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TOtCB Chapter 11 ‘The Boy with the Thorn in His Side’

Hey, hows it going my imaginary audience.

So, it’s done, sorta. I finished Diana After Dark, if that’s even what I’m still calling it by the time I post this. And I’m sinking into my usual funk. That completionist depression, when you walk away from a book. Like when you finish a videogame that really gripped you and then it’s over and you’re like ‘I want more’. Same for books I guess but my first experience with that feeling was videogames, just getting engrossed in that world and then having to leave it behind because there’s nothing left to do. It’s depressing.

That’s done, I say ‘done’ what I really mean is it needs shitloads more editing and fixing and tweaking which could take months but I’ll happily do it, also I think I might change her aunt character into a cop. It just might make more sense later on, give her more leverage in the story and it sort of makes sense in regard to the character she’s based on I guess.

It’s finished and I feel lost once again, trapped in that miasma of deciding what to do next. Because honestly the first thing I wanted to do was just say fuck it and write the sequel right away. Start drafting up the ideas floating around in my head and put it on paper, I literally have ideas for at least two more but I don’t know if it’s healthy to stay in that headspace for so long and listen to the same music. I figure I should put something in between.

I’m thinking I might do something that’s a twist on a bunch of Lovecraft stories. I did do a sort of weird almost Lovecraftian super hero story a while back that I could revive. It might be fun, like a cosmic horror thriller novella. Then maybe I could do another Diana or that fantasy novel I’ve been planning to do or that other fantasy novel I’ve been planning to do.

I dunno, just feeling bummed the fuck out recently and I need to get reinvigorated and throw myself back into something and I need to get this stuff cleaned up and start talking to agents again and try to get some money out of it so I can start getting deeper into potential series’.

Also planning on making a pilot or something for a Starship troopers tv show, I was just at a party recently and I thought how awesome would that be if netflix dropped all this gay ass superhero shit (Punisher not included, The Punisher is awesome, they could still fuck up his standalone show though) and started a high budget live action starship troopers tv show. I mean shit I would watch that in a second.

I mean I would be happier if I didn’t even write it, if I just gave the idea to a good screen writer and then I could just enjoy it. But it’s netflix so they’d probably still fuck it up haha. Or shit even worse if it was taken on by AMC and it couldn’t have any nudity or swearing like Preacher, fuck me sideways that was fucking retarded.

Anyway, enough of me ranting about bullshit, got another chapter of The one that came back for your viewing pleasure. You know the drill.

See you…

The Boy with the Thorn in His Side.

–

Porter couldn’t let it go. there was something about it that he knew would haunt him if he didn’t get something squared away. He figured a few questions, a couple of hours out of his life. That would spare him the sleepless nights, tossing and turning thinking about it.

So here he was sitting in his truck on Swallow Street. Outside Johnny’s old house. He looked into the old case reports on the boy’s disappearance online. They were bare enough for the cops to not care who looked at them and all the addresses were old anyway. This is Johnny’s old neighbourhood, he was taken in a park not too far from his home. The family moved out after his disappearance because of a new job across town.

He thought about watching the kid at first. As far as he could tell the neighbours he had. The friends he had back then were still kicking around here so they might have more to say. As far as he was concerned the person he met and the boy that went missing were two different people. So following him wouldn’t teach him anything he didn’t already know.

He’d gotten hold of a Photostat copy of his missing poster. He went over it a couple of times trying to get a picture of the kid in his mind.

Johnnathon William Bartlett Missing Since Jun 13, 2013, Missing From San Antonio, TX. DOB Dec 31, 2000. Sex Male. Race Caucasian. Hair Color Lt. Brown. Eye Color Blue. Height 4′8″. Weight 80 lbs.

Identifying features; Has three tattoos. The letter T on his left hand between his thumb and forefinger. The letter J on his left shoulder, and the letters L and N on the outside of his left ankle.

What’s a thirteen year old doing with tattoos? He thought to himself. He made the drive out to fort Sam Houston where the boy was abducted. It was at least a twenty minute drive, maybe an hour bike ride away, or a three hour walk from his house. A picture of this kid was forming already. The missing poster said he was diagnosed with adhd. So this wasn’t your average kid. Normal kids don’t have tattoos or take hour bike rides to go play basketball away from home.

Swallow street was a normal neighbourhood. Lined with modest single story homes in reasonable condition. Nothing out of the ordinary about it, no gangs, or drugs or undesirables about. The house he was looking for was 14118 Swallow Street.

The house was a small red brick building with a tiny covered porch at the entrance and a single car garage at the side. A black mailbox outfront. The lawn was small and sloped down with a single tree in the front that looked like a hand sticking out of the earth. Bare of all its leaves. All the houses in the neighbourhood were pretty much the same sandy colours. Like they all just rose out of the desert.

It was early and there weren’t too many people out, the odd dog walker or baby stroller. A squat Mexican woman one yard over was raking leaves and mumbling to herself in Spanish.

He didn’t think it would do much good asking the new owner about the missing kid. Chances are he wouldn’t have even known about the thing at all. Not exactly need to know information for a realtor to give out. ‘Oh by the way a kid who used to live here disappeared’.

But he figured it couldn’t hurt to talk to the guy. Maybe if he got talking something might tumble out and he’d get to look around a bit.

Porter parked on the sidewalk next to the black mailbox. The sidewalks were those little strip sidewalks. Like they expected you to walk single file.

Porter crossed the lawn, it was well kept, a little too short even, dry looking.

He passed through the little alcove and tapped on the glass in the door. No one answered, Porter went around the side and peeked through windows. It didn’t look like anyone was home.

“HE NOT HOME!” A shrill voice called.

Porter looked towards where the sound came from. The squat Mexican woman was looking at him from across the yard. Holding her rake close to her as she bagged leaves. Porter put on his best smile and hopped across the lawn like a little bunny. Pretending to be out of breathe when he reached her.

“Mr Hostelle not home, he work in construction travel a lot, he come back next week.”

“Right, thanks” He was surprised, he didn’t even need to ask any questions yet.

“Something you want?”

“As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you knew the family who used to live here?”

“You here about the boy who disappeared, Johnny whatshisname?” She said tutting trying to remember his name. Waving her hand trying to pre-empt Porter correcting her and progressing the conversation.

“Bartlett” He said flat.

“That’s it Bar-lett, the news people already been here, you with them?” She probed the air with the end of her rake acquisatorially.

“Not really, I just wanted to know more about the boy, can you tell me anything?”

“Si, I remember.” She said curtly as she tied up the garbage bag full of leaves a little too tight. She looked up from the bag and cocked her head to the side. “You want me to say he was the pefect little angel who flew away, is not true. That one was a little puta!”

