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Diana in the Dark Chapter 4 ‘Heads over heels’ (remurdered edition)

Ok so right off the bat this is just shameful filler, not even hiding it haha.

Not to say I’m not proud of it but it’s padding because I ran out of Green Sunday chapters and I don’t have any 3 ring chapters proof read right now, just pure laziness haha. But I’m having a great time going through the chapters of Diana again (the fourth time now I think) with a fine tooth come just making sure every I is dotted and every T is crossed for when it goes out to agents which should be soon, before the end of the year at least. 
I know there will be people that want the full manuscript because there were people who wanted it for TOTCB and that was a piece of shit I wrote in 30 days haha (not a piece of shit, by comparison haha) so I don’t want to fuck around this time, I want it to be the best it can be. Not perfect because then I’d never get it sent out but damn near as close as I possibly can get it.

So that’s what I’m doing today haha. And despite it being proofread multiple times and edited, still finding minor errors, doing some reading out loud, things like that. I’m getting excited for it but also really impatient.

Personal life as usual in the toilet, might be looking to get a new job maybe cut back on my writing/gaming/jerking off haha. It’s like I’m straddling the fence of destiny and I either fall off or get on that ladder, if Diana gets zero attention I’m pretty much fucked. I mean I invested a lot of hope in Cur for a back up because my ex was telling me that Diana wasn’t me. Something I disagree with, but I get what she was saying, because I was inspired by Dexter but the reason I loved Dexter was because it resonated with me, it was me. So in a lot of ways Diana is me, maybe the best of me, it’s still definitely the best thing I’ve ever written to date. I was so inspired writing it.

Cur went well but I feel like I kinda lost it towards the end, the subsequent chapters fall short of the fire in the first chapter and I think it requires a lot of work to attain the same level of greatness. A lot of time needs to be spent going over it I think. Maybe my expectations of it were a little too high.

Anyway, Parker novel I’m reading right now is kinda ok, I don’t really feel like I’ve got to the meat of it yet, they’re kinda just faffing around and I haven’t had much time to read it lately because my body is still wrecked from doing the exercise thing haha. And every time I get down to read I want to sleep instead haha.

Ok, I gotta finish this otherwise I won’t get any ‘real work’ done today.

See you…

–

I squeaked my chair back an inch. I felt…numb, like I was vibrating, happy, satisfied, complete.  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’ve been faked, easily. Movie magic and all, clever editing, a fake head. Something in her eyes and something, that thing, deep inside, deep in the dark well told me it was all too real. Its tinny little laugh rang like a hunchback swinging on a church bell screaming ‘sanctuary’.

My skin was damp, a 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.

Dazed, tension working loose on my muscles, making them slack, weak, shaking as I logged off and stumbled goggled-eyed out of the library.

My arms were like limp noodles, useless pieces of string pulled along by a runaway kite.

It was…good.

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

I meant to get printouts of the newspapers, and some of the juvie records but I forgot and it was already nearing closing time. So I decided to drop off the rest of my stuff in my locker and walk home.

Tomorrow is another day, Diana.

The lock on my locker came off easy, like I hadn’t locked it. I must’ve forgotten, in my daze. Not like I kept anything valuable in there, unless futures in deflated volleyballs had sky rocketed in the last couple of hours.

I unloaded my satchel into it. Put the notepad and pens back in their rightful place.

Casting a wanton glance at the volleyball, almost like a mascot, I might as well paint a face on it and start talking to it. Something caught the corner of my eye.

There was already a face on it.

Someone had drawn a big smiley face on the deflated ball, complete with eyelashes in black marker.

Funny.

Then there was a strange noise, the creak of a pirate skull’s lower jaw opening, then the feeling like a giant boulder was going to roll down the hall. As if I’d stepped right on an X someone had carefully placed just for me.

The noise was coming from Wendy’s locker, to the left of mine.

I closed my locker and locked it this time.

Wendy’s locker was ajar. The lock was sheared off, as if it’d been cut with a set of bolt cutters.

Bolt cutters?

Why use those on her locker and not mine? Maybe I really had left it open, or he knew the combination.

This was getting to be too much, I was getting carried away. This was silly, all in my head.

Not everything is about me. I’m not the center of the universe.

I was going to open this locker and there was going to be absolutely nothing inside it because this had been a simple robbery.

Maybe someone saw Wendy leave a MacBook in it and just had to have it.

A simple explanation for a simple buttoned down world.

Was I going to open it?

That was what he wanted me to do.

Does that mean I should?

Should I play his game. That was what he wanted, he wanted to play.

I want to play, too. I really do.

A shiver danced up my spine, as my true intentions became known to me. The darkness inside stretched like a cat, clawing the inside of my head playfully pricking my brain.

I put one finger inside the tiny dark opening and nudged it open, then let gravity do the rest.

The door swung open slow, creaking all the way, giving me that long lost pirate ghost laugh. Behold ye, not-so buried treasure.

I wanted to gasp but all my breath was stolen.

There it was.

There he was.

“Hello, Benjamin,” I said. My voice had an echoing that vibrated through me.

Both voices coming together and smirking as a puzzle piece fell into place.

A man’s head, bisected at the neck sat atop the top shelf of Wendy’s locker.

There was no blood, the head was clean and perfect, it looked like a mannequin head.

A ghost remained of the color it once had.

The cut was clean and even, one fast perfect kiss, and it was free. It looked like it could be reconnected, or it might start reciting Shakespeare.

I wanted to touch it, wanted to keep it.  The head was for me, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

I knew what I had to do.

I called 9-1-1.

The cops were there within the hour. The Orange county sheriffs department were notoriously laid back. Unless it was an active shooter or a terrorist bombing, a dead body—not even a full one didn’t get their juices going.

How terribly anticlimactic.

But what else could I have done?

They wouldn’t all fit in my locker.

 All four of them to be exact.

It took a step back to really see the full glory of it, what was it called?

A Tableau?

Four lockers, four heads.

The four lockers in a row, on either side of mine. It was on odd scene, all four open, with mine closed in the middle.

Evidence techs in full body suits went over it like they were searching for Barb from stranger things. Looking for trace evidence and dusting for prints, spraying for blood and shaking their heads.

Needless to say, I took the time to remove the deflated volleyball with the face on it; that was mine after all. Of course they’d search my locker eventually, so anything that could link me to this had to be disposed of.

What good would it do me to call this in and put a big red X over my name?

That was assuming there wasn’t already a big red X over my name just for finding them.

Four heads.

One was missing, the woman’s head; the German barmaid without a name.

Why?

Well I’m sure it’ll turn up.

“What’s this girl doing here?”

I heard a nasal voice say off to my right.

“She’s the one that called it in,” One of the techs in the mask said without looking up.

“And why is she still in an active crime scene?” He didn’t wait for an answer. His eyes landed on mine. “Come with me, Miss, you shouldn’t have to see this at your age.” The man stepped to my right. He was a tall slim black man with a shaved head and a light complexion. A sort of dull friendly expression on his face, like he’d forgotten how to frown. “Would you mind coming with me and answering a few questions? Has anyone called your parents?” He made one of those fake-concern faces news anchors made when they were pretending to care about tragedies. But the dim smile was still there, as he made deep lines appear on his brow.

“Err,” I said, eloquent and erudite as ever. “I live with my aunt.”

He led me outside like I just came off the short bus, with a light but firm grip on my upper arm. Told me his name was Detective Cantwell, and repeated he was going to ask me some questions.

“What were you doing when you found the…umm?”

“Heads?”

“Diana! Are you all right?”

I heard my aunt’s voice.

She rushed to my side, her legs looking like they were chaffing against her little bike shorts. Dharma grabbed me in a really uncomfortable hug, like she’d just seen my face on a milk carton. She looked up at the cop, then back at me. “I heard your name over the radio, and I came as fast as I could.”

I believed her, because she was still wearing her pointy cop bike helmet and shades.

She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder to look at Cantwell. “Is she all right, can I take her home?”

The detective made a noise in his throat, like a punctured bicycle tire and sucked his bottom lip. Then he looked at me again. “Yeah, she can go.” His tensed jaw betrayed his reluctance, and he exhaled loudly again.

I’d already left my name and address with the arriving officers, so I was only a hop skip and a jump away. Slipped the net once but the pool was small enough, and they could trust my true blue aunt to wrangle me in if need be.

Before I could make any sense of the day’s activity, I was back in the front seat of my aunt’s car, like I was coming home from an especially stimulating field trip. For some reason, she wasn’t saying anything.

Dharma held the nervousness of a getaway driver as she hunkered over the wheel. She backed out of her crude parking spot, and back onto Campus Drive.

The rest of the drive wasn’t much different. I watched her keep her eyes locked straight forward; only glancing up to check the rear-view mirror once in a while. Her muscles only relaxed as we pulled out of sight of the school.

I was still feeling sort of buzzed and happy so I didn’t feel like popping that bubble, silence it was for all of the two-minute drive home.

It was darker now, the sky bleeding red and orange, one way to waste a day.

It seemed like a jump cut in a movie and I was standing in the entryway of our house, bouncing on my heels as my aunt dithered locking and dead bolting the door, top and bottom.

