Isaac correctly argues that without genuine character depth, extreme horror is just empty spectacle rather than a meaningful exploration of human suffering. This analysis successfully bridges the gap between low-brow shock and high-brow psychological observation.
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I Found My New Favorite Extreme Horror Book
Added:I have read a lot of books that people describe as extreme horror. Some of them I have loved. Some of them I've hated.
Most of them have made me feel like I was reading a fetish diary or a collection of [ __ ] up scenes written by a 15-year-old trying to impress his friends. There are plenty of great books with extreme content. But over time, I've learned to lower my expectations whenever a book puts extreme horror or some splatterpunk equivalent directly on the packaging itself. Usually the best books become extreme because they're aiming at something bigger and the violence helps them get there. Blood Meridian, for example, is not even a horror novel, but its violence is more extreme than most splatterpunk. In Blood Meridian, that violence is earned. In books like Grandpappy, it often feels like the author went into the book to write extreme gore and nothing else. So, when I looked at The Summer I Died by Ryan C. Thomas and saw the blurb, "Every second you're alive brings more and more pain." I was not excited. I thought I knew exactly what kind of book I was about to read. But people have recommended this book to me for years.
So about a week ago, finally gave it a shot. And once I started, I could not put it down. Regardless of my thoughts on Tooth as a person, as a character to follow, he is one of the most interesting people I've ever come across. Within 15 pages of the book, I was thinking about how awesome and dangerous it would be to spend a day with him. Nothing extreme happens in the first 60 pages or so of this book, but I did not care. I felt so hard for Roger, Tooth, and the world that they live in that I would have read an entire novel about the two of them hanging out, watching movies, shooting beer cans, getting into fights, and planning a move to California. There's enough depth in the first 60 pages that you could have convinced me this is a novel by SE Hinton or Steven Shabbosski. There's a sense that these characters are real people who are still figuring out their lives but have potential to do great things. Once the horror begins, the book uses that to explore heroism, luck, fate, purpose, and what it actually means to survive. The summer I Died is the best book I have read in 2026, and it's not close. I have a lot more to say, but I'll save the deeper analysis for later. First, I'm going to give a full in-depth summary of the novel.
During the summary, I will pause occasionally for a reaction or a small piece of analysis. Whenever the background music stops, that means I'm cutting in to provide some commentary.
Once the summary is over, I will come back with my full review of the novel.
Content warnings are on screen now, so please pause if you would like to review them. This summary includes the book's major scenes of torture, mutilation, and sexual violence. I am not going to sanitize those scenes because what these characters endure matters to the story, and I believe that it would be disrespectful to do so. Without further ado, let's begin. The Summer I Died by Ryan C. Thomas.
The Samurai Died begins with a prologue written after the events of the story take place. Roger, the main character of the novel, says that he barely sleeps.
He lives on caffeine, diet pills, and anything else that can keep him awake because whenever he sleeps, he has nightmares about the summer that destroyed his life. He barely eats. His eyes have sunk toward the hollows of his skull. His face is bruised. And his thighs are dotted with purple welts and half moon scars from punching and pinching himself awake. As he puts it, he's eroding. Even while awake, Roger cannot stop questioning what happened.
Why did he survive? He curses God, thanks God, wonders whether God had anything to do with it, and sometimes wonders whether God exists at all.
Whenever he does fall asleep, he wakes to himself screaming instructions at his past self. Leave the dice at home or put the gun to your head and pull the trigger so you never have to face what happens next. Therapists, friends, and even a biographer keep asking Roger what he felt like when he first returned home from college that summer before the bloodshed. He tells them that he was happy. They seem to believe they can return him to that point. But Roger says there is no way that person ever comes back. That person, Roger says, that me from then is dead. As far as Roger is concerned, everything began during the first weekend he was home. When his best friend, Tooth, convinced him to fire a gun for the first time. I won't lie, I usually find prologues like this corny and overdone. Roger is opening the novel by telling us that what happens next is so horrible, he wishes he had shot himself in the head. I have heard some version of this a million times, and I'd be willing to bet that most of you have, too. Usually, it comes off as melodramatic, and it makes me want to put the book down. But here, those little details fill me with this curiosity.
Why should he have left the dice at home? The bruises, the stimulants, the screaming, and the line, "I am eroding."
These things don't only promise that something bad is coming. They show us the damage it already caused. As I read the prologue, I found myself needing to know what could have done this to him.
So, I kept reading. Chapter 1 begins with Roger and Tooth standing in a dirt clearing in the New Hampshire woods using an old metal trash can as a target. It's Roger's first time firing a gun. He pulls the trigger on Tooth's 44 Magnum, punches from the force, and sends the bullet into a tree. Roger writes, "If I had been aiming at Kennedy, I would have hit Oswald." Tooth slaps him on the back and yells, "Well, wrap my nuts around a pole and call me Mary. Looks like you just popped your cherry." Despite missing badly, the 44 immediately makes Roger feel invincible, almost godlike. Booth hits the trash can easily while Roger worries that a passing car heard them. Tells him to relax. Nobody cares about a few gunshots this far into the woods. The clearing used to be a teenage hangout until Lakewood High star running back Mark Trigger jumped from the cliff. His body lay among beer cans and pornography for two weeks until some teenagers climbed down after dropping a six-ack of beer.
One of them saw a necklace hidden in the leaves and went to pull it. But when they did, Mark's decomposing head came with it. The kid panicked and dragged the corpse after him. When paramedics later wenched Mark's body up the cliff, his head reportedly thacked against the rocks loudly enough for all the spectators to hear. Roger tries shooting again. This time his bullet clips the rim of the trash can and Tooth throws his hat into the air like Roger had just won the World Series. When they approach the can, however, they discover that Roger's bullet also struck a bee. Its abdomen has fused to the metal, leaving it alive, but unable to do anything except crawl in a small circle. Tooth laughs. He shot a bee and didn't even kill it. You [ __ ] [ __ ] Man, wait till I tell everyone. Roger and Tooth have been friends since kindergarten.
When Tooth stole Roger's cookies and Roger punched him in the eye, their teachers forced them to play together.
Instead of reforming them, this taught them to work as a team with Tooth distracting people while Roger stole the best toys. Their interests later split.
Roger towards comics and science fiction toward alcohol, but they stayed inseparable. At 16, they spent two days in jail after covering the police station lawn with stolen ornaments.
During those two days, Roger discovered that Tooth was far smarter than his grade suggested. Ruth wanted to build motorcycles, take Route 66, and move to California. Roger realized he had reduced his best friend to the same growing alcoholic stereotypes everyone else saw. Back at the trash can, Tooth tries twice to shoot the bee and misses.
Roger says they cannot leave his suffering because injured bees release a distress signal that attracts the rest of the hive. Tooth calls him a geek, then crushes the bee beneath his boot.
Better it dies quick than just stay there suffering in agony till it does.
Roger and Tooth go to Wendy's to get food and stare at Lucy Graves, who Tooth says has nipples that are so big you can hang your hat on him. After Wendy's, they stop for alcohol. Tooth presents a fake ID, naming him 32-year-old David McNelte, but the clerk immediately recognizes it is fake. Dude starts a loud argument to distract him and gives Roger a look. Roger understands what he wants. Their shorthand is so complete that Roger can ask about that movie with the guy and Tooth will somehow answer Bloodfist 4. Roger cannot hide the 12-pack, so he stuffs six miniature bottles into his socks and places a Batman comic on the counter as a signal.
Tooth snatches back the ID and announces they are leaving. The enraged clerk shouts, "If you ever come back, I'll [ __ ] you good." Tooth calls him the fsler. On the way out, they go to Roger's house because they don't want to be around Tooth's father. Tooth's real name is Mvin Elliot, but everyone calls him Tooth because his drunk father backed over him when he was 10. He missed the wheels, but lost six front teeth and has worn a bridge ever since.
His mother divorced his father and moved to New Jersey, but Tooth chose to stay with his father. Roger thinks that this is because a drunk parent isn't able to enforce many rules, and Tooth likes to take advantage of that. Roger's parents are away visiting his grandmother, but his younger sister, Jaime, is home.
Roger and Jaime immediately begin fighting over the television. Jaime mocks his comic books and Roger makes fun of her movie. After a few minutes of this, Booth sits beside Jaime, puts an arm around her and says, "Ain't seen you in a few months. You're developing nicely." Jaime knocks his hand away, threatens to remove his remaining teeth, and leaves Roger and Tooth with the television. I do want to point out a couple things. First, it is unacceptable that Tooth used the fler. And second, his comments about Jaime are gross. By my best estimate, Jaime is somewhere between 15 and 17 and is definitely still in high school. So, I want to be clear that although I really love following Tooth as a character, I am not condoning any of his actions and I do not think that he is a good person. That night, Roger and Tooth watch John Carpenters's The Thing, a movie they have both seen enough times that Tooth asked the same question during the same scene every single time. When the men in the movie surround one of their friends without knowing whether he is still human, Tooth asks, "Would you kill me if it was me and you weren't sure?" Roger answers, "Yep." Tooth says Roger would actually be the first person he captured so he could force him to toss salad in an alien prison. After the movie, Tooth goes to the bathroom and yells, "If you're an American outside the bathroom, what are you inside the bathroom?" Roger has heard the joke before and answers, "European." When Tooth returns, they discuss the future. Roger wants to draw comics, but is taking business classes because his father says art is not profitable. Tooth mocks pretentious art students and reminds Roger of when he used to draw comics of Tooth fighting aliens. Tooth claims Roger always forgot the part where he had sex with the female villain. Roger suggests the Tooth go to community college, but Tooth says a degree leaves you with a $30,000 IOU and Jack [ __ ] and their cousin [ __ ] all.
