TYLER McKINLEY was the toughest kid in his fifth grade class, plain and simple.

He’d jumped off the high dive at the swimming center without hesitating, rung the doorbell of the house on Pine Drive everyone thought was haunted, and walked across the top of the jungle gym even though the teacher was watching and he knew he’d get in big trouble.

He hadn’t even cared.

Which wasn’t to say he was a bad kid. He was good-natured and inclined to share his pudding at lunchtime with the kids who didn’t have any desert. He also stood up for smaller kids against bullies. That was probably what he was known best for throughout Theodore Roosevelt Elementary.

So it wasn’t surprising that while out riding his mountain bike in Mitchell Woods behind the mall, he decided to investigate what sounded like a scream. He’d just ramped a huge rock that most kids his age wouldn’t have had the guts to so much as look at when he’d heard it. Bringing the bike to a stop by kicking the back tire out to the side, sweeping up a large cloud of red dirt, he looked in the direction that he’d thought the sound came from and stood silent, straddling the ten-speed.

Insect chirpings and birdcalls filled the afternoon silence as he held his breath. And then, the scream came again. Faint but undeniable.

“Woah,” he whispered. “Hope they’re okay!”

Realizing how far he’d gotten from the mall and that there might not be another person around for miles, he started peddling as hard as he could toward the sound’s

source. It got louder with every revolution he pounded into the peddles, confirming that he was headed in the right direction. Each scream also came with greater frequency and rang out longer than the one before it.

As his adrenaline faded and Tyler felt the sweat and exhaustion from going so fast, he thought:

“It better not just be some dumb girl screaming because she saw a frog or a bug or something!”

A memory flashed of summer camp when he’d snuck a frog into Becky Rundell’s sleeping bag and had heard her entire cabin burst into screams that seemed to last forever. He couldn’t help smiling at the recollection.

Finally, when the screams sounded so loud he wanted to cover his ears, he came on a tiny little shack no bigger than fifteen foot square made out of half-rotted pine boards.

Tyler had hopped off his bike and let it drop in a patch of tall grass. Just as he was about to call out for the girl to ask if she was alright, he was stopped by a man’s voice that sounded angry. Angrier even than his neighbor Mr. Dobson when he’d found Tyler spraypainting a model car on his carefully mowed lawn!

He heard the man’s voice shout:

“Where the fuck’s your husband?”

“You piece of shit…” came a woman’s voice in reply–hushed, weak, sloppy with crying.

Tyler’s eyes widened at the brutality of the language. Walking in slow nervous steps toward the house he saw a short window just inches above the ground, appearing to look down into a basement. There was movement there and he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled toward it to peek in.

There was a lady with all her clothes off tied to a table saw, the ends of her feet all red and her toes looking odd. Crooked somehow. The last two on the left foot unusually longer than the others.

“Bitch, you’ve only got two toes left. Two fucking toes! How the fuck many toes you think you got?”

“Oh geez!” gasped Tyler as he realized that the reason her toes look so funny was that all but two had been sliced off.

The screaming man grabbed the naked lady’s hair and yanked her head back and put a knife close to her face and said:

“Bitch, I’m going to be real fucking honest with you. Brutally fucking honest. If I take off those last two toes, and you still haven’t told me what I need to know about that lying sack of shit you call a husband, I’m going to be mad. And you know what’s going to happen if I get mad? I am going to fucking hurt you, bitch.”

The woman’s eyes cinched and her body started shuddering with sobs.

“Oh geez!” said Tyler again, shaking his head.

“That’s right, slut,” said the man. “That’s exactly right. Because if you think losing those toes hurt, you’re in for a hard fucking surprise. Open your eyes.” The lady, still crying real hard, just shook her head. “I said open your fucking eyes!” Finally she did, even though it was just a little. And she pulled her head back, like she was scared. “Now you look at this knife. You see this big-ass knife? Well this knife has a way of getting horny after it cuts off a bitch’s toes. That’s right, when it finishes cutting off those pretty little toes, it’s going to want to fuck. And if you haven’t answered my question, I’m not going to have any choice but to let it.”

As he said this, he lowered the blade down toward her crotch and Tyler sort of got what he was talking about.

“No way! Sick!” he said.

“Now, here’s what your second-to-last chance sounds like: Where the fuck is that thieving piece of shit husband of yours?”

The lady let out a shriek that put every one before it to shame. It seemed to Tyler to last for minutes on end. And as her breath seemed to run out she formed words from the scream.

“I’ll never tell! But you’ll find him. You’ll find him when he wants you to, and he sticks that knife up your ass, faggot!”

A look of rage illuminating his face, the man grabbed her toe and began sawing into it, threads of blood spurting outward.

“Oh geez!” said Tyler, finally jumping up and sprinting to his bike as fast as he could then peddling off toward Main Street with all the energy he could muster. “I’ve got to tell the police!”

