Nicholas

 

I continued home. I could still feel the ghost of Natalia’s fingers on my own, a faint tingling where she’d touched me. The contact had a weird electric tint to it, almost like static electricity. Maybe I was just imagining things, but it really felt like there was something still there, like her fingertips had left a mark. I studied my hand under the glare of a streetlight overhead, but I couldn’t see anything.

 

I shook my head and let thoughts of her drift away for the time being. Jogging through a small break in traffic, I crossed the street and made my way down the alley to the foot of a fire escape. I jumped up to tug down the ladder. It descended with a metallic shriek, then I clambered up and took the stairs two at a time on my way to the top floor of the building.

 

Reaching the open window on the top level, I slipped inside. I landed with quiet feet on the tile floor of the bathroom of the empty apartment that Smalls and I had been squatting in for the last couple months. The electricity didn’t work, so we had candles scattered throughout the place, but by some miracle the water still ran, so it was as good a place as we could afford for the moment.

 

I reached to pull open the door and let Smalls know I was home, but just before my fingertips settled on the doorknob, I heard voices. I frowned. I didn’t recognize them. Sucking in a breath, I leaned my ear to the crack in the door and listened in.

 

“Smalls, you rat-faced piece of shit, you shoulda known better,” said one of the unfamiliar voices. It was a man’s voice, deep, like it belonged to someone big. There was a faint Italian accent on the edges.

 

“You made the wrong choice, my friend,” said another softly.

 

My heart was pounding in my chest. I didn’t like the menace on the edge of these men’s words. I needed to get a closer look.

 

Tugging open the door as slowly as I could to avoid the squeak of the hinges, I slipped through and crouched low to the floor. The bathroom opened onto a short hallway. The corner of the wall jutted out into the living room. I moved towards it and peeked my head around just far enough to get a line of sight into the living room.

 

Smalls was seated facing in my direction on the one rickety chair we owned. His hands were bound behind him. Standing with their backs to me were the two men I’d heard. One was grossly fat, his belly hanging heavy over the edge of his pants. The other was taller, skinnier, and he was holding a gun in one gloved hand. The fat man was gripping a length of iron pipe.

 

Smalls looked badly roughed up. I saw a cracked tooth tangling by a thread from his mouth. The front of his shirt was slicked with blood, and his head hung forward, too exhausted to hold it up straight. “Please…” he muttered through lips fat and busted.

 

“Why didn’t you just think, Smalls?” the skinny man said mournfully. “We knew you were working with The Punishers. You could’ve stopped, and all this mess would’ve been avoided.” The fat man shook his head in disgust.

 

“I didn’t…” Smalls was two words into his thought before the fat man swung the pipe viciously into the side of Smalls’ head. The crunch was sickening. I felt the blood rush from my face.

 

“Don’t tell us what you did and didn’t do,” the fat man barked. “We tell you what you did. And right now, my partner is telling you that you fucked up, capisce?”

 

Smalls nodded, unable to speak further.

 

“This is what happens when you try to hurt the Esposito family,” the man said. He leaned over, put two fingers under Smalls’ chin, and lifted it up to look straight in his face. “If you hurt the Espositos, you get hurt.”

 

The air reeked of blood and sweat. The skinny man let go of Smalls’ chin, which dropped back to his chest, and straightened up. “Now, we are here to make sure you don’t cooperate with the Punishers anymore. No more cars for them, you understand?”

 

Smalls nodded again.

 

“Do you swear you won’t help them again?”

 

Smalls nodded as frantically as he was able. A low moan trickled through his bloodied mouth.

 

I could almost hear the sickly smile on the skinny man’s face as he shook his head. “I wish we could believe you, Smalls. If only that were enough.”

 

Long pause.

 

He gestured to the fat man. “Do him.”

 

The fat man raised his pipe high above his head. The skinny man holstered his gun and started to tug his gloves off, turning around as he did so. I scrambled back behind the wall to avoid being seen just as I heard the crack of metal on Smalls’ skull.

 

More moaning echoed out as the crack sounded five more times, each crunch as wet and throbbing as the last. Then the sound of footsteps walking towards the front door. It creaked open, then clicked shut as the men left.

 

The second they were gone, I sprinted out towards Smalls. They’d cut his bonds loose, so he was slumped forward in the chair, hands by his sides. Blood dripped down his face, neck, and chest from the devastation in his head. His eyes were fluttering, half-lidded. I tried to tug him upright, but I lost my footing in the puddle of blood surrounding the chair and slip. He tipped sideways and fell to the ground on top of me.

 

I struggled upright. His head was in my lap. “Smalls, Smalls,” I said desperately. The candlelight flickering around us had never felt so ghastly, so wrong. “Wake up, Smalls,” I begged. “Please wake up.”

 

The only sound he could make was a nauseating groan. He tried to work his jaw to form words, but the scrape of pulverized bone overpowered the attempt and he gave up. He was floating somewhere between states of consciousness, drowning in pain. His fingers were wavering on his lap.

 

“C’mon, shorty,” I pleaded, using his nickname for me. “Don’t die. Please don’t die.” I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. This was the man who saved me. I had to save him. I had to. I owed him that much.

 

I pulled my shirt over my head and tried to soak up the blood. But there was too much. Smalls kept groaning, a horrible, grating noise that set my teeth on edge, as I dabbed at his broken skull with the wadded fabric. I could see slivers of white bone sticking out around the ragged edge of the wound.

 

I didn’t have any concept of time as I sat there, trying to stem the bleeding. It could have been hours or days or weeks that I didn’t move, Smalls’ head in my lap. It took me a long time to realize the moaning had stopped, along with the rise and fall of Smalls’ chest.

 

Numbness took over. I didn’t move, even as his body grew cold and still. I felt hollow.

 

Smalls was dead.