Porter thought it best to keep quiet and pretend he was taking mental notes, which he was.

“The policia, they come around all the time for this kid, and this a good neighbourhood”. She swung around as if to give him a good look at the neighbourhood, her house was simple but nice. A single story house with a slanted roof, a large two car garage with a 4×4 taking up one a half cars worth of space. The windows outside looked almost like church windows, three in a row. Twin cedar trees dominating her lawn. “We don’t get much trouble, but with him always trouble. He come home late, screaming and shouting and fighting and drug”.

“Drugs?”

“That’s what I hear, I never see, and that not the first time he run away either. Last time he was hiding down the bottom of my yard. Tearing up my flower bed.” She started to get fidgety now. “And these not little kid fights. When they fight, they fight, they use knive, the mother she have boyfriends and they no good.” Something told Porter she was enjoying this a little too much. The reporters didn’t let her get to the nit gritty. Like she wanted.

“Do you know what happened to Johnny’s father?”

“No, we moved in after he was already gone, they say, err, he run away” She shrugged.

She started looking a little more nervous than aggravated. She started rubbing a cross that was hanging around her neck. She made the sign of the cross. “Madre dios, that’s not all, one night we call the police because we heard noise”.

“What kind of noise?”

“Like an animal cry and like singing, err not singing, like a droning noise. The police come and the man, err what his name J- something. He answer the door cover in blood”. She moved her hands to signify the blood was all over and her eyes were wide now and he could see the whites. She was excited, a little theatre crept in.

“What did the cops say” Porter stayed cold and flat like a frozen flank steak.

“He say, the man, that it was chicken blood. He kill a chicken for dinner, no way, in mehico we kill chickens, very little blood. You see a chicken, they very small, not very much blood. Head to toe. The policia, they leave him alone”. She shrugged and wrinkled her bottom lip.

“Was this around the time Johnny went missing?”

“I don’t remember exactly, maybe. It get so bad, with the boy that they had to bring in his Uncle to come live with them because the boy was so violent. He was hitting his mother so they bring in the man J-something to keep the boy, behave, you know. But you know the news they only want to hear how good he was. Cute little blonde boy with blue eyes go missing. They only want to hear nice things about him” She chuckled to herself.

“Thanks, you’ve been a big help”

“Si” The woman said as she raised her eyebrows and got back to raking leaves.

Porter went back to the dodge and got in and sat there for a moment, tossing gravel in his head.

–

 

 

 

0

Diana After Dark Chapter 4 ‘Heads over Heels’

Yeah so playing with the name a little, someone told me to get rid of the alliteration and I thought it was a little heavy to have it in the title despite the obvious homage to the source material but I can always change it.

So things are going well, having a lot of fun writing it as usual, also oddly having a lot of fun proof reading it. But obviously I’m pretty biased. I do have a lot of trepidation, I’m thinking of reworking some of it. I see my short falls a lot more in this piece when I compare it to the source.

There’s just some stuff I lack, some vital piece I think I’m missing and I feel like I have to fake. I just need to go over it and I need it to be edited and I need someone to put a partial eye to it and tell me what I need to tweak. Because I feel like it’s almost there, it has all these nice little touches. And it really is the little things that make something like this, the small touches that add up to this one great big living world.

Huh, I dunno. I just need to step back and look at it and get some feedback, and I mean real feedback not people on inkitt blowing smoke up my ass.

Well anyway, this is a fun chapter, lots of senseless gore haha Actually that was the last chapter, well whatever haha.

See you…

Heads over heels

~

I squeaked my chair back an inch. I felt, I felt, numb, I felt like I was vibrating, happy, satisfied, complete. I felt like lighting up a cigarette and leaning against the board of a four poster bed. What was this, what was that? Could it have been real? It could have been faked, easily. But something in her eyes and something, that thing, deep inside, deep in the dark well told me it was all too real. It’s tinny little laugh ringing like a hunchback swinging on a church bell.

 

My skin felt damp like I just got out of a pool, refreshing, tingling sensation going up and down. Working up my spine and down my legs. My heartbeat slowing, breathing going back to normal.

 

I’ll have what she’s having, or what he’s having.

 

I felt dazed, tension working loose on my muscles made them slack and weak and I shook as I logged off and stumbled goggled eyed out of the library. My arms felt like limp noodles, like useless pieces of string pulled along by a runaway kite.

 

I felt, good.

 

I almost ran, through the halls tripping over my own feet hearing only my shoes screeching against against the cool silence in the empty school.

 

I stopped at my locker, I meant to get print outs of the newpapers and some of the juvie records but I forgot and it was already nearing closing time. Tomorrow is another day Diana I thought as I fumbled with the lock on my locker, it came off easy like I didn’t even lock it. I must have forgotten, in my daze. Not like I keep anything valuable in it unless futures in deflated volleyballs have sky rocketed in the last couple of hours.

 

I opened it and started to unload my satchel into it. The notepad and pens back in their rightful place.

 

Casting a wanton glance at the volleyball, almost like a mascot, I may as well paint a face on it and start talking to it. Then I noticed, in the corner of my eye.

 

There was already a face on it.

 

Someone had drawn a big smiley face on it with eyelashes in black marker.

 

Funny.

 

There was a strange noise like a pirate skulls lower jaw opening and there was a feeling like a giant boulder was going to roll down the hall and crush me. Like I’d stepped right on an X someone had carefully placed for me.

 

The noise was coming from Wendy’s locker to the left of mine. I closed my locker and actually locked it this time. The door being out of the way gave me a good look at her locker which now was ajar.

 

The lock of which had been cut with a set of bolt cutters. Bolt cutters? But why use those on her locker and not mine, maybe I really did leave it open, or he knew the combination.

 

This was getting too much, I was getting carried away, this was silly, it was all in my head. Not everything is about me. I’m not the centre of the universe. I’m going to open this locker and there’s going to be absolutely nothing inside it because this was just a simple robbery. Maybe someone saw her leave a macbook inside and just had to have it. A simple explanation for a simple buttoned down world.

 

Was I going to open it? I know that’s what he wanted me to do. Does that mean I should? Should I play his game, that’s what he wants, he wants to play.

 

I want to play too. I really do.

 

I felt a shiver up my spine as I thought that, as my true intentions became known even to myself. The darkness inside stretching like a cat, clawing the inside of my head playfully pricking me.

 

I put one finger inside the tiny dark opening and I nudged it open and let the gravity do the rest. The door swung open slow, creaking all the way giving me that long pirate ghost laugh. Behold ye not so buried treasure.

