Chapter 12: Turning the Blade

Chapter 12: Turning the Blade

The world had compressed to the space of a single breath. All the roaring agony from his severed limbs, the oppressive heat, the buzzing of the lights—it all receded to a distant hum. There was only the rough texture of Mike’s flannel shirt against his cheek, the sour smell of sweat and dried blood, and the small, wooden handle of the pocket knife, a promised land just inches from his grasp.

Move.

The command was a silent thunderclap in the prison of his skull. He poured every last dreg of his will, every flicker of his nearly extinguished life force, into the unresponsive nerves of his right arm. For an eternity that lasted less than a second, there was nothing. The signal screamed into a dead void.

And then, a jolt.

It felt like a switch being thrown in a long-abandoned powerhouse. A rusty, protesting connection was made. His arm, which had been a slab of inert meat, twitched. It was a convulsive, ugly spasm, but it was his.

Mike grunted, shifting his weight as he began to hoist Eli’s torso. The motion brought the pocket knife even closer, scraping against the back of Eli’s dangling, tingling hand. It was now or never.

With a surge of pure, primal adrenaline, Eli’s hand shot out. It wasn't a smooth, controlled motion, but a clumsy, desperate lunge. His fingers, numb and stupid, fumbled against the denim before closing around the worn, cross-hatched wood. He had it. The object felt impossibly solid, impossibly real in his grasp.

Mike, halfway through lifting him, felt the movement against his back. He paused, a flicker of confusion crossing his features. "What the—"

There was no time for a plan, no room for thought. There was only instinct. Eli’s thumb, clumsy and weak, found the small nail nick on the side of the blade. He scraped, he tore, he pushed with a strength born of sheer terror. The blade resisted, stiff from years of disuse, then gave way with a sharp, metallic CLICK that was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. The blade was open. It was locked.

As Mike started to turn, his face a mask of dawning alarm, Eli acted. He swung his arm in a wild, awkward arc, a parody of a killing blow. But it didn't need to be elegant. It only needed to connect.

The three-inch blade, sharpened to a razor’s edge from years of use, sank deep into the side of Mike’s thick neck, just below the ear. The resistance of the skin was a taut, leathery pop, followed by a sickeningly soft give-way as the steel severed muscle, tendon, and the carotid artery beneath.

A choked, wet gurgle escaped Mike’s throat. It was not a human sound. It was the noise of a pump breaking, of air and blood mixing where they should not. His eyes, which had been narrowed in annoyance, flew wide open in absolute, uncomprehending shock. The strength vanished from his body in an instant.

He stumbled backward, but Eli was a dead weight slung over his shoulder. Their momentum, combined with Mike’s sudden system failure, sent them both crashing to the floor. They landed in a tangled heap, the impact a jarring agony that sent a fresh wave of fire through Eli’s stumps. But he barely felt it.

Mike lay half on top of him, his powerful body twitching, a puppet with its strings cut. He clawed at the side of his neck, his fingers coming away slick and black with his own lifeblood. A torrent of crimson pulsed from the wound, rhythmic with the last, frantic beats of his heart, splashing onto Eli’s face and chest, hot and impossibly wet.

They were on the floor together, predator and prey, the artist and his ruined masterpiece, drowning in the same pool of blood. The abattoir had finally claimed its master.

Mike rolled onto his back, his eyes—those cold, calculating eyes that had dissected Eli’s soul—were now filled with a primal, animal rage and disbelief. He had been so in control, so far above the messy chaos of violence. And he had been undone by a pocket knife. By a piece of forgotten pocket lint. By the moth he was about to burn. The hubris in his philosophy was bleeding out onto the concrete floor.

He tried to speak. His mouth opened, but only a torrent of blood and choked, gurgling air came out. He tried to raise a hand, perhaps to point, perhaps to curse, but it fell, limp, to his side. His gaze was locked on Eli, a look of pure, impotent fury. He was the master of deconstruction, and now he was experiencing the ultimate, irreversible system failure.

He slumped against the base of the concrete slab, his own altar. The frantic energy faded from his limbs. The rage in his eyes softened into a vacant confusion. Eli watched, transfixed, as the cold, calculating intelligence that had held him captive simply… went out. It was exactly as Mike had described watching his father die. The light was just… gone. One moment a monster, the next, a cooling piece of meat.

Mike, the carver, the philosopher of pain, the meticulous craftsman, was still.

Eli lay in the spreading, sticky pool of blood, his head resting on the cold concrete. The stench of iron filled his nostrils. He was maimed, mutilated, and bleeding out. The pain from his legs was a screaming chorus that threatened to drag him back under into the blackness. But he had won.

He had done it. He had killed.

But there was no high. There was no transcendent rush of power he had so desperately fantasized about in his lonely, grimy apartment. There had been no intellectual satisfaction, no philosophical confirmation. There was only the brutal, messy, disgusting reality of a reflex. It was the desperate, unthinking act of a cornered animal biting its captor. He hadn't become the predator he'd always wanted to be. He had simply been the better one when it mattered.

He was alone. Alone in the butcher’s workshop, the tools of his own unmaking hanging silent on the wall. The buzzing of the floodlights seemed to grow louder in the sudden, profound silence. Alone in the abattoir, the killer finally, truly, killed.