“Seth has told me many ways he’s killed people,” I tell them.
Grant keeps shouting through the phone, but I talk over him.
“He said a bullet in the head is actually the kindest.”
I walk slowly toward the head of the table.
“Usually you’re dead before your brain can register the pain.”
Grant’s mother begins sobbing harder.
“But this,” I say, lifting the bat slightly in my hand, “is not kind.”
The barbed wire glints under the overhead lights.
“It doesn’t end things quickly.”
I step beside Grant’s father.
“You feel every single hit.”
“Brooke please,” he shouts through the phone. “Please don’t do this.”
I look at the screen.
“Grant, you killed my parents.”
I tilt the bat once in my grip.
“You killed Seth’s mother.”
Grant’s voice breaks completely.
“Don’t.”
I shrug, “So it’s only right that I do this.”
“No!” he screams.
“Eye for an eye, Colin.”
The bat swings.
The bat connects with the side of his face with a wet, cracking impact that sounds wrong for a human skull. Bone gives way instantly. The barbed wire bites deep, tearing through skin and muscle as the nails punch inward. Blood sprays across the dining table in a hot arc, splattering the white tablecloth, dripping down the polished wood.
Blood pours from his mouth in thick, choking streams, soaking his collar, his chest, the rope holding him upright.
Evelyn shrieks.
I swing again. The bat hits his temple. His body convulses, legs kicking uselessly against the chair as the ropes keep him upright, forcing him to take it.
Grant is howling through the phone.
I barely hear him.
One final swing caves in the side of his skull completely. There is no sound this time. Just a heavy, final slump as his body goes slack in the chair, head rolling forward, blood pouring freely onto the floor beneath him.
I lower the bat slowly. Blood drips from the nails and barbed wire, splattering softly against the tile.
