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“Oh, yeah, I remember you now,” he said. “Almost had you before, in that alley with your sister. I remember thinking back then how much I wanted to fuck you. I think this is my lucky day.”
She tried to shrink back away from him, tried but the bed was right there behind her, pressing up against her back. Even so, she pushed herself against it, as if she thought she might be able to push herself through it if she tried hard enough. The entire time she struggled, Skinny kept edging closer and closer, taunting her by waving his knife in little circles in the air.
“Maybe we should have a little fun before I smoke you, hunh? What do you think, bitch? You want some of this?” he said, grabbing at his crotch, and then he held up the still-empty shotgun. “Or maybe I’ll make you suck on tHIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEE…”
His words ended in a high pitched scream, a shriek of pain and surprise as a big, tattooed hand shot up from the floor and seized Skinny by his nuts. The knife and the shotgun fell from nerveless fingers as Skinny’s face contorted even more than his voice, screwing up into a mask of sheer agony as the big hand crushed and crushed and crushed.
To Becca’s shock, Griz sat up from the floor, still squashing Skinny’s balls in his iron grip. Skinny tried to hammer down on Griz’s arm to break free, but it was like throwing snowballs at an onrushing freight train.
Griz rose to his feet as Skinny doubled over in pain, the thin man still shrieking shrilly, sucking in wheezing breaths between his screams. Keeping his grip on Skinny’s nuts the entire time, Griz grabbed him by the throat with the other hand, shoving him backwards at first, and then full-on hurling him through the air out of the room.
Skinny’s body flew like a rag doll, out of the door, across the breezeway outside, until it hit the guardrail. Even then, the force of the throw kept his body going; he hit the guardrail and the top half of his body tilted back over it and his legs kicked up into the air as he completely upended and disappeared over the guardrail and out of sight.
Becca had enough time to blink once in surprise before there was a heavy crash and a scream from the parking lot below, followed by the blaring horn of a car alarm going off.
“Jerk,” Griz said.
“Griz!” Becca cried, springing to her feet and wrapping the big man in an embrace. “You’re alive!”
“Yeah,” he said.
“What… how?” she said, looking him over.
“Bulletproof vest.”
“You’re… wearing a bulletproof vest?”
“Yeah.”
It seemed a simple and obvious enough explanation now, but as scared and freaked out as Becca was, she felt like she needed to talk about it a little more than just that. After all, Griz had been dead, she had been sure of it, and Skinny was going to do all of the awful things to her, and only hearing “bulletproof vest” and “yeah” wasn’t really doing a very good job of chasing away those feelings completely.
“But… the shotgun… and the door…” she said.
“Bulletproof vests stop shotguns,” he said.
“But you were lying there, and…”
“Knocked me out,” Griz said. “I woke up.”
Griz, you’ll never be a therapist, Becca thought, but she didn’t care, she was alive, he was alive, and she hugged him in again tight. Now, she felt it, under his leather jacket, a hard, flexible vest concealed beneath one of those flannel shirts he always wore.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Are you sure?” she said. “It could’ve…”
“Hang on,” he said, pushing her away gently and moving toward the open door.
Becca followed him out onto the second floor walkway, leaning over the railing as he did to look down toward where the car alarm was still blaring.
Below them, in the parking lot, Skinny rolled around on the asphalt in agony, crying. He lay next to a car whose windshield was covered in spiderwebby cracks where his body had hit it on the way down, and whose alarm continued to beep and lights flash.
“Of course,” Becca said. “Of course he landed on my rental car.”
“Sorry about that,” Griz said.
“Oh, hey,” Becca said. “Forget it. Big picture, you know? Wait, where are you going?”
“Going to go down there,” Griz said.