I wanted to collapse on a chaise lounge.

Dharma disappeared into the kitchen without a word, and I heard frantic dialing of the kitchen phone.

The receiver was missing, and she was behind the locked door of the bathroom in the laundry room.

My mental capacity was in tatters at this point and for all intents and purposes, used up.

Kicking off my shoes I stumbled into my room ready to crawl under a pile of dirty clothes like some sort of happy insect who’d been rolling dung uphill all day.

A glance at my phone, revealed lots of missed calls from Paul and Wendy. I had it on silent for the library. After narrowly missing two awkward conversations in a row, I decided to quit while I was ahead and turn my phone off. Not like I was going anywhere. I didn’t really want to know how they’d found out so fast, but word gets around easy enough here.

Body parts start turning up around someone, and people find things to talk about, and have to tell all their friends.

I went to the door of my bedroom and there was an odd jolt of electricity from the door handle, not just static.

A warning, from the deep depths. The dark sea from my dream bubbling.

I opened the door cautiously.

My hovel of a room materialized one piece of trash at a time. It looked the same, but it had a different aura, like I was playing a game with the Mad Hatter. As if everything had been picked up and swapped around and put back exactly in their places again. Only to give the illusion of things staying the same but keeping that static energy of a wicked prank.

The room hummed with potential. A cloistered violence clinging to the sheets. I could almost smell it. The pheromones of another monster stalking through, poking into the dark crevices and laughing.

It wasn’t a dream; it was real.

I’d seen the heads, almost took one home. Where would I have even put it? The pictures would have to do. My only souvenir. To come that close without even a picture would’ve been a crime.

Someone had been here.

No, I was paranoid, tumbling down the rabbit hole of my own narcissistic personality disorder.

Did that mean the heads were a fluke? A cruel coincidence?

Someone just happened to pick the day I went to the library and specifically chose to skip my locker when they were giving out heads?

Maybe.

I grabbed my laptop from my bed and smirked. All those articles from all those ‘real journalists’. They couldn’t dream of pictures this good, this rife with meaning.

Clean and crisp, without their tacky headlines and small minded narratives or nicknames. Out done by some amateur hack, some nobody on the internet, scooping them and mounting them as the tired beasts they were.

I set my laptop on my desk and booted it up. I found my computer chair on its side; just where I’d left it, and wheeled to the desk as the computer took its sweet time to fire up.

Wait.

That feeling came rushing back, long cold and pointy fingertips working their way down my back.

The wheel had rolled—the sock was gone.

I jumped off my seat and let the chair fall. All the wheels spun.

I scanned my room, waiting for some ghost-faced killer to spring up out of the pile of clothes on my bed with a hunting knife gleaming in the wicked dim daylight.

No such thing came, just a cool quiet calm, and the incessant song of crickets outside.

I searched my room for my own peace of mind, turning over wrappers and empty bottles. Nothing was taken, there was nothing to take. My laptop was the only thing of value in the room, and evidently he found value enough in it to take a peek at it. My closet was in the corner. I rarely used it, as my bed and floor seemed to be working just fine.

I opened the door and clicked the light on, the magic clicking of the lamp dispelling all evil spirits and cleansing the dark dingy space.

On the floor was a Malibu Barbie I got when I was eight. It was naked and missing its head, but admittedly, that was probably me.

However, I remembered it being in a box with my other ‘victims’. Old toys in varying stages of dismemberment.

Silliness crept over me again; I was getting caught up in coincidences. My aunt probably moved the sock—or I did and forgot about it.

But who took the doll out, and who put its head on the top shelf to stare at me?

–

If you want to read the rest the of the chapter you’ll have to buy the book when it comes out sucka haha #trolled. No seriously though you can find the raw unedited copy on my inkitt if you’re that impatient and cheap haha.

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Diana After Dark Chapter one ‘Darkly Dreaming’ *remurdered edition.

(posted late because there was a freak storm here that knocked out my internet for a day haha)
Yes I’m this lazy, rather than proof reading and posting another chapter of Cur (of which I have lots of) I’m re-using Diana chapters haha. Ok well they have been fully edited and now I’m going over them again for the final proof read before I submit them so it’s a little different.

This is essentially the final version so it’s a much more polished version than I give the plebs on inkitt haha. And honestly looking at it, it has changed a lot, it’s really grown up with the help of my new editor and I’m really proud of it and really glad I went over it again because some of the formatting was fucking broken from the editing software haha.

I’m just posting the whole chapter because this is not going up on inkitt, this is just a sample. You gotta pay for this haha. Or maybe I’ll give it away for free next year who knows. I really hope I don’t have to.

Feel really shitty today because I missed another day of work and I really really need the money right now. I just fucked up and I feel really fucking frazzled trying to reset my body clock coming back from the holiday. I feel like a zombie only getting the 4/5 hours again so it’ll be a couple of days before it becomes normal again and this fucking heat is not helping. I feel like I’m fucking melting, two fans on me and I feel like a polar bear in an oven.

Maybe I should switch to drinking cold green tea.

Actually fuck it, I’m gonna do that right now brb haha.

*30 minutes later

Well that took longer than I expected.

Not much to report beyond that. I like this Parker book but it’s not really delivering on characters and suspense in the usual way. I like it when Parker is just this unstoppable force like in the first books he’s going against the whole mob and they can’t touch him. Because he’s this one guy who can dissapear and reappear wherever and he has a network of people just like him who’ll help him and the mob is this stalwart force with names and faces and addresses he can find. The third book is when it hits home that really the mob can’t touch him because he’s not a real person with a real name or even a real face by that point he’s already had facial surgery.

Parker basically lives like a ghost and they’re vulnerable because they have houses and families and cars in their names and he can just roll up to their front door and kill them which is exactly what he does. Because nomatter how rich or powerful you are you can still be gotten to if someone knows where you are and wants you bad enough and has the balls to do it.

It’s such a good book, the first three books are so solid. They really inspired me. In regards to Diana and especially LCYE and TOTCB. Just tight tense terse stories with great action.

This one is a little more loose and it’s good but it’s scope is a little small so far and I just feel like Parker is whining and being kind of a bitch. I just feel like he’s getting softer and I don’t like that. I mean in some of the books it’s almost like he’s the bad guy because he’s like this unstoppable monster and most of the books swap to his quarry and they’re fucking terrified of him and you really feel like they’re being stalked by the devil.

In this he’s like a little lost sheep hiding in a barn. It’s different but I like the stories that are about the job, I think this book and the last Stark got a little tired of the same formula and wanted to switch it up but in my opinion if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I want to read a book about a hard as nails master thief planning the ultimate job, it just seems a little bit like Stark is running out of ideas for cool heists so he sets all the book after the heist to get around doing the same things. Which is a good idea to stop the books from getting stale but it’s just a little underwhelming and there isn’t any direct interaction Parker has with another character so there doesn’t really feel like there’s progression or structure or pacing because he’s in this one place the whole book trying to do the same thing.

In the other books he’s moving all over the place talking to different people and doing stuff, this book is just small in it’s scope and I don’t mind that, its fresh for a Parker book but I really hope it goes back to classic Parker in the next book. And the next book is called ‘Plunder squad’ so that sounds promising haha. A cool cast of characters and lots of loot.

It’s literally taken me all day to write this because there was a lovely little storm knocking out my net and power and since I live in the middle of nowhere I just have to wait.

Anyway I’ve waffled enough, must dash.

See you…

–

My high heels tapped on the wet concrete like anxious teeth clacking. It’s dark, I’m alone. Scared.

It’s a good kind of scared.

A fear of coming waves of something unexplainable, something inevitable.

I’ve felt it building for so long, and now as I walked the street, alone in the dark, it’s all around me like the tropical heat.

I picked up the pace, it’s a neighborhood I didn’t recognize, low slung houses, high fences with glass teeth. Dogs barking in the arid heat of the night. Salsa music played in the distance, muffled shouting in Spanish.

I swam through its want, waded through its need.

It called to me, it’s hunger passed down through what feel like eons. An insatiable hunger. Teeth strain against gums. I tasted blood, and it felt good.

I heard a splash, and it’s my feet hitting a puddle, it watched, and it waited, the hunger growing.

The moon reflected in the puddle, its smile so wide and manic. Those white teeth, sharp and ready, it’s just right. Projected on my back, it filled me with that white pure light. Filled every corner, carried me like I was on strings.

My steps were weightless and without agency, carried by a wave of lustful righteous anger.

His eyes landed on me before I heard his silent voice.

I heard a fluttering of dark angel wings. A leathery tightening inside, as it whispered and laughed, it told me to keep going.

Told me to be patient even though that’s not a word it understands at all.

A cool breeze blew through the little hairs on my neck.

He called to me, and I’m out of it for a second.

A man—but I couldn’t see his face reflected in the glass of a bus stop because of a huge hairline crack down the middle. He walked down the street on my side, toward me.

I saw myself, dressed in my best impression of a hooker from a nineties cop movie in a car window. The fishnets might’ve been a little too on the nose but it seemed to have worked.

 

I caught a big fish after all.

Just the one I wanted.

He called to me again, but I can’t respond now.

