"Excuse me?" Roy asked, his voice shaking. Emmit climbed slowly to one knee, then stood on both feet. His legs were solid; there was no longer any doubt, no timidity within him. He would fight for his life. He would fight for Deacon, and yes, even Kelly; his wife who despised him no matter how fiercely he still loved her.
"I said, it's not a fair draw."
Roy slammed the little wooden cup down onto the shelf above the fireplace with such ferocity that it split in two, sending a shower of unchosen twigs scattering across the floor. The shelf tilted crazily and finally clattered to the floor. Roy swiftly kicked it out of his way, his powerful leg launching it like it weighed no more than a dried leaf in a fall breeze, rather than a solid wooden shelf.
"Not a fair draw. How the fuck is it not, Papa? It's a blind fucking draw. Drawing straws. It's older than dirt, tried and fucking true. Random. No bias. How is it not fair?"
Emmit felt like a steel cable, strong and sturdy but straining to hold the immense burden of his anger. His body, every muscle and tendon, was bursting with endless stores of potential energy. He would snap soon, but that was alright. At this rate, they would find a way to kill him sooner or later anyway. Better to show them now that he wasn't a weak little calf that they could casually herd into the slaughterhouse chute.
Oh, my little boy...
His body trembled, vibrated with rage, and then the snap came.
"Because I watched you separate the sticks, Roy! I saw you push one out for Poke! You can't have your right-hand man end up squirting out of your asshole tomorrow night now can you?!"
The Rev was climbing to his feet now, speaking sternly but gently, with one hand extended to each of them. He was quietly trying to defuse the growing conflict, but it was atomic now; an unstoppable chain reaction that should be hidden from, impossible to control. Poke strode over to him and shoved him back down to the floor, pinning his back to his tangled bedding with one foot.
Roy's mouth became a cannon, his voice an explosive combustion of noise and hatred and flying spittle the likes of which Emmit had never seen or expected. The force of his shout alone might have been enough to knock a cabin wall down.
"YOU'RE DONE!" He vociferated, and one step was enough to halve the distance between them. He cocked one tree-trunk arm back behind him, pivoting on his hip. Emmit raised his hands to shield his face, feeling the spearhead tumble up his sleeve and lodge just behind his elbow. The point dug in immediately; but he had no time to feel any pain.
There was an earth-shattering WHOCK! followed by the dreamy sensation of falling through space. There was warm, aching pain pressing on the center of his forehead like the weight of a skyscraper reduced to a single pinpoint. There was a bolt of lightning striking the bridge of his nose. Something snapped beneath the skin, a brittle sound like Deacon biting into a baby carrot, back when he was first trying out his newly completed set of baby teeth. He smelled coppery blood, and when he sucked down breath, he tasted it. Another thud as the back of his head hit the floor. His arms and legs twitched, but refused to move beyond those trace, reflexive impulses. He saw a tunnel; long and foggy, expanding and contracting like gray, living smog. The tunnel collapsed in on itself and Emmit began to snore, deep grinding breaths that tore into his nasal passages hard enough to arch his back off the floor. When they whistled back out again, blood came with them.
His glasses, snapped nearly in half by Roy's supersonic fist, had fallen off and skittered across the cluttered floor and come to rest right beside the Rev's thrashing leg. Poke saw them and smiled his black grin. He spun on one heel, raised his foot from the Rev, and brought it back down with a brittle crunch.
Chapter 10: Blinded and Bound
When Emmit came to, he had a few tantalizing seconds to think that maybe he had dreamed all of it. He half expected to roll off his sunken, haggard old couch and land on the floor of the apartment that was no longer his, trying to comprehend the sheer scope and magnitude of the night terror he had just had.
After those scant few seconds, the pain managed to catch up with his dazed brain, and Emmit groaned. His head felt like a paper bag full of broken glass, and his nose was plugged solid. He snuffed as hard as he could, feeling the blockage in the bridge of his nose give way and his throat clog with mucus and blood. He grimaced and spat it away from him as hard as he could. Some of the nasty mixture hooked into his lip, and on impulse he moved to wipe it away— but couldn't.
His hands were bound, tightly, behind his back. His ankles were lashed together too, constricted by knotted loops of rope.
Oh, shit.
That small sentiment was all Emmit could muster, but it described his situation perfectly. He squinted and blinked, trying to scope out where he had been taken through blurred vision. His right eye burned furiously; he assumed that meant there was blood in it.
Jesus, he wished he had been born with better eyes. He could sense that he had been tossed into a small wooden box; it didn't take a genius to deduce that he must be inside Roy's shed.
