I vault off the ravaged sofa and start frisking the apartment for anything portable that I can sell—my CD player, an old Sankt-Moeller button, the ring in its velvety box. When I am bent over the sofa searching for stray containers of toxins a pair of hands picks me up by the neck with little regard for the forces of mass or gravity, thrusts me face-first on the area rug, and then I’m grazing on thick green shag.

A pair of pliers exerts cruel genitalian pressure.

My attempt to verbalize is useless—the pain is literally breathtaking—but it probably doesn’t make a difference. I know what’s coming. Before it comes, however, a piece of paper is slapped onto the floor by my head. It’s the title to the Clean Getaway.

“You die either way,” he says succinctly. “But sign it over to me and I won’t kill your girl.” A pen drops onto the title. “There is no discussion. You have three seconds.”

This seems like a good plan. Dying seems an expeditious alternative to living with my memories. If I can’t be an amnesiac Amish guy, I think, I might as well be dead. But when I pause momentarily while searching for the correct line to sign on—these things are confusing—and Deke gives my nuts a hurry-up squeeze, I blink in agony and then see only one thing: Chester Wellingon III. He is lying on his side, nearly face-to-face with me. The sight of him witnessing my imminent offing while giving me that smug I’m So Married and You Never Will Be look makes me inflame with rage.

“Chester Wellington,” I say, the syllables parsed with loathing.

“What?”

“Fucking English fuck.”

“Sign it, Starks.”

“Your girl didn’t lie, did she?”

“What?”

“That’s the only reason you’re married, fuckplug. You’re not any better than me.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Die, Chester Wellington!”

I reach for Chester. Deke reaches for something in his jacket. I get mine first. Grabbing the snotty figurine I scythe it into Deke’s face. I poleax the guy. He falls backwards, a gun tumbling out of his grip. He groans and clutches his face, blood seeping between his fingers. Still in a trance of rage and terror I pick up the gun and, standing astride Deke, shaking, I aim the muzzle squarely at his forehead, giving him the full glare of the barrel, its mouth of absolute darkness.

Its God-hole.