My tongue is somewhere far removed, and words seem like pointless frail things.

I kept going with my arms folded like I was cold, when nothing but cool clear clarity and vicious joy washed over me.  Faster now, the puddles and the car windows revealed he was following.

He looked around and kept pace, how far will he go?

I went along a pink stucco wall that seems to stretch on for miles, passing houses all with their curtains drawn tightly, small dirty lawns cluttered with broken children’s toys, dry dying grass.

The shadow inside shifted and wriggled, like a kid in a bean bag chair. So excited, it hissed and tossed, just where it wanted to be, so close.

The man called to me, something crude in Spanish, but I couldn’t react, not yet.

A little further.

My heels clicked louder and faster, almost breaking out into a run, and what do dogs do when someone runs?

They chase of course, and predictably, he’s caught the scent of something he likes.

Me.

I knew him, his name escaped me, and his face seemed familiar but unimportant right now. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, just a blank pale face not unlike the face of the moon.

Maybe I’m giving him too much credit.

Who’s hunting whom after all?

His need is palpable; I’ve watched him. A small petty monster, a dog chasing cars, not sure what he wants until he gets his hands on them. A bottom feeder, a wanton monster with no attempt to hide it, no need. How free he must have felt, not like me at all.

Something inside me called to him but he can’t hear it, he’s just along for the ride.

I moved faster but I’m not out of breath, it’s a humid night with a cool ocean breeze and I felt brisk and tight. I quickly checked in another car window. He still shadowed me.

Good, almost there now. One more block, follow me little rat.

The thing inside shifted like an eel in a glass vial. Happy, tensing and releasing like a balled fist, electric, with terse excitement.

Impending release just over the horizon.

The man is still following, muttering to himself, looking around, he put his hood up..

The streets are dark and desolate, and lined with houses full of people that don’t talk to cops about strange goings on in the dead of night.

That’s why he picked this place, that’s why I picked it too.

A perfect playground for Diana the Dark Dabbler.

The pink stucco wall ended abruptly, and I rounded the corner fast down the back alley of a Chinese restaurant with bars on the windows, breaking line of sight.

Hidden in the shadow of the large smooth square building. The clear black sky overhead.

He made some sort of noise in his throat that somehow I heard.

I kicked off my heels already and tossed them into the open dumpster. It was neatly tucked away, behind a chained metal fence until I came by earlier and freed it.

That dull thudding sound sent the rats circling.

I ducked behind the spot I picked. A pile of cardboard fortune cookie boxes was all I needed.

The odor sent shivers up my spine. Old shell fish, the smell of the ocean, the spray, maggots—refreshing—like smelling salts.

He rounded the corner fast and confused, like he’s the only kid that doesn’t get the magic act at the birthday party.

My lips parted and curved up; my heart beat hard in my chest, can he hear it? Can he hear the wings beating, can he hear the moon’s teeth clacking, feel it’s beaming maniacal smile?

I hope so. He will.

The man looked around, pulled his hood down tighter. All those chemicals rushing, he felt it too, the chase, the thing inside of him that fed on my fear. Got high off that night air, stumbled into my trap.

I took my cellphone out of my purse and dialed the number of the burner I put in the dumpster.

It rang with a mocking eight-bit Mariachi band song.

He heard it, and swung around taking offense at everything.

Stired up that rabbit in head lights feeling. Trapped in a beam of ambivalent bone white moonlight.

It carried me, gave me goose bumps- goose bumps. Teeth chattered, but I’m not cold, not even close, I felt nothing but pure icy potential. The thing inside purred and waited.

He poked open the dumpster with the barrel of a Glock and looked inside.

We waited until he reaches in for the phone. It took the wheel and we fell out of our hiding spot, lithe and ready in a sliver of moonlight. Invisible, invincible, stun gun in hand, as we moved low and slow and sleek toward his back.

I shouldn’t look..

He turned but it’s too late; It pressed the stun gun to his neck and his legs went limp.

We caught him, took the gun out of his hands like a child with a squirt gun. “You’re mine now,” I whispered and heard not my voice but another vibrating just below the surface.

He heard it too, that eternal voice that speaks to both of us.

His heart beat faster but he couldn’t move. I hiked him up and leveraged him into the open dumpster.

The gun held in my hand, my heart sped up, pumped all those good chemicals hard. The Glock bounced and scraped into the gutter from my toss. Can’t risk some little kid picking it up and blowing his face off—that would be tragic.

I climbed into the dumpster.

Diana the Dumpster Diver, c’est moi?

Afraid not.

A dumpster is just a big metal coffin. It can be cleaned and prepped like any other space.  Prepared it I have; it didn’t take that long, a little tape, a little clear plastic. A battery lamp hooked on a loop of duct tape.

Then there was light.

It still didn’t smell great, cramped and hot, with a faint smell of soy sauce. It wasn’t a room at the Cali Hilton but it’d do fine for about the four hours this would take.

Then home and a lot of showers later would let all those good vibrations course through my muscles. Loosening and straightening out all that bad juju that’d been building. Making me tense and not quite myself.

Set up another light, I blocked out a lot of it in that tight space. Made quick work of taping his hands and feet, cutting his clothes away with garden shears. Shaved and buffed out the areas I wanted to work in.

He didn’t know, couldn’t know or feel what was about to happen. What was about to happen?

My tongue touched all of my teeth; I let out a little laugh.

Just had to have gotten the most powerful stun gun they had; he was out like a light, complete reboot.

A quick slap to his face and he made a noise like someone finding a hair in their lingquini and muttered something in Spanish that might’ve have been, “Ten more minutes, Mama.” I suck at Spanish.

Found the bag I’d stashed there. A small black overnight duffel, and I plan to stay the night. Inside, a sharp fillet knife, a scalpel, a razor and a framing hammer. The gangs all here!

The dumpster was cramped but I could move, as well as lay him out flat. The restaurant it was attached to was closed today. So I’d had all the time I needed to make it ready. Then leave my own trash behind in neatly wrapped packages ready to garnish the local landfill.

We slapped my friend again and his eyes opened wide. I taped his mouth shut.

He couldn’t scream muffled Spanish slurs.

We showed him the knife and his eyes darted back to absorb his surroundings.

He may have well been buried six feet under already.

He had to know he was ours.

The man didn’t seem too impressed with the knife, so the framing hammer was the next item in show and tell day. He didn’t like that, not one bit, his eyes got wider, his pupils shrinking.

It seemed like he was getting it.

We breathed out a cool controlled breath and we watched him shrink, his muscles tightened feebly against the tape, his veins popped, we breathed in his fear.

The pretty girl thing might’ve thrown him at first, or maybe it was a prank.

I heard the mirthless tinny laughter inside and I think he heard it, too.

There was no turning back, one step on the dark path was enough.

There would be blood, a lot of blood.

I could almost hear it rushing inside him, that disgusting hot sticky stuff, waiting to come out.

He was mumbling something; I could feel his panic rising. His longing for release reaching up and touching mine. His eyes were talking, he was drooling, his mouth moving.

There was something really important he had to tell me.

I was hungry for anything. I’d been watching him. What he liked, young girls with wide scared eyes looking up at a knife or a gun or a framing hammer. Feeling him on top of them heaving and sweating, then nothing.

He’d killed four in the last month, and it was nothing to sniff at. Mostly prostitutes, because he was an amateur, no procedure, just pure bare need.

A pathetic creature, but I didn’t hate him.

How could I? We were the same, sort of, but more than that, I loved him; he was a brother.

He sputtered.

His eyes tried frantically to reach inside of me and find some small tear. Like some buried motherly instinct would battle the forces of darkness in the dungeons of my deep dreadfulness. Seeing fit to spare him and maybe take him out to lunch..

I was curious, bad form for a cat.

Didn’t like begging, but was ready to hear anything.

He looked up at me after the tape was ripped off. “Diana, you’re gonna be late for school.”

“School?”

“Yes, school.” I heard my aunt’s indignant voice break through the cozy wall of the pillow over my head.

A dream?

How you tease me. I can still hear the laughing, it’s taunts. Me, Dark Dreamless Diana.

I don’t dream, I never dream, it’s just serene blackness every other night, or I don’t remember. I miss the cool crisp void of sleep, the nothingness. What happened to my nothingness? Bring back the void.

Not to say the dream wasn’t, stimulating.

I moved the pillow off my face and started to rend myself of my sopping sheets. I was drenched in a layer of thick cold sweat.

It isn’t the first time, different people, men, women, different places, times.

It seemed like the dreams were getting more frequent and they always end the same way.

Unsatisfying, they always end just before…

Murderus interruptus.

“Didn’t you say you had a test or something today?”

“There’s always a test or a final or a quiz,” I tell my aunt Mary-anne, a fat girl’s name, but she wasn’t fat, not yet anyway.

A soft and pretty woman, not much older than myself. Kind of a hippy dippy sort but a good soul, raised me from an egg to the velociraptor I picture myself as now.

She had that ‘good hair.’ The type that’s long and straight, a deep chocolatey brown she nevertheless always tied back in a tight ponytail for work. Delicate straight features TV pretty people had, but she never really liked to flaunt it with make-up or fancy clothes; I guess it runs in the family.

