Knives

Drake

Splinner was bleeding. The blood poured from a gash on his hip and soaked through his boxers and bedsheets. It was a godawful way to start a morning. Then again, so was an alarm clock. Splinner had gotten up and was stripping the wet sheets off his bed when he woke up enough to realize that something might be wrong.

The man leaned on the wall in the corner of the room, quietly watching him. Splinner froze. The man seemed to be frozen already. He was pale and in the shadows he looked blue. There was a long silver knife in his hands.

"Who's there? I'm armed and immortal, and I should warn you I'm very grumpy in the morning!" Splinner yelled as he reached for the light.

The man got there first, shearing a layer of skin from Splinner's arm with an off-center slash. Splinner screamed. It wasn't a long scream. The man followed the knife with a hand wrapped around Splinner's throat, pressing him against the wall until his voice died and his eyes filled with tears.

Splinner tried to fight back, but he had no power. He felt drugged. The man was ludicrously strong.

"Listen, wolf boy, my name's Drake, I'm as immortal as you which is to say not at all, and I've known about you since you were just a tiny little furball. There's a girl I want you to find for me. Erin Kendall. Los Altos, California. Knife. Find her fast. If you're slow, I'll get there first and kill her. Then I'll kill you. I don't have to tell you why."

Splinner gagged silently, and tried to squirm out of Drake's grasp. He couldn't. Drake had no expression as he pressed the tip of his knife against Splinner's groin, an inch above his penis. Splinner tried to pull his legs up to shield himself, but his weight was on his neck and he couldn't. He couldn't do anything. His chest ached for air and the tips of his fingers had gone numb.

"Now I'm going to do something to make you remember to do as I said. This is going to hurt. A lot. I'm going between most of your major arteries, so you'll live. But this is an eight-inch knife! It's gonna go all the way through. Your bladder's going to burst, your prostate and your colon are going to rupture, and they're all going to start leaking piss and shit and come all over your insides. I'd say it's about six hours until you're even able to start healing. And I'm going to gag you and tie you and bar the door so you can enjoy all this by yourself, without anyone there to spoil the experience for you."

Near the end of the last sentence, Splinner's eyes rolled back and he slumped down against the wall. Drake loosened his grip on Splinner's throat, kissed his cheek, and drove the knife in.