The Summer I Died: A Thriller by Ryan C. Thomas, Cody Goodfellow

when I get back, maybe we’ll discuss your punishment a little more. ”
    He stopped to look at the woman, gave her a nudge with his boot, saw she was still in her coma-like state, and left.
    Next to me, Tooth was mumbling incoherently and trying to open his swollen, puffy eyelids. Something started to smell like smoked ham and t ogether we realized that, against the stove , the woman was starting to burn.
     
     
    CHAPTER 12
     
    She sat in a pool of blood that flowed from the stump at the end of her arm. Her hair, face and neck were stained with dirt and gore; fresh leaves stuck to her like reptile scales. She wore a pair of jeans and a button down flannel shirt. Her feet were bare.
    As soon as I smelled her flesh cooking, I knew it was going to be bad. She was going to die horribly right in front of us. Considering her wounds, especially that ax in her head, she had little chance of survivi ng even if she escaped anyway, b ut to watch her burn to death was something I couldn’t stomach. Seeing her head get cleaved and her hand chopped off seemed far less cruel in comparison. Don’t ask me why, perhaps because those acts were quick and I didn’t anticipate them. This was different. We knew what was coming, and it was the waiting that was making us crazy. I could already feel the heat of the stove from where I was, a good ten feet away.
    If only she would stay comatose, stay half asleep like she was, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she would just melt away without a sound, peaceful, quiet. But she woke up. And the show began.
    S he blinked her eyes , as if pulled from a restful siesta by a strange noise, then lifted her head, trying to figure out where she was and what the hell was going on. It took a few tries to get her head level because the ax was throwing off her equilibrium. A snaky tendril of smoke rose from her back as her shirt started melting away. Then something sizzled and popped, and as if on cue, she went wild. Her scream was deafening, worse than any gunshot, like being slammed sideways in a high speed, metal-crunching car wreck. Tooth snapped to attention, worked his rag a little out of his mouth, enough to form words, and called to me. “Roger!”
    “ I’m fine! ” I managed to yell around my gag. “ But she’s burning to death. He lit the stove. We’ve got to stop it. ”
    We both struggled against our chains but to no avail. She was starting to bleed from her back, frantically trying to scoot away from the heat. The chains w ere just loose enough that she managed to open a small gap about a centimeter wide between her and the hot iron wall of the stove, but u nfortunately, it wasn’t enough. The heat melted away her skin like candle wax . Desperately she kicked and rocked, but still her flesh singed. Blood fizzled as it ran down the stove and pooled beneath her. A gooey cream-colored substance joined the mix; either skin or fat, I didn’t know which.
    The screaming was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was guttural. It raked my bones. She spasmed, shook, saw us watching her die; she shrieked at us. The ax swung about as she flailed, and the handle banged against the wall, keeping time to this hellish nightmare. A nightmare so unreal I couldn’t look away.
    Neither could Tooth. He was watching with tears streaming down his cheeks, his puffy eyes beginning to slit open just a little. The smell of charred flesh was so awful it made me want to stop breathing, but the rag was so full in my mouth that if I didn’t try to use my nose I would die. Which meant I was forced to smell her body cooking . Tooth started screaming. I started screaming.
    We all screamed. We all flailed. We were in Hell.
    Then one of the chains gave. I couldn’t believe it. It just went slack. Skinny Man must have left a kink in it which she pulled loose. Not missing a beat, Tooth was yelling at her to move, quickly, to pull at the chain. I doubt she heard him but her gyrating, twisting body instinctively tugged away