, he decided that it didn’t matter. Connor pointed at his pinky. “Hey. That’s mine.”
“This?” The man in the chair shook his head and, using the fingernails of his thumb and pointer, began to peel the flesh off of the severed digit. “Don’t be ridiculous, Connor. You don’t have time to go the emergency room and make up a fake name and a story about how you lost it. You’ve got a hundred and sixty eight hours to come up with seventy-five grand. That’s over four hundred and forty six dollars an hour. Given that your best job to date was at that furniture store, and that only paid -- what was it? Twelve dollars and change? -- I’m thinking you might be in trouble.”
Connor’s eyes stayed locked on the finger. “I don’t need to come up with all of it. Just enough to buy myself some time.”
“So, what, ten thousand, maybe? So sixty dollars an hour for a week straight? Sure, that’s only mildly impossible.” The man continued to pick the flesh from the finger. “You could start a class on how not to manage your money. Put up some flyers. You could even teach the class right here, a shining example of where people will end up if they follow your example.”
“No, I can do this. There’s a high school game at six tonight. There’re always people willing to bet there. I only need to come up with a hundred, maybe two hundred. Then I can turn that into some real money at one of the poker games tonight. I can come up with ten grand by the end of the week. I’ve done it before.”
The man in the chair rolled his eyes. “You’ve fallen so far and for so long, and you still can’t even admit the truth to yourself. You did it once. You had one fantastic week where you made eleven thousand six hundred and seventy eight dollars. Once in your life. And then what did you do, Connor? Huh? You kept gambling. You kept betting, and you lost it all. Every penny. That’s what you do. You place bet after bet until there’s nothing left. And that first game, how are you going to pay for that first bet? You don’t have a nickel to your name. You could suck someone’s cock, I suppose. You haven’t done that since you got out of prison, but it’s like riding a bike, isn’t it? You never really forget how, no matter how hard you try.”
Connor went white. “How do you know about that?”
The man at the table tilted his head back and laughed. “Five minutes we talk, and it doesn’t occur to him to ask until I bring up his time as a bitch. Oh, I do like you, Connor.” The man finished skinning Connor’s finger. “I’ve always had a soft spot for losers,” he continued, as he pried the fingernail off of the finger.
“Who ARE you?”
The man sighed, popped the skinned finger in his mouth, and began chewing. Connor could hear the bone crunching from across the room.
“What are you?” Connor whispered.
The man smiled. “Who I am, what I am, these are interesting questions, but they aren’t particularly relevant, are they? The real question, the only one you need to concern yourself with, is what you’re going to do next.”
Connor grimaced. “There are a few plasma places in town. I can sell at two or three of them. That’ll give me enough for the high school game.”
“More blood?” The man pointed at Connor’s hand. “You sure you’ve got enough to spare? It may be more pleasant than sucking a dick, but you don’t want to make bets when you’re half conscious, now, do you?”
“Well, what do you suggest!?” The gambler stumbled across the room, sinking to his knees half way between the table and the door. “What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to gamble,” the man answered, his expression approaching contempt. “It’s what you do. The only question is what you’re going to bet on. So tell me, are you going to risk your wellbeing, your very existence, on a thousand tiny bets that you have no control over? Are you going to put your life on the line when the smallest detail, a bump on a basketball, a cheating girlfriend, a misstep in the middle of a play, might cost you everything? Or are you going to bet on yourself, for once.”
“Bet on myself?” Connor shook his head. “I’d rather bet against myself. The way my luck’s been going, it’s the smart move.”
“Luck.” The man at the table snorted. “You really believe in that, don’t you? That the universe is centered around you, and that every loss you take is fortune, slapping you in the face. It’s pathetic. The universe no more cares how its machinations affect you, than an elephant cares how the flies like the shit it feeds them. Be a man. Take responsibility for your life.”
Connor looked down at his hand. He needed to tie a handkerchief around it, or something. “What’s the bet?”
“Ten souls.” The man paused, looking at Connor’s hand. “Oh, what the hell, let’s call it nine, just to make it easier for you to count. You get me nine souls in the next seven days, and you won’t owe anyone anything.”
Connor blinked. “So, you’re supposed to be the devil, then?”
“The devil? Hardly. You don’t warrant his attention. I’m just a . . . what would you call it? A sub-contractor?”
“I don’t believe in the devil. Or souls.”
“Great.” The thing smiled. “That’ll make it easier for you. People who do believe, they get all touchy-feely and wuss out when push comes to shove.”
Connor stared at the man. He wanted to argue more, but he didn’t have the energy. “How?”
“How is up to you. Buy them. Trade for them. Do a few of your little prison favors.”
“No. How . . . how do I collect them?”
“Oh, that.” The man, or the thing, whatever he was, reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, blue notebook. “They have to sign their names. One rule, though. They have to know why. You can’t tell them they’re signing a petition or anything like that. They have to know they’re signing away their souls.”
“What if they don’t believe in souls?”
“Believe? What does belief have to do with anything? Just make sure they know.”
Connor opened his mouth to ask another question but lost his train of thought.
When he opened his eyes, he realized that he’d passed out. The blood from his pinky had pooled out and congealed, staining his pants and shirt. Every inch of his body was sore from the beating he’d taken, and his head felt like someone put it in a vice.
The good news was that the bleeding had stopped.
But what a weird dream. Nine souls. “Shit. If only it were that easy.” He snorted. Finding nine people who’d sign away their souls would be a hell of a lot easier than coming up with ten thousand dollars.
Too bad it had only been a dream.
Connor shook his head. Here he was, daydreaming about an easy fix when there was money to be made. He had to make it to that basketball game, after he sold some blood, and he had to be halfway presentable for both, which meant he’d have to stop by the YMCA. The utility company had shut off his water a week ago.
He glanced at the wall clock to see how much
time he had, only to realize that he’d pawned the wall clock before his water had been cut.
***
Connor only managed to sell his plasma once that afternoon. Talking them into sticking a needle in his arm had been hard enough the first time. He’d had to call in his very last favor with an old friend to get a fake pinky and makeup to cover his pallid skin, and even then he was almost sent away.
The basketball game, on the other hand, had gone quite well. A bunch of drunk teenagers had stumbled into the betting and apparently had a little of their parent’s money left over after beer. Not all of it went to Connor, but he got a big enough cut to make it worth his while.
By the end of the third quarter, the home team was down almost twenty points, and Connor had turned ten dollars into nearly two hundred.
“Son of a bitch.” One of the boys wearing a letter jacket for the losing school swore. “These guys are our varsity team?”
“Well, they’re not that bad,” Connor consoled the boy, trying to figure out what the odds were he could get another twenty out of him. “They’ve always been a come-from-behind team. Look at the other team, sweating their balls off. All of their best players are dead on their feet. I bet this last quarter . . .”
“No!” The boy shook his head emphatically. “No more bets. I’m done.”
Connor sighed in disappointment and started pushing the wad of folded money into his pocket. An unfamiliar shape stopped him, mid-motion. He pulled out the blue notebook.
His first reaction was to flinch. The dream, the strange man, or demon, or whatever he was supposed to be, couldn’t have been real, and yet, here was the proof.
No, not proof. That was ridiculous, Connor reassured himself. He was a gambler. Connor was in the habit of carrying notepads, random slips of paper, a variety of things to jot done his latest bets or calculate payouts.
Subconsciously, he must’ve remembered that he had picked up the notebook somewhere, then incorporated that memory into his dream.
Still, it was an interesting idea, collecting souls. Connor glanced at the boy next to him, thinking. There was nothing to be gained from it. It was a dumb bet he couldn’t afford to make. Still . . .