“Get your dick in that, motherfucker! You been talkin’ about it all night. Go on, stick your dick in that hole I cut; go on and fuck it.” Hogg reeled away from the couch. His own face was pretty scratched up on one side. I guess he’d had a real workout.

The wop—there was a tear across the waist of his jumpsuit and I could see his scar in all that hair, moving between the edges—was trying to get it in. I couldn’t tell if he’d done it; if not, he was rubbing himself off on her leg like a dog, one hand clutching at her tit while she screamed. Maybe he did it.

The nigger was back on her head. But with her screaming like that, he couldn’t really do anything, except bust her one every once in awhile; when he did it, he laughed.

Hogg tossed the wop’s knife onto the rug and turned, wiping bloody fingers on his crotch. “Hey, cocksucker, I got something for—” Then I guess he noticed Denny’s bloody pants leg. He began to laugh. “Get on over here. What you two been doing?”

“Hey, Hogg …” Denny was still breathing hard; and he was still grinning. “You really been workin’ out, huh?”

“What’d he do?” Hogg asked me as we came over. “Cut his nuts off?—Or did he make you do it?”

My hands had blood on them too.

With Denny leaning and limping, and once tripping on a fold of the rug (and gasping hard then), we came over.

“Lemme see.” Hogg stuck his hand between Denny’s legs.

Denny squeezed my shoulder so tight I winced and tried to pull away. The back of Denny’s hand on my shoulder was wet. So was his neck; the side of it wrinkled where he dropped his chin to stare down. He panted like a puppy.

Hogg put his hand inside Denny’s fly and lifted out his swollen, bloody genitals. “Jesus fucking Christ.…” Suddenly Hogg closed his fist on them, so tight his own lips thinned. “You like that?”

Denny jerked one foot up off the floor again and staggered against me. He nodded his head, fast. His mouth was open. He nodded again.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Hogg repeated. And let go.

Denny put his foot on the ground, gingerly. And began to breathe: short gasps, with a long time between them.

Hogg turned to the couch. “Hey, you bastards!”

Blood stained the whole of one cushion and half another. Below that, it made an irregular semicircle down the front of the upholstery, almost two feet across. “Drop your loads or get your asses out of here.”