Jordan in the Time of Cold War (2 page)

 
"Here," I said. "Let me help you up." I pushed his shoulders back into the wall and punched him in the gut where I'd been jabbing him with the gun. He wheezed and spit blood onto the floor. I hoped I'd caused some internal bleeding, but who could know about things like that? I pried Cold War's arm up from his side and held it over his head, like a referee declaring him the winner in the center of the ring.

"You like this?" I asked. I held the gun under his chin, pushing his face up to look at the hand so he knew what I meant.

I looped the toilet chain around his little finger and started twisting it. I had an idea, but didn't know if it would work. Then it started to and I could tell how much it hurt by how tight he squeezed his eyes shut and the color of the pinky. His face went red as I kept on twisting the chain. It had bunched up and tightened around the base of his finger. I got a better grip and cranked the handle again. His finger was blue-purple and starting to look like a piece of fruit.

"I like this," I told him. "I like my job."

Cold War didn't say anything. He just pleaded at me with his eyes. I figured he had something to say, but couldn't because of how I had the gun pressed into his chin. I pulled it away.

"Please," he said. "You done enough. You can go home now. Let me go. You know I'll pay."

I wanted to see him piss himself, but his jeans looked dry, so I kicked him in the nuts. The finger was getting darker.

"I'm taking this finger with me," I told him, and I cranked the chain again until I felt a pop. He was lucky: the chain had broken first, the handle coming right off from the rest.

I looked down at the wooden handle in my palm and then showed it to him. "You think this will do?" I asked.

He was crying now as he nodded his head.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess it will."

About the Author

Seth Harwood received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to build a large fan base (Palms Nation) for his first novel,
Jack Wakes Up
, by first serializing it as a free audiobook. Across iTunes, Podiobooks.com and sethharwood.com, his work has been downloaded over one million times. His second novel,
Young Junius
, a novella,
Triad Death Match
, and
This Is Life,
the second novel to feature Jack Palms, are also available now.

You can contact him at his website,
sethharwood.com
, on
Twitter
or through
Facebook
. He’s always happy to hear from a reader.
 

About the Author