"Mr. House" by Sean Walusko

Mr. House

by Sean Walusko

 

“Her name was Emily. Emily House. She was my daughter,” I tell the man sitting across from me.

He’s screaming through the gag in his mouth. The zip cords holding his wrists and ankles in place start to dig into his skin, causing superficial cuts. No amount of struggling works for him since the chair is bolted to the ground. He’s not going anywhere. 

“She was eight years old when you, well, you know what you did,” I tell him. 

I start playing with a knife, flicking my thumb against the blade. 

“You got what? Five, maybe six years?” 

My hand starts bleeding, and I realize I’m squeezing the blade too tight. 

“She lived with a lifetime of pain. Pain that you caused.” I take a breath. “You don’t care though. And that’s fine. Neither do I. I guess the only upside to this is that you pieces of shit are required to register on a list.” 

I’m in the kitchen looking at the table next to me. I have a gas-powered chainsaw, a blowtorch, pliers and gardening sheers, just waiting, begging, to be used. On the stove is a frying pan that’s been sitting on high heat for at least fifteen minutes.

“It’s been eleven years. Eleven years.” 

The chainsaw calls out to me. 

“I bet you’re wondering why now. Why after all this time?”

Sweat beads off my brow, and I’m licking my lips. Behind my eyes, I can still see her face. How hopeful she was, so full of life. A life destroyed in the blink of an eye. 

The eyes. 

I’ll take his eyes. 

“She graduated. Straight A’s. Smart.” Another deep breath. “She killed herself. It’s been a year. I’m not gonna lie, I thought about it too. Gun in y mouth and everything. My wife left.” 

Blood rushes to my feet when I stand up. The chainsaw feels surprisingly light in my hands. It feels good.

“I had nothing left to lose.” 

I pull the cord on the chainsaw and rev its engine like a beast hungering for flesh. 

“What’s funny is how easy you were to find. All you sex offenders listed online like…like…prey,” I smile.

He starts to shake harder and blurt incoherent curses at me from behind the gag. 

“No one can hear us. We’re in the middle of nowhere,” I shout at the top of my lungs.

Calmly, I look at this person, this thing that considers itself human, and tell it, “I forgive you.” 

There’s a moment between us. A silent understanding that he knew this was inevitable. I take in the last moment before crossing a threshold I can never come back from. With the rattling mechanical demon in my hands, I let go of the last remnants of my humanity and bring the snarling, spinning chain down onto his left wrist. 

He screams. 

Blood shoots out in the same direction as the chain before a loud buzz creaks like nails on a chalkboard as it cuts through the bones of his wrist. I push through until the meat of his forearm looks like shredded beef hanging from a stump. He’s bleeding out fast. 

I grab the frying pan and press the bottom of it on the open wound, searing it closed. It cauterizes in just a few seconds, preventing further blood loss. 

His screams get deeper, more desperate. This fuels me. Compels me.

The right hand is next. It comes off just as easily, ripping, shredding, snapping and falling off just like the left hand. Again, I grab the frying pan that I’ve been putting back on the open flame to make sure it stays hot, and fry his right stump closed.

The smell of burning meat causes me to taste stomach acid. He starts vomiting from behind the gag, and he starts choking on it. I have no choice but to free his mouth. 

“Fuck you, you fucking…” 

I smash his teeth in with the frying pan. He’s mumbling and gurgling, swallowing a few of the teeth I broke. 

Without hesitation, I grab the blowtorch and aim the sharp blue flame directly into his left eye. The small white orb bubbles and cooks like a sunny-side up egg until bursting open. It never has a chance to leak out as the flame chars it to a crisp black along with the rest of his ocular cavity. The right eye gets the same treatment. 

He’s now groaning, begging. The “fuck you’s” turn into “kill me’s.” I deny him this mercy. 

A coldness falls over me. I feel nothing. There is no solace in this. Only necessity. 

When I tilt his head back, he’s too weak to resist. I grab the pliers and grip his tongue tight. I yank hard and hold it in place while using the sheers to cut the small, wet, pink thing from his mouth. This gets cauterized with the blowtorch. 

By the time I cut his feet off, I’ve already grown numb. Bored. I sit back down and stare at this eyeless, limbless thing in front of me. It can’t speak. It can’t confess. It can’t testify. But it can still hear and nod at questions. The blowtorch shoved in his ear canals fixes this. 

When the police do find us, they won’t question my motives. There will be no reprimanding, no life sentence. I gave him a part of myself. He will live stuck in this chair, in this house, in his mind, for the rest of his life. And I will always be there with him.