Instead, he wants Roger to drop out and move with him to California where they could find beaches, women, sunshine, and weed growing from cracks in the pavement. They sit quietly for a moment.
Then, Roger says, "Not my sister." Okay.
Tooth claims he was joking about what he said about Jaime, but Roger knows he was not. Still, Tooth understands the warning, and that is enough to end the conversation. Tooth stretches across the couch and pulls his Red Sox hat over his eyes. He's always wearing that hat, even when he sleeps. His mother mailed it to him when he was 12 with a birthday card containing only the words, "Happy birthday."
After a moment, Teeth becomes unusually sincere. He says, "Maybe I'm just drunk." Or maybe I'm in a nostalgic mood, but I miss you.
Without Roger, he mostly drinks with married co-workers and plays video games alone. He tells him, "So yeah, I'm glad you're back for a bit. It's going to be a good summer. Before falling asleep, he repeats, "A good summer." Roger lies in his parents' bed and remembers being eight, sneaking downstairs for monster movies and then crawling between his parents because he was terrified. One night, he overheard his father arguing with his mother, saying that the movies had to stop. When his father found Roger listening, Roger cried and apologized for being afraid. The following night, instead of shaming him, his father gave Roger advice. "Every monster has a weakness, and humans can defeat them by learning the secret ways. Us humans are stronger than the monsters," his father says. And once a person knows how to defeat them, knows these tricks, they can't ever hurt us again. His father says that the will to survive runs in their family, then sends them upstairs with the words, "Everything you need is waiting for you." On Roger's bed lies Monster Slayer issue number one. The next morning, back in the present, Jaime and Tooth are fighting in the kitchen while Tooth eats eggs mixed with fruit roll-ups. Yep, Tooth actually eats eggs mixed with fruit roll-ups. As Jaime and Tooth trade insults, Roger rummages through a basket of junk and finds two red dice from the Snake Eyes Casino.
Brought home from his parents' first vacation without the children, he rolls them over breakfast and gets seven, a lucky number. Casually introducing the dice here is such a great move by the author. At this point in the book, I was already becoming invested in the characters and their world. I'd literally almost forgotten that horror was waiting for them later on. The prologue told us that Roger should have left the dice at home. So the second he picked them up, I remembered that warning. I was begging Roger to put them back because by this point, I cared about him. Roger's mother calls from Providence. She jokes that Roger and Jaime have permission to kill each other as long as they avoid staining the rug.
Before hanging up, she says that she loves him. Roger does not say it back, and although he knows she understood, he writes that he will come to regret it.
Roger and Tooth stop at Tooth's house to collect the 9mm. Tooth's father is sitting in his usual place on the porch drinking beer, and he stops Roger before he can get through the door. He begins retelling a story Roger has already heard a hundred times. Back when Mr. Elliot was studying at seminary, he claims he saw Jesus standing at a water fountain. But instead of water, wine flowed from the spout. Then one of Jesus's tears fell into it and blue lightning flashed across the surface in the shape of a cross. Mr. Elliot now believes he finally understands what the vision meant. Every person has a purpose, even if they can't see it.
Maybe every action creates a chain reaction somewhere else in the world.
Perhaps his drinking was somehow causing something good to happen to a stranger he'll never meet. Jesus had the cross he was meant to die on. Maybe alcohol is simply Mr. Elliot's own cross to bear.
Roger understands this as just a drunk man transforming the addiction that destroyed his family into a mission from God. He doesn't believe Jesus appeared to encourage Mr. Elliot to keep drinking. Although the larger question, whether every person has some hidden purpose, stays with him. Later, as Roger and Tooth leave, Mr. Elliot calls after them. Got to have a purpose in life. On the drive to Bobcat Mountain, Roger and Tooth smoke terrible weed and play with the dice. Roger wagers on a seven. Tooth bets him an ass kicking. Roger rolls seven again, and Tooth punches him so hard he nearly falls to the door. Bobcat Mountain is remote enough for shooting.
In a clearing overlooking miles of forest, Tooth asks whether Roger sees anything interesting. Roger says no. And Tooth replies, "Neither do I. I have to get out of this place." And soon they spend the next few hours shooting beer cans until the metal is so full of holes it can barely function as a target.
Roger gets surprisingly good. From 20 yards away, he can hit whatever he is aiming at around 70% of the time. Tooth is still much better, even drunk. Roger says he could shoot the hairs off a knat. At one point, Tooth walks towards the cans while Roger is still holding the gun, wobbling from side to side and pretending to dodge bullets. Roger suddenly realizes how easy it would be to raise the gun, shoot tooth in the head, hide his body somewhere in the forest, and drive home. That thought scares the [ __ ] out of him. He tries handing the gun back, but Tooth assumes Roger is frightened by the recoil and forces it into his hands again. Roger raises it towards one of the cans and imagines that the target is a man's head. He fires and the bullet hits dead center.
Examines the hole and says, "Damn, you're unnatural." Roger does not tell him what he was picturing. By midday, they have run out of usable targets.
Wanders around collecting the empty shells because he claims he can reuse them, which does not make Roger feel particularly confident about the origins of the bullets they've been firing. They roll another joint and sit at the edge of the clearing looking across the forest. Storm clouds are slowly spreading across the distant sky when Tooth asks, "Want to go to Okconors tonight?" Roger immediately says no.
Okconors is the only nearby bar that does not check IDs, but getting carded is the least of Roger's concerns. It's a local hangout for skin heads. There aren't many minorities in the area for them to terrorize. So apparently Roger mentioning Blade, a movie starring Wesley Snipes, was enough to make him their entertainment. One evening, Roger had barely mentioned the movie to tooth when an enormous fist dragged him from his chair. He found himself face to face with a man wearing suspenders and two lightning bolts tattooed across his shaved skull. The skin head used a racial slur and told Roger that if he wants to support black people, he can do it somewhere else. Had Roger been alone, he would have apologized for existing and quietly escaped through the nearest door. Unfortunately, Tooth is with him.
And Tooth has never encountered a dangerous situation he could not make considerably worse. Tooth walks behind the skin head, puts an arm around him like they were old friends, and says, "I say we lynch the little fucker." Roger's eyes go wide. The skin head turns toward Tooth as the bar's owner approaches with a golf club, warning everyone to calm down or he will call the police. But the other skin hands have already started surrounding Roger and Tooth. Every conversation in the bar stops. The other customers turn to watch, practically salivating for the fight. Then Tooth gives Roger the same look he gave him at the liquor store. That look has meant the same thing since kindergarten. Tooth is about to create a distraction, and Roger is expected to do something useful while everyone is watching Tooth. But Roger has no idea what Tooth expects him to do. There's nothing to steal, and he's definitely not brave enough to sucker punch one of these men. But tooth continues provoking the skin head, pretending to agree that Roger needs to be taught a lesson. The skin head recognizes Tooth as the boy who was run over by his father and says, "What do they call you? Mouth or something?" The skin head raises a fist wearing what is essentially a set of brass knuckles. The words Brody was here are engraved backwards across the metal so that presumably they'll be stamped into whoever he punches. Tooth looks at the ring and says he owns one, too. It says once you go black, you never go back.
Put it right where I had that epiphany.
Want to see it? He reaches for his zipper. So, while the skin heads stand there in stun silence, Roger finally understands the plan. He slowly places his foot behind the big skin head's knee. The man announces that they are all going outside. Tooth draws his fist back. Roger kicks the man's knee forward. The skin head's legs buckle and Tooth punches him directly in the face.
Unfortunately, the blow sends the man's head backwards into Roger, splitting Roger's lip and knocking him to the floor. Then the entire bar explodes.
Fists come from every direction. Combat boots swing past Roger's face. Bottles smash against the floor as people yell, grunt, and spit blood. Roger uses his position on the ground to crawl toward the exit over broken glass. He's only inches away when several hands grab him and drag him back into the fight. Roger becomes certain that he's about to die.
He pisses himself. Then the owner charges into the crowd, swinging his golf club at anyone within reach. Bodies scatter across the bar. Roger ducks beneath a swing that would have caved in his cheek and finds Tooth standing in front of him. Tooth's face is covered in blood. His nose is broken and the bridge replacing his missing teeth is gone.
Roger screams, "Let's get the [ __ ] out of here." Without the bridge, Tooth answers, "Hold on. I wa my teeth." So while skin heads crash into tables around them and the other customers cheer, Roger and Tooth get down on the floor and search for his teeth. Roger eventually finds the bridge beneath a bar stool covered in a thick red glob that looks like a stewed tomato. He nearly vomits as Tooth shoves it straight back into his mouth. Then they sprint outside, climb into the Camaro and escape. That was the last time Roger went to Okconors. As he watches the storm clouds creeping over Bobcat Mountain, he tells Tooth he has no interest in returning. Tooth accuses him of being afraid. Man, when are you going to get a backbone? Roger answers, "I have a backbone and it's straight and in one piece. I kind of like it that way, but Tooth does not find that funny." He says, "You kind of make me sick sometimes." He tells Rogers that he never takes chances, never gets laid, and is going to waste his life sitting in their hometown reading comic books.
Watch argues that he's not trapped. B has given him opportunities, allowed him to meet new people, and at least the possibility of a different life. D could experience that too if he ever visited.
