Blood Men: A Thriller

Then I realize he actually is moving. Small, shallow movements, almost every part of him swaying minutely back and forth, convulsing almost, as if he’s having an epileptic fit but doesn’t have the energy to give it his all. He can’t break the contact, all he can do is this death dance as the power flows through him. His feet seem bolted to the floor. The lights in the bedroom fade, then come on real bright, then fade again. One of them blows, the other one brightens, dims, brightens.

Kingsly’s face is in a tight grimace, his lips are pulled back and his teeth have clenched tight on his protruded tongue. The tip of it, a slug-sized piece, sticks out between them. His body keeps shaking, harder now, spasms rolling up and down his tall frame, blood splashing up onto his nose and face and down his chin. The tip of his tongue comes away, the bloody side of it hits the wall and grips a little, sliding down the wall like a pickle on a window at McDonald’s. It hits the floor. The front of his pants darken. I can smell shit. I can smell barbecue. His eyes bulge from his face. No smoke anywhere.

A small flame jets out from the wall and equally as fast goes out. The humming comes to a stop. The light goes out. The flashlight hits the ground and stays going. Slowly, Kingsly slides down the wall, following his tongue. He slides as far as his pinned hand will allow, which is enough for his knees to bend and his face to press up against the doorjamb, his upper lip snagging on the latch and stretching out before tearing on the way. His head lolls over his shoulder, his eyes staring at me, no smoke coming from them. Other than the torn lip and bloody stump of a tongue, he’s not in too bad a shape. Of course one look into his now-empty eyes is an immediate giveaway that things aren’t good for the guy.

Something in his hand gives. I’m not sure what, exactly, but his hand forks open in a V as his body weight pulls it down past the blade, and then the rest of him slides down the wall and he tips onto the floor, covering the flashlight and blanketing me in darkness.

I can hear my own breathing. Ragged-sounding. Painful-sounding. Panicked.

I can’t hear Kingsly. Can’t see him. My arm hurts and so does my chest. There’s a sharp pain right down in the base of my throat. My heart is thumping. I count off the seconds. One. Two. My entire body has broken out in a sweat. Three. I push myself further away from him, backing into the corner of the bed. Four. I can’t figure out why the fuses didn’t pop and cut the power. Five.

I take my cell phone out of my pocket and learn another lesson. Bringing a cell phone is a mistake unless it’s turned off. If somebody had called while I was hiding behind the hedge, or in the bedroom, things would have gone very differently. I point the display away from me and it lights up the meter or so ahead. I can’t see much except my own feet and the floor. I get to my knees and move closer to Kingsly. The power is out but I don’t touch him. I kick him to roll him off the flashlight so I can see better.

I’ve killed a man.

And you liked it.

There’s a long cut in the palm of my right hand; it’s not too deep but it’s very ragged. The knife has ripped right through the glove when I slid forward after stabbing him. It’s also why I got electrocuted. If he hadn’t hit me with the flashlight I could be lying right beside him now. I touch the side of his face and poke him. His head lolls to the side and doesn’t loll back. His face is puffy and his lips pulled back and pieces of flesh from the bloody stump of his tongue are threaded through the small gaps in his teeth. The fuses should have popped. A circuit breaker should have kicked in somehow. The voltage shouldn’t have done this to him.

I grab the flashlight. There is blood on the wall, on the floor, all over the knife and his arm, and some of his blood has mixed with the wound in my hand. I scoot myself back against the bed, roll onto my side, gag, open my mouth, and . . .

And nothing. Nothing happens. I stop gagging. I can taste vomit but none appears. I move off the floor and onto the bed, trailing blood with me. I put my own hands on the bed, bleeding into it, and I realize there is no way I can ever get away with any of this.

“You did this to me,” I say.

You? I am you!

I keep staring at him, waiting for him to do something. He doesn’t. I wait for somebody to appear. Nobody does. And nobody will.