Despite the steep hills the bike had to climb, the beds of rocky terrain, the nearly two miles between the shed and the police station, Tyler’s heart never stopped pounding. The fear never left him. His joints never unfroze from the horror of what he’d seen. And he didn’t even notice to what limits he pushed his body. And beyond!

When he jumped off his bike and burst through the doors, Captain Murray, a friend of his father’s, just happened to be walking through the main lobby with a file in his hand. He turned as Tyler came through (As everyone did, the doors slamming noisily), and a little light glinted in his eye and he put his hands on his hips and smiled.

“Well if it isn’t little Tyler McKinley.”

“Captain Murray!” he said breathlessly.

“What is it this time, young man? Are you going to report another burglary at a house that just happens to be hosting the girls from your class’ slumber party?”

Police officers from across the room, all very familiar with Tyler’s antics, laughed loudly. “Or maybe,” continued Captain Murray, “you’ve just come to ask for a police car to come to the home of a Mr. I.P. Freely?”

Again, laughter erupted, but Tyler didn’t think it was funny at all.

“No, Captain Murray! I’m not joking around this time! I was just out riding my bike in Mitchell Woods, and I heard screaming!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! And I biked out until I got to his tiny house, and I saw a lady with no clothes, and she was tied down to this table thing, and there was a guy, and they were talking and he was cutting off her toes, one at a time!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” said Captain Murray, the smile disappearing from his face. He approached Tyler and knelt down in front of him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “That’s not funny, buddy.”

“I know it’s not!”

“It’s actually pretty messed up. I know your dad doesn’t let you watch R-rated movies. Did you see this kind of garbage just on TV?”

“No! I saw it in Mitchell Woods, like I said. Just a few minutes ago! You got to go and help the lady!”

“Tyler, I think you’d better go home. I’m going to give your Dad a call and let him know what happened. Because it sounds to me like he’s going to have to give you another talk about making up stories to the Police.”

“But I’m not making up stories, Captain Murray! This is real, and that lady’s really hurting! And, and… the man said that if she didn’t tell him where her husband was, then he was going to… put the knife inside of her.”

Based on Captain Murray’s expression, Tyler’s pantomime of what the man intended to do with the knife must have been clear.

“Alright Tyler, you’re making me angry. That is not funny. Now if you don’t go home right this instant, I’m going to tell your father. And he’s going to be very unhappy.”

“But…”

“Tyler!”

“Alright,” he sulked, lowering his head and walking outside to his bike and sitting down on the concrete steps. He folded his arms over his knees and sank his head into the cool dark cavern his gathered arms and legs formed. Thinking of the poor lady getting her toes cut off and worse, and thinking of the police refusing to believe him, he could feel frustration well up until he thought he might cry. But a cool breeze rustled his hair and he raised his head. And in so doing, he happened to catch sight of the American Flag on the front lawn, riding the breeze high atop the flag pole, fluttering and flapping in regal grandeur. And he remembered the last Fourth of July, at the evening fireworks display at Founder’s Square.

He’d sat on a blanket beside his father, who would be deployed to Afghanistan the next morning. And he’d caught his father staring at the large American flag at the Square’s center. And he’d noticed his tears.

“Why are you crying Dad?” he’d asked uncertainly.

His father had looked down and smiled and wrapped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed Tyler tight.

“Do you know,” he asked the boy “what that flag up there means?”

“I… I guess so. It means we’re free.”

“That’s right!” laughed Tyler’s father, squeezing the boy even tighter and grinning like a man possessed as his eyes widened. “But that’s not all, son. Oh no!” He paused as a fit of giggling overtook him, and his teeth clenched and his eyes bulged from his skull. “It also means never giving up. Ever. No matter what. And looking after those people in the world who might not be as strong or as well-off as you. Always protecting the weak.”

Now, Tyler stood up from the police steps and said aloud:

“You’re right dad! Americans never quit and we always help people who need it!”

And with that, Tyler hopped on his bike and began peddling as hard as he could. And an idea began to take form in his mind.

In no time at all, he reached his best friend Joe’s house. He rode right up to the front door and rang the bell without bothering to dismount.

“Joe,” he panted when his friend opened the door, “you’ve got to let me borrow your walkie-talkies and your b.b. gun! The really powerful one that uses CO2 cartridges!”

“This sounds like a pretty serious prank, Ty. Even for you!”

“It’s not a prank, Joe, it’s serious! But I don’t have time to explain.”

“Let me guess… you’re going to put one of the walkie-talkies in the girl’s bathroom at school, and then–”

“I told you, I don’t have time to explain! But it’s serious! Please. We’re best friends. We’re blood brothers. Believe me, I’ve got to have the b.b. gun and the walkie-talkies NOW! I promise I’ll bring them back as soon as I’m done.”

