"No Allen." I move slowly around the chair until I'm facing him, standing directly in his line of vision, and he's so drunk he can't even focus on the ax, he doesn't even notice I've raised it above my head. Or when I change my mind and lower it to my waist, almost holding it as if it's a baseball bat and I'm about to swing at an oncoming ball, which happens to be Allen's head.
Owen pauses, then says, "Anyway, I used to hate Iggy Pop but now that he's so commercial I like him a lot better than--"
The ax hits him midsentence, straight in the face, it's thick blade chopping sideways into his mouth, shutting him up. Paul's eyes look up at me, then involuntarily roll back into his head, then back at me, and suddenly his hands are trying to grab at the handle, but the shock of the blow has sapped his strength. There's no blood at first, no sound either except for the newspapers under Paul's kicking feet, rustling, tearing. Blood starts to slowly pour out the sides of his mouth shortly after the first chop, and when I pull the ax out--almost yanking Allen out of the chair by his head--and strike him again in the face, splitting it open, his arms flailing at nothing, blood sprays out in twin brownish geysers, staining my raincoat. This is accompanied by a horrible momentary hissing noise actually coming from the wounds in Paul's skull, places where bone and flesh no longer connect, and this is followed bu a rude farting noise caused by a section of his brain, which due to pressure forces itself out, pink and glistening, through the wounds in his face. He falls to the floor in agony, his face just gray and bloody, except for one of his eyes, which is blinking uncontrollably; his mouth is twisted red-pink jumble of teeth and meat and jawbone, his tongue hangs out of an open gash on the side of his cheek, connected by only what looks like a thick purple string. I scream at him once: "Fucking stupid bastard. Fucking bastard." I stand there waiting, starring up at the crack above the Onica that the superintendent hasn't fixed yet. it takes Paul five minutes to finally die. Another thirty to stop bleeding. The Patty Winter's Show this morning was on the improving the glow of your skin using Asian tea.
