Hush Hush by Erik Carter (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

hit the glass. He traced the chisel’s toe point down her thigh, applying a bit of pressure. Her black jeans split open, curly frayed edges.

She wailed.

He put the chisel on the bedspread, stuck his fingers on both sides of the opening in the pant leg, her smooth, warm skin brushing his fingers, and tugged, splitting the tear all the way to her knee. The jeans made a satisfying sound as they ripped, and Kim screamed again.

He put his hand on her now exposed thigh, rubbed up and down. Supple, perfectly shaved, quivering at his touch. Lovely. No wonder she was so popular. He should have partaken at some point. Oh well.

He grabbed the chisel again and brought it to her skin. The edge was terribly sharp, eliminating his need for theatrics. Let the chisel do the work. He lightly, so lightly traced it along her thigh. The skin flared with goosebumps.

And then quickly, he applied a bit of pressure, pushing the toe point in with a tiny pop, piercing her flesh. A drop of blood appeared and raced down the curve of her thigh.

Kim wailed.

He continued.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The door slammed shut.

Silence staggered into the darkness of the garage, his eyes glancing back to the door, to where Mr. Accord was, and saw just a thin strip of light, the glowing rectangular outline of the doorway.

The back of his leg smacked something hard, something plastic, a couple feet tall. A mop bucket or a trashcan or a sawhorse. The sudden impact was enough to spin him around, shuffle his feet, make him reach out into the darkness for something to steady himself. He found a suface, caught his balance, something cold and hard, the side of a vehicle.

His eyes adjusted, gathering fragmental outlines of his surroundings—a workbench to his left, a utility closet by the door.

He turned, and the bit of light from the doorframe showed Mr. Accord.

Right in front of him.

What the faint light didn’t show, until the very last moment, was a fist, swinging in a massive uppercut.

The blow caught Silence right under the chin, cracking his teeth together with a sound that echoed through the garage. His head whipped back, straining his neck, future whiplash. His arms swam in circles. He staggered back again, farther into the darkness, sliding along the side of the vehicle.

Eyes forward. Mr. Accord in front of him, pulling back for a massive jab, a twinkle of confidence in his eye.

Silence reached out, wrapped his hand around the fist, stopped it before it could even move.

The look of confidence on Mr. Accord’s face changed to bewilderment, a bit of fear. Silence’s strength confounded lowlifes.

It wasn’t the sort of strength forged with barbells and weight racks. It wasn’t honed by any sort of traditional exercise program. It was a mixture of static strength, speed, explosiveness, and muscular endurance. It came from the combination of mental conditioning, isometric exercises, and repetition.

It was a sort of strength that a scumbag like Mr. Accord had never encountered.

Silence twisted the man’s fist, a precise movement that brought incredible pressure on the rotator cuff. Mr. Accord bent at the waist, then looked up at him with those bewildered eyes again. With his free hand, Silence slugged Mr. Accord across the jaw. The man stumbled back.

Silence lunged for him, tightening his fist, ready for a deadly blow.

But as he stepped forward, he felt himself shift to the left, felt his surroundings shift as well, moving in a strange off-kilter manner. That first uppercut from Mr. Accord had been a doozy, but he hadn’t realized that it had been devastating.

Another step. Toward Mr. Accord. Silence’s hand slipped off the vehicle.

He reached under his jacket. His fingers brushed the Beretta, fell off. Grabbed it. Pulled it from the holster. It fell from his grasp, clattered on the concrete.

Silence had had the sense knocked out of him many times in his line of work, but it always returned quickly, within minutes.

Right then, though, Silence didn’t have minutes.

Only seconds.

He put his hands on his knees, straightened up, staggered to the side. Regained himself. Looked up. And in his swimming vision, he saw Mr. Accord.

Sneering.

The confidence had returned.

Mr. Accord recognized the symptoms Silence was exhibiting. He knew he’d knocked him senseless.

And so he slowly approached, sneering broader, almost gleefully, and grabbed Silence by the arm. He yanked hard and spun Silence half a revolution before releasing him.

Silence flew to the far end of the room, his shoes slapping against the concrete, deeper into darkness. Dusty, thick air. A change in direction, a twirling of his senses, and he hit something that sent a shock of pain through his back.

A set of shelves.

It cracked and collapsed upon him.

Sharp pain to his left shoulder. Something had fallen, struck him. Another blow to his head. His neck. His other shoulder. His back.

The contents of the shelves. He was being pummeled. And even in the darkness, Silence’s trained senses told him what was dropping on him—metal paint cans.

He fell to his knees.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

They struck Silence all over—left, right, top, bottom. On his stomach now. Sharp edges cracked into his back, through his clothes, through his skin, into his muscle.

More cans falling. A crack to the back of the skull, hard, an instant headache.

And with a final metallic thud, the last can crashed onto the concrete beside him.

He was half-buried in the heavy cans. The palm of his left hand was pressed flat against the cold concrete, and two cans rolled to a stop in front of him. One was latex paint; the other was a smaller can, wood stain. Which would explain why there were so many damn cans. Carlton Stokes must’ve been a woodworking hobbyist.

Silence groaned. Pain warbled throughout his body—at the top of his head, through his core, into his feet. He moved his arm. The heavy cans tumbled around him, like stones tumbling down a precipitous mountain face.

His eyes were closed. He opened them again, scanned the garage, found the rectangular outline of light coming in