Elwood woke up groggy and sore in a room he didn’t recognize. The pain in his right hand, red and thrumming like alternating current from a cattle fence, sobered him up.
He pulled the injured hand towards his torso but was stopped short. A steel manacle cut into the carpal bones of his wrist, chain tightening with a vibrating rasp which echoed through a small corrugated metal storage locker.
He didn’t scream. He surveyed his surroundings, lighted by a bare mechanic’s bulb clipped to the ceiling.
A cardboard box, filled with loose piano legs. A stack of comic books. A low wooden workbench with sawed down legs holding a single pipe wrench and an opaque plastic grocery bag with the words “Have a Nice Day!”
Elwood thrashed at his restraints, hearing movement from behind. White hot light flashed behind his eyes, and for a moment he thought he’d pass out.
He smelled burnt hair, tasting tin from his fillings. Despite his girth, the chair hadn’t budged; it was bolted to the floor.
“Sit tight,” said a voice from behind, high-pitched, nasal. When the man stepped in front of him, unmasked, Elwood spat.
He recognized the thin red mustache, emphasizing the jagged cleft palate scar underneath, as last night’s bartender, who’d been behind on his loan. Jimmy. He was probably six two if he straightened his spine, a hundred fifty pounds, barely half of Elwood. The shiner on his right eye was fresh.
Jimmy lifted his right hand, depressing a button on what looked like a black plastic tuning fork, sending a crackle of blue electricity through the air.
“Make a sound, I’ll zap ya again, psychopath,” said Jimmy.
“Sociopath,” Elwood corrected. “How’s that eye?”
Crackle. Stabbing-hot light. Every one of Elwood’s muscles cramped up, pulling at his restraints, then went flaccid. How’d this walking pimple gotten the jump?
“Your beer,” said Jimmy, as if reading Elwood’s thoughts. “Twice the amount of horse tranq as usual, but you kept drinking so I kept pouring.”
“Juice’s still running if I’m gone,” said Elwood. “And you’re getting fuck all from me.”
“Think you need to talk for a withdrawal?” sneered Jimmy. “Give up your PIN code? Account numbers?”
Elwood stared, eyes glazed from pain and horse meds galloping through his veins.
“Modern age, man,” said Jimmy. “Mikey’s got your cell, means he’s got everything. Probably done with your checking, already gassing the truck.”
Elwood considered the number of fingers he’d broken enforcing bad loans with bad people. Every sweat-soaked dollar he’d collected and compounded, suctioned away while chained in a sweltering storage locker with what looked like a giant sunburned fetus.
“How’d you crack it?” asked Elwood, smiling while mentally snapping Jimmy’s pinky.
Jimmy let out a high-pitched cackle, reverberating against the storage locker’s aluminum siding like handfuls of gravel.
“Yer thumb, dumbass!”
Elwood craned his neck to look over his shoulder, towards his manacled hands. His left hand, thick fingers still bearing gold rings, was unblemished. His right hand was another story. The shears had been inexpertly applied, and a flap of angry red skin hung ragged beside raw meat and bone.
Unprofessional.
Elwood growled. “I’ll kill you with my bare..”
“..hand?” Jimmy cut him off, laughing, shaking his head while shuffling to the box filled with piano legs and undoing his belt. He spoke over the stream.
“Think I’m just a babysitter?” asked Jimmy. “Mikey gives the word you’re cleaned out, I’m the guy putting a bag over your head!” He cackled again, then stopped, turning towards the sound of heavy metal scraping across wood, limp member still clutched in his hand.
The pipe wrench crashed through Jimmy’s jaw, sending teeth clattering across the storage locker floor. He fell to the ground, clutching his mouth; Elwood stood over him, cuffs still hanging from his left wrist.
“Cuffs don’t work if you don’t have a thumb, ‘dumbass’,” said Elwood, lifting the pipe wrench high overhead, bringing it down over and over until striking concrete.
Elwood dropped the wrench, wiping sweat off his brow.
“Besides,” he said, lifting the rolling steel door to the storage locker with a rhythmic clatter, a jagged streak of light hitting what remained of Jimmy.
“I’m a lefty.”
~ fin ~
Colin Alexander is an attorney and writer living in San Francisco. He’s previously been published in The Molotov Cocktail, Shotgun Honey, Radon Journal, and Havok, writing crime fiction, science fiction, and horror. While he has written for money in the past, he now primarily writes for revenge. He can be found on Bluesky (@colincalexander.bsky.social).
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