I’m Diana, the poor orphan, boohoo. My parents died when I was just an innocent tot. Oh woe is me, the poor child, parents taken so young.

Is this a superheroes backstory? Afraid not.

Were they slain by a wicked murderer or super villain? No, not unless the truck that hit them was a Decepticon. A petty car accident robbed me  of any parental love I was owed and cast me as the martyr in my own passion piece.

“Well, that’s school for ya,” she said, she smiled with her hands on her hips as she waited for me to fully ascend my damp throne.

It’s not that I don’t like school; in fact, I love school. All those plastic minds clinging to some form of identity or another. Forming their own sense of self, all those people pretending to be human hoping the shape would stick. I fit right in.

Maybe I’m not very good at this, I feel like I skipped a step. I’m completely hollow inside. It sounds like teen angst, which is an easy way to pigeon-hole it since I am a senior in high school.

But it’s been this way since before I can remember. Since before I could think, I’ve felt nothing.

My aunt tells me, even as a baby I wouldn’t cry or laugh or smile, nothing. Every emotion I fake is for other people. I’ve been forced to become the perfect mirror of every person I’ve ever known, but I’m good at it.

I’m the best.

I trudged my way to the shower, down the hall from my modest bedroom. It’s hot today, it’s always hot in Cali. That’s why I keep my hair short, easy to clean, easy to dry and it looks cute.

What does anyone else’s opinion matter anyway? Only, that’s a lie people tell themselves on occasion. I don’t, I’m not people. Other people’s opinions are all that matters. It’s the glue that binds this world together. Without it, the world would be the perfect clean chaos of my dreams.

The world where that mocking laughter I hear comes from.

Lies we tell others, and the lies we tell ourselves, are what stops this world from falling apart and it’s what keeps me out of a sanatorium. Are there any sanatoriums in Long Beach? Probably some rich kid day spa with Vicodin vending machines that take hundred dollar bills. So Miley Cyrus can clean up for the next time she needs to squeeze her ass inside a rubber glove.

Rubber gloves, was I even wearing gloves in my dream? Need to write that down.

The things that you remember in the shower. Running water stimulates creativity, or some such other new age nonsense. Massages the chakras or stimulates the karma flow, vibrates the mediclorians. I toweled off and wiped the mirror with my hand. Empty blue-green eyes stared back. I made a toothy fake grin, showed those pearly whites. Such a practiced grin, straight out of the Sears catalogue, 1997.

It’s easier for girls I guess, people don’t look too closely at a girls’ smile. As long as it’s there, it’s good enough, a perfect disguise.

The mirror steamed up again, and I’m gone, poof.

The test was easy, done and gone and I was already forgetting what it was about. The dream was growing stronger and taking up more space in my head. All I could think about was that night and the ripple of the plastic wrap.

I looked outside; it was nice day. Every day was a nice day in California, starts to get boring after a while.

University High was the number one ranked public school in Orange County, go Trojans. It looked like a cross between a prison and a high end motel on the outside. Monstrous palm trees swaying behind sturdy chain-link fences. A backdrop of concrete covered in coral white stucco.

It was a standard mix. An even smattering of Hispanic, caucasian and black kids, the motto, ‘Unity through Diversity,’ as supercilious a statement as the American flag outside.

This wasn’t America, this was some place all new, a fantasy island floating in the clouds where all the beautiful people and one or two monsters lived. Every day, I was rubbing elbows with the future career criminals and politicians of the greater California area. Was there a distinction? I felt blessed walking through the halls. A real rainbow family of love and diversity.

I had no idea how my aunt got the money to put me here on a rookie cop’s salary, but we have a don’t ask don’t tell relationship that seemed to be working for us even better as I got older.

She chose the school because the campus tour video gave off a distinct ‘cult vibe’ and the teachers were nice enough. They really went out of their way to pretend they cared, despite fading into the background in Dark Diana’s World.

I wasn’t bad at school, I was too good at it. It’s amazing the pointless facts and figures you can memorize when you don’t have all that teen angst or hormones or any emotions whatsoever clouding your mind. Pure emptiness to fill with whatever the school board wanted. The perfect clean slate.

I made my way to my locker before I realized I forgot to eat breakfast, a common occurrence. But that’s not to say I’m anorexic. I love to eat, but I could never put on much weight, compliments of a super-fast metabolism, must be genetic, or maybe I was a sleep jogger.

Sleep walking?

I hovered in front of my open locker.

Nah.

As soon as I slammed the door shut

Whom was standing behind it? None other than the notorious Wendy Vargas. How cliché.

Another cliché would be that the most popular girl in the school and I would be bitter rivals.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Morning, bestie,” she crooned in her best vocal fry valley girl as she opened her locker.

It might have something to do with my painfully cringe-inducing habit of flattering everyone. A trait I polished like the turd it is. I say things most people with any sense of dignity wouldn’t dare.

Happily, I lack any of those mortal inhibitions; my gag reflex was never there. When your goal is to blend in and make people like you, lacking any shame is pivotal. So I can tell everyone everything they want to hear and keep a straight face while I do it.

Funny, it’s not even that hard. I can usually tell at first meeting someone what they want to hear. No one even bothers to hide it, they might as well write it on a sign around their necks.

Wendy’s locker being next to mine also tipped the scales of fate. I can’t remember exactly how we met or became friends but I assume proximity is what allowed me to use my powers of butt-kissing to full effect.

Maybe I just complimented her on how she opened her locker. How she applied her lip-gloss in the mirror she had inside the door, or some other banal little detail I’d felt wasn’t worth the storage in my head.

“Looking sexy as always, my love. Wendy Vargas, when will you marry me?” I say in a perfect mocking impression of her voice; she will of course ignore that, and only hear the compliment.

“Thank you, my dear but you know as well as I do, I’m taken and I am a one-woman man,” she said, as she pursed her snake-bitten lips.

She was a beautiful golden goddess one might expect to see in some Spanish soap opera, with a set of expressions just as fake. Heir to a fortune in Cuban sandwich shops. Head of the cheerleading squad, of course, but also a strange passion for ‘nerdy stuff,’ as she called it. Mostly kitsch nerdsploitation, like The Big Bang Theory. Big lens less glasses, wearing comic book superhero T-shirts and pretending to like the new Star Wars movies.

It was all an act so she could rule over a hoard of thirsty geeks in the AV club who’d do whatever she said.

I still have no idea why she likes me. I really could’ve slipped right through the cracks right where I wanted to, if it wasn’t for her.

It might be because I’m the only one in the state that knows she poisoned her stepfather with anti-freeze, and framed her mother.

Did she tell me? Not in so many words. I wasn’t an accomplice or anything, either. Poison’s not my style.

That’s such a ‘girly’ way to kill someone, and I’d never stoop so low as to kill for money. No, a passion is best left free, like all the good things in life.

She didn’t confess to me, but something did. That little voice, that little clawing thing that rolled around deep inside the dark depths of Diana.

It could smell it on her, not her guilt, not her shame, her complete indifference. She had a monster too, a dark secret, but it was a small and covetous thing, a greedy opportunistic monster.

“Where’s that handsome new beau of yours?” I enquired.

Wendy’s new boyfriend was some chad from out of state, what was his name? Bradie? Brodie? Brodo?

She tends to go through them quickly, but this new one had peaked her interest. He was a transplant from Miami, very exotic.

“He’s off collecting that order of red cups and plates for prom.”

“I sense, we’re about get down to business.” I winked.

“You’re senses are keen, as always, my young padawan,” Wendy bowed with her hands pressed together, like she was going to Kung-fu me.

“I learned from the best, master.” I dipped my head.

“I need you to print off some fliers for me.” She smiled, like she was doing me a favor, her arms swaying at her sides, as her voice rose at the end.

Wendy was head of the prom committee, they put on the senior prom every year, and this time it was our turn.

I, Diana, sweetness and light, am on the prom committee, too. All because it would’ve been too strange for me not to, being best friends with the head of the committee. Oh, sweet nepotism.

Part of the practice of being normal was doing things ‘normal’ girls do. I’m not a cheerleader, that was too much for even me to stomach, some things truly are beyond even me. I can’t remember how I got out of that one, must’ve made up something about having one leg longer than the other or something, extreme corns perhaps.

Cheerleading is also surprisingly time consuming, all those pep rallies and practices and incessant parties. Which could prove a problem for my other ‘interests’. I looked around at the fliers already up around the hall. They were on almost every locker, and bulletin board and classroom door. I cast sparring glances at people who don’t need to make conscious efforts to be normal. What blissful cow-like expressions they all had.

“What’s wrong with the old fliers?” I asked in a robotic fashion, but I already knew exactly what she was going to say.

“They’re old,” Wendy shook her head like it was obvious; which it was.

“Okay,” I said without argument, because, what a waste of time and energy that would be.

She sucked her lips like she was tasting her cherry lip gloss and she liked it, then looked over my head. “Oh, there’s a sight for sour eyes.”

I looked over my shoulder, and stage left appeared my stalwart boyfriend Paul.

An ordinary name for an ever so ordinary boyfriend. He was practically perfect in every way, the male Mary Poppins of University high. Tall, but not too tall, smart, but not too smart, conventionally handsome but not too conventionally handsome.