Suspicion covered Joe’s face as he stood staring several seconds. But eventually he conceded, saying okay as he disappeared into the house. When he returned, he had only barely extended the requested items before Tyler snatched them and tore off down the drive.

As he felt himself getting weak during the final stretch of the ride, he tried to think of the naked lady tied to the table saw, her toes being sliced off, and what the man had threatened to do with his knife. Then Tyler felt very very uncomfotable and just started thinking about America instead. How its people were brave and compassionate, and how its flag was so beautiful, and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and stuff. This gave him the final burst of energy he needed to reach the shed in the middle of Mitchell Woods.

He dropped his bike a fair distance from the house, in a patch of undergrowth so that it couldn’t be seen. As he crept as quietly as he could toward the door, the b.b. gun slung over his shoulder, the walkie-talkies in his hands, he noticed that there were no screams coming from the shed. He hoped this meant they had finally let the girl go. Fortunately he didn’t check to see, as the sight of the lady’s head split down the middle–the saw blade jammed on one of her upper vertebrae–would no doubt have hurt his resolve.

Reaching the door, he switched on one of the walkie-talkies and set it on the ground and covered it up with some leaves so that no one could see it. Then he ran for the cover of the woods, standing between a pair of tall pine trees as he unslung his b.b. gun, double-checked that it was loaded, and switched on his walkie-talkie and raised it to his lips.

After a deep breath, he pressed the button to send transmissions and said:

“Hey! Come out here you jerk! Get out here, loser! Or are you afraid to take on someone your own size?”

Thrilled and horrified all at once, Tyler stared at the door. He didn’t have to wait long.

The man who had been dismembering the girl stepped out, his head darting around for the source of the words. Tyler felt a powerful satisfaction to see his plan working so brilliantly as he lifted the b.b. gun, took aim squarely on the man’s temple and pulled the trigger. A ringing thwap sounded and a second later the man convulsed and put a reflexive hand to the side of his head.

He turned toward Tyler, his eyes red, his face shaking and taut with the exertion of every tendon in his neck flexing outward with more concentrated rage than Tyler had ever seen. Tyler felt his stomach drop at seeing that his plan had failed. The shot had not killed the man.

And seeing that the man had spotted him and started off in a run toward him, he had to think fast. He thought perhaps he could take another shot at closer range, but sudden doubts about the killing power of b.b.s plagued him. And as the man was gaining fast, running about as fast as any man he’d ever seen, instinct took over and Tyler dropped the b.b. gun and walkie-talkie and started running away.

“Ha ha!” he screamed back at his pursuer. “You’re chasing me right into a police ambush!”

But the man did not slow down even a little. He didn’t believe Tyler. “Well not really, but I’m going to call the cops! I saw what you did to that lady!” Still the man ran, covering with each step as much ground as Tyler covered in three. He didn’t have long.

Unfortunately, he was out of ideas and just screamed in a high-pitched voice as he ran another few steps before feeling the weight of the man tackle him to earth.

“Who the fuck are you?” demanded the man in a rasping yell that sounded like gravel under tires.

Lying there under his weight, Tyler shut his eyes and mustered the air to shout back:

“I’m an American! And I saw what you were doing to the lady in there and I came to teach you a lesson!”

“Oh yeah?” snarled the man as he stood and pulled Tyler up so effortlessly it was as though he weighed less than air.

But now that he looked into the man’s eyes–hollow and evil–Tyler lost the ability to say anything at all. He only screamed. The volume and unbelievably high pitch caused the man to wince and shake his head. And he dragged Tyler toward the shack and rubbed at the sore spot where the b.b. had hit. “What the fuck was that, kid? A fucking b.b.?” But the prolonged scream was his only reply.

Reaching the shed, the man flung Tyler in through the door, where he crashed hard into the floor.

“What the fuck’s this?” demanded a man sitting inside, eating from a box of Chinese takout.

“Some fucking kid. Said he saw us working over that slut. Little fucker shot me with a b.b.”

“Ha,” the man said without laughing through a mouthful of food.

“Ain’t fucking funny,” he said in reply over the wail of Tyler’s screams. And he grabbed a blood-caked knife from the table, saying: “better believe I’m going to fucking enjoy the shit out of this.”

“Just make it quick. I’ve had enough fucking screaming for one day.”

“Fuck that. I’m going to make this last.”

He waved the knife wide-eyed and maniacal and took slow, deliberate steps toward Tyler. Tyler shrieked and wept as the man crouched down and, grinning, pulled the filthy blade against his own tongue, drawing a line of blood.

“Freeze!” screamed Captain Murray as he burst into the shed, his gun drawn, Tyler’s father and best friend Joe behind him. But this was nearly an hour later and Tyler had long since been brutally murdered.