Punch.

A Mr Thursday Story.

Why? 

Dear God, why are they doing this to us?

What have we done to them? 

There can’t be a reason, not for this. Nothing could justify this. 

The big one, the one called Eugene with the muscles and the tattoos, he climbed up on that trunk again, the one they’d carried in here and placed in the middle of the lounge. An old, battered traveller’s trunk, it even had faded, peeling stickers on its sides, Morocco, New York, Istanbul. 

Eugene, he was still holding the baseball bat, the one he’d used to shatter Toby’s kneecaps. The one he used to — 

No! I can’t think of that. 

Not now. 

Ellie, Toby’s wife, wailed softly, and Toby wished she would stop, wished she would be quiet, because if she didn’t stop they might get mad again. 

Eugene, he was standing on the trunk and raising his arms out to his sides. And he was still holding the baseball bat, and the blood was dripping off it. Maisie’s blood, big fat drops of it, hit the lid of the trunk with a wet splat. 

Toby screwed his eyes shut, tried to block out thoughts of Maisie, their Labrador. If he thought about what they had done to her, he knew he would start screaming, and he wouldn’t be able to stop. And then they’d get mad again, and they’d kill him, Eugene would bludgeon him to death with that baseball bat. And then he’d turn on Ellie, or maybe he’d kill Ellie first just to torment Toby. 

To make him suffer. 

Eugene cleared his throat. 

The fat lady, Celesta, she started clapping. Toby had never seen a woman so huge before. Her body was so round that her fat arms struggled to connect with each other. Her hands were tiny and looked ridiculous, like little doll’s hands attached to balloons. And she was filthy too, and she stank of piss and sweat and something else, something that stirred a memory in Toby but he couldn’t pin it down. She was standing up close to Toby, towering over him. Toby had to fight to control his gag reflex. 

Ellie was still wailing softly, rocking back and forth in the corner where the shattered television was. She had her ankles crossed and her arms folded. 

Toby wished Ellie would be quiet. 

Eugene started singing. He couldn’t hold a tune to save his life, but Celesta started squealing with delight, and clapping even harder. He was singing ‘Que Sera, Sera,’ that old Doris Day song, and his voice was fingernails scratching at a blackboard. 

And every time he opened his mouth, Toby’s stomach turned over at the sight of Eugene’s chipped and rotting teeth. 

Celesta looked at Toby as if to check that he was paying attention. Toby blinked, swallowed. He could barely focus on anything through the pain in his legs. He was sitting with his back against a wall, his useless legs stretched out in front of him. Eugene had pounded and pounded at Toby’s kneecaps until he’d been satisfied he had completely obliterated them, while Celesta had sat on Toby. Then they’d propped him up against the wall, and Toby had screamed and pissed himself. 

Eugene reached the end of his song. He was really belting it out now, stretching out that last note in a flat, atonal wail. 

Celesta clapped even harder and faster, and the rolls of fat jiggled like jelly. And then she looked pointedly at Toby, and so, of course, he clapped too. 

Ellie just kept on moaning, but thankfully Celesta and Eugene ignored her. 

Eugene jumped down off the trunk. 

‘Right,’ he said, tipping Toby a wink like they were best buds and sharing a secret. ‘I think it’s time we let him out, yeah?’ 

Celesta squealed again and clapped some more. ‘Oh, I love this part!’ 

Eugene rattled the big, heavy padlock. 

‘It’s time to come out, Mr Thursday!’ he shouted. 

There was a muffled thump from inside the trunk.