He was into sports, basketball mostly. An army brat through and through, his dad was almost always away on maneuvers.

If I was painfully honest, I mainly liked him for his car, and for the places he was willing to take me in said motor vehicle. I had my license already, but no car of my own.

My aunt was sort of an eco-nut, forcing me to take the bus when possible and if she did buy me a car, with the no money she had saved. It would end up being one just like her work car. One of those terrible eco-bubble little hair dryers powered by happy thoughts and bunny farts.

Did I mention his dad was deployed most of the time? So if I ever did go visit we had the run of the house, and from time to time, his gun cabinet.

His mom was a mystery I didn’t care to explore. Seemed like a sore subject I had no interest in. Sobs stories are no fun, unless they’re your own.

Most of all, I liked him because he was normal. Painfully normal, bone achingly, teeth rattlingly normal. So much so, just being around him made me feel normal by osmosis. Like he absorbed some of my weird into himself and excreted it as a form of non-toxic handsome. He was kryptonite to my superman. Paul is the perfect disguise.

His upbringing, one of strict discipline had forced him to become the perfect gentleman. Thus, his urges were dutifully restrained, not unlike my own.

I really have no interest in sex. I have no hang ups about it either, we’ve had sex.

Honestly didn’t much care for it, a sweaty messy thing, waste of time and sheets. The smell of it was enough to keep him by my side, and to drive me where I wanted to go and do most of anything I wanted.

Being a woman is pretty easy when you have no shame. Anyone that says different is a liar.

Men will put up with almost any shit from a woman if he thinks sex may possibly happen at some point in the near future.

Paul was presentable, neat and clean and always smelled good, never a blond hair out of place, or a blue eye in the wrong direction. A stern solid posture always maintained for some hidden watcher like someone stuck a broom up his ass without any KY and expected him to clean the ceiling.

The perfect scarecrow he was, scaring off all those hangers-on and beta orbiters that like to cling to pretty girls who don’t carry mace on a key chain.

The bell rang, and Wendy looked up, as if to make sure. “Shit, gotta get back to class, see you guys later.” She said as she vocal fried her way down the hall. Swished and swayed spreading a sweet fake scent as she floated away.

“Hey, baby, what’s up?” Paul said.

He speaks! He Leaned in for a hello peck, his arms wrapped around me.

I dutifully resisted, pushed back against him. “Hunger,” I said, without a hint of irony.

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”.

LCYE Chapter 13 ‘Confinement’

Just gonna be a quick update because I’m up to my neck in stage hand work right now for this grand show I put on for you kind people.

Again another shout out to my new subs on my mailing list, thank you very much for paying attention to this fucking train wreck haha.
I’m really busy, I got the edit back for LCYE and I’m just proofreading it again and making the changes as well still spamming for more subs haha. But it’s coming together. I just wanted to go over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it’s at it’s best when I convert it into a pdf/epub and send it to you lovely people.

As far as my writing is going, it’s going haha. I’m writing something a little sillier as a break. I was trying this new diet which I had to rework because I felt like a zombie and it put a kink in my weight lifting but it’s all good now. I thought I had writers block but it turned out I was just dying haha.

I dunno, this novella I’m working on is a little wet, just wanted to keep myself busy til I’m psyched up enough for GS two, or something new. It’s just not jelling as well, it’s a blast from the past, it’s sort of silly and stilted and doesn’t really represent the growth and the scope of my newer work.

But enough of me rambling incoherently.

Here’s chapter 13 of LCYE that is being proofread and will be in the inbox of hopefully everyone reading this blog within the month.

Without further ado here is Confinement

~

He fell into consciousness wide eyed and drenched in sweat. His breathe burning in his chest. He strained against plastic ties which bound his arms to the black metal struts of what seemed to be a weightlifting bench.

Was it a room?

It smelled dank, rotting wood and coppery smells of rust. It was too dark to tell.

He was lying in what felt like a dentist’s chair, his arms held down at his sides. He was restrained not only at the wrists but it felt like all the way up his arms and his legs. He had zero mobility in any of his limbs. His head equally was held in place by what felt like plastic wrap, wound tightly around his forehead. It was sticky and forming a lot of sweat but none of which allowed him any more mobility.

He felt powerless, his heart beat out of his chest for what felt like an hour of blackness and panic. Finally, when he’d given up hope of his limbs proving useful for escape he faded into despair. Taking deep breathes getting gradually shallower and more quiet until he heard someone else breathing.

A generator sprang into life, humming and coughing behind his head. A bright unshaded bulb was born cutting through the thick dark dank of what he now knew was a boxcar probably deep in the railyard. In a place no one could hear them.

An unseen scratching, and then music started to play.

“How much is that doggie in the window (arf, arf)

The one with the waggley tail”

As the record was started, James felt a sharp tugging and a shifting in his seat. A feeling of falling as the hydraulics in the chair dropped him lower and then bolted him almost upright. Instantly he was made aware of what he was supposed to see.

In front of him were two rows of something obscured by a tan hide tarp. They were spaced out as if they were seats on a train and behind them there was something hanging on the wall. Something that looked like an animal.

He heard breathing getting closer to his ear and then a voice he thought he knew.

“James, it’s good to see you. Are you resting comfortably?”

~

0

LCYE Chapter 12 ‘Silent Circus’

Bonjour, you know the drill now ladies and gentlefolk. I rambled on for a bit and then dish out another chapter of one of my many and diverse brainfarts.

Honestly not much has happened between the last time I did this except oh yeah I have a child now. Surprise. I have a child with a woman that doesn’t like me, on the otherside of the globe that I’ll most likely never see and she’ll grow up resenting me and calling someone else daddy.

Enough of that drama.

The wheels are still turning, I kicked the people who need kicks in the asses and it should be working it’s way up now. The cover sketches are on the way and I’ve sent the lcye manuscript off for editing, we’re just working out payment now.

So here it is as promised, soon to be edited and available for free when you join my mailing list. As usual this is just a snippet, the full chapter and the rest of the book can be found on inkitt with the hyperlink below.

LCYE Chapter 12

Silent Circus
~
Con drove this time.

“Right over there” Harri said.

“I see it”.

Con pulled the Lincoln into the Riverside County Sheriff’s department parking lot.

The department had its own street sectioned off with the court house on one side and the Robert Presley detention centre on the other.

They parked in the small east side parking lot in between a couple of shiny pickup trucks.

The building itself was located in downtown riverside. A built up area that made a change from the open spaces they’d become accustomed to out here.

The courthouse, the detention centre and the sheriff’s department building were all concrete buildings. Elegant but with a hint of noble authoritarianism.

The building they’d parked in the shadow of was a tall rectangular concrete edifice. The windows of which were narrow strips high across the top, well above the average person’s height. Around eight or nine feet off the ground hooded by concrete awnings. Evidently it was some sort of holding facility not connected to the actual detention centre.

Despite the serious tone the buildings evoked, this was still California and of course there were palm trees everywhere. But even they were regulated in a strict spacing along the sidewalks. More serious plants stood guard in grey concrete planters along the edge of the rectangular holding facility. Some sort of fern or bush that had been trimmed into a phallic point.

On the other side of the parking lot was what looked like a multi-storey car park. They’d come the opposite way so hadn’t passed it. In between that and the temporary holding cells was a small red building with a comms tower poking out of the top. That must have been some kind of small office building for admin personnel.

Con hopped out of the car and quick stepped around the front not quite sure what to expect. Harri bundled herself out of her side almost visibly shaking. The thought of standing seemed to throw her. She sat for a moment turned out in her seat leaning on the open door taking in as much air as she could before could stand without feeling sick.

Con stood like a child watching his mother recover from a car crash. He was a good foot away standing with his hands out of his pocket not sure whether he should try and help her.

His mind was made up when she steadied herself against central column of the Lincoln and her Glock fell out of hip holster. He quickly stepped in and stooped to pick up the small plastic gun, which now looked like a cap gun on the parking lot floor.

He lifted it up like a glass slipper and presented it to her on one knee. She scowled at him and made a chupse sound. “Thanks” She put the Glock back in the holster and steadied herself.

His eyes searched her for a moment and she chupsed again “It’s nothing sordid ok?”

“I didn’t say anything”

“I know but I can feel your smirk.” She closed her eyes and lowered the pitch of her voice “It’s not a big deal, I don’t want you to go building it up in your mind”

“I wouldn’t dream of it” A little smirk leaked out, his fears of her unknown past seemed to melt away just a little.

She sighed and chewed on her lip a little almost for show.

“You know I used to be a cop”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Really, I thought everybody knew. Well regardless, I used to be a cop back in St Louis and when I was such a thing I worked in narcotics.” She paused to watch his cogs spin a little. “I know what you’re thinking and it’s not that. I didn’t steal drugs from the taskforce, you think someone with a history like that could make it into the FBI?”

Con shrugged.

~

0

LCYE Chapter 10 ‘Dance of the Dream man’ Raw AKA return of the dreamer.

Yoyoyo this obnoxious intro was brought to you by someone that smashed NaNoWriMo 2016!!!!!!!!