 

I wanted to gasp but all breath was stolen.

 

There it was.

 

There he was.

 

“Hello Benjamin” I said. My voice carrying an echoing that vibrated all through me. Both voices coming together and smirking as a puzzle piece fell into place.

~

 

 

0

ToTCB Chapter ten ‘All Tomorrows Parties

Hey there folks,

Gonna keep it brief, throw out another chapter of something juicy and bale. Not much to update on, been pretty dark recently inside and out. Day job has been a little annoying and I’ve just been engrossed in this latest project up to a point where I almost see nothing past it. I got lost a little a long the way, I lost myself in it, had some more shitty developments in my personal life my house falling apart not withstanding. Water is shut off right now because the guy we had do out kitchen was a shit plumber and it all needs to be redone, what a ball ache.

So far sales of GS are pretty shitty but its a first book and the publisher has his shit to sell too and honestly I mean did I really think I was going to making boat loads of cash off a book about a zombie gameshow? Nah.

I’m just gonna keep doing what I do, maybe work on the zombie stuff if my publisher wants them other than that gonna keep writing real shit and trying to get an agent so I go on to a bigger publisher, tv, movies, t-shirts the whole bit haha.

As I said, short.

See you…

All tomorrows parties

–

Within a week Con arranged for the boy to flown out to Houston to have a forensic interview. Johnny was taken alone by a consort of FBI agents from the San Antonio field office. He was put on a plane and sent to meet a psychologist at the Texas childrens hospital in Houston. One of the biggest hospitals in the state.

They waited in an airconditioned waiting room with a black leather couch. His handler was a stuffy man that didn’t talk and just sat and read magazines. He had the demeanor of pampered night watchman, always checking the time he could clock off. Johnny people watched and bobbed his knees up and down. He couldn’t sit still. Struck by a sort of nervous energy, half way between fear and excitement.

Within a couple of minutes Johnny was called into an office. Blue walls and dark maroon leather chairs, grey steel filing cabinets against the walls.

He was greeted by a soft looking middle age man with glasses and light curly hair sitting behind a teak desk. He was dressed casually in a white shirt and sweater vest with no tie and brown pants.

He stood to shake the boys hand and sat down.

“Johnny, its nice to meet you, I’m doctor Banner. I’m just going to ask you a few questions, it’ll be very relaxed, nothing to worry about”. He smiled earnestly. There was something calming about his voice. He put Johnny at ease within a few moments and he was rattling off the story he’d told so many others already.

It was all over in a few hours and Johnny was taken back to a hotel room they got him to spend the night before his flight home.

–

“This is doctor Jules Banner for Agent Nancy Jaeger”

“Speaking” Her voice carried the vague disinterest of a sceptic.

“Oh, well I have some unsettling news”

“Go on.”

“Erm, well concerning his trauma.”

“Yes”

“Well to be frank, there doesn’t appear to be any.” He sounded incredulous.

“What do you mean” Nancy was hanging on the edge of the phone now.

“Well I didn’t see the same physiological change that you get in most people who suffer trauma. His body posture, his pupil size, his heart rate. There wasn’t the usual changes you’d associate with someone reliving trauma”

“So you’re telling me he’s not traumatized?”

“Yes but what’s more, what I find troubling is he can’t seem to speak English without an accent.”

“He claims to have been held in Europe for a number of years.”

“You’re not following me, he speaks with an accent, and accent can be picked up but he can’t speak without it. This is supposed to be a boy who was raised in an English speaking household until he was thirteen”.

“Ok”

“Well it tells me about the development of his brain and the development of language. It’s impossible for someone raised in an English speaking home to not be able to speak without an accent. Regardless of spending, five, ten, twenty years in a foreign country”.

“What exactly are you telling me?”

Con was watching from his desk on the otherside of the room but he wasn’t saying anything. His face was still and expressionless as he watched Nancy talk.

“I can guarantee you within the best of my abilities.” He paused for effect. “This child was not raised in an English speaking home”.

“Once more please”

“This child cannot be Johnnation Bartlett because this child is not an American”.

“Thank you Doctor.” She said as she hung up the phone.

–

“Peggy, this is Special Agent Nancy Jaeger”

“Yes” Peggy’s voice was strained, anxious.

“I’ve spoken with the forensic psychologist and we have some troubling news.”

“What is it, is Johnny ok?”

“Dr Banner has informed me that the person claiming to be Johnny Bartlett cannot be your brother. Because he is not in fact an American”

“What do you mean he’s not an American, he’s my brother”. Her voice got higher and she took on a comic incredulity like she was waiting for a punchline.

“The psychologist has confirmed he was not raised in an English speaking house. Due to the development of language in his brain”

Peggy got quiet, she started breathing heavy over the phone. “Oh my god!” She said through her hand cupped over her mouth.

“Now you don’t have to worry I will-“

“OH MY GOD!” Peggy started crying and shrieking over the phone. “WHAT DO I DO, WHAT DO I DO?”

“Don’t panic, me and my partner will meet him at the airport. We will take him into custody for the mean time until we can figure out who he is. You don’t need to meet him, you don’t need to take him home, we’ll handle everything.”

“Ok”.

–

 

0

The Following season 3 review – sorta

Ok, this is not really a review. It’s more of a rant, but when do I write anything but half assed rants?

So I the Following, I watched the first two seasons and honestly it’s kind of an ‘eh’ show for me. It’s the kind of show I watch while I workout or I cook to, its not some cerebral show that eye fucks me on the regular it’s just kind of a chewing gum show I watch to fill time while I do other stuff.
It has fun themes and decent actors but is otherwise unremarkable. It’s sort of normie-tier Dexter. Well Dexter is sort of normie-tier Dexter if you read the books which are much better but I digress.
It was ok, it was a little sloppily written, the plot was sort of jumbled and all over the place and it struggled with characters. Because it has so many and Kevin Bacon and all his cohorts are sort of generic as fuck, like seriously they could swap them all out and it makes no difference and none of the main ones die so there tension is sort of lost but you don’t really care about them either.

But it was a great show for knives, lots of cool microtechs and cold steel knives on show. And in season 3 I actually saw my favourite killer using a knife I actually own which just touched my heart haha.

I dunno, I mean the main characters are sort of unlikeable and the bad guys are sort of between being too angsty and cunty to being too likeable. Like it gets to a point in season two where Joe Carroll the main killer cult leader played by James Purefoy who is awesome see Solomon Kane and Ironclad. He is so likeable to a point where it’s bad, it gets to a point where he’s almost a foil, he stops being scary, you forget he’s a serial killer. He’s just fun ol’ uncle Joe. So you have a real clusterfuck in terms of characterisation going on and the plot is sort of middling and predictable for the most part but its watchable.

