This time when he screams, I notice he’s missing a tooth in the front. Did that fall out when I stepped on him? Or does Rod just have poor dental hygiene? I push back his lips and look inside because I genuinely want to know. He wrenches his head away from my hand.

“I said RELAX.” I yank his face back toward me by the lips.

“Please . . .” A reddish clear tear spills from one eye. “I’ll give you money—I won’t tell.”

By the blood pooling under him, it seems he’s on the verge of death.

I grab the machine gun off the coffee table and point the barrel at his chest.

“Okay, game time,” I say. “If you can guess my name, I won’t shoot you.”

“I don’t know,” Rod chokes. “I don’t know who you are! Please don’t do this.”

“I said guess.”

“Uh, Jamal!” he screams. “Tyrone! Anthony, Malik, fucking I don’t know!”

“Sawyer, actually.”

Rod goes still and silent, as if he isn’t bleeding. As if he’s not been stabbed at all. When he speaks, his voice is clear.

“What did you say?”

“Sawyer Doon.” I place one foot on his bloody stomach and watch his face contort. “Your favorite nephew.”

“Sawyer?”

A fit of bullets explodes his body. A funny dance rattles his arms and legs.

He’s dead in a second.

Giggling, I throw the gun across the floor. I skip around the house, tear his Confederate flag into strips, pull the gun cabinet off the wall, and tip it over. BANG! The glass goes everywhere.

I throw his candle holders through the windows. I smash his TV screen with the Sig Sauer.

Then the kerosene. I drench him in it. And the floors, tables, and countertops.

Once everything is slippery slick, I slide through each room and light the fluid, raising little bursts of flame in my wake. The den, the dining room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the—

The . . . the burning fabric and the smell of flesh is unbearable . . . like knives digging up through my nostrils and sinking into my brain.

Fire engulfs the rooms, growing and growing, forming deadly clouds.

I cough, and blood lands at the inside and outside of my lips. In the middle of my glove.

My nose is leaking blood and my skin opening in little tears across my arms. The flame is eating me from the inside out without even touching me.

Jake

We stumble across the floor, toward the door we came in through. Rod becomes crispy behind us, like a big burnt bit on a skillet fire. The flames have us dizzy and disoriented. My body feels like it’s been set on fire, even though the fire hasn’t touched it.

What the fuck is this?

Heat waves swim across our vision. Our eyes and heart burn like they’ve been set upon hot coals that are eating us from the inside out.