Yeah I’m not that psyched about it, all I got was a crappy like certificate I had to download and put my own name on and a computer generated pat on the back. Even my mother was dissapointed, I somehow convinced her it was important and the prize wasn’t just 50,000 words of complete gibberish. Nah I’m fucking with you, its pretty good, it’s not entirely finished, should be done and dusted by december and I’ll start leaking proofread chapters on here and probably inkitt too although I’ve been in talks with this publishing house called quivering quills or some gay shit, I don’t know, but they looked at GS and thought it was a piece of shit but who knows they might like this, it may not be a complete piece of shit.

So yeah I was gone, almost sort of lost my mind there, everyday spent inside my head trying to hold on to some semblance of sanity as well as keep up with a 2k a day word quota. It almost made my day job feel like a break from the bleak blank insane scratching inside the wet wailing walls of my skull. Which reminds me the holiday season is upon us and I must go back to work and listen to same christmas type music over and over again and try not fucking impale people with a christmas tree.

Updates updates updates, it’s back to business, shock horror, I lied to you Ladies Close Your Eyes has been completed for months maybe, not actually maybe just a few weeks and I was just releasing a chapter at a time to tease or whatever but I just thought fuck it and I wanted to mess with inkitts algorithyms so I published the whole thing. But I will still keep posting individual chapters because I’m back and I need a constant stream of content and with the day job and proofreading and sorting out all the shit I need to do to get GS ready for amazon or a garbage fire I really don’t have time to just do wordy nonsense blogs or reviews so yeah.

With no more to do here it is, Chapter ten ‘Dance of the Dream man’ if you haven’t watched Twin Peaks you should, very much inspired by that, I love the mixing of the dark and the absurd. Absurdity and comedy sort of act as lube for the big black cock of horror you slowly slide down allowing it to get deeper and deeper inside the anus of your fetid minds. Whereas without the lube you might just sit on it and jump off straight away. (Metaphor excellence achieved).

As for today I’m gonna be chilling and probably christmas knife shopping for myself.

As usual you can get a preview here and check out the full chapter over on inkitt. I’m probably gonna be giving this away soon as a free ebook to people who sign up to my blog so please as soon as I do this forget inkitt exists please haha.

Dance of the Dream Man

Cheers!

–

James was standing in front of the blue door; someone had left it open. He pushed it and it opened with a rehearsed creaking sound. Allowing a thin shaft of daylight to spread in an arc across the floor.

James swallowed hard and in his head it was very loud. He gingerly entered the small room following the beam of light.

The light ended before the opening of a tiny bathroom. Looking inside, it had no windows. Just a shower bath combo with a shower curtain pulled closed all the way around in the right corner running along the wall. The toilet was to the left in the other corner but the room was so small they were almost touching. The sink was in the small amount of space in the right corner closest to the door in front of the bath. The bathroom was tiled all around in a black and white pattern that went from the floor to the walls. The ceilings and places untouched by tiles were the same desert tan colour as the outside of the building. The toilet seat matched the patter, the porcelain was naturally white but the seat and lid were black.

There was just something off about black in a bathroom, it hid the dirt but it also felt dirty.

There was a loud dripping noise coming from the bath tub.

James approached the bath and gripped the edges of the shower curtain which met at the corner of the bath.

He parted them swiftly, like ripping off a band aid.

The bath was full of a brown dark liquid, a putrid rusty water that had a dank smell. The bath itself was filthy, the gaps between the black and white tiles were black with mould. The shower head and bath fixture were also covered in the same black mould. He examined the taps and the shower head but there was nothing leaking.

Remembering himself he set to looking about the bathroom for any clues. Shy of sticking his hand in that filthy water and draining the tub there was nothing of interest in the bathroom. He could have stuck his hand down the toilet, but why would he do that?

He left the bathroom and returned to the bed/living room area.

The bed was un-made and showed signs of a struggle, the satin sheets were half off the queen sized bed. The long red curtains were drawn, the chair in the corner of the room was empty and there was nothing on the coffee table. The room smelled like sex and cheap perfume.

The old TV was in the same place as his dream but the screen was dark.

“Dream?” As he said it he started to feel light headed, his heart started to race and he couldn’t get it to stop. “Was it a dream?”.

He stumbled and knocked the TV off its stand leaving a large crack down the centre of the bevelled screen.

James collapsed into the chair in the living area and tried to catch his breath, he closed his eyes and tried to centre himself, stop the spinning. It felt like something unnatural was happening. Like his brain was rebooting, trying to make sense of two memories overlapping.

Just like that he felt something poking him from the side of the seat cushion. He put his hand down the side to see what it was.

It was a business card.

‘Dr. Alphonso Moral’

It had the second love symbol on it with a phone number on the back.

Now he started to remember, he had gone there, but something had gone wrong.

He shambled out of the room, a sheen of sweat across his brow. The sun was still high but the fresh air made him straighten up a little as he walked back towards the office.

The office was still open; he must have been gone only twenty minutes.

Like before the old man wasn’t at his desk so James rang the bell. There was something off about the front desk though, there was something missing and he couldn’t quite place it. The fan was still going back and forth and although it offered some breeze it was slight and pointed in the wrong direction. He tried to turn it around but it was affixed to the desk somehow.

He rang the bell again, remembering it took at least three rings for the old man to know you were serious.

On the third ring he expected to hear some commotion in the back but there nothing, just the TV on like before. An infomercial about old people losing the remote was playing. Advertising some kind of device that would let you find it, necessarily he thought what would happen if you lost the device to find the remote too.

He rang the bell a fourth time but still he couldn’t hear anything.

James sighed anxiously. The old man must have gone out or he was sleeping in the back. All he really wanted was to use the phone. He couldn’t know for sure but he was pretty certain he was in a hurry.

James went around the counter and put on a loud but unthreatening voice.

“HEY- ERR, OLD MAN? I JUST WANNA USE THE PHONE, I’LL BE GONE IN A SECOND. I THINK I BROKE ONE OF YOUR TV’S I’LL PAY YOU BACK FOR IT, DON’T WORRY”.

James entered the back room through the little alcove beyond the beads. The beads making an unnerving cacophony of clacking noises.

The old man was asleep in his chair facing away from the alcove towards a large TV set on a stand not unlike the ones in the rooms, sitting in the corner. A long hanging mirror on the wall next to it.

The phone was on a small side table against the wall on the right as soon as you entered the alcove. It was a weird novelty phone in the shape of a football. Which was particularly odd since he hadn’t noted any football memorabilia of any sort in the lobby or anywhere as he looked around now. The room was ‘cosy’.

There were more of those plants wilted in the corners of the room. There was no furniture apart from the easy chair the old man was asleep in which looked like real leather, real old leather. There was a small table next to the chair but it was knocked over with an upturned bowl of chips next to it. He must have just knocked it over while he was sleeping. The floors were hard wood for lack of a carpet. There were just some beaten up looking rugs with floral patterns. There was another beaded alcove which must have led to a kitchenette and a bedroom if he really did live here.

James quietly picked up the phone’s receiver and started to dial with the card cupped in his other hand and the receiver cradled in his neck. There was another mirror on the wall above the side table and James looked at himself for a brief indulgent moment of vanity. He looked a little younger in that Jacket he couldn’t remember buying, not that it mattered. The cut above his eye looked ok and his neck wasn’t hurting as much.

As the phone started to ring he noticed something in the mirror he’d missed on his way in. There was something out of place next to the TV, in front of the long hanging mirror. The phone was still ringing while he looked closer at it in the mirror above the side table. It was some kind of heavy rectangular object, four wooden corners embossed with a brass trimming. The brass seemed to be rusting but only on one of the corners and along the sides of the object adjacent to that corner. Possibly it was supposed to be sitting in the corner of the room and those parts were never polished.

He couldn’t see much else from that angle so he took a step the right and craned his neck, he didn’t want to turn around and whip the phone off the table. He was on hold; the music was some French woman whining about something or other.

There was a plaque on the base but he was too far away to read what it said. But in his new angle he was able to see a small fuzzy shape and he remembered what was wrong with the desk scene. ‘Fido’.

The stuffed Chihuahua from the front desk had taken up legs and moved here and was lying on the floor. A cold sensation gripped his gut and he swallowed hard as his eyes craned up from the dog lying on the floor. His jaw tightened as he saw a pale set of eyes staring back at him reflected in the hanging mirror into the mirror above the side table.

The old man was slumped in his chair, his hairy white arms hanging off the sides. His lifeless cloudy eyes staring into the mirror. His head was a mess of blood and bone and brain matter, caved in with the corner of the little stuffed mutt.

James licked his lips frozen. A man’s voice came on the line.

“Hello, who is this?”

“I’ll call you back”. James said as he hung up the phone.