That is exactly the problem. Roger already has somewhere else to go. Tooth has a warehouse job, a father drinking himself to death, and a Camaro with a broken CD player. California isn't just some vacation fantasy to Tooth. It's the only future he can imagine that doesn't look exactly like his present. The argument eventually burns itself out.
who changes the subject and begins telling Roger a probably fictional story about sleeping with Michelle Murphy, the intensely religious girl nearly every boy at their high school wanted. Roger calls him a liar, says he's hungry, and suggests they drive into Bobtail for food. Buth puts the gun back in the car, and that is when they hear the scream.
The scream seems to come from every direction, echoing through the trees. It fades, the cicas resume, and Tooth starts climbing into the car. Then it comes again. Help me. Please help me.
Roger stone brain replace every slasher movie he's ever seen. Who thinks someone may be injured? Looks at Roger and says what Roger already knows. He'll say, "Let's go look." Roger argues that they should leave. I've seen this movie before. We'll walk in there and the psycho with the axe will split my head in half. But Tooth answers, "Movies aren't real. She is. We can't just leave her if she needs help." Tooth tries calling 911, but the cell phone has no reception. Then the woman screams, "Oh god, no." Tooth grabs the 9mm and runs into the forest, ordering Roger to move.
They push through branches and rocks until Roger loses the direction of the car, then climb back to the shooting clearing, hoping for reception. There's still none. From the clearing, Tooth spots a log cabin through the moving treetops with a blue pickup beside it and something large beneath the canopy.
A dog's bark seems to come from the opposite wall, revealing why the sounds were impossible to locate. They were echoing across the valley. Roger wants the Camaro, but Tooth says going straight down will be faster and shows Roger the gun. They descend through thick branches as thunder begins in the distance. Roger tells us, "If only I'd known what was going to happen next. I would have taken the gun from tooth and put bullets in both of our brains. Near the cabin, they cross a crude fence and remain inside the treeine. The yard holds a broken swing set, car parts, a gas tank, and a freshly disturbed earth.
who enormous rottweilers appear beside a cellar door, pawing and whimpering.
Booth whispers of the woman may have fallen down the stairs. As he draws the gun, they hear her muffled voice behind the door. Then Roger notices the dog's paw prints. They're red with blood.
Before Roger or Tooth can react, the cellar door bursts open. A woman runs into the yard. She's bound, gagged, and covered in blood. Behind her comes a thin, shirtless man carrying a handax in one hand and a saw in the other. The woman sees Roger and Tooth and runs toward them. The shirtless man catches up and swings the axe into the back of her skull. Blood sprays from the wound.
Her body begins spasming. She somehow continues running. Then Tooth fires the gun. The gunshot breaks Roger's paralysis. He urinates on himself and runs. Crashes into the fence and is knocked down by the woman. The ax is still in her skull. One Rottweiler bites through Roger's leg to the bone and thrashes him until he punches it hard enough to make it release. Near the house, Tooth fights the shirtless man while the other dog lies shot through the neck. The woman sits up and claws at the axe. Roger kicks her away, climbs the fence, and collapses on his torn leg. Through the rails, he watches a man beat tooththed unconscious with a 9mm.
Roger closes his eyes rather than watch his friend die, then forces them open because he wants to know. I'll kill you so slowly it feels like an eternity, the man says.
Shoot my dog, you [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] The man checks the remaining bullets and walks toward Roger. Roger hides beneath leaves, thinking only, "Please let it be fast." Before reaching him, the man lifts the woman as she again reaches for the axe. If you pull that out, you're likely to lose all your brains. You'd probably die pretty quick, and we wouldn't want that. We haven't even started having fun with you yet. When she keeps trying, he saws off her hands and feeds it to the surviving dog, Butch. Roger remains beneath the leaves while the man climbs the fence and stops directly above him. What the hell are you two doing on my property? Don't you know it's against the law to trespass?
Roger turns over and finds the gun pointed directly at his eye. The man tells Roger that he should have kept running, but since his calf is open deeply enough to expose the muscle, Butch would have tracked him anyway.
Roger promises never to tell. Skinny Man says they should have minded their own business. Roger already knows that a bullet would be better than entering the house. He cannot make himself choose death. Roger writes, "You don't just concede death in these circumstances.
You take every second you can find and use it to pray for another few seconds.
Hope is a cruel [ __ ] Roger climbs back over and marches toward the house while Butch crunches the woman's finger bones.
A blow strikes the back of his head and everything goes black. Roger wakes smelling mold and wet concrete. Chained to a basement wall by sharpened cuffs, ankle restraints, a waist chain, and an iron collar. Filthy rag fills his mouth.
Tooth is chained behind him, his face caked in blood. Roger, relax. It's no use. Tooth has already studied the room while pretending to be unconscious.
Skinny man releases them. Tooth plans to attack while Roger runs for the door and uses a cell phone in Tooth's back pocket. Tooth admits he's scared, but says, "If you need to cry, go for it.
But I'm going to need you to be awake and aware when he comes back. Around them are a boiler, a wood stove, dog bowls, pools, the stairs, and a second locked room beneath the house."
Footsteps approach. Skinny man returns covered in blood, dragging the woman with the axe still in her skull. He drops her by the bowl and pinches Roger's nose shut, making the gag suffocate him. Tooth screams for him to release Roger and fight them fairly.
Skinny man slams Roger's head into the wall and turns on Tooth, but Tooth keeps provoking him. Unchain us and fight us fair, you coward. You [ __ ] mom's boy.
Come on, we'll let you use the gun. and Skinny Man instead chains the woman against the stove, rubs her head upright by the axe handle, and says, "Much better." After briefly leaving, he returns with firewood, starts the stove, and beats Tooth across the jaw until Roger forces out his gag and yells, "Hit me, you fuck." Skinny man only fakes a blow at Roger, promises something special later, and leaves to bury the dead dog. As the stove heats, the woman begins to burn. Her shirt melts into her back. Blood sizzles and her skin and fat liquefy against the iron. She wakes screaming and thrashing while the axe handle bangs the wall. Roger and Tooth scream with her. One chain slips loose and she tears away from the stove, leaving burned flesh across the floor.
Tooth begs her to free them, but she collapses. Roger keeps pleading until Tooth says, "Enough, Roger. Enough.
Enough." She's dead, but her chest is still moving. She sits up and Tooth gently tells her that if she can release them, they can reach a hospital. Roger thinks she needs a priest. Somehow, she stands and takes a step toward them.
Skinny Man returns with a shovel, kicks her down, and drives the blade through Tooth's thigh to the bone. He threatens to put it through Roger's neck unless Tooth stops screaming, and Tooth forces himself silent. When Skinny Man yanks the shovel free, blood pours from the wound, which licks it until it called away. Skinny man heats the shovel, drags the woman forward, and sings. The armbbones connected to the shoulder bone, the leg bones connected to the hipbone. He saws off her arm at the shoulder, licks the wound, kisses Roger with her blood, and cuts the arm into pieces for Butch. He pulls the axe from her skull, then presses the red hot shovel against Tooth's open thigh. Roger hears the flesh sizzle and Tooth scream before he passes out. When Roger wakes again, the basement is dark except for the dying embers inside the stove. Tooth tells him the skinny man burned the wound closed. Woman's body is gone and Tooth believes she is finally dead. Then Tooth asks Roger to promise him something. Promise me if we get out of here. Promise you'll come to California with me. The request is so absurd that Roger begins laughing. He imagines the two of them sitting on the beach smoking weed, drinking, and telling people about the time they survived a psychopath's basement. Roger agrees. Sure, I'll go with you. You're right. There's nothing here for me. Ruth answers except Lucy Graves' tits. Somehow, they laugh together. Ruth believes a ranger may find the Camaro if they survive another day. While Roger was unconscious, he mapped the room by sound. The stairs lead them toward the driveway, the second door beneath the house. When anyone approaches, they must scream.
They pull against the wall plates without much success. Roger cries, so Tooth distracts him with comics. He asks what the Silver Surfer does, and Roger replies, "He rides a silver surfboard and saves people." Tooth asks why Batman matters when he's just a normal guy with gadgets. And Roger answers, "That's why he's so cool. He's just a normal guy with guts and skills, a true hero."
Roger imagines Batman escaping with a hidden tool, but Roger has nothing.
Skinny man has the gun and Tooth cannot reach the phone. Tooth apologizes for bringing them here and exhaustion eventually pulls Roger to sleep. Roger dreams that his parents are standing outside a jail cell ashamed of him.
Tooth appears bruised and strangled holding a Rottweiler. As he begins opening the cell, Tooth says, "You can hear me. Just pretend you're asleep."
The dream disappears. Roger realized its tooth is speaking to him in the real basement. Skinny man has returned. He is naked and dancing in front of them while carrying the dead woman's severed head.
He rolls it across his body, forces its mouth around his penis, and speaks to it as though it is still alive. Roger and tooth pretend to remain asleep. Butch suddenly takes the head in his mouth and runs away with it. Guinea man approaches Roger and masturbates while staring directly at him. When Roger doesn't react, he licks Roger's lips. Roger screams. Skinny man laughs, tightens tooth gag, and threatens to show tooth his insides if he speaks again. Then he turns on the basement light. The room is covered in blood. Remains from the woman's arm lie beside the dog bowls. A skinny man's body is covered in faden prison tattoos depicting animals attacking and sexually abusing women. He searches Roger's pockets and finds his driver's license. Roger. 143 Union Avenue. He threatens to visit Roger's mother. Roger screams that he will kill him if he touches her. Skinny man then finds the red dice Roger took from his kitchen that morning. He rolls them in his hand before searching Tooth and finding the cell phone. He throws the phone against the wall, destroying it.
