Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
“Shut the fuck up, Heath. What she does with her husband isn’t my concern. I told her not to marry that loser. She could have stayed with me.”
“You and your frat boy friends sure never learned how to treat women. Do you think she likes it when he forces her to fuck him while she begs him to stop and sobs in the sand?”
“I don’t fucking care,” he sniffs.
“Maybe it’s what you guys like. Maybe that’s why you all do it. Should we give it a go, me and you, the little handle of my trusty blade made Eddie come hard. I can provide the bruises, too, free of charge, for old time’s sake.”
Henry creeps away from me on the floor like the roach he is. “Kat could have been comfortable here with me, but she wanted to get away. She probably couldn’t stand this house because this is where she gave up her pussy to a piece of trash like you.”
“Let bygones be bygones, Henry. That’s all in the past. Let’s see if I can make you come in your cute little pajama pants. You like it rough, or so I’ve heard around the way.”
Henry screams as I dip the blade into his flesh superficially, pulling down from the corner of his eye to the edge of his lip. Crimson blood gushes from the wound and quickly covers his face. Not the smartest move on my part, but I didn’t appreciate how he talked about Kat. I’m showing restraint because usually at this juncture of the game, I like to pop the whole eyeball out.
“Don’t kill me,” he begs as his hand moves up to his face, clawing at the knife.
“Oh, I don’t plan on killing you, Henry. At least not yet.”
Where I come from, we call that a “buck fifty,” on account of the roughly one hundred and fifty stitches it takes to close that up.”
I dislodge the knife from his face and clean both sides of it on his dirty wife beater. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, did you forget how to bathe? You’re absolutely disgusting. You used to call me the dirtbag, and now look at you.”
“You’re going to jail!” He screams as he scoots backward until his back hits the staircase, his fresh blood mixing with the filth on the floor.
“Good luck with that, Henry. You see, I’m now connected to powerful people who make things happen in this city, even out here on Long Island. I’ve got everyone from judges and politicians to celebrities and mobsters eating out of my hand. I made our old man proud. He gave me a pittance of his estate and I took that and transformed it into an empire. What did you do, Henry?”
“Mind your own business, you fucking psycho!”
“You squandered every cent down the drain. Booze, gambling, cheap women, and coke. You brought down a whole empire, Hen. Too damn bad it was your own.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well, you’d be too drunk to know, wouldn’t you.”
I pull out my cell phone and offer it to him. “Go ahead, call the police.” I stare at the blade in my hand and smile before turning to him. “I won’t even wipe my fingerprints off the evidence.”
Henry blinks at me, his one remaining functioning eye focusing on my phone. Hesitation and fear flash in his eye, and then I hear the faint shushing sound of liquid. I peer at Henry's filthy pajama pants to the big wet spot on his groin and quickly pooling yellow piss on the floor dangerously close to the toe of my shoe.
“Aww, Hen, did you just piss yourself? I’ll add diapers to the grocery list and make sure someone picks them up for us.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” he whimpers, looking up at me. “All I have is Wainscott Hollow. I don’t have any family or anywhere to go,” he pleads.
“I know exactly how you feel,” I tell him in mock empathy.
I pull a hundred from my wallet and drop it so it slowly flutters down to his lap.
“I don’t care, Henry, as long as you’re out of my house. Shelters in the city can get pretty crowded, but I’m sure you can find a McDonald's bathroom to clean yourself up, and maybe they’ll take pity on you and give you a job.”
Henry’s hands are stained with blood and dirt, and the half-moon crescents of his fingernails are black. “Please, Heath. Have some mercy. I’ve got nowhere to go.”
My foot connects with his face as I tug my leg from his grasp, but I pull back, not wanting him to contaminate my clothes. “I might have shown you mercy at one time, Henry. I believe there was a point when I thought maybe we could have been brothers, but that time has come and gone. Now get out of my house.”