Read A Dog in Water for Free Online

unextended leg didn’t have much force behind it. I ignored it and shoulder-checked him.
    We were about the same height but I had at least twenty pounds on him. Katsuya flew through the air.
    My advantage was short-lived.
    I dashed to where he lay on the ground but was a second too late in delivering a kick to his prone stomach. He aimed his right between my legs. He took advantage of my dodging the blow to stand up.
    He was as agile as a cat. I threw a right before he could compose himself. He ducked slightly and charged toward my chest. My fist barely grazed his face. He threw a short uppercut. I blocked it with my right arm and grabbed his neck with my left. A punch struck my cheek at point-blank range. I didn’t feel any pain. I swung my right fist down towards his jaw.
    It unceremoniously sliced through open air. My lower body dropped like a stone; my brain had been jolted. My body refused to respond, and Katsuya landed a carefully aimed kick on my temple. My mind went blank.
    I regained consciousness immediately, but all I could see was asphalt. Somehow I was lying face down on the ground. I felt a blow to the side of my torso, followed by shooting pain. Another blow. And another. I tried to shrink away but my body wouldn’t move. He stomped down hard on my back, and all the air in my lungs was expelled through my mouth. I desperately gasped for oxygen.
    I felt Katsuya lean onto my back with all his body weight, causing pain to tear along my side. I could tell that I had a broken rib.
    He grabbed the back of my head and pulled upwards. Terror assaulted me as my head was slammed into the pavement. Strobe lights flashed before my eyes. Tremendous pain lanced through my entire body. My skull felt like it was fracturing into tiny pieces. Death stood right beside me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. It hurt to breathe. Blood poured relentlessly from my completely smashed-in nose.
    I heard a metallic noise behind me.
    “The right? Or the left?” a voice asked next to my ear. I didn’t understand the question. I felt a pinprick of pain on my cheek. It was the tip of a knife. “Right or left?”
    He’s going to slice off an ear
, I thought. A vision of Katsuya, laughing as he held my shorn-off ear, danced in my mind. As I tried to think of some way to escape, I realized that my muscles were entirely depleted of energy.
    The knife point skimmed down my cheek. “Which’ll it be? Right or left?”
    An eye. He was going to gouge out my eye. Fear came inching back. The tiny bit of pride I still retained held the panic in check, but my voice sounded pathetic. “Whichever you prefer.”
    I could hear Katsuya laugh. “Hey, now. Say something like that and I’ll think you don’t want to keep either of ’em!”
    Terror raced up my spine. I recalled Katsuya’s words:
If I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it
.
    I had a deep-seated terror of having my eyeballs destroyed. I was terrified of a world filled with darkness. I felt like losing my sight would make me the weakest being on the planet. I could feel my heartthreaten to break.
    The tip of the knife pricked the skin below my right eye. I felt something warm spread between my thighs.
    “Please, spare me …”
    Katsuya’s laugh echoed around me. “So, ya finally learned how to talk to me, eh?” His weight vanished from my back. “If I do anything more to ya, you’ll probably go cryin’ to the cops, Junko be damned. So I’ll let you go like this.” I felt the sole of his boot on my left fingers. “Come back when you’ve got what it takes to try and kill me.” He bore down on my fingers. A nauseating sound came from beneath his boot and my whole body convulsed.
    I heard footsteps walking away. I tried my damnedest to get up. It took a very long time to simply roll over onto my back.
    Katsuya was long gone—I was all alone in the darkened alleyway. Blood flowed from my nose into my mouth, and my body felt feverish as if I’d been set on fire. I couldn’t tell