Now here comes season 3 and it’s actually very different and its apparent from the start, it’s handled really well, written really well and it fools you, it takes a completely different path from the other two seasons. It sort of builds slowly to this midpoint where a new killer is revealed and at first I wasn’t that impressed because this show sort of throws out killers like hot dinners. In a way not dissimilar from Hannibal but in lots of ways I think this show is so much better than Hannibal because it has a lot more substance, Hannibal is all style, just freak of the week killerfest. It’s dull honestly and the following has a few throw away killers too but then this guy starts getting more and interesting.

It started to make feel like I was watching the first season of Mr Robot, the guy is like a serial killer version of Elliot from that show without all the shit show psychodrama of season two. But I won’t get into that emperors new clothes bullshit again. He even almost looks like him actually, although he’s a mulatto I think, not egyptian like I think Rami Malik is. But this dude could play a Kang if pressed haha.

I really liked his character, he had a lot of depth and was genuinely scary as well as likeable in a Dexter kind of way. The concept was great. But the show sort of fumbles him a little bit because it’s a bit one sided, the killers don’t really get away with much honestly, the fbi is a bit too good. Like they kill them all and not too many of the main characters are even scratched so it gets to be you’re rooting for the bad guys because they’re like the underdogs.

Because this guy is this awesome killer, like a total badass but he’s foiled constantly by these stumblefuck fbi agents and it can’t help but take the sting out a little.

But the season ended in a really nice open way because you have this awesome killer Theo, the hacker hacker haha. But it also leads into this rich kid serial killer social club a lot like Hostel and I think that could have been even better. Also Joe the serial killer from the first two seasons is executed but lives on in like a yoda ghost sort of way but creepy haha.

Sadly, just typing season 4 into google while I was looking for header images and it turns out they cancelled it which really sucks. Because although I wasn’t really invested, it was like Lucifer I just sort of watched it and took whatever I could from it. I had through the third seasons seen something really great blossoming and to see it cut short like this just when it was getting good is a little disappointing but eh there’s more fish on amazon prime haha.

Maybe I’ll do a black sails review just to talk about gay pirate kiss endings haha. Maybe not, might get kicked off the internet.

 

0

DDD Chapter 3 ‘Come into my head’

Hey there dudes and dudettes, back again to let me shovel more interesting tripe into your noodle. well good. Got some doozies for you today.

Ok well not much to report on, got my first royalty report for GS and I’m too afraid to open it and admit I suck at marketing haha. Yeah, a fair few copies sold but probably not enough to warrant a release of a sequel which is depressing but you know if someone actually went right for me I’d have to eat my fucking hat, now wouldn’t I?
I sound saltier than I actually am, I know people like the book, what’s not to like, not tooting my own horn, its just a fun book. But I never really looked at it as my magnum opus or anything like that. It was never the book to save me from the poor house but nevertheless I want it to do well and hopefully with some time and elbow grease it can and then I can release the sequels.

I can’t really get down about it, because a) I have a lot better more traditional things to depress me a la life in general haha and b) I have two more serious book franchises in the works that have a lot more potential to do well and hopefully get me a fucking agent which is what I really need. I can’t be doing with this indie shit anymore.
I’m obviously talking about this and maybe the one who came back, after extensive work, actually now I think about it it might not even be long enough after the editing and DDD is a Dexter clone so I’m pretty fucked either way, but I have to dream because otherwise what do I have? What reason do I have to go on if I don’t keep the hope alive that this is all worth something? And what is that something? Money? Fame? Love? Immortality?

Who knows?

Come into my head

~

The steady metronome of waves gently beating the shore, the smell of the spray. I open my eyes but it’s just blackness and then a light comes on but it’s not a light, it’s a moon rising out of the sea. The sea, am I on a boat? I ask myself stupidly.

Then I can feel it, the cold cloying embrace of the ocean in answer.

I kick my legs but I don’t feel I need to, I’m bobbing, cold and wet, just with my head floating above the surface of the water.

I can’t see the shore, the ocean seems endless and the only noise I hear are the waves parting and my heart beating. A rising anxiety sets my teeth on edge and I can feel it all around me. Is this what it’s like inside? Is this it’s world? A cold endless black ocean. I can’t feel the bottom, why would it have a bottom?

I can feel something, something moving, circling, rising. Waves and bubbles rising to a crescendo peaked by an anticlimactic blub blub and something bobbing on the surface of the water.

It floats towards me and I know what it is before it the moon can cast it’s bright bitter smile down on it.

It’s a head.

A perfectly lopped head of a woman. It floats towards me and in the glare of the moon it rolls open and it’s wet hair parts like a flower and it’s my dear old aunt Mary Beth. I should feel things, I should feel earth shaking, bone clattering terror and cold sweat but I feel nothing, nothing but a joyful wonder. A question answered, a life revealed, a lie told and taken away just as swiftly and my heart races and in an instant. I’m surrounded by more perfectly lopped heads, floating and bobbing like rubber ducks floating in crude.

I wake up in the same cold sweat, no maybe even colder, as colder as that black ocean, or maybe I just left the fan on, yeah it’s the fan. I slop the sheets off my damp body and walk on over and turn it off.

I need a shower and maybe a ritualistic burning of my sheets.

The water washes over me and I’m expecting revelations, a brief aside into Jungian psychology. Did I even care what the dream meant, if it meant a thing?

The sea, the darkness, fear of the unknown, the oldest fear, pretty standard. If you’re not afraid of the unknown you don’t have a very good imagination. The moon, well that was easy. I felt my teeth clicking thinking about it, getting responses up my legs and back as I just let the water flow over me.

The heads were a gift from my new and anonymous friend, but why did I recognise them, why her? I often thought about my aunt, about how I would feel if she would die. To tell the truth, if I could love anyone it would be her. Her absence in my life would be the most notable. A sapping noticeable emptiness that could be called loneliness or sadness. Something close to that but sadness was a foreign concept to someone completely bereft of any feeling whatsoever. A blessing and a curse, a crisp clear almost chipper emptiness. Like a smile with no teeth.

Where did that come from? I turned off the water and towelled off, it was a Saturday so much less care was taken in regards to time and form. As I towelled my head I heard something like the door opening and whispering.

I opened the door and looked down the hall but all I could see was my aunt holding tight to the door and looking at whomever was there. I tried looking past her but all I could see were their feet, well one foot, the other seemed to be, well not there. The stump was pressed against the stirrup of a wheelchair. The other foot not looking much more useful next to it.

