Page 235 of What We Burn

Milo steps past me into the light. “Jesus Christ. I’m all for men loving men and filthy group sex, but this might be a bit much even for me.”

A couple of them laugh, uncertain. The smart ones are already looking at me. At my size. At the door behind us.

The laughter dies in pieces. A guy near the mattress—massive gut, gray chest hair, wedding ring still on—frowns. “Where are the girls?”

“The pets?” Milo’s voice goes bright and terrible. “Why, you’re looking at them. Knox and I came here to play, boys. But careful. I bite.” On the last word, he clicks his teeth together.

The men shift, looking confused.

“What?” one of them asks. “What do you⁠—”

Milo holds his hands out to the side, brandishing a knife in each. “I think it’s time to turn this sausage fest into mincemeat.”

I kick the door closed behind me, and the room comes apart.

I’ve seen Milo fight. I’ve never seen this. He’s a hummingbird made of edges—throat, inner thigh, under the arm, gone. The first three are down before the screaming even starts, arterial spray arcing across the work lights. The screaming starts and doesn’t stop.

A big one rushes me. I take his wrist, turn it, put my elbow in his throat, and shove him back into the fray. Milo jumps on his back like a feral squirrel, knife arcing up, then swooping down to slice open the man’s throat. Blood sprays and Milo flings the dying man aside, moving onto the next.

I stay by the door.

They come at me in waves—naked, slick with other men’s blood, eyes white all the way around. The next is fast. Baseball build, still half-hard, screaming. He throws a punch. I catch his fist, break his arm at the elbow, and throw him back. He lands at Milo’s feet. Milo doesn’t even look down. He just opens the man’s throat on the backswing, like swatting a fly, and keeps dancing.

That’s what it is. Dancing.

Someone’s phone is still playing music—something bright, all synth and a woman’s voice promising a good time—and Milo moves through the room in time with it. He carves a line across one man’s belly, spins out of a grab, comes up under another’s chin. The lights catch every spray of red. The warehouse throws every shriek back at us. It should be ugly. It’s beautiful. A blood-soaked ballet scored by some guy’s gang-rape playlist.

The next guy runs at me with a folding chair. I take it from him and hit him with it. Once. He stops being my problem and becomes Milo’s.

“Please—” A crawler. Dragging himself toward my boots, leaving a smear. “Please, man, I was just gonna watch, I wasn’t gonna touch⁠—”

I pick him up by the hair and throw him back into the middle of the room.

“Sorry!” Milo calls out, the knife going into his ribs. “No refunds!”

The screaming hits a register I didn’t know men could reach. Milo crouches over a big one who’s begging to go home to his children, and the begging becomes something else entirely.

“You wanted no limits.” Milo wipes his cheek with the back of his wrist. Doesn’t help, his whole face is painted in blood. “Paid extra for rough. I’m just filling the order.”

One quick motion. He holds the result up to the light like a magician doing a reveal, and the laugh that comes out of him is the worst sound I’ve ever heard—eerie, manic. A pitch I feel in my teeth.

Then it’s just . . . quiet.

The song changes. Milo stands in the middle of the pile, chest heaving, drenched head to toe, surveying the room like a man admiring a garden he planted himself.

Four minutes. Fourteen men.

The silence underneath the music is enormous.

“Ta-da,” he sings, arms out. His fingers flex around the knife handles. His shoulders twitch. He’s still running full speed with nowhere left to go.

I’ll give him this—when Milo decides on a massacre, he doesn’t let it drag.

I start walking the room, checking pulses. Two are still making noise. I fix that. Milo crouches by the cooler, wiping his blades clean on someone’s abandoned shirt, humming along with the music.

I find what I need by the loading dock—a roll of industrial shrink wrap, six hundred feet, half gone. Feet first. Ankles, knees, twice around the torso. Tight. Neat. My hands know this work.

Milo helps the way a toddler helps bake. He holds the wrap. He narrates.