[ The way he pounds against his fist on the table causes her to turn her gaze slightly, but she doesn't flinch. Sudden loud noises aren't some new, novel invention. There's always something rattling around under the bed, or in a closet, or just behind the door. She busies herself quickly scooping up the two severed plastic, blood smeared fingertips — and, yeah, ew — and dropping them carefully in the bucket of ice.
Keep going, he says.
She does his pinky finger next. Lining up the knife to the seam where rough skin meets brittle plastic, she raises her arm. No pause this time. Thwack.
In the corner, the boy is whooping, caught between glee and a boy's juvenile, vocal disgust. He calls her a freak in the same breath as demanding she do it again. The girl, though—
The girl can't take it anymore. The sound she makes when she runs forward is as much two feet pattering against a thinly carpeted floor as much as it is meat slapping wetly against more meat, broken fragments of bone rattling around as if they were encased in a jar and shaken violently. Through what was once a face, she wheezes and sobs and gurgles and yells. Into Nash, and through her; what should be a collision, but isn't a collision. The universe doesn't have a good explanation for this. It both is and isn't. And it fills Nashua with ice water in her throat, with a sudden peaking dread and emptiness so severe she wants to collapse, to close her eyes and forget how to reopen them.
She's used to that, too. But she can't keep her back from tensing, her wrist from wobbling on the downswing. She doesn't make it all the way through Frank's final finger. It requires a second, decisive hit. Thwack.
Over the noise, the girl's agitation finally outs. She's trapped in this childish immaturity, an inability to bear the world's hardships with stoicism. She wails— Daddy.
The knife is laid down, the remaining fingers plucked up and placed into the bucket of ice. ]
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Keep going, he says.
She does his pinky finger next. Lining up the knife to the seam where rough skin meets brittle plastic, she raises her arm. No pause this time. Thwack.
In the corner, the boy is whooping, caught between glee and a boy's juvenile, vocal disgust. He calls her a freak in the same breath as demanding she do it again. The girl, though—
The girl can't take it anymore. The sound she makes when she runs forward is as much two feet pattering against a thinly carpeted floor as much as it is meat slapping wetly against more meat, broken fragments of bone rattling around as if they were encased in a jar and shaken violently. Through what was once a face, she wheezes and sobs and gurgles and yells. Into Nash, and through her; what should be a collision, but isn't a collision. The universe doesn't have a good explanation for this. It both is and isn't. And it fills Nashua with ice water in her throat, with a sudden peaking dread and emptiness so severe she wants to collapse, to close her eyes and forget how to reopen them.
She's used to that, too. But she can't keep her back from tensing, her wrist from wobbling on the downswing. She doesn't make it all the way through Frank's final finger. It requires a second, decisive hit. Thwack.
Over the noise, the girl's agitation finally outs. She's trapped in this childish immaturity, an inability to bear the world's hardships with stoicism. She wails— Daddy.
The knife is laid down, the remaining fingers plucked up and placed into the bucket of ice. ]