Their best chance of calling for help is gone. Skinny Man also finds Tooth's fake ID and reads the name David McNoli. When Tooth tries responding to the gag, Skinny Man calls him a liar and punches him. Then he places the fake license plate inside the stove, piles glowing embers onto it. Holding the embers in one hand and the dice in the other, he announces that they're going to make a wager. He shakes the dice up and says, "Hear that rattle, huh? That's luck being shook up like juice." Skinny Man explains that too much bad luck is no fun, but too much good luck only leads a person forward until it suddenly runs out. He splits the possible totals between them. Roger gets the low numbers, anything from 2 to six. And Tooth gets the high numbers, 7 through 12. Then Skinny Man rolls. The dice total eight. That means Tooth Skinny Man forces Tooth's mouth open and shoves the burning embers inside. Tooth thrashes, spits blood and fire, and tries desperately to remove them. The man punches him, retrieves more embers, forces them into his mouth, and ties the gag shut so tooth cannot spit them out.
Roger closes his eyes and mentally escapes to memories of stealing lawn ornaments and imagined scenes of California.
Eventually, Skinny Man leaves.
Roger listens to Tooth cry for hours.
Roger writes that the moments before the embers entered Tooth's mouth was the last time Tooth would ever look like the friend Roger had grown up with.
By morning, Roger's injured leg may be infected. The fire has gone out and Tooth's mouth is burned black and red.
Roger begins praying despite not believing in God. He thinks about Tooth's father, who's probably home drinking beer while Roger and Tooth sit chained inside a murderer's basement.
Roger remembers something from Tooth's childhood. During one of the rare occasions Tooth's mother returned home, Tooth asked his parents whether they remembered their old family password, macaroni and cheese. The password had been created to protect Tooth from kidnappers. If a nonfamiliar adult approached him, Tooth was supposed to ask for it and run away if they did not know the answer.
Like everything wrong with Tooth's family, Roger realized there had still been love underneath it. He thinks, "My family never had a password." Then the basement door opens. Skinny man walks downstairs carrying something large in his arms. Morning, Roger. I want you to know that you have a lovely house. Roger is scared shitless, realizing that Skinny Man has been to his home. Now, when I first read this, I immediately thought Skinny Man was just being cheeky, trying to freak Roger out, right? I figured he was lying, and I didn't think there was any way he actually would have gone to Roger's house. It's the kind of threat villains make in movies and books all the time. I mean, what kind of deranged lunatic would take the risk of kidnapping someone and then going to their house?
For what reason could you possibly do that? But then when the lights turn on, Roger sees what Skinny Man is carrying.
It's Jaime. Roger immediately begins screaming through his gag, but Skinny Man only laughs and carries Jaime through the locked door beside Tooth.
She is unconscious and slumped in his arms, and Roger cannot tell what has already been done to her. Tooth wakes at the sound of Roger's pleading. His lips and cheeks are now blistered black and red from the embers, and the rag in his mouth is covered in blood and puss.
Roger motions toward the room beside him. A tooth cannot see inside. Guinea man returns alone, rolling Roger's dice in his hand.
She's nice, just ripe enough for me.
We'll have to play with her a little later. Guinea man shows to the payub he found inside the Camaro and laughs at his real name, Mvin. Roger realizes this means Skinny Man has searched the car and probably moved it. Their hope that a park ranger might discover the abandoned Camaro is gone. faint plea for help comes from the locked room. Jaime is awake. Tooth immediately recognizes her voice and looks at Roger. Roger wants to tell her to be quiet, but he's still gagged and neither of them want to attract Skinny Man's attention. Skinny Man loads the wood stove again and places a shovel in the fire. He briefly presses the gun against T's head just to make Roger believe he is about to pull the trigger, then brings out the dice.
He explains that he has never had three fresh victims at once. He has tortured pairs, individual people, even children.
But now he has so many options that he does not know where to begin. Best to let fate decide for me. He assigns numbers 1 through 4 to Roger, 5 through 8 to Tooth, and 9 through 12 to Jamie.
Then he rolls a nine. Roger's first thought is, "Who was nine again?" Second later, he remembers. Skinny Man strips naked and begins dancing around the room, touching himself and arguing with Butch, who keeps barking impatiently.
Finally, he takes a pair of hedge cutting shears from the wall and enters Jaime<unk>'s room. For a few seconds, there's silence. Then, Jaime begins begging. Please don't. Oh, God. Please don't. No. No. Please. She screams in pain. Roger and throw themselves against their restraints. Jaime continues stream Jaime continues screaming behind the wall while Butch paws at the door and licks his mouth. Skinny man eventually returns carrying the shears and a mound of bloody flesh. Roger cannot identify what part of Jaime it came from. Skinny man drops it into Butch's bowl, removes the glowing shovel from the stove, and returns to the room. Roger hears the sound of flesh burning, followed by another scream.
When Skinny Man comes out again, he looks relaxed, almost like someone who has just eaten a large meal. He puts the shovel back in the stove, leaves the shears against the wall where Roger and Tooth can see them, and walks upstairs.
Roger calls for Jaime through the gag.
When she doesn't answer, he vomits. Bile shoots around the rag and runs down his shirt, joining the blood and urine already covering the floor. Then Jaime speaks. Mom, Dad, please, somebody help me. Oh god, it it hurts. It hurts. Roger whispers her name and begins shaking for relief. She's alive. He and Tooth exchange a look. They've spent most of their friendship understanding one another without words. And now they reach the same conclusion at the same time. Nobody is coming to save them.
Neither Batman nor the Silver Surfer is going to appear. They want to escape.
They have to do it themselves. No more waiting to die. They begin working the gags from their mouths. takes around half an hour and every movement causes the burns around two slip to split open again. Once they can speak, Roger tries communicating with Jaime, but she's too far into shock to recognize his voice.
She only begs him not to hurt her and promises that she will never tell anyone. Tooth tells Roger that speaking to her is only frightening her more.
Worry about the chains first and then we'll get Jaime. They study the room again. The chains cannot be broken. The plates are secured inside the concrete and Skinny Man has intentionally left every useful tool beyond their reach.
Tooth asks Roger, "What would a comic book hero do?" Roger says, "A rider would probably invent a rusty link in the chain or give Batman some gadget hidden inside his utility belt." But there is no convenient weakness here.
The chains are new and the cuffs are so sharp that pulling against them cuts their wrists. As Jaime cries behind the wall, suddenly confesses that he lied to Roger earlier. I kind of dig your sister, he says. I was going to try and [ __ ] her when you went back to school.
Roger becomes furious even under the circumstances. He tells Tooth that he cannot sleep with every woman he sees, especially Roger's sister. Truth points out that Roger and Jaime have fought for years. But Roger only became protective after returning from college. Roger admits that a student in his dorm was raped by her boyfriend and never returned to school. He does not tell Tooth that she was the woman with the Star Wars poster whom Roger had a crush on.
Seeing Jaime again after that made Roger understand the kinds of men she would eventually encounter. Ruth attempts to explain that he would not have treated Jaime like another meaningless hookup.
Her cries interrupt him. He starts pulling against the chains again. Man, I I understand Tooth felt guilty and wanted to come clean, but like what a terrible time. While Jaime is being tortured in the other room, presumably sexually, even using that word, [ __ ] her. It's disgusting. It made me lose a lot of respect for Tooth, especially given the age and things I've already discussed. This can't be our fate. No way, [ __ ] No way. We're going to get out of here and go west. Sit under some palm trees and watch the waves. That word fate brings Roger back to Tooth's father. If everyone has a purpose, what is Skinny Man's? What purpose could possibly be served by the woman's death, Tooth suffering, or Jaime being brought here? Roger has never believed in a cosmic plan. But it's becoming harder not to search for one.
Tooth asks whether Roger is giving up on him. Roger nearly tells the truth.
Instead, he says no. Tooth then begins forcing his hand through the sharpened cuff. The metal peels back the skin around his wrist until blood sprays onto Roger. A flap of flesh hangs around Tooth's palm. But instead of stopping, Tooth smiles. Think I know a way out or he can explain. They hear Skinny Man walking toward the stairs. They quickly replace their gags. Skinny Man enters carrying a black duffel bag. He notices Roger's Silver Surfer shirt and says he used to read the comics as a child. He describes the Silver Surfer as a hero trapped on Earth, fighting the evil of the universe. Then he asks whether Roger ever brought flowers home into his mother. Roger pretends his gag is still tight. The Skinny Man immediately sees through it. He removes the rag and asks why Roger trespassed on his property.
Roger says that they heard a woman screaming. Skinny man tells him that they wanted to be superheroes. The heroes don't exist. There are no heroes in this world, my friend. Only winners and losers, the strong and the weak, chosen and the unchosen. He compares himself and Butch to a demolition crew.
A normal demolition crew destroys a building carelessly with the wrecking ball, even though someone took time to place every single brick. Skinny man says that he and Butch are different.
Someone took the time to make you. We're going to take the same kind of care and passion and on making you. He opens the duffel bag and removes heavy gloves and a length of razor wire. Tooth pushes the gag from his mouth and yells, "Fight me!
