I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  Heartbreak, he thought. This is heartbreak. He didn’t need Thomas to tell him because what else could it be? There had never been a more perfect word to describe the dreadful feeling.

  The wolf monster moved toward him again whining softly in its throat much like Marley. The dog did not approach Rainer though. He remained on the far side of the bed, looking on with his head sadly hanging. The wolf did not bother him and Rainer could not understand that. Thomas had loved that dog. That dog, he had believed, loved Thomas. Why didn’t he attack the beast? Why did he just sit there looking sad?

  The wolf lowered his head toward Rainer and put a strange hand on the carpeted floor as he started to crouch down to his level.

  Rainer had been afraid of the wolf in the desert. He had recognized that fear and been thrilled by it. He was not afraid of the wolf there in Thomas’s bedroom. Thomas would have told him that was foolish: Be more afraid of the thing in front of you than the thing that isn’t there; more afraid of the thing that will kill you now than the thing that might have killed you and did not. But he wasn’t afraid.

  He was enraged.

  He launched himself up from the floor at the beast and took it by surprise. It made a startled yelping sound and jerked upright to back away from him, but Rainer jumped at it, meaning to take it to the ground. He had no weapons, the wolf creature was much, much larger than he was and its reflexes were quicker, but Rainer wasn’t thinking about any of that. He hit it on the end of its muzzle and the wolf made a hurt sound somewhere between a yelp and a snarl and grabbed him before he could jump onto it.

  With a wordless scream, Rainer swung blindly, hitting at its face, but the wolf held him back and most of the blows did not land. It growled at him and snapped at his fingers. Its teeth closed on Rainer’s right fist and broke the skin. Instead of biting down and crushing his hand, it let him go.

  Rainer swung at the monster again, but the world swam before his eyes and he staggered. The bite on his hand was on fire and pain moved up his arm to his shoulder, sank into him like vicious claws and dug in toward his organs, toward the heart of him. He stumbled back, retreating from the creature. He knew it was there but he couldn’t see it, his vision spun like he had drank himself blind. Then he collapsed to his knees on the floor and vomited, something slippery like worms twisting at his insides. He didn’t forget about Thomas or the wolf monster in the room with him, but he waited for it to skewer him on its saber-like claws and eat him and it never did.

  “Kill me then,” he breathed around his nausea.

  He felt the wolf’s breath on his face and its bizarre hand-paws on his shoulders and almost hoped it would kill him. A part of him genuinely wanted to die. Not out of some spiritual belief or hope that he would meet Thomas again in the afterlife, but because he could see his future without him and it was full of rage, darkness and violence. Without him, Rainer would burn out like a wild brushfire. He could already feel the madness that would take him there cracking his mind open like a hammer hitting a spike. Thomas had been the only thing that kept him in the world. Without him, Rainer would destroy everything in his path without regard for himself or his life or anyone who knew him.

  So why not?

  “Just kill me and get it over with!”

  He gagged just as his voice rose to a shout and retched. The wormy sensation was moving out from his stomach to churn through his blood and he pictured maggots beneath his skin. He wondered if that would be such a bad way to go.

  The wolf nuzzled him and Rainer couldn’t even hit it anymore. Cramps tore at him and he fell in a trembling heap to his side on the floor and moaned, everything around him blurring, stretching before it all went dark. The wolf licked his hand and Rainer tried to move it away, but nothing happened except his fingers twitched and jerked like the limbs of a shabby marionette. Then the beast cradled him in its huge arms and Rainer passed out waiting to feel its fangs bite down and tear him open.

  If you have the time, please leave an honest review of this book for the author. Thank you.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at J.L. Aarne’s novel

  Needle Freak

  Phineas first appeared to Jack as a friend and he took him away from all the horrors of his childhood. No one could see Phineas except Jack though, and more and more as the years passed he seemed less like a friend and more like a demon. At sixteen Jack ran away from home and ended up living on the street. Out there, Jack learned just what lengths he would go to in order to survive.

  Then he met Steve and Steve is a bad, bad man—one who drags Jack lower than even he imagined he could go. But that doesn't matter to Jack because he is stupidly, pathetically in love with him.

  When Jack finally starts to pull his life together and puts all of that behind him, he reconnects with the brother he used to be so close to but hasn’t seen in fourteen years and with his sweet Grandma Chloe. He gets a real job and kicks the drugs. He even believes that he’s gotten away from Phineas at long last.

  He couldn’t be more wrong and when Phineas returns to torment him, Jack becomes more desperate than ever to escape him. Jack’s secrets come out and threaten to destroy everything and a ghost from his past tracks him down and this time he may not survive. When it comes right down to it, Phineas might be a demon, but he’s one of Jack’s demons and Jack needs him if he’s going to make it out alive.