She whispered harshly and shut the door latching it with the chain and the deadbolt and scurrying into the kitchen.

It took me a few minutes to get ready. I ran a comb through my hair, when I found it and put on a loose t-shirt. Then a pair of jeans more hole than denim and walked down the hall of the minimalist bungalow we shared.

She was waiting for me in the kitchen nursing a mug of gourmet instant coffee and mumbling to herself as she was one to do when something was taxing her.

I’d ask her what was wrong but she’d usually outright tell me as I was the only one she could tell her in insular little world. She really needed to get out more, like me, at least in my dreams. She owned some kind of crystal hoodoo voodoo shop in town that was run by a couple of kids. She came in to visit occasionally but most of the time she didn’t have to. Especially not on weekends. The shop did well, that kind of crap always does in California.

I came in and leaned on the the sparkly faux marble breakfast bar, none of it was new. It had all come with the house and I didn’t need her to tell me that. It has a sort of flat pack feel, like everything could be folded up and carried away at a moments notice.

I put some bread in the toaster and pressed the plunger down imagining it was some sort of small flat animal.

“What did I say about carbs?”

“That they’re delicious?” I said.

She scoffed and went back to her coffee and nothing.

“Who was that at the door?”

“Oh just the mail man, you know how chatty I can get” She took a sip waiting for my reaction “Poor guy couldn’t wait to get away.”

Now I was no expert on the hiring process of the postal service. But I was reasonably sure someone wheelchair bound and missing vital appendages couldn’t make up the required walking speed. So that was either the result of liberal diversity policies running amok or a sweet little lie rolling off my aunts lips to my ears.

“What were you talking about?” I prodded catlike, fighting a smile at the corner of my mouth.

“Oh you know, the usual stuff” She said tossing her long hair around in my face. She had it tied back with one of those seventies bands things that gave it a little lift on the top and a floral loose fitting dress. “So what are you doing today?” She asked, skilfully changing the subject as she sipped her coffee, the smell of which was driving me nuts.

“I was planning to go to the library and catch up on some studying” Of what was a need to know basis of course.

We lived in a nice but relatively secluded part of orange county. Turtle rock was a picturesque little hamlet made up of cute little match stick houses. Street names that sounded like they came straight out of fairytales. Sweetwater and rainbow falls, morning dew, sandpebble, gumdrop lane, I made that last one up. It was a good area but in comparison to the homes around us we lived in a shack. It had privacy but was incredibly secluded. You couldn’t get anywhere without a car and that was something I was sorely lacking.

“Ok”

“So I was wondering if you could drive me there and I could maybe get a ride back?”

She seemed to not be listening to what I was saying and took another sip, her head bobbing and then caught like she skipped a beat. “Sure” She said giving me a laboured smile. “Wait the library? As in at your school?”

“Uh huh?”

“It’s fifteen minute walk versus a two minute car journey” She said pausing trying to register how much I cared about carbon emissions.

“Didn’t you hear? There’s a serial killer on the loose” I said trying my best not to glow as I said it.

“I heard” she said with a ringing tone in her voice like it jumped and fell down a well. “You sure you don’t want to go the mall or something, all that work on the prom and you haven’t bugged me for a dress or shoes.”

“I still have time” I shrugged.

“Ok” She said. She picked up her unwieldly keybang off the kitchen counter with a clattering noise. Various useless keyrings like peace symbols and weed leafs. Cool aunt persona mastered. “Shouldn’t you be out with your friends? It’s a weekend.” She said clapping the keys in her hands. She almost sounded hurt, like I wasn’t fitting into the fantasy she had for a kid my age. Frolicking through piles of maple leaves and having water fights with the local kids. Taking breaks in between licking giant circular lollipops and braiding my hair. Maybe her childhood was on rainbow falls but mine fell somewhere a lot darker on the map and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Who says my friends won’t all be in the library?” They weren’t, Paul was at basketball practice and Wendy was probably at a salon somewhere getting her nails ‘did’.

“Ok sure, I can get some stuff done in town and pick you up around six?”

“I was planning on staying late, I’ll just get a ride or catch a cab or something”

“How late?”

“As long as it takes, I don’t know, are you gonna take me or not?”

“Ok fine”

“Thanks” I said in my most chipper getting my way voice.

We left the house, it was still early afternoon, I slept til about twelve which was odd. I never usually needed much sleep but these dreams seemed to leave me feeling drained. The sun was hanging lazily in the sky and the birds saw fit to fill the silence of turtle rock with their incessant happy chirping.

Most people here didn’t stay on the weekends so the place was deserted apart from the sound of sprinklers hissing. They were probably all out on the beach with their jetskies making lots of noise.

We lived on the tip of a little culdesac called whitewater, probably the least fairytale sounding name in the area. It had a mini garden in the centre of what was supposed to be a roundabout but was a tad too small. But it left more than enough to allow whatever bike or hybrid car the neighbours were packing. The place was a little too metropolitan to have front lawns opting more for the shallay feel. Little neatly formed shrubberies and trees sticking out of perfectly shaped garden strips hemmed in by the bricked driveways. Their mail boxes all nicely shaded by god knows what trees, do I look like a tree surgeon?

The houses all looked the same or similar. The same matchstick wood with sandy coloured tiles matching the tone almost perfectly. They looked almost like unpainted monopoly houses in their uniformity.

Little balconies on top for relaxing two car garages that seemed to take up most of the space in the house.

She opened the garage and drove her little rollerskate car out of the needlessly huge garage. She saw fit to fill it with useless nicknacks, a fooseball table we never used and some piece of ethnic art she picked up in a flea market. Anything to fill the void left by the tiny car in the huge garage.

The car was so small it was basically a motorized rickshaw but complaining would be pointless and eat up too much air in the car. I was getting a free ride after all. A chance I sorely needed to get a leg up on whomever was in the shadows of the internet so interested in little old me.

I opened the car door careful not to break it. I eat all my green vegetables after all. And settled in the front passenger seat, sans legroom. No complaints uttered. She started the engine and the dull hum of the electric motor made my fillings ache.

It puttered along like a milk float down the end of the drive turning right on Sweetwater. A left onto Sycamore creek and then it was another left and a straight shot onto Turtle rock drive. Only coming out of the neighbourhood noticing how much it looked like a cult compound from the outside. Trees planted there like it was a model of some Swedish fishing village and the grass cut so fine it looked like it was just paper mache painted green.

We drove for what felt like miles of an endless stream of near identical houses. Neatly topiared bushes pointing up at the bright clear pale blue sky. Were there any clouds in Orange County?