Fight me!" Manto man. Skinny Man whips the razor across Tooth's face. Three deep cuts open his cheek, but Tooth immediately raises his head and stares back at him. Skinny Man then forces the razor wire into Tooth's mouth and ties it around the back of his head. Part of Tooth's lower lip is sliced away and falls onto the floor. Butch runs over and eats it. tooth screams which only makes the wire cut deeper. The corners of his mouth split outward into his cheeks. He realizes that moving his jaw will make the wounds worse. Forces himself to become silent. Skinny man rolls the dice. Six. That's Tooth again.
This just ain't your day, is it, Mvin?
Skinny man pulls a butcher knife from the bag and begins removing Tooth's pants. Roger offers him money, but Skinny Man places the knife beneath Roger's eye and warns that if he speaks again, he will cut Jaime<unk>'s throat.
You all wanted to interrupt my last game. These superheroes, so now you get to take her spot. Fair is fair. Skinny man strips tooth completely, masturbates while looking at him, and asks Butch, who is hungry?
Then he cuts off Tooth's penis. Tooth screams, "Tear the razor wire deeper into his cheeks." He loses control of his bladder and bowels as Skinny Man throws the severed flesh into Butch's bowl. The dog bites it into pieces and swallows them. Skinny Man removes the shovel from the stove and presses the glowing blade against the open wound, powderizing tooth groin. Smoke rises as the flesh and hair burn together. Tooth loses consciousness. Skinny Man leaves the basement, drives away, and returns sometime later carrying a new roll of duct tape. He tapes Roger's mouth, covers the wire across Tooth's face, and does the same to Jaime in the other room. He then finds Tooth's sweats socks hat on the floor, brushes it off, and puts it back on Tooth's head.
Skinny Man rolls the dice again. 11.
Jaime skinny man strips naked, enters her room, and begins attacking her with a large axe.
Roger cannot see what is happening. He hears the blade strike, followed by Jaime's screams. Skinny man eventually returns with the axe covered in blood and pieces of flesh. He allows Butch to eat the pieces. Then he returns to Jaime's room with a heated shovel. Roger begins dissociating. He imagines himself and Jaime as children playing with their parents in a park. He remembers feeling jealous after Jaime twisted her ankle and their parents focused all their attention on her. At the time, Roger thought she had stolen them from him.
Now, a skinny man mutilates her behind the wall. Roger understands that his family's ordinary life was something precious.
Whatever happens next, they will never be a normal family again. The basement and Roger's imagined California begin blending together. He sees Butch eating pieces of Jaime on a Malibu beach. Who stands nearby with his destroyed groin while Skinny Man purchases a red hot shovel from an ice cream truck and carries it through a door in the ocean.
Roger eventually falls asleep. When he wakes, Skinny Man is slapping him across the face. Roger tells him he is thirsty.
Skinny Man returns with a cup of brownish green liquid and claims that the pipes are rusty.
Roger refuses to drink it. Skinny man tears the tape from his mouth, closes Roger's nose, and forces the liquid down his throat. It contains blood. He sees decaying flesh, fat, and pieces of skin.
Roger manages to cough most of it back into Skinny Man's face. Skinny Man prepares to strike him, but then Tooth wakes up after everything done to him.
Tooth is still conscious, alert, and furious. He balls his hands into fists and stares at Skinny Man through swollen eyes.
Skinny man mocks him for no longer having a penis, then rolls the dice again.
The total is 10.
Jamie Skinny Man enters the room and Jaime begins screaming again. While he's distracted, Tooth returns to his plan.
He pulls his hand into the sharpened cuff. The metal peels back the flesh around his wrist until a part of the bone is exposed. Roger realizes what he's doing. Tooth is attempting to use the cuff like a saw. He intends to destroy or sever enough of his own hand to pull it free. Once one arm is loose, Tooth can grab Skinny Man and hold him close enough for Roger to reach the keys. Tooth looks toward the clothes Skinny Man left on the floor. The plan will only work if Skinny Man is dressed and carrying the key ring. It's barely a plan at all. Will probably die attempting it, but it's the only plan they have. Door to Jaime's room opens.
Skinny man emerges carrying one of her severed feet.
Jaime is somehow still screaming. He places the foot on Roger's head and allows blood to run into his eyes. Then he returns to cauterize Jaime<unk>'s leg with the shovel. While he's distracted, Tooth continues feeding his hand through the cuff. Skinny man returns, cuts several toes from Jaime<unk>s foot, and feeds one to Butch. "Savor it," he says.
The dog chews the toe and drops the painted nail onto the floor. Skinny man rolls the dice again.
Five.
That's Tooth. He tears away Tooth's shirt and saws off both of his nipples.
The flesh falls beside Jaime's severed toes while Roger, Tooth, Jaime, and Butch all scream or howl together.
Skinny Man rolls again. This time, the dice send him back to Jaime. He cuts off one of her ears, two fingers, a section of hair, and several teeth. He throws the pieces into the basement. Then he rolls a third time. It's Tooth again.
Skinny Man retrieves the large ax and swings it into Tooth's hip. The blade cuts through the flesh and strikes the bone. Whose body collapses sideways, but remains suspended by the chains. Roger cannot tell whether he's fainted or died. Skinny man leaves them in the darkness.
Next sound Roger hears is scraping.
Tooth is still alive. He is bent sideways, continuing to saw his hand with a sharpened cuff. A razor wire protrudes from beneath the duct tape around his face. His hip is shattered.
His groin and thigh have been burned shut. And he's lost enough blood that he should already be dead. But he doesn't stop. He continues working. Roger believes Skinny Man's next visit will probably be the last. He decides to say goodbye. Tooth, I'm scared. Oh man, I'm scared and I don't want to die. Roger thanks Tooth for always having his back and for including him when everyone else ignored him. He says Tooth could have abandoned him to chase women, but he never did. Roger wants to tell him that he loves him, but the words feel too weak. He assumes Tooth already knows.
Tooth never even looks over. He just continues sawing his hand. Roger then calls through the wall to Jaime. He apologizes for fighting with her, for not being kinder, and for bringing her into this. He tries to tell her that he loves her, but he breaks down before he can finish.
Skinny man descends the stairs again.
This time, he's strangely quiet. He doesn't look frightened so much as sober as though he has received some kind of lifealtering wakeup call. Roger looks at Tooth and can barely recognize the person beside him. Tooth is naked, burned, split open, covered in blood, missing pieces of his body, and breathing through a small hole in the duct tape. Skinny Man studies the tools and chooses a hammer and a metal spike.
Tooth's body begins sliding to the wall.
The collar catches his neck, preventing him from breathing. Skinny man removes the duct tape and razor wire from Tooth's face. Want to know why they call you Tooth? He strikes Tooth's jaw with a hammer. Tooth's bridge flies across the room. Skinny Man laughs at the fact that the man called Tooth does not even have all his teeth. He strikes him again and knocks out two mers.
tooth doesn't make a sound. Skinny man places a spike against his jaw and hammers it through. He strikes repeatedly until the jaw breaks loose from its hinge. Then he grabs it with both hands and pulls. He twists Tooth's head into the metal collar, tears through the skin, and eventually rips the entire lower jaw from his skull.
Tooth is dead. Roger sees Tooth's tongue hanging from the open skull and closes his eyes.
He goes to California. In his mind, Tooth is alive on the beach, wearing his Red Sox hat, drinking beer, and making women laugh. He waves Roger over, but Roger stays where he is with a Spider-Man comic because Tooth looks happy.
Skinny Man onchains Tooth's body and drags it upstairs, whose head strikes every step on the way up. The same thumping sound Roger once heard when Mark Triger's body was pulled over the rocks. Skinny Man leaves Tooth's jaw and Butch's bull. Roger is alone. He looks at the hammer and spike lying beyond his reach and briefly considers using the spike to kill himself. Butch eventually comes downstairs without his master.
Roger taunts the dog and Butch lunges at him, biting the ankle chain and shaking it. Roger spits into the dog's eye before Skinny Man calls it back outside.
Once Butch leaves, Roger notices that the dog accidentally kicked the spike closer.
Using the toe of his shoe, Roger raises a spike against the wall and launches it upward. It lands in his hand. Before Roger can determine how to use it, Skinny Man returns. He's dirty from digging a grave and is wearing Tooth's Red Sox hat. He tells Roger that he buried Tooth beside Sundance so the dead dog can have its revenge. He then holds up a bloodcovered human freia, apparently removed from Tooth's body. He feeds it to Butch. Roger hides the spike behind his back and attempts to keep Skinny Man talking. He asks why Skinny Man killed the woman and why he's doing any of this. Skinny Man leans close and answers because if I don't, they get mad at me.
Hurt me. He claims that they are always listening and will force him to continue if they are not satisfied. Roger cannot tell whether he means the dogs, voices, ghosts, or whether this is just another game. Skinny Man rolls the dice again.
This time he reduces it to a 50/50 choice and assigns Roger evens.
Ro does not select Roger.
Skinny man becomes furious and returns to Jaime's room. Roger uses a spike to pry one of the chain links, bracing it against the concrete wall. The metal begins bending slightly, but Skinny Man catches him. He takes the spike and strikes Roger with it. Then Skinny Man goes upstairs, leaving Butch behind.
As the dog lies near its bowls, Roger notices its collar.
The collar has a metal buckle. The small arm inside the buckle might fit into the handcuff's keyhole. Roger calls Butch toward him. When the dog remains cautious, Roger rubs his injured wrist against the sharpened cuff until it begins bleeding. Butch approaches and licks the blood. Roger smears some onto his hip, guiding the dog close enough to reach the collar.
begins unfassening it. Skinny Man's footsteps move toward the basement.