  Chapter 1

  Jack sat on the bench outside their motel room and smoked while Steve fucked the dead girl. He knew the girl was dead because she had stopped making noise ten minutes ago. He knew Steve was fucking her because he could hear the bedsprings squeaking and the bed bumping the wall and Steve grunting and moaning. The walls of motels like the Last Chance were not thick or soundproofed. Jack had fucked a lot of men in sleazy motel rooms in places just like it over the years. Enough to know that if you could hear the crackheads fighting in the room next door, the crackheads could hear the john fucking you in the ass telling you what a dirty cock-slut you were.

  The girl was some twenty-something chick from some state up north where Jack had never been. Her name was Emily, she said. She smiled a lot and she’d trusted him when he offered to give her a ride. It was only when Steve grabbed her and pulled her into the back of the car that she realized what was happening, but by then it was too late. He was already sticking the needle in the side of her neck and depressing the plunger.

  Jack had one of those faces, Steve said. Not just pretty, but vulnerable. Broken. The kind of face that never belonged to people like Steve in the TV shows, movies and books about people like Steve. People, but especially women, Steve said, were stupid about a pretty face. In all the stories, the bad men were ugly. The bad men had rotting teeth and rancid breath, greasy hair, gnarled fingers, warts and scars and a feral gleam in their muddy eyes. Jared was getting old for a boy-whore and he liked heroin a little too much and it was starting to show, but he still looked like a china doll. He had a sweet smile and eyes the color of a tropical ocean and his dark hair was wavy and shiny and clean.

  Emily wouldn’t have followed Steve to the car because, while Steve was an attractive man, he was big and he was nobody’s china doll. He looked mean.

  Jack hated the sound of overworked bedsprings. He heard that sound in his nightmares. He hated the sound of Steve moaning on the other side of the wall. He sometimes imagined it in his ear, no wall to muffle it, the damp warmth of his breath on his neck and ghosting along his back.

  He stared at the motel sign across the parking lot, at the letter E in “Chance” flickering like the light in a bug zapper, and he hated Steve then in a way that burned deep in his guts.

  A shadow fell over Jack and he looked up to find a tall man in a white T-shirt and a trucker cap standing over him. He was blond, face a bit sunburned, freckles and a farmer’s tan on his thickly muscled arms, a shifty look in his eyes that Jack knew by rote.

  “How much?” the guy asked.

  Jack blinked at him in surprise and sat up. He looked down
at himself and he was suddenly angry at this man for taking one look at him and knowing what he was. Jack was wearing faded jeans and a ratty Metallica T-shirt, his hair was uncombed, he was tired, irritated and waiting for Steve to finish with Emily so he could take a shower and go to bed. Still, something about him had screamed WHORE to this stranger just the same.

  “What part of this fabulous ensemble of mine says hooker to you, man?” Jack demanded, gesturing at himself. “I’m sitting here minding my own business. I look like I want to be bothered? I look inviting at all? No? Didn’t think so.”

  The guy quickly backpedaled and held up his hands, shaking his head and looking around in case anyone had heard. No one had, but no one would have cared anyway. It was that kind of place.

  “Jesus, sorry. I’m sorry,” the guy said. “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” Jack said. “Fuck off.”

  “Fine. Hey, sure. I don’t want any trouble.”

  Jack watched him go, hurrying down the walkway to his room at the end. He flicked his cigarette butt after him and slumped back over his knees.

  Steve was still at it. Steve could do it for a while depending on his mood and he was apparently in a mood tonight.

  Jack hated Emily. He hated all of Steve’s girls. He hated that in the years since he’d met Steve Walker, sitting on the bench outside was as close as he ever really got to him. He hated his own inability to walk away and leave him alone with his dead girls because, dumbass that he was, he loved the bastard.

  A loud groan from inside the room made anger and jealously curl like hot smoke in Jack’s belly and threaten to crawl up his throat. Before he could make himself sick thinking about it, Jack stood and paced a little away. He glanced at the closed door of the room where he’d watched Trucker Cap Guy go. Room 10A.

  With a sigh, Jack walked down the walkway and knocked on the door to room 10A. There was some movement inside, the rustle of a paper bag, the click of the safety chain lock. Then the door opened and the blond guy looked out at him. He frowned.

  “Seventy-five,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  “That’s how much.”

  The guy looked like he wanted to tell Jack to go to hell. Then he stepped back into the room and held the door open for him.

  The guy introduced himself as Ron. He wanted Jack to wear his hat while Ron lay back on the bed and he rode him. Jack had done a lot weirder for a lot less, so he put the hat on. The trick was keeping it on while he moved and Ron thrust and the mattress bounced.

  When he left Ron’s room, Jack was seventy-five dollars richer, more tired than ever and Steve had finished with Emily and left. He was somewhere disposing of the body. Jack took a shower then decided to go see Zane.