I couldn’t bare to look at their near perfection anymore. Choosing to just follow the bumps of the dry dusty hills on the otherside, reminding us all that in fact we live in a giant desert.

I opened my window because of course AC was broken in the boxy car, I was lucky the window still worked. I poked my head out for some fresh air, taking in the smell of chlorine as we passed a walled off little compound. The tops of a slide poking over the high walls. Probably owned by some cartel money man that liked quiet swedish fishing villages and indoor pools.

After about a minute of watching shadows slide over the almost non-existant crumple zone of the car. We were pulling into the flat patch of concrete that was the campas parking lot. Which was nice and empty with it not actually being a school day.

Despite all the space my aunt parked at a jaunty angle trying to take up three spaces. I got out and rounded the car to peck her on her cheek narrowly missing her pair of fake DG sunglasess. Planting a bird like poke of hard dry lips on her freckled sunkissed cheek.

“Don’t work too hard” She called at my back as I walked into the shade of the foyer.

“I wont, thanks for the ride” I called back waving at the glare of the sun, covering my eyes with my forearm.

Now onto business.

~

0

TOTCB Chapter 9 ‘Wings of flies’

Yo,

Gonna make this a quick one, my days are seemingly getting shorter and shorter, doing all this reviewing and dealing with the ensuing butthurt (I’ll elaborate on that later haha), the proofreading is murder since I started doing longer chapters. Boohoo woe is me right? haha. And I’m pretty much exhausted everyday now I upped my weights, feeling like death everyday but I shall be larger soon haha.

Still chugging along with Diana Dreams Darkly, it’s going pretty well but most importantly it’s fun as fuck, so there’s that haha. Still working on getting GS2 out and faffing about with this The one that came back, editing it slowly and surely with the help of the wonderful Nat who helped me with GS and stuff before that.

So that’s all I’ve got time for folks haha.

Cya

Wings of flies

–

“This is eye witness news at ten” A voice over said as graphics for the news station rolled over the screen.

An anchor with short slick hair and a pressed blue suit faded in with his name under him “Bob Hurley”. He said straightfaced “He disappeared without a trace three years ago. Tonight a san Antonio boy is back home. Johnny Bartlett” A video was played over him, an upward shot of Johnny. He looked paler than ever with the washed out stage lighting. The dark glasses on, that wide brimmed cowboy hat on his head. “Now sixteen years old, he vanished when he was thirteen. Johnny says he was kidnapped and taken to spain. He says for three years he was repeatedly drugged, beaten and raped. All part of a sex slave operation involving dozens of missing children”.

A young female anchor with her hair in a short bob and too much blush continued. Her name super imposed under her reading ‘Sandra Hawkins’. “Well Bob, the FBI is not taking this case lightly. Somehow a thirteen year old boy from San Antonio ended up in spain, without a passport.”

It cut to a street shot of the same anchor woman on the streets of san Antonio. The sky was slate grey and she stood under a metal sign outside fort sam Houston.

“On the night of his disappearance. Johnny had a fight with his family so came out here to Fort Sam Houston to play basketball. Two young boys approached him. He started talking, the next thing he knew, there was a clothe over his mouth and Johnny passed out.

It cut to an old photo of Johnny before he was taken wearing a blue baseball cap and hoodie.

“He claimed his captors changed his appearance to make him unrecognisable.” It cut to the interview of Johnny. Sandra was wearing a dark suit jacket over a turtle neck sweater and dark trousers. “He was no longer allowed to speak English”

The interview took place in a lounge in the studio, mocked up to look like an old lady’s living room. There was a long cream couch along the wall with a wheat pattern on it. The walls had pictures of old ships on them. Johnny sat in a cream armchair with a leaf pattern embroidered onto it. Sandra sat across from him in a white leather chair.

Johnny leaned forward, his feet off the teal carpet, Susan had her legs crossed. It was filmed from the side, to get them both in shot.

“Did they rape you every night?” She asked with a slight inflection as it cut to a close up of his face, pale and angular.

“Me? No, uh uh, because they- They didn’t rape me every night. Some of them they like more” Johnny smiled and released a sort of pained laugh. “Some of the kids they like more, they rape them usually, two or three times a week.”

“Was there a religious component to it, were they worshipping the devil?”

“Err”

Porter was set up in a booth behind the cameras, standing watching from the dark studio. Peggy was sitting down on a couch somewhere in back watching on the monitors.

The booth he was standing in had been where they’d briefed the news crew on the basics of the story. They had Johnny’s missing photo and a few others they pulled from the news archives. They’d stuck them on the wall of the booth.

The angle he was standing he could see the monitors of the interview and the pictures of Johnny as a kid at the same time. Just instinctively he started comparing them. In the old pictures the boy in them had blonde hair and blue almost steel grey eyes. Johnny on the camera now had deep brown eyes, but that wasn’t what he was looking at.

Porter started to feel warm, the hairs on the back of his neck started to stand up and his breathing quickened. A light rushing feeling in his chest was building. There was something wrong. A fly landed on a picture of Johhny on Christmas morning opening presents. It was taken from his side with his head down as he tore into the wrapping paper.

He pulled it off the wall, letting the tack hit the carpet. It was the best picture he could get of him in profile.

He’d read about a man who was caught by Scotland yard in heathrow airport by identifiying his ears. Ears were just as unique as fingerprints. He held the pictures up to the monitor and compared their ears.

They weren’t a match.

He looked back at Peggy. She was still watching the monitors and hadn’t seen him pluck the picture off the wall so he slid it into his pocket.

–

0

TOTCB Chapter 8 ‘God’s away on Business’

Hey there,

First official book is out and it already has a handful of great reviews, seven to be exact. I’m pretty happy about that, one or two in there really get what I was going for, that’s great. But as my publisher tells me ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’, so more will come in given time and effort and I need to get back to the daily grind of writing and editing.

Oh yeah almost forgot, I finished Green Sunday part 2 yesterday. It is done, just needs a little proofreading from yours truly, then off it goes to get edited and back to me for another proofread and then into your hands hopefully and I haven’t even got my author copies of book one yet haha.

I should be really excited, it feels like an eternity I’ve been waiting to start that Dexter spin-off/spiritual successor/inspired book and I’m finally going to be let loose on that. It feels almost sanctified, like all I’ve done has been building to this, the wacky loose comedy and violence of Green Sunday and the stark disturbing dreaminess of Ladies Close your eyes and the stark reality of The one that came back coming together to make this next series, bringing all those elements together to make a whole stronger than all of them.

