I writhed under his grip. His breath smelled of whiskey and cigarettes, and spittle was dripping from his open mouth onto my forehead. I tried desperately to scream for help, but with his hands around my neck, all that managed to escape was a whimper.

“Now you’re really done for, kid”, he growled. “The numbers. Now.”

I was starting to black out. The ceiling was vignetted with black edges closing in concentrically like the Looney Tunes title card. I made one final, desperate attempt to reach out for something I could strike him with, but my flailing hands found nothing.

And then, I saw it.

Judith’s smile. Shopping for groceries with my Mom. Winning first place in the creative writing competition. That time I almost drowned. My first kiss; the first time I made love. All this and more, shown to me in rapid succession like images from a flip book.

I didn’t want to die, but in this I had no choice. I could feel my last breath escaping me, the light closing in, when all of a sudden—

“Eric? Can you hear me?”

I sputtered and coughed, and the room slowly came to. I was no longer pinned to the ground by my attacker in that back alley - now I was in a dark green room of some kind, lying in a bed with a girl in a baseball cap leaned over beside me.

“Who- where- what happened?” I exclaimed.

“Look, we don’t have much time. You need to tell me what the numbers are.”

Numbers? What nu– oh, that’s right.

“Now lady, I don’t know who you are, but I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told the other guy: I don’t. Know. What. They. Are. And by the way, who even are you anyway?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is what’s in that brain of yours, and we’re going to get what we need out of it one way or another.”

With that, the girl grabbed my arm and wrapped some sort of corded strap around it, which she then hooked up to a device on the wall. She flipped a switch, and the next thing I knew, I felt a violent electric shock shoot through my body.

“AGH!!” I shouted, miserably. As if this day couldn’t get any worse.

“That’s the lowest setting. I’m going to give you five seconds to give me those numbers, or I’m cranking this up to the max.”

I gritted my teeth. “Fuck you,” I managed, “and fuck your stupid electric torture kink.”

“…aaand one. You asked for this.”

The pain hit me so hard that I passed out immediately. For a moment, I was floating, and then I crash-landed down on a bunch of cardboard boxes.

“Not your day today, is it laddie?” A bearded man in a bowler hat called out. “The numbers. Would you be so kind as to share them with us?”

I think I was starting to get the gist of things.

“What is it with you people? Why can’t I die? And why do you keep asking me about these god damn numbers?”

“We’re not going to stop until you give us what he want,” he said, approaching menacingly. In his right hand was a baton, which he tapped against his left hand in a steady, rhythmic fashion.

I picked myself up and started to run. Turning the corner, I was met with a large fence - too tall to climb over. There was no way out. I turned back and saw the man rounding the corner. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I couldn’t do this again. The agony of two deaths had already been more than I could take.

Looking frantically around, I spotted something metal and shiny lying on the ground. Before I could think, I immediately picked it up.

It was a hunting knife.

“Ooh, I see that the playing field has been leveled, has it now laddie?” The man in the bowler hat teased.

“I may not be stronger than you, but I’ve got nothing left to lose!” I retorted.

All of a sudden, the man started running towards me, and I instinctively stepped aside. His baton smashed against the fence with full force, sending a rippling vibration through the chain-link structure that would have been devastating had it landed its target. I took a swipe at him with my blade but I missed. Unfazed, the man swung his baton at me again and it connected with my right arm, the pain of which almost made me drop the knife to the ground. Mustering up all of my strength, I charged forward, blade in hand, and stabbed upward with all my might.

The silence was deafening. And then, the sound of gurgling, followed by drops of blood on the ground. The man fell to his knees, then toppled over, dead. I twisted the knife out of his neck, the remaining gash resembling something from a Cronenberg movie. I let out a primal yell at his corpse.

The next thing I knew, the area around me faded into darkness. I fell backwards into a void and ended back in that hospital bed.

“My, my, quite a resilient one we have here, don’t we?” The girl with the baseball cap remarked.

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed. Had it all been a hallucination? No, the sensation of killing that man had been too real. Before I had time to catch my breath, she spoke.

“Well, it looks like the electric shocks aren’t enough to eke this information out of you, so we’re going to have to try some… alternative methods.”

The girl turned around to retrieve something from the table. In that, I saw my opportunity and grabbed the electric cord connected to the wall and wrapped it around her neck. She was stronger than I expected and thrashed around violently, but I wasn’t about to let go. I tugged the two ends of the cord as tightly as I could until she no longer gasped for breath, upon which she slumped to the ground, unmoving.

I knew what was about to happen next.

I blacked out and woke up with the drunk man’s hands once again wrapped around my neck.

“The numbers… give them to me…”

With all my might, I grasped his fingers and tugged at them so I could speak.

“O-Kay… let me… go… and they’re - they’re yours…”

At first he cocked his head to the side in doubt, but after a moment of deliberation he finally released his grip. I wheezed, rubbing my neck and trying to get a second wind.

“Numbers. Now. Or you die.”

I stood up, leveling myself with him.

“See, I couldn’t give you the numbers just now because, like I told you, I don’t know what they are. But what I do know is WHERE they are. They’re written on my fingers. Didn’t you notice? Here, look.”

He stepped closer to me as I held my hands up to his face. Then, without warning, I shoved my thumbs into his eye sockets, gouging them with all my might.

“AGGHH!!” He screamed, falling backwards onto the floor in pain. “YOU’RE A DEAD MAN NOW, ERIC HOLTZ!”

Taking advantage of his blindness. I scanned the room for something - anything - I could use as a weapon. In a flash, I saw it - the beer bottle he had been drinking from before he ambushed and strangled me.

I picked the bottle up off the table, smashed it, then lunged for the man.

“YOU WANT YOUR NUMBERS? WELL, I’VE GOT YOUR GOD DAMN NUMBERS!”

I stabbed him in the throat, chest, and stomach repeatedly, counting out loud for each time the bottle came down and pierced flesh.

“ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”

I stopped when I got to forty-seven, exhausted. By then, the air stank of whiskey, cigarettes, and blood. I let go of the bottle, upon which it landed on the floor, shattering.

I was finally free.

It had been a long time coming, but now I felt I could truly call myself the slayer of monsters.