~

Dance of the Dream Man

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LCYE Chapter 9 ‘White Noiz’

It’s sort of finished now I guess, I stopped tapping the keyboard at least ha-ha. I like it, I think it’s the start of something new and good. I’m reading more of those Richard Stark Parker novels, they’re fucking infectious. Effortlessly cool, I just love them and the more I read them the more inspired I get to write like that. His style is bleeding into mine and I can’t get enough of it. It’s the perfect filler to stuff in that Dexter shaped hole in my life. I really want to read all the Dexter books again. Not just because I loved them and they spoke to me but also because when I read them I was deeply in love with someone and some music and I need to feel that again.
When I was reading those books it was the happiest and brightest my life had ever been and to see them end it brought in the end of that relationship too. And it’s fitting since those books are about someone trying to be human and failing at every turn. Trying to have love but lacking the vital component to make it work and keep it alive. Some people just aren’t meant to love, if not then what are they meant to do? Who knows.
Enough of that feeling sorry for myself bullshit onto the chapter and updates. I’m still in talks for the cover and the editing is coming along for Green Sunday. I think it’s going on amazon soonish. Still bricking it over nano, I just feel so fucking competitive, I want to win but I don’t think I can and give the story the attention and time it needs, I need to slow down, this is serious business. Oh, I also watched the new ghostbusters movie and yeah it was trash ha-ha, so I might do a review of that.

Ok this chapter is a bit of a departure, slipped in a little more action, bit of breaking bad crept in somehow, but I hope you like it. And yeah I spelled noise wrong on purpose haha. Its the title of a silent hill song.

As usual you can check it out for free on inkitt.

White Noiz

~

Con reached the bathroom down the narrow hall. The house was like a maze, it felt like there were too many rooms, too many doors squeezed into such a tight building. He passed two bedrooms on his way into what looked like a parlour with a set of carpeted stairs leading to an upstairs bedroom in the attic space. One of the bedrooms was completely empty, carpeted and painted in the same way as the rest of the house, the other was locked.

The parlour had a few black couch chairs and a pool table with what looked like a minibar in the corner. It had another set of glass doors which lead out into the yard and overlooked the pool. A big black ceiling fan span above his head as he stood, hands in pockets looking out at the pool.

He crossed the room past the pool table almost tripping over a black leather foot stool. He leant on the railing of the stairs looking up at the attic door. It looked locked too but it was worth a shot.

Just as he mounted the first step his ears pricked up to a muted cracking sound and brief fumbling from where he’d come.

He pulled his Glock 19 with a nervous jerk from the moulded holster on his hip and soft stepped around the pool table with the gun at his side. He shouldered up to the corner and took the safety off, he held his breath and rounded the corner with his gun high. The tight corridor was empty the door to one bed room still closed the door to the empty bedroom was open still. The closed door was closer on his left so he tersely slid along the wall keeping his eye on the edge of the hall where the sitting room was located. He got to the locked door and tried it again, it was still locked.

He popped out around the door of the empty bedroom and it was still empty. He continued at a quickening pace down the hall. He kept his breathing steady but his heart beat was fast and light.

He swung around the corner of the sitting room, it was empty. He did a further sweep to make sure there was no one in the kitchen or entryway. All the doors were closed and he opened them quietly one by one, revealing storage closets full of cleaning products and chemicals. The other was a study full of unopened boxes, a desk with a monitor on it, behind the last door was a tiny bathroom with just a sink and a toilet.

Making his way back into the sitting room he loosened his chest a little. The TV on the wall was cracked and there was a half-heeled shoe on the carpet without a foot. A couch cushion lay on the floor open.

He stalked into the kitchen and saw her lying on the floor, one shoe off. He swept to her side on one knee, his gun still in his hand as he felt for her pulse. It was weak but it was there. Her knight in shining armour breathing heavy over her, feeling nothing but burning in his chest.

His head got a little numb and he started to feel dizzy as he stood up. His tongue clacked dry, He pounded the side of his head with his balled palm around the butt of his gun. He opened and closed his eyes deliberately, as if his lids were glued together and he had to pull them apart.

He took a sharp snort of air and was straight again. His shoulders knotted up tight lifting the gun like his arms were on marionette strings. Wobbling slightly but long and straight and rigid. He took up his firing stance and paced through the kitchen trying to make as little noise as possible on the tiled floor.

There was a small alcove behind the breakfast bar adjacent to a set of two white wooden slated doors that probably lead into a small pantry. Con rounded the breakfast bar tightly, using his hand to toss himself around the sharp corner. He passed through alcove into a small carpeted anti-room. This room didn’t seem to have a purpose since it was too open and close to the kitchen to be a bedroom and too small to be another living room or sitting area. Despite that it had the same carpeting and the same type of ceiling fan with the daffodil shaped light fixtures. There was another alcove on his far left that fed back into the entry hallway, a door on the wall on his right which lead outside into the pool area. Another door in front adjacent to the pool was open at an angle.

He braced the ajar door and pushed it open with his empty hand, probing the stale air with the Glock. As the door opened he was in a small strangely angled smoking room with a large sixties style red stone fireplace. Against the back wall there was a beat up leather couch and a wood end table in front of the fireplace facing out. It looked out of place with the new coat of paint and the modern light fixtures running along the ceiling. There was a closed door on the right adjacent wall to the fireplace that probably lead out of the house functioning as a side entrance. The main focus was a strange door that jutted out into the centre of the room. The walls seemed to angle to meet it forming a trapezoidal shape taking up almost a quarter of the floor space. The door was so imposing it took all the focus off the bespoke fireplace and the entire room seemed to centre around it like it was a big flat screen TV.

Con glided over to the door, he gripped the knob and began to turn it, it was unlocked. He flung the door open and pressed against the doorjamb angling his gun through the opening.

It was black as pitch, a set of stairs faintly lit by the sunlight coming in from the window on the other side of the room. The stairs went down into a basement of some kind. Con craned his free hand around fumbling for a light switch. He got a nasty shock on an exposed wire and yanked his hand away like it was a rattlesnake bite. He fumbled around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out his cell phone. There was no signal, they must have been too close to the mountains, he didn’t remember seeing a single landline throughout the whole house. With the gun lodged tight to his chest he held the cell phone out in front of him as his only source of light and started down the stairs.

~

 

 

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LYCE Chapter Chapter 8 ‘The Rabbit’

Running out of things to rant about, I guess I could rant about the nontroversy of the Trump tapes, as if that even matters, the news will report on anything these days it seems. I’m half expecting the next headline to be ‘TRUMP FARTS IN ELEVATOR’ ‘TRUMP LEAVES TOILET SEAT UP’ ‘TRUMP SEES MAN SNEEZE – DOESN’T SAY “BLESS YOU”‘. It’s kind of pathetic but there you go.

Almost finished this, it’s tough keeping it on the rails, my mind just wonders into the woods some times but I tried. I’m getting there, my work is becoming much more grounded as I put more time and effort into my research. Makes me hopeful for nano to see my progression but at the same time I’m thinking I should have done much more research for nano. But fuck it, I don’t really intend to win, I just think it’ll be good to switch off facebook for a month and do some solid work like I’m supposed to.
No fucking blogs, or twitter, or internet drama or trolling, any of that bullshit, just me and microsoft word and all the other shit I use.
It should be interesting, my first nano, I’ve got a blog share type thing coming up with a fairly famous zombie author, he’s more famous than me that makes him famous haha, John L Davis IV, so that should be interesting. I doubt he took the time to read my book but I picked up a copy of his and it’s pretty serviceable zombie fare.

Anyway back to the chapter at hand and yes, quite a few references to Lynch in here, a lot of twin peaks, a little wild at heart for some reason. I think it makes for a fun read, if anyone is reading it, my reviews seem to be getting more eyes on than any of my actual work for whatever reason that is. Ok well I’ll go kill myself then bye y’all haha.

Ok as usual you can find the full chapter for zero monies on inkitt by following this handy dandy linkamabob;

The Rabbit

Cheers!
~

The sign read ‘Twin Pines Lodge’ it was big and blue. The same colour blue adorned every door in the motel set into the cream colour walls. It was a common looking L shaped motel with the office closest to the street with a few adjoining rooms connected to it. Then you had the double packed rooms adjacent, facing out towards the street. There wasn’t a pine tree in sight. Just the large sycamores spaced out unevenly behind the back building.

The parking lot was nearly empty, there was a white minivan under a car port awning on the right of the entrance. And a white Toyota parked next to the office. He pulled into a space between the minivan and a big green dumpster that was facing out into street at an irregular angle. The dumpster was next to an oddly placed patch of grass that looked like someone’s front lawn. It was edged off by a black fence around the office of the neighbouring motel that had a nice little desert garden made up of cacti and orange rocks.

He got out of the car and looked around for a second with his hand cupped over his eyes. A curtain moved from one of the upstairs rooms. James felt exposed.

He walked slowly towards the small office building at the head of the fat snake. It was a tiny building partially hidden by some overgrown bushes. He entered and right of the bat got a trailer park feeling, the floor felt temporary, made of some sort of panelling covered in a carpet. There was no air-conditioning, just a big fan on the ceiling and one on the desk next to a nodding Chihuahua. He didn’t suspect the rooms had air conditioning either.

The room felt even smaller than it looked and even James not being of an advanced height felt it necessary to stoop. There wasn’t much to see, a beaten up couch that looked like it belonged in an airport waiting room. The carpet was blue, stained and pulled up at the edges, the owner probably had a dog. There was a small coffee table between the couch and a chair that didn’t match either the table nor the couch. A few tropical plants which also stooped.