I say I should be happy about it but bummed out from a day of sucking at Gwent haha.

I am happy, but there’s always that sliver of melancholy that sneaks in when you finish anything you put your heart and soul into. It’s like a reward in a way.

Anyway, the next chapter of TOTCB or an excerpt of is below, you can find the full chapter on the inkitt page with the link below as usual. Still having it edited so if you sign up to my mailing list you can get yourself a free copy when it’s finished.

See you…

God’s away on business

–

It was happy hour.

Porter was sitting at the bar with an untouched pink flamingo cocktail in his hand. His other hand held his chin as he leaned with his elbow on a damp beer mat. It was dark outside but still warm.

“Phone for you Porter!” Patrick said at the back of the bar. Porter didn’t even hear it ring. The bar was full, locals mostly and a couple of college kids that looked lost.

Porter walked around the bar trying not to fall over a guy in a hockey jersey who couln’t find his feet.

The phone was on the end of the bar itself, all the way in the back.

Patrick wasn’t waiting he left the receiver on the side and Porter picked it up and put it to his hear.

“Porter”

“Dear god, you sound terrible”. A quick snippy new Yorker accent rattled around in his ear like a bad penny circling the drain.

“Wrong number, god’s away on business”

“It’s Phil” He sounded, his voice rising at the end like that should mean something.

“…”

“Phil Robertson from Channel eight action news.” He said it almost like a chant, ‘I think therefore I am’.

Porter licked the corner of his mouth.

“You remember me you prick” Phil smiled on the other end.

“I remember, what is it?”

“You been watching the news at all?”

“I don’t have all day” Porter was used to long stories from people who liked to talk but not on the phone.

“Sure you do, who are you kidding? All you micks do is sit around that bar waiting for someone to bludgeon you with a chair leg”

“Is it a job?”

“It’s a job.”

“Yeah?” Porter was waking up now. His eyes were half open and he slipped a carton of cigarettes out of his pocket and pushed one between his lips. He looked up and saw his brother signalling for him to put it away with a soggy bar towel twisting between his hands.

“Usual rate plus expenses”

Porter grimaced and put the whole pack down. He glared at his brother who smiled like a cherub, tossing the bar towel over his shoulder. Slapping himself in the face with it on accident to the great joy of a local tout

“Better not be anything to do with a sextape, I’m done with celebrity bullshit.” Porter felt antsy, he needed to put something in his mouth. He reached for a handful of bar nuts and started crunching them into the receiver.

“No it’s nothing like that, are you hearing a crackling sound?”

“No”

“Must be on my end. There’s this kid, he was on the news, it was leaked by someone on the inside. We don’t know who and we can’t get in touch with anyone from the embassy who’ll talk to us”.

“The job?”

“Ok ok, I just want you to track him down so we can set up an interview that’s all. He’s in San Antonio but that’s all I know, that’s not too far from you right?”

“Right”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Yeah, I’ll do it”

“Great, great, the kids name is Johnny Bartlett and his sister’s name is Peggy Carson. You might do better going through her. Supposedly this kid has been missing for over four years. Do you need me to spell any of that, are you writing this down?”

“No”

“You sure?”

“Yeah”.

“Ok keep me posted, I’ve already got a crew set up in north san antone. The address is K335 Northwest Loop 410, it’s along the freeway, you can’t miss it”.

“That all?”

“Just find’em and get’em there, that’s all”

“Right” Porter said as he hung up the phone.

–

 

 

0

TOTCB Chapter 7 ‘Sorrows Child’

Bonjourno people,

With the launch of my first book (officially) around the corner, let’s take the time to look at this other, less good book I wrote over nanowrimo which I curse to this very day for making me rush this could have been master piece haha. Nah I don’t really care, it got my word count out of the dirt. My rate now is up to where I can write a full novel in like two months give or take proofing and what not and that’s with days off to market my old stuff so it’s cool. It was a good excercise for my mind. Got me out of that devil may care attitude, it was a kick in the butt I needed. But never again haha.

But who knows, after the edit, it might be bareable and Brian my publisher might like it and it could make money someday, but for now it shall be free for the people.

That’s pretty much it, only update I really have is I suck at gwent online haha.

As usual, the link is below, and an excerpt.

See you..

Sorrows Child

~

The party had waned, people with full bellies and rosey cheeks rolled out to their cars and trucks. Peggy waved them off. Johnny said he was tired and locked himself in his room for the rest of the day.

Peggy was about to call it and get an early night with some true crime shows and a cup of hot tea when the phone rang. Which was strange since pretty much everyone she knew was either here on their way out or were on their way home.

She answered the phone with a curt “Yes”.

“Hello, is this Peggy Carson?” A woman on the other end said.

“That’s me”

“This is special agent Nancy Jageur of the federal bureau of investigations. I was wondering why you hadn’t brought Johnny in for a formal interview yet. It’s been almost two weeks now since he arrived isn’t that right?”

“Yeah well we just wanted to get him settled before we got into all that, you know?” Peggy seemed nervous she put the phone in the crux of her neck and fiddled with her wedding ring.

“I understand but I have an investigation to follow up on and the longer we wait the colder the trail will get. I’ll need you to meet me as soon as possible”

“Ok, I can do that”

“I’ve organised a room for us at the San Antonio missing children’s centre. How’s Monday afternoon for you?” Nancy said idly as if she was booking a nail appointment.

“Err, yeah, Monday is good, we’ll bring him in then”

“That’s great, I’ll see you then”.

“Bye” Peggy said as she clumsily hung up the phone, her nerves were a little shot maybe she drank too much. It was time for bed at least.

–

As soon as Nancy put down the phone Con looked up from the report he was reading and said “So?”

“Monday”

“Monday?”

“I said Monday” Nancy smiled.

“You’re excited?”

“Anxious” She said as she looked at the colour Photostat picture of Johnny. The san Antonio missing children’s centre had sent it over. He was a good looking blonde haired blue eyed kid no more than thirteen years of age.

Con and Nancy had been set up in a small back office in the Bureau’s San Antonio field office. It was a simple and old looking room with white corkboard walls. Halogen ceiling lights blaring day and night. A paltry ceiling fan that did next to nothing. The desks were brown chipboard like the ones you’d get in a community college classroom. Still there were free donuts and the coffee wasn’t half bad. Lots of Mexican style pastries.

“Did she say why she didn’t call as soon as they had him?”

“Something like that” Nancy rocked back and forth in her swivel chair. Tossing thoughts in her head like bales of hay.

“What is it?”

“I dunno, there’s just something off about her, she seemed really nervous.” Her voice got distant as she reached for a blank white coffee cup on her desk.

