Story code: ST-000616
Part 2: Predatory Lending
Toby saw Eleanor’s manicured thumb hovering over the bright glass screen of her phone, the blue light reflecting in her widened eyes. He didn’t need to see the digital keypad to know she was dialing three digits. Nine. One. One. An ambulance meant an emergency room. An emergency room meant unconsented scans, specialists, and a catastrophic medical bill he couldn’t ever hope to pay. A medical debt lien on his half-acre dirt lot was the only opening Eleanor needed to finally snatch his property at auction, bulldoze his life’s work, and extend her pristine modern estate.
“Don’t,” Toby rasped, his voice tearing in his dry, chemical-coated throat. He lunged across the scuffed laminate counter with his right hand. He didn’t grab for her phone. He grabbed the heavy-duty aviation tin snips she had just purchased.
Eleanor flinched backward, her heel catching on the wire battery rack. “Toby, you’re bleeding! It looks gangrenous!”
“It’s fine,” he lied, clutching the cold steel of the snips to his chest.
The teenage cashier was pressed flat against the cigarette display, her eyes darting frantically between the bloody, resin-caked horror of Toby’s left arm and the exit doors.
The man in the work boots stepped out of the checkout line, dropping his items on a pallet of rock salt. “Take it easy, buddy. Let the lady call a bus. You’re gonna lose that arm.” The man reached out, thick fingers aiming to clamp down on Toby’s good shoulder to hold him in place.
Toby twisted wildly, throwing his weight toward the automatic sliding doors. His heavy work boots slipped on the polished linoleum, but he caught his balance against a cardboard display of garden hoses, sending them clattering across the aisle. “Stay away from me!” he shouted.
The sudden, violent exertion sent a sickening throb up his left arm, the swollen flesh screaming against the rigid, unyielding fiberglass pipe he had constructed. The epoxy didn’t just feel tight anymore; it felt like it was actively shrinking, crushing the damaged, feverish tissue and whatever was trapped beneath it into a suffocating vise.
He burst through the glass doors and out into the crushing eighty-five-degree heat of the asphalt parking lot. The sun hammered down on his thick winter parka, instantly drawing a sheet of slick, cold sweat across his forehead. He needed to get to his truck. He needed to cut the cast off before the mounting pressure cut off his blood supply entirely.
“Toby, stop being an idiot!” Eleanor’s voice carried over the idle hum of parked cars. The sharp clack of her heels followed him. She wasn’t running, but she was pursuing him with a terrifying, measured purpose. “You don’t even have insurance! You’re going to die in that disgusting shack!”
He ignored her, weaving between blindingly hot car hoods, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The toxic smell of curing epoxy baking in the summer sun filled his nostrils, mixing horribly with the coppery tang of old blood. His rusted Ford Ranger sat at the far edge of the lot, a blistering metal oven baking under the cloudless sky.
He reached the driver’s side door, his trembling right hand fumbling deep into his jeans pocket for his keys. Every tiny movement of his torso pulled at the muscles connected to his left shoulder, sending shockwaves of white-hot agony down into the hardened yellow shell. He yanked the keys out, dropped them, cursed, and fell to his knees on the melting blacktop to scoop them up.
The heat radiating from the asphalt was unbearable, making him dizzy. He jammed the key into the lock, wrenched the door open, and threw himself onto the cracked vinyl bench seat. He slammed the heavy door shut just as Eleanor rounded the rear bumper of a neighboring minivan.
Toby frantically hammered down the manual lock lock. He didn’t bother putting the key in the ignition. The inside of the cab was well over a hundred degrees, the air stale and suffocating, but it was a fortress.
He had to do it now.
He positioned the tin snips in his right hand, awkwardly pinning his left arm against his knee to keep it steady. The fiberglass resin was a quarter-inch thick in places, a chaotic, bubbled mix of synthetic fibers, dried blood, and gauze. He jammed the lower blade of the heavy-duty shears under a jagged edge of the shell near his wrist.
The blunt metal blade slid against inflamed, raw skin. Toby squeezed his eyes shut, bit down hard on his lower lip to stifle a scream, and clamped his right hand down on the rubberized handles of the snips.
The forged steel blades bit into the resin. It didn’t yield like thin metal or plastic. It crushed, sending a sharp, terrifying crack echoing in the small cab. The vibration ran directly into the wound hidden deep inside the cast. Toby’s vision flared with black spots. The pain was absolute, a blinding crescendo that nearly made him vomit across the steering wheel.
But the pressure released, just a fraction. A millimeter of breathing room.
Along with the release came a sudden, foul rush of trapped air. The stench was horrifying-sweet, rotten, and undeniably necrotic. Toby gagged, his eyes watering profusely as he stared at the fresh crack in his handiwork. Dark, fresh fluid began to well up from the fissure, sliding over the dirty yellow epoxy.
A sharp tap on the glass made him jump, driving the blade painfully against his wrist.
Eleanor stood directly outside his window. She wasn’t holding the phone to her ear. She was holding it up against the glass, the screen angled so he could read it. It wasn’t a 911 dispatch screen. It was an open email, an electronic property transfer contract with his name and the address of his studio at the very top.
She mouthed the words through the window, slowly and deliberately. *My private doctor. Zero cost. Just sign.*
Toby stared at the high-resolution screen, then down at the rotting trap encasing his arm. His desperate attempt to save his livelihood had just handed Eleanor the ultimate leverage. If he didn’t cut the rest of the cast off right now, he would lose the arm to infection. But looking at the brutal thickness of the bloody fiberglass, smelling the decay, and feeling his rapidly fading strength, he knew the tin snips weren’t going to be enough.