Straight Razor

He slid the stiff blade up to my ear: Oh, fear, this should have been thirst, a cheapening act. But I lacked, as usual, the crucial disbelief. Sticky, cold, a billfold wet in my mouth, wrists bound by his belt, I felt like the boy in a briny night pool, he who found the drowned body, yet still somehow swam with an unknown joy. That boy.