There were a few framed pictures of what looked like stock photography of Caribbean islands, Barbados, maybe Jamaica. Some religious iconography above the desk, a picture of Jesus with the catholic heart and thorns. There was a crucifix next to it, just to make it doubly holy. The rest of the wall behind the desk was covered in framed plagues relating to some qualifications in motel owning and hospitality. Awards that looked like they’d been printed off the internet with the name; Howard Blum. An alcove behind the desk lead into the back where the owner probably lived. It didn’t have a door, just a set of those hanging beads that made a noise when you went through them.

James couldn’t put his finger on it but the room smelled stale, like the smell of rotting insect carcasses under a hundred-watt bulb. There was a bell on the desk, that on closer inspection actually looked like a doorbell that was taped to the counter, the wire running down the side. The desk itself was of some indistinguishable wood that was varnished to look like a hardwood. But it was patchy work and a lighter thinner wood showed underneath. Ringing the bell a second time he realised what the smell was. Taking a closer look at the nodding Chihuahua on the desk. He noticed it actually wasn’t nodding at all because in fact it was a real Chihuahua stuffed and mounted on the desk with a heavy looking ornate base. The plague read ‘Fido’.

He rang the bell again and listened, sounded like a TV was on in the back. He rang the bell again and heard a stirring, like someone waking up. He heard joints cracking, ankles creaked as they took on the weight of the body above them. A slow shuffling noise approached from the backroom.

A gaunt figure appeared mechanically and slow in the alcove. He parted the beads and entered as if he was coming out of an elaborate Swiss cuckoo clock. He was tall and thin but naturally stooped with age. He was wearing a string vest that really didn’t cover a lot up. His arms were sinewy and bare and there were visible tufts of white and grey chest hair sticking out of the places the old vest didn’t cover. His skin, wrinkled but looked as soft as a babies. His face was long and thin and looked like that of a sad horse with flecks of grey stubble and nose hair. He had full head of white hair sitting back on the top of his head. The style similar to that of Bob’s big boy, the mascot of the famous burger chain. A sort of fifties style swoop quiff. He was wearing a pair of Bermuda shorts and some fluffy pink slippers, hence the shuffling sound.

He shuffled behind the desk and cleared his throat.

“Err… this is going to sound strange- “James paused, suddenly flushed as he realised he hadn’t given any thought to what he was going to say. Or even what he hoped to find.

The old man’s eyelids fluttered as if he was dreaming and he lifted two weary grey eyes and pointed them at James with their bowed lids. “My dog barks some”.

James’ mind went completely blank as the old man stared at him “Err never mind, can you just give me a minute?”

“Mentally you picture my dog, but I have not told you the type dog which I have. Perhaps you might even picture Toto from the wizard of Oz” The man began to chuckle to himself. “But I can tell you my dog is always with me.” The old man said as he shuffled back to his room behind the alcove.

James went outside and paced some, he thought about lighting a cigarette but he remembered he didn’t have any. Come to think of it he’d given up years ago, so why that craving would come back now seemed odd. Maybe just something to do with his hand or a reason to be hanging around outside.

There was a small shooting pain behind his eyes. He put a palm against his eye and opened his mouth wide. Turning his head, he took a quick scan of the rooms to see if anything at all was familiar.

Every room looked identical moving across from the office, that same blue door. There was only one noticeable difference about the room on the end of the single story block. The door was ajar.

~

The Rabbit

 

 

 

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LCYE Chapter 7 ‘Sinnerman’

Hello hello, back again with another chapter of this trippy dippy attempt at a psychological thriller. I think its shaping up nicely. By that I mean spiralling out of control into a complete surreal David Lynch parody clusterfuck but atleast I’m having fun. It’s something to do. And since I’ve sort of run out of things to rant about and there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting going on that isn’t american presidential election related so I’ll just keep writing and throwing that at you. Not like you want to hear my unfetted opinion anyway, I’m pretty much talking to myself.

This blog has sort of become just an insane time captual of my gradual decline, like some stardate log on a doomed space vessel heading to the sun and possible alien rape.

It could be worse right, I could be the person taxed with keeping whatever Hillary Clinton is alive and fed with bugs and mice.

That being said… is a phrase that’s over used these days I noticed, that being said here is the chapter in question. Sinnerman named after the song of the same name, we get a little window into the psychology of the killer but not really. It’s a fun if cliche’d autopsy exposition scene. Done a million times in almost every crime show/movie but it never gets old. Hopefully I kept it fresh, if not, oh well.

As always you can read the full chapter and all subsequent chapters on my inkitt page for the one time offer of zero shekels down do not pass go do not collect three hundred rare Pepes #notallpepes.

Sinnerman

~

Con paced back and forth in his expensive suit at the side of the road. He shook his head as he hung it. Casting a weary glance at the big open plot of grassland at the side of the road.
He stumbled up onto the uneven grassy embankment to look out at the horizon. It was mid-morning and hot. The sun was pregnant in the sky, squatting on the California mountain range. He took a deep breath as and shook his head again. So much emptiness. There was only small wire fence running along the side of the road accompanied by the telephone poles running parallel. A large grain silo in the distance. He was surprised anyone lived here in all this emptiness. All that light brown grass all that fresh air, he stole away one wild west fantasy and let it go again.

After another few minutes of stamping his feet and licking his lips he walked across the street to the black Lincoln.

Harri was sitting on the hot hood with her sunglasses on, a pair of cheap truck stop aviators. Her arms folded as she put all her weight on her heels and her sensible half heeled shoes.

“Feelin’ better?” She called out.

“Sorry, just getting car sick.” He flashed her a winning smile on that handsome face and then dropped it again. “You ready?”.

“Sure” She gave her own conservative smile and peeled herself off the car.

Con walked bow legged towards the large flat building behind the parked Lincoln. Harri followed smiling and shaking her head.

The Riverside county coroner’s office was a large rectangular building. It was fairly modern looking in some respects, old in others. It was tan stucco all the way around sitting atop a large glass front that wrapped around the whole building making it look like an uneven wedding cake. The windows all looked black from the glare. Riverside County Sheriff’s Coroner embossed in big silver letters on the side of the building.

The surrounding greenery was well kept to a point. The grass had dry desert bald patches but that was to be expected. A few clusters of cypress trees were dotted around. Maybe to give the impression that this wasn’t the middle of nowhere and civilisation would greet you a few miles in either direction. Either side a great distance apart was a post office and what looked like a stationery store.

The entrance was another big rectangular box which jutted out in an awkward L shape. There was a strange red outcropping over the door. It looked like a red piece of prepacked cheese slice hanging from a sandwich at a jaunty angle. The whole building gave off an aura of flat-pack furniture.

Con waited for Harri at the door turning to shield his eyes and scrunch his face up, he looked pale and a little sickly. Harri brushed past him as she broke the seal on the door which made a sucking hissing sound that gave way to a cool blast of air conditioning. Thus completing the illusion of a walk in freezer.

Inside it was modern and simple. There was a small waiting area with a wooden table and matching furniture. A flustered middle age woman with an eighties haircut and blue blazer sat at a small light wood reception desk. A phone pressed tightly to her ear.

Harri did her usual bit as she liked to do. She strode up to the reception desk and flashed her laminate.

“FBI, you’re expecting us”

The flustered woman had no time to think and just nodded furiously and blurted out “Err room 3b, end of the hall”.

Harri smiled politely and quickstepped down the hall followed by a queasy looking Con squinting at the halogen lights.

It smelled like a hospital, but the smell of cleaning products was much stronger. As if the walls were soaked in it or there was bleach in the sprinkler system.

Harri marched down the narrow hallway, she could feel it getting colder. She knew that had to be a step in the right direction. The floors in the lobby were that locking wood flooring, now it was all clean squeaky linoleum like a hospital. The walls were all white with a few tasteful paintings and bulletins dotted about. Con plodded on behind her as she stalked the halls looking for 3b. She found it, it was a large stainless steel sliding door with a little porthole window at the side. She looked inside through the foggy window. She could see mounds of bodies wrapped up in see through plastic. They all looked like props in a scary movie lying on stainless steel shelves with raised lips.

“Oh you’re here” A shy perky voice behind her croaked out.

A small fat man in a lab coat peaked out from an office door on the other side of the hall. There was more of that pale wood lining the windows in the office and the writing surfaces. All the work surfaces were stainless steel.

“FBI right?” The small man said.

“Uh huh, Special agent Harriet Jaguer and this is my partner, Special Agent Con Folsome.” Con shambled along just as she introduced him. He looked a little better, the cold seemed to straighten out some of the wrinkles on his suit and his face. He was just in time for a vigorous handshake from a pair of very sweaty and inextricably hairy hands.

“Gary Dole, it’s good to meet you folks, don’t get many of you men in black fellas out here”.

The little man was bald and had the greying stubble of a plumber all over his face. A set of wire framed reading glasses resting atop his head. His face looked like someone had taken silly putty and put it on a boiled egg and frozen it. Squishy looking features that were left to set hard. A stubby nose and tight rounded lips on a small alert face.

Sinnerman

 

 

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