Roger manages to pull the collar loose just before Skinny Man enters. He leaves it hanging around Butch's neck so the missing collar will not be noticed.
Skinny Man is carrying a jug labeled bleach. When some of the liquid splashes onto the floor, it begins smoking.
Whatever is inside is much stronger than ordinary bleach. He searches Roger for anything stolen, but doesn't notice the collar. Before returning to Jaime, Skinny Man decides to roll the dice again. Nine. Not Roger.
Skinny Man stares at the result. For the first time, Roger sees fear in his face.
Roger's number has never been selected, not once. Earlier, Roger believed it was coincidence or luck. Now, even Skinny Man appears to believe that something is protecting Roger. Skinny Man storms into Jaime's room with the mug. Roger hears choking, screaming, and flailing as the liquid burns her. While Skinny Man is occupied, Roger removes Butch's collar and tests the buckle inside his cuff.
It's too large. All the hope drains from him. Skinny Man eventually returns and throws the empty jug at Roger. He does not notice the collar hidden behind Roger's back. He's still disturbed by the dice and no longer appears to be enjoying himself. He turns off the basement light, locks the door at the bottom of the stairs, and then locks the outside door as well. Roger is left alone in complete darkness, listening to Jaime's wet, increasingly distant breaths through the open doorway behind him. Skinny Man left that door open on purpose.
He knows that Jaime is dying. At first, Roger wants to immediately resume working on the dog collar and find some way out of the chains. But he also knows that even if he frees himself, he'll not do it quickly enough to save her. He stops struggling and calls through the darkness.
Jamie, I'm right here. I'm right beside you. Listen to my voice. He cannot let his sister die believing she's alone.
Roger does not know what someone is supposed to say in a moment like this.
But he remembers a Christmas when Jaime bought him a Darth Vader model kit with her own money. Watch had assumed their mother had bought it and simply put Jaime<unk>'s name on the gift. But weeks later, he overheard his parents discussing it, and he learned the truth.
But he never thanked her. I never said it, but it was the perfect gift. I'm sorry I never told you. Roger once read that a person's final thoughts may follow them into the afterlife. So, he tries to give Jaime somewhere better to go. He tells her they're back at the park near their house. Their parents are sitting on a towel drinking iced tea.
Children are playing catch. And a man who looks like Brad Pitt is checking her out. Jaime is going to get a hamburger with him, marry him, and live a happy, wealthy life. Do you see the kids? Watch them, Jamie. Look at them run. Roger begins crying so hard that his words become unintelligible.
Then Jaime's breathing stops. Or at least Roger believes it does.
Tooth had been Roger's courage. Jaime had been the person he needed to save.
Now they're both gone. Nobody knows where Roger is, and nobody is coming to rescue him. Roger says goodbye to his sister, takes the dog collar from behind his back, and examines the metal buckle again. Its arm is too thick to fit inside the handcuff, but Roger realizes he may be able to make it thinner. He presses the metal against the concrete wall and begins grinding it down. For hours, Roger scrapes the buckle against the wall. He listens to Skinny Man moving around upstairs. is watching television, talking to Butch, and eventually settling down for the night.
Roger's arm and shoulder begin burning, but he keeps rubbing until the thick metal arm has been reduced to something resembling a pin. Remembering a scene from a comic called Chaos Legion, Roger knows that the inside of a handcuff contains a sloped lever that allows the cuff to tighten but prevents it from opening. Proper handcuff key has a small flag at the end that pushes the lever down. Roger bends the end of the metal pin into a tiny hook. He threads the dog collar through his belt loop, leaves the makeshift key sticking outward, slides the cuff's keyhole over it, and tries rotating his wrist, but it fails. Roger tries again and again. He continues through the night until he can hear birds outside. Then the metal finally presses the lever correctly. The cuff opens just enough for Roger to pull out his hand. There's no dramatic celebration. Roger simply stares at his free hand in the darkness, unable to believe it worked. He begins picking the second cuff. This time, the metal gets stuck in the lock. While Roger struggles to free it, he hears a voice telling him, "Calm down. You can do it. Don't give up." The voice seems to be inside Roger's head, but it also sounds as though it may be coming from somewhere else in the basement. Eventually, the second cuff opens. Roger's hands are free, but the iron collar around his neck remains chained to the wall. The lock is much larger and cannot be picked with the tiny piece of metal. Roger turns around and examines the hinge at the back of the collar. A long screw passes through it, secured by a rusted nut. Roger reshapes the buckle again, bending its wider section into a V-shaped tool. The nut fits inside it almost perfectly. He uses the buckle like a wrench, twist the nut loose, removes the screw, and opens the collar.
But steps begin moving above him. Skinny Man unlocks the door at the top of the basement stairs. Roger still has chains around his waist and ankles. He slides beneath the waist chain, reaches across the floor, and manages to drag the large axe into his hands just as Skinny Man begins descending the stairs.
Then, Skinny Man notices that Butch is missing his collar.
Roger waits with the axe raised, ready to strike the moment the basement door opens. But Skinny Man decides that Butch must have buried the collar somewhere in the yard. He becomes furious with the dog, accusing him of burying everything, including some missing butter. Instead of entering the basement, Skinny Man takes a bunch outside to search for it.
Roger knows that he only has a few minutes. He swings the axe into the chains connecting his leg irons to the wall. The basement fills with the sound of metal striking metal. Roger hits the first chain repeatedly until one link splits. The cuff remains attached to his ankle, but the chain separates from the wall. He does the same to the second.
Then he's completely free. Roger uses the axe as a crowbar and breaks the basement door from its frame. He begins climbing the stairs toward daylight. But before he reaches the top, he hears a moan from Jaime's room. Jaime is still alive. Roger returns and enters the room for the first time. The windows have been blacked out. The light switch doesn't work. And the floor is covered with knives, handsaws, nails, wire, hammers, bones, and other tools. Handles have been arranged around Jaime<unk>'s body. most of them already melted into the floor and the faint light coming through one of the windows. Roger sees that the shape lying on the ground appears too small to be his sister.
Jaime suddenly begins thrashing against the chains holding her stakes into the floor. Roger sees pieces of her body in brief flashes of light, but what remains is so damaged that he cannot process it as human. She's still breathing, but Roger cannot process what he's seeing, much less free her alone. He backs out of the room and returns to the main basement, knowing he needs outside help.
The first time he sees the entire place without being chained to the wall, the stove, the bloodcovered tools, the remains inside the dog bowls, mystery woman's burned skin on the floor, tooth's jaw resting among the gore, and the empty chains where his best friend died. Near the door, sunlight falls across Roger's red dice. Roger picks them up. His number never appeared.
Every time Skinny Man rolled the dice selected Tooth or Jaime, Roger no longer knows whether he has survived through luck, fate, divine intervention, or something else. But he remembers Tooth's father, saying got to have a purpose in life. Roger places the dice in his pocket and climbs the stairs. Roger places the dice in his pocket and climbs the stairs. When he reaches the small al cove at the top, the outdoor light nearly blinds him. For days in the basement, the fresh air smells impossibly safe.
pine, sap, flowers, and wet earth. For a moment, Roger feels as though he could open his eyes and discover that the entire experience was only a nightmare.
Skinny Man is still outside with Butch, filling in a grave and complaining that the dog keeps digging things up. Roger enters the kitchen and searches for a phone, but there isn't one. He briefly drinks from the sink, forcing himself to stop before the pipes make enough noise to expose him. Then, Roger crawls into the living room. The couch is covered with notebooks and polaroids. Roger looks at one photograph and immediately throws it down. It shows two naked young boys on the floor, one being forced to perform oral sex on a Rottweiler. The other already mutilated while the second dog eats his remains.
A bowl on the coffee table contains around 10 sets of car keys, presumably belonging to previous victims. Roger searches for two Camaro keys, but cannot find them. Then he sees the muzzle of a gun beneath a magazine. Its tooth's 9 mm. Roger ejects the magazine and finds it empty. He searches the table for ammunition but finds none, so he places the apparently useless gun in his waistband and continues upstairs.
One bedroom is filled with possessions of other victims, clothes, backpacks, sleeping bags, pocketbooks, and bicycles. Roger takes a small knife from the dresser. Beside it is a family photograph. Skinny man is standing beside the backyard swing set with who is presumably his wife and young daughter. His daughter is smiling and holding his hand while his wife appears exhausted and frightened. In Skinny Man's bedroom, Roger finds old bottles of Cloopapene scattered across the floor. Most are still full and their prescriptions expired over a year ago. A blonde child's doll lies among them.
Hanging from one of the bed posts is Tooth's Red Sox hat. Roger takes it down. Holding it forces him to remember Tooth's torture, his refusal to give up, and the ordinary afternoon that somehow led them into this house. Roger folds the hat and places it in his back pocket. He thinks Tooth would have wanted to take it to the grave. Roger searches the rest of the room, but still finds no phone. He decides he has no option except to leave through the front door and somehow reach Bobtail on his injured leg. Then he realizes that the backyard has gone silent. Roger enters the upstairs bathroom, lifts the edge of the blind, and looks outside. Skinny Man is staring back at him. Skinny Man screams and runs into the house. Roger hears him smash into the kitchen and the living room before racing up the stairs.
The shovel. Roger raises the axe and for several seconds, the two men stand at opposite ends of the hallway. Then, Skinny Man charges, and Roger charges, too. As Roger runs towards him, he sees something behind Skinny Man, something he knows cannot possibly be there. Roger swings the axe. The axe and shovel collide in midair and Skinny Man falls backward down the stairs. Roger tumbles after him and loses the axe, but he manages to keep hold of the knife.
