What would it feel like to snap someone’s neck? It would have to be a child’s neck, because Harold wasn’t a very strong man. Not a baby’s, though. Just a child, pure and innocent, a product of bad parenting. Hold him with two hands resting on his shoulders, thumbs on his spine, silent, pressing harder and harder. Tears rushing down his cheeks onto an old wooden dusty floor. Tears that get sucked in fast and darken the wood. The boy, shrugging and wining, no idea what’s happening. Hands moving across the boys neck, to support the thumbs pressing in. Grabbing the collarbone and pulling and pressing and wining. A mixture of sounds and emotion. Gasps. Waiting. Waiting for that sound, the sound of the spine giving in. An unfamiliar sound, an unknown sound. Harold stops and opens his eyes. He doesn’t know the sound. He doesn’t know it. Will it be crunchy, dry, muffled by the meat and skin? Multiple cracks or just a single one? He can imagine the feeling in his hands, the hands holding the bones, tender meat, skinny boy, but not the sound. The sound remains unknown. A computer beep sounds and the paper is still warm. Harold enjoys his visits to the copy room.
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