It was a very long moment, no more than a second—and then he suddenly relaxed and rolled his head back, releasing his bite on my thumb-muscle, as if it had never happened. . . . He pushed his wiry little neck back against the palm of my left hand and gazed up at me.
I closed my fingers around his neck and got a firm grip on his shoulders. He began to purr and the pupils in his eyes closed down to blissful little black slits as he wantonly ground his sharp, ugly little hipbones down into the palm of my right hand, the one he almost bit.
The phone rang. It was Pat Caddell, calling from Santa Barbara with a whole raft of ugly political news. “I can’t talk now,” I said. “I have to deal with this animal. Call me back when you calm down.”
Then I hung up the phone and looked down, once again, at Screwjack. “You’re lucky,” I told him. “That was Mr. Caddell, the political man. He sends you his best regards.”
Then I clamped my fingers very suddenly around his neck in a vise-like grip that cut his wind off, while at the same time dragging his head backward and straight down, over my leg, causing his front claws to flap crazily in the air as he struggled. . . .
With my right hand I seized the whole lower end of his body, between the front side of his groin and on the back where the tail connects to the spine, and I squeezed him like a grape.
There was no noise. He was bent and stretched out so far that he couldn’t even hiss. . . . But not for long; it was a matter of split seconds before he was up in the air like a fruit bat, and then down into a trembling four-point stance about ten feet across the room. His eyes were huge and his white fangs were out of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Why are you staring at me like that?” He shuddered and sat down heavily on the floor, near the icebox, saying nothing.
Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. His books include Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, The Curse of Lono, Songs of the Doomed, Better Than Sex, The Proud Highway, and The Rum Diary. He is a regular contributor to various national and international publications. He now lives in Colorado.
authors.simonandschuster.com/Hunter-S-Thompson
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by Hunter S. Thompson
Copyright © 2000 by Gonzo International Corp.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
0-7432-1524-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1524-4 (eBook)
Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack
(Series: # )
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