Skinny Man lands upside down with one leg caught inside the staircase railing.
A broken spindle has driven completely through his calf. Rather than panic, Skinny Man breaks the spindle from the railing, grabs the shorter end, and pulls the entire piece of wood through his leg. He tries pretending the wound doesn't hurt, but his face betrays him.
Roger runs for the front door. Skinny Man calls for Butch. The Rottweiler charges through the living room, slams Roger into the door, and bites into his hip. Roger wraps an arm around the dog's head, and tries cutting its throat. The blade misses and enters Butch's shoulder instead. Butch runs away with the knife still lodged inside him. Roger searches for the front door latch, but Skinny Man attacks him from behind. The two struggle while Skinny Man attempts to pull the hand axe from his belt. Roger begins losing consciousness inside a headlock. Then he sees Tooth standing in the corner of the room. Go for the leg.
He's hurt in the leg. Roger kicks backward into Skinny Man's wounded calf and tears it open further. Skinny Man releases him and Roger runs outside.
Skinny Man follows him across the lawn and into the road, swinging the hand axe at his head. Roger's injuries prevent him from running fast enough to escape.
Skinny Man taunts him for crying. If you're going to act like some [ __ ] superhero, least you can do is play the part. He reminds Roger that he still has his address. Even if Roger escapes, Skinny Man can still kill his parents.
Roger asks whether Skinny Man murdered his own family. Skinny Man says he only followed instructions. His wife and daughter were bad, constantly looking through his possessions and trying to steal from him. He claims his daughter was attempting to steal his soul. He tied her behind his truck and dragged her until her face came off. Skinny Man threatens Roger's mother directly. I'll [ __ ] her rotten on top of your corpse.
I'll [ __ ] her with your severed limbs.
Roger understands that he can't simply run away. Skinny Man knows where he lives, has murdered for years, and will continue as long as he remains alive.
Roger thinks about the dice, the comic books, Jaime, California, and the figure he saw standing behind Skinny Man upstairs. He stops running. What's it going to be, superhero? Skinny Man asks.
Roger turns and charges at him. He pulls Tooth's empty 9mm from his waistband and throws it towards Skinny Man. Skinny Man instinctively reaches to catch it, giving Roger enough time to slam into him. They fall into the road. Roger headbutts Skinny Man, punches him repeatedly, and bites a section of flesh from his neck. Skinny Man continues reaching for the gun until Roger takes the hand axe away from him. Skinny Man covers his face for the first time. He looks terrified. Their roles have reversed. Roger steps back and looks at him. Skinny Man asks whether Roger is really going to murder him in the middle of the road. Roger thinks about Tooth lying inside a shallow grave instead of living in California. He thinks about Jaime's mutilated body and understands that no matter what happens now, the old version of himself will never return.
He writes, "Roger Huntington was dead."
Roger removes the dice from his pocket.
Skinny Man smiles and asks whether they are going to play another game. Skinny Man crawls toward the gun. Roger knows it's empty, so he allows him to reach it. When Skinny Man picks it up and points it at him, Roger swings the axe into the side of his face. The blade tears through his cheek, shatters his teeth, and lodges in his jaw. Roger pulls it free. Then he places one of Skinny Man's hands against the pavement and chops it off. He removes the second hand and two strikes. Roger drives the axe into Skinny Man's chest and demands to know why he did this to them. Skinny Man can no longer answer. An elderly woman in a station wagon approaches, sees them in the road, and speeds away.
Roger then removes one of Skinny Man's arms. When he sees that the man is close to death, Roger drives the axe into his forehead above the right eye. Skinny man's skull splits, his eye falls from the socket, and his body collapses.
Roger drops the dice onto his chest.
Then he screams and continues until a police car stops nearby. Officer Teddy arrives and initially assumes the bloodcovered Roger murdered the dismembered man. Then he notices Roger's injuries, urine, and the chains hanging from his ankles. When Teddy mentions handcuffs, Roger panics and threatens him until the officer agrees to not use them. Roger tells him that someone's inside the house and they're alive. When the officer enters through the front door, Butch attacks him. Despite the knife still embedded in his shoulder, the dog launches itself at Teddy's throat, knocks him onto the lawn, and begins tearing at him. Roger later says that he spends years refusing to remember what happened next. As Roger watches Butch attack Teddy, he remembers a strange figure he saw twice during his escape. It was Tooth. In the upstairs hallway, Tooth appeared crouched on all fours behind Skinny Man, as if Skinny Man had tripped over his body and fallen backward towards the stairs. In the living room, Tooth told Roger to attack Skinny Man's injured leg. And both times, Tooth was missing his Red Sox hat. Now Roger feels hot breath against his ear and hears Tooth whisper, "Roger, I told you always check the chamber first."
Roger reaches into his back pocket. The hat is gone. He grabs the 9mm from beside the road and pulls back the slide. Although the magazine is empty, one bullet remains inside the chamber.
Warned him about this exact possibility when he first showed Roger the gun.
Butch releases Teddy long enough to chase him across the lawn. Roger remembers that the gun fires slightly to the left. He compensates for that and aims.
The second police car arrives as Roger pulls the trigger. Roger's bullet enters Butch between the eyes. And almost the exact same moment, the second officer fires at Roger. The bullet passes beneath Roger's chin and cuts his throat without killing him. Eddie throws a dead dog from his body and shields Roger, screaming that Roger saved him. More officers and ambulances arrive. One officer exits the house vomiting.
Another runs to the paramedic, shouting, "Forget them. Forget them. We need you down there right now. She's still alive.
Hurry." Jaime is carried out so burned and mutilated that Roger compares her to a cooked marshmallow wearing a Jaime mask. A paramedic carries her severed hand in a cooler. As the ambulance leaves, the medical examiner asks for forensics and shovels.
Jaime survives for two more days. She dies in the hospital with Roger's parents beside her. Both of them crying and cursing God. Police uncovered nine bodies and additional unmatched bones, including Skinny Man's wife and daughter, Mystery Woman, two hikers, children, adults, and Tooth. Roger can identify only Mystery Woman and Tooth.
He attends Jaime's and Tooth closed casket funerals, then returns to the psych ward. Roger can no longer hear keys jingling without panicking. He struggles to sleep, haunted by the dead and by the understanding that his parents' bed or any safe place is impossibly far away. Roger keeps returning to Tooth's father and the idea of purpose. If Roger's purpose was killing Skinny Man, what is he supposed to do with the rest of his life? What purpose did Skinny Man or any victim serve? Roger survived with comparatively minor physical injuries? His mind is destroyed. He cannot stop asking why he lived, why the dice never selected him, or why he picked them up that morning.
He thinks about God, heroes, villains, strength, fate, luck, and randomness.
And he thinks about one final detail that makes everything more confusing, but also seems to make everything fit together. Roger took Tooth's hat from Skinny Man's bedroom and placed it in his back pocket. Tooth's ghost appeared twice without it. The hat disappeared shortly before Tooth's voice reminded Roger about the bullet hidden in the gun's chamber. Then comes the final line of the book. When they dug up Tooth's body, he was wearing his Red Sox cap.
Wow, man. I just I cannot express how much I love this book. I mean, reading through it, I really disappeared into a new world. from how much I love the characters, those first 50, 60 pages to the pacing and the tension. I mean, I love books and movies where we get to see characters try to find a way out of a terrible situation. And I think that feeling is elevated when we're following characters that are just so interesting and that we care about. I mean, I so badly wanted to see them survive, and I'm glad that Roger did in the end, but this book still doesn't have much of a happy ending. On top of those kind of surface level thoughts about the book, I have some deeper analysis that I want to talk about. Let's jump into that. The thing that I kept returning to after I finished The Samurai Died was what I can only think to describe as a fourdimensional feeling. By that I mean that Roger, Tooth, Jaime, and even their parents feel like they exist outside of this specific story that we're reading.
They had lives before page one. I believe those lives would keep moving if the novel earned its attention elsewhere. Sure. And Tooth have been friends since kindergarten. But the book doesn't just ask us to accept that because the narrator says so. It gives us so much evidence. They can communicate through a glance at a liquor store. Roger can mention a movie with the guy and Tooth somehow knows he means Bloodfist 4. They remember stolen lawn ornaments, jail, childhood games, old bar fights, and all the stupid versions of themselves that have changed over the years. They're the kind of characters I could drop into any situation and instantly know how they would react. I mean, I don't write fanfiction, but I feel like it would be so easy to write my own story with these characters. The scene that really completely sold me was Booth lying on Roger's couch with his Red Sox hat over his eyes. He says, "Maybe I'm just drunk. Maybe I'm lonely.
Or maybe I'm in a nostalgic mood, but I miss you." And it's such a tooth way to say something so sincere. He gives himself three excuses before admitting that his friend matters to him. He's the type of guy who doesn't say things like that, but he does. I think this is where the book goes beyond other extreme horror novels that are also good. Like I said in my last video, I love fluids.
Lauren and Dalia are psychologically rich characters, but that book intentionally traps us inside the pressure cooker of their relationship.
The Samurai died feels like a larger world. Roger and Tooth could walk out of this novel and into a comedy, a road trip story, or just a book about two idiots trying to survive California. The horror interrupts their lives, but it's not the only reason those lives exist.
This feeling brought me back to when I loved reading more than almost anything.