“But she’s not the one coming in for an interview, it’s the kid. Maybe she just doesn’t like cops”.

“We’re not cops” Nancy smiled and turned her head sideways.

“Yeah but you sound like one” Con gave a sharky grin.

Nancy chupsed and squinted.

Con snorted.

She reached into the pink pastry box on her desk and threw a chirro at him that he deftly dodged laughing.

–

0

LCYE Chapter 15 ‘A World of Madness’

Hola seniors and senioritas,

Had like a minor backlash from my comments about camwho- I mean cosplay girls. No but seriously, I dunno, I guess I was in a bad mood or something, when am I not amirite haha? And my disdain for normies and facebook admins had reached its peak boil. I just can’t stand these little internet nazis thinking they can tell me what I can say and when I can say it and how. Like this facebook group is their own little dictatorship, it’s just fucking infuriating talking to these idiots so I just block them when they message me with these fucking snide little diatribes about how I posted on the wrong day or I didn’t ask their permission first. Fuck you, I’ll post whenever I goddamn like, don’t like it kick me out of the group, there are only like a million more groups without you controlling them.
I just can’t stand these people with this inflated sense of self-importance. People who have zero power over their own lives using what little power they have on the internet to police others, it’s as Donald Trump would say ‘Sad’.
But anyway that’s my spiel and I’m sticking to it, still think cosplay is shit and the people who do it are just fat attention whores and you can’t copyright a picture you took of your own fat ass. Honestly that post got shitloads of traffic so maybe more of that cancer is useful.

I guess my personal life turning to shambles just has me on edge and anyone who sticks their neck out is about to get cut in one way shape or form.

Anyway that bullshit out-of-the-way, gonna get into some updates. So the contract with Muddy boots is signed, haha he can’t turn back now, totally stuck with me haha. What does that mean, well the book is going back for another edit, hopefully my cover cost will be compt, which would be nice. Not sure I’d do anything productive with the money, maybe buy another knife haha.

That’s underway, should have a release schedule soon, more people on my mailing list, kinda surprised by how steady it’s building and honestly it’s all due to the awesome cover Mike did for me. It looks spectacular in a thumbnail.

In other news people seem to love the book that or they’re polite enough to lie to me haha. Had lots of positive feedback, should amount to a lot of nice reviews, I’m also going on a zombie themed podcast soon, so that should be fun.

GS2 is coming along nicely, kinda feel like I’m rushing it a little but out of just excitement really, feel like a dog chasing rabbits. I just want to get into it and it’s shaping up really nice. You know you’re enjoying writing when it makes you smile even writing it. I might have bitten off more than I can chew characterwise but I think I differentiated them and made them giant fucking stereotype caricatures enough to make them stand out and not have them just blur into one. But fuck I’m having fun, currently lying in a hospital bed which is my coach being treated for Xcom 2 addiction, the struggle is real.

Other than that and my crippling loneliness, alls good on the western front oh and the postman just brought me my polish gwent decks, pisser.

And here, completely unconnected is an excerpt of the penultimate chapter of a novella you should have already in e-copy if you’ve signed up to my mailing list LADIES CLOSE YOUR EYES. If you wanna check out the full thing head on over to my inkitt page and if you want the full edited version sign up to the mailing list to get a free copy for your ebook reader.

Thanks for checking in.

See you…

A World of Madness

–

There was an annoying buzzing sound rattling the real wood bedside table of the Thunderbird lodge.

Some stirring under the covers.

A brown naked arm stretched out to pick the phone off the bedside table and retracted back under the warmth of the covers.

“Special agent Harriet Jageur speaking” A muffled voice under the covers said.

A few moments of silence passed as she dazedly listened to the rushed voice on the other end.

“Thank you for informing us, we’ll be in touch”

As soon as the call ended Harriet launched out of the bed flinging the covers off her nude body.

“Shit fuck shit!”

Con lay exposed under the tossed over covers naked in Harri’s bed awoken by the immediate sense of immediacy.

“What is it?”

“Banville’s been murdered in the fucking interrogation room! Mirra got away in his car, he could be in the next fucking state by now!” Harri spoke as she faced away from him quickly putting on a bra and panties that were tossed out the front of the bed. She sprang for the cupboard’s and started to dress as fast as humanly possible.

“So what now?” Con lay struck in her bed.

“Get dressed”

“We need to slow down and think this through. We have no idea where’s he’s going. There’s gotta be an APB already out on Banville’s car, they’ll turn him up.”

“Get dressed!”

“And go where?”

Harri took in a harsh rasping breath and looked at the floor, she tensed her jaw and her eyes got moist. “This is my fault”. She paused and heaved a few more long wet breathes. “I opened his cuffs, I was too fucking caught up in all this hoodoo voodoo spooky bullshit and now someone is dead because of me! Because I forgot to lock a pair of fucking cuffs”

“This is not your fault. We need to be smart, what do you wanna do just barrel out the door and follow the sirens? You think he left us a trail of breadcrumbs?”

Harri was quiet for a moment. She closed her eyes and a few nervous tears leaked out as she stood looking a mess with her clothes hastily assembled. Buttons skew and her skirt on backwards.

An hour later she was changed into a dressing gown. Her hair pinned back sitting on the bed, her back against the back board. Calm after a steady application of coffee. A laptop on her knees as she checked Mirra’s bank records they’d had subpoenaed the moment he was taken into custody.

Con sat at the writing desk with a pair of pyjama bottoms on with no top checking flights in and out of the state and any activity in Mirra’s credit cards.

“Anything?” Harri said without looking up.

“Not much, you?”

“I have something, two flights purchased on his credit card. Two seats premium economy to Sacramento, he paid for a room in some motel down there.”

“Doesn’t seem like much”

“Not on its own” Harri looked up scornful. But then there’s a return journey with only one seat booked.”

“So you think he planned a little vacation and then what? Maybe she got sick and had to take the bus back, maybe they had a fight and he left her there? It doesn’t explain how he could kill her there, if that’s what you’re suggesting and get the body back”

“These days’ airlines weigh and record the weight of your luggage so they can charge you more, especially with budget airlines. His luggage going coming back was almost ninety pounds heavier”

“That’s a lot of souvenirs. It’s a cute theory but it could be anything. Maybe he was picking something up from craigslist, a ninety-pound paperweight.” He looked back and gave her a silly grin. “Doesn’t the airport have sniffer dogs?”

She gave him a narrow eyed look and chupsed. “They do” She paused and exhaled as she looked down at her laptop “For bombs” She took a sip of her coffee. “She’s not a bomb”.

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