In middle school and high school, I could open a young adult novel like Hunger Games and forget about the world I was living in. I could lose whole days, have my parents calling for me from 5t away, and not even hear them. To this day, I still read constantly and widely. But I rarely get that feeling anymore. Part of my brain is usually standing outside the book, taking notes, thinking about all the other things I have to do, checking my phone. This is the first novel in probably close to a year where my brain just completely shut the [ __ ] up. Nothing else mattered until I finished this book. And that's why the opening of this book is so important to me. Skinny Man doesn't only kill people, he destroys everything we want for these characters. California. A tooth's escape from his father, Jaime's future. Roger's belief that college will open the world in the version of Roger who could crawl into his parents' bed and believe every monster had a simple weakness. Uh Roger's the narrator, U was the emotional center of the story for me. I loved him almost immediately as a character, even though I would not necessarily like him as a person. He of course has plenty of bad qualities, but he's also funny, loyal, deeply damaged, and far smarter than the identity he performs for everyone around him. He reminded me of Minho from The Mazer Runner. He's angry, passionate, brave, and completely unwilling to abandon his people, even when loyalty is guaranteed to kill him. I won't lie, though.
Tooth's courage can blur the line between bravery and stupidity. He starts fights he can't win. Fires guns while drunk. Treats Roger's caution like a character flaw. But then they hear a woman scream. Roger points out that they're walking directly into a horror movie. And Tooth answers, "Movies aren't real. She is. We can't just leave her if she needs help."
That's the moment the book separates masculine performance from actual heroism. Who starts fights and bars because he wants to look tough.
But here, no one is watching. He helps because a real person may be dying.
Whatever else is wrong with Tooth, I think that we all have to respect that.
And once they're captured, Skinny Man destroys Tooth's body, but never makes him stop trying. Tooth screams, he cries, he loses control of his body, but he's still brave to the end. He controls himself with a shovel buried in his thigh because Skinny Man threatens Roger. He studies the room, maps the doors, tries to reach the phone, keeps Roger awake, and talks about comics because he knows Roger is falling apart.
Even when he's the one being hurt the most, he puts Roger above himself. Even after his body has been reduced to something Roger can barely recognize, Tooth keeps sawing his wrist against a sharpened cuff because fraying one hand might give Roger and Jaime a chance.
It's enough to make me cry just thinking about it. One of the best choices in the book is that Tooth never gives a perfect final speech. Roger thanks him for being his friend and can't quite bring himself to say that he loves him.
Tooth doesn't even turn around. He keeps sawing because that's the only answer he has to give. He's trying. In the end, Skinny Man wins physically. He can make Tooth bleed, scream, and he kills him.
But he never turns Tooth into what he believes people are. Skinny Man says there are no heroes, only winners and losers, the strong and the weak, the chosen and the unchosen. But Tooth proves him wrong while losing in every material sense. He dies chained to a wall, but he dies as the most heroic person in the book. The central question of the samurai died is not only whether Roger escapes, it's whether his survival means anything. The dice begins as this meaningless souvenir sitting in Roger's kitchen. His parents brought them home from their verse vacation without him and Jaime. Roger rolls a seven at breakfast, then rolls another seven on the Camaro and wins an ass kicking from tooth. That point, luck is just a joke between friends, but then Skinny Man takes those dice and turns them into a way to assign suffering. He describes their sound with one of my favorite lines in the book. You hear that rattle, huh? That's luck being shook up like juice. Obviously, the dice do not absolve Skinny Man of anything. He still chooses to torture them, but they allow him to pretend he is no longer choosing the victim. He creates the rules, rolls the dice, then acts as though fate has given an order. Except Roger's number never ever comes up. Skinny Man rolls the dice 10 times. Booth is selected four times. Jaime is selected six times.
Roger is selected zero times. By the end, even Skinny Man is frightened by the pattern. Roger has been spared so consistently that ordinary luck no longer feels like an explanation. It starts to feel like Roger has been selected by never being selected.
Selected for what? This is where the math becomes very interesting because Skinny Man's game is not nearly as fair as he thinks it is. Whether he knows it or not, he actually rigged the game in Roger's favor.
I did the math and I'll put my work on screen for you while I explain. When two dice are rolled, there are 36 possible combinations, but every total is not equally likely. A seven can be made six different ways. A two can only be made one way. So even though Skinny Man gives each person what looks like an equal range of numbers, those ranges do not contain equal chances. On the first roll, Roger gets totals 2 through six, while Tooth gets 7 through 12. Roger's rage contains 15 possible combinations.
Tooths contains 21. Before the dice even leaves Skinny Man's hand, Tooth is already more likely to be selected. Once Jaime arrives, Skinny Man gives Roger 1 through 4, Tooth 5 through 8, and Jaime 9- 12. Those ranges look equal because each contains four numbers. But the number one is impossible to roll with two dice. Roger's actual totals are only 2, three, and four, which are the least likely combinations. That means Roger only has a 1 in6 chance of being selected on each of the next seven rolls. Tooth, meanwhile, has 20 possible combinations, more than three times likely to be rolled. Now, I'll be candid here. Even with the advantage, the probability of Roger avoiding all 10 rolls is still only about 4%. uh roughly a 1 in 25 chance. But my point is that Roger is not escaping from a perfectly fair game through some astronomically impossible miracle. Part of the luck is actually coming from Skinny Man being bad at probability. Skinny Man eventually becomes terrified that some force is protecting Roger, but it never occurs to him that Roger keeps surviving, partly because Skinny Man designed a system that made Roger the least likely victim.
But like I said, 4% is still low. It's not proof of God, fate, or some supernatural intervention. But at the same time, if you were chained in that basement, watching the dice miss you 10 times in a row while the two people you love were repeatedly selected, it would probably start to feel like more than a coincidence.
And maybe it was. It's so open-ended.
But if Roger was protected by God or some supernatural force, why? The idea of some hidden meaning was planted before the horror through Tu's father.
Mr. Elliot claims that every person has a purpose they may never understand, then uses that belief to excuse his alcoholism. Maybe his drinking creates some distant chain reaction that ultimately benefits someone else. Maybe alcohol is simply his cross to bear on the porch. It obviously sounds like the ramblings of a drunk. But in the basement, Roger can't stop returning to that question. If everyone has a purpose, what is Skinny Man's purpose?
What purpose did Mystery Woman serve by being burned alive? What purpose could possibly justify what happened to Jaime and Tooth? If Roger's purpose was to kill Skinny Man, what is he supposed to do with the rest of his life? But while the dice can potentially be explained mathematically, Tooth's return is harder to dismiss.
Roger sees him after his death. Tooth's hat vanishes from Roger's pocket. His voice reminds Roger about the bullet left inside the chamber. Then, when the police dig up Tooth's body, that is somehow back on his head. That is extremely difficult to explain as a coincidence. What I really love about this novel is that it suggests the possibility that Roger's suffering is for some higher purpose, but it never gives us any hint of what that purpose might be.
So, we're left to wonder. And I think that's how many of us spend our own life, things that happened to us. Why is there a reason? If you believe in God or some supernatural force guiding the universe, then yeah, there probably is a purpose to every beautiful and terrible thing that's ever happened to you.
Skinny Man is terrifying because the book gives us just enough information to know that a normal human being once existed inside of him. He read Silver Surfer when he was younger. He had a wife and daughter. He was prescribed antiscychotics and claims some undefined they force tried to kill him and claims some undefined they forced him to kill.
I wanted to know more, but Roger stopping for an explanation would have been stupid. And honestly, Skinny Man does not deserve to become the most interesting person in the story. The mystery makes him scarier. The emotional depths belong to the people whose lives he destroyed. I'll be honest, I have no criticisms of The Summer I Died. The violence is relentless, but I always understood the room. I knew what Roger could see, what Skinny Man was doing, and what each character was trying to accomplish. The escape is complicated, but it's not confusing. Roger doesn't suddenly become an action hero. He survives through observation, luck, comic book knowledge, possibly Tooth's help, and desperation. For me, this is an easy five out of five and one of my new favorite books. It's funny and horrifying, nostalgic, and traumatic.
The gore works because the characters are not disposable. Every wound happens to someone whose jokes we know, whose family we've met, and whose future we want to see. Most disturbing part of this book is toothang. It's going to be a good summer. It's Roger promising to go to California when both of them know they may never leave the basement. It's Jaime buying her brother the perfect Christmas gift and never knowing he appreciated it. It's the hat returning to Tooth's grave. The book gave me the kind of reading experience I thought adulthood might have taken from me. I fell into it. I loved these people, panicked for them, and kept turning pages with the irrational hope that the story might somehow change if I reach the next scene quickly enough to everyone who wants to write extreme horror. Before you destroy a body, make me believe there's an entire person living inside of it.
I think you can see how passionate I get about literature and specifically this book. I loved it. so much that I actually went and bought the whole series. Here's book one, book two, book three, and book four. Um, I'm planning, if you guys are interested, I'm going to read all the books no matter what. You guys can't stop me. Um, if you're interested, I plan to cover the entire series. So, maybe I'll do something like once every other week or once a month. I'll cover one of these books and then when I'm done, maybe I'll make a huge video kind of talking about the whole series as a whole. But let me know if you guys are interested about hearing the rest of the series and I'd be happy to over that. Let me know in the comments down below. Please be sure to subscribe if you enjoyed the video.
When I started my channel in January of this year, my goal was to hit 10,000 subscribers by the end of 2026. We are quite a ways off, but who knows? Maybe if you click subscribe, we can make it happen. See you guys in the next one.
Peace.
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