  Zane Bledsoe was part black, part white and part Indian. The last part was the one that counted the most to Zane. His mama had been a Cherokee Indian and she’d raised him alone. No matter what else he was, he said it didn’t matter because he didn’t identify with those people. He wouldn’t go on about it at annoying length though like some Jack had known, which was nice. Jack had once heard Zane jokingly describe himself as being “black and white and red all over.”

  He liked Zane. He didn’t even mind fucking him if Zane wanted that more than his money, which he sometimes did. He was nice to him, which was more than Jack could say for a lot of men, especially drug dealers.

  Zane wanted a little of both tonight. He offered to cut Jack a deal for “a poke”; a term he’d recently picked up and taken to because of a western movie phase he was going through. He was particularly fond of Gus McCrea and the written works of Zane Gray, though Jack figured he liked the latter more for the author’s name than the words on the pages. Zane wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t much of a book reader.

  “I can’t tonight, Zane. I’m tired. I’ve got the money, just let me pay you this time,” Jack said.

  Zane looked disappointed. “You still with that creepy fucker? What’s his name?”

  “Steve,” Jack said. “Yeah.”

  Zane tossed a little baggy of creamy yellow powder down on the table between them. “You be careful with that one, Handy. He’s likely to kill you one night and fuck your dead body.”

  Jack stared at him. Zane didn’t know anything, but he’d never liked Steve. A lot of people didn’t. Steve could be nice and charming and even funny, but he still put people off. Jack sometimes wondered what it said about him that he’d been attracted to Steve almost from the first rather than repelled by him as others were. That even knowing him for what he truly was did not make him run away.

  Jack wasn’t like most people though. He’d seen worse than Steve and survived. He’d learned a long time ago the bittersweet seduction of evil.

  “Nah, he won’t,” Jack said. He passed the seventy-five dollars along with another twenty-five over to Zane. “He doesn’t like men. He’s straight.”

  “Shit, Handy, I’m straight,” Zane said. “Poke’s a poke though and what can I say? I like it. And you’re pretty, Jacky. Pretty enough to have a man rethinking his sexuality.”

  Jack smiled, acknowledging the compliment though he didn’t really believe it. “Look, can I fuck you next time? I’ll suck your dick, but I’m tired and I’m sore and I’ve got the fucking chucks.”

  Zane grinned and swept a hand down at his lap, inviting him to it. “Have at it, Jack. Tell you what, I’ll fix you up with a shot of mine—a little extra for the road—if you do it right.”

  “Fine,” Jack said.

  He could have rolled his eyes—he’d been doing it “right” well enough to suit Zane for over a year now—but he didn’t. He stepped around the low round coffee table, went to his knees and opened Zane’s belt. While he was blowing him, Zane stroked gentle fingers through Jack’s hair, but he didn’t grab him or thrust into his throat. He watched him, dark eyes intent on Jack’s face, on his cock sliding wetly in and out of Jack’s mouth. His interest and focus made Jack uncomfortable so he closed his eyes.

  When he was done, before he had licked the bitter flavor of Zane’s come off his lips, Zane reached down and caught his chin in his hand, pulled him up and kissed him. It surprised Jack and he tensed. He hadn’t been kissed in a long time. Not a real kiss. Zane pressed his tongue against Jack’s lips and he opened to it more in self-defense than out of desire.

  Zane broke the kiss and let him go and he was smiling faintly to himself. He reached over Jack’s shoulder to pick up a small rolled up cloth pouch where he kept his own personal stash.

  “Why’d you do that?” Jack asked.

  Zane shrugged one shoulder, took a full and already prepped needle from his kit and held it up to the light for Jack to see the fluid inside. “You look sad, Jack,” he said. “Looked like you needed it. And I kinda wanted to, I don’t mind saying. You kiss me back next time and we might really have something. Now give me your arm.”

  Jack put his arm out on Zane’s leg. Zane expertly slipped the needle into the vein under his skin. He was the only person Jack knew who could do that every single time without fail without a tourniquet. He depressed the plunger and Jack moaned and slid to the side against Zane’s thigh.

  “Yeah. That’s good, ain’t it, Handy?” Zane asked. He petted him again and sat back on the sofa, watching him lay there and enjoy it.

  Like most drug dealers who were also at least part-time partakers of their own wares, Zane kept some of the best stuff for himself. Jack was feeling good. He was feeling really good. Then he looked up and saw the clown standing in the corner of the room.

  The clown looked like any other clown. Except maybe meaner. He had black hair in curls that you could tell were fake. There was a line around his forehead where the wig became his face. His makeup was flaked, but it had once been very well done. His nose was red and the paint was flaking off, his lips were soot black, making his pointed little child’s teeth appear yellow. His costume was the black and white argyle diamonds of a harlequin fraying at the seams and cuffs
. He stood there by the window, the faint glow of the streetlights outside cutting stripes across his face, dancing light in the facets of the rhinestones placed haphazardly over his outfit. When he noticed Jack looking back at him, he lifted his hands and slow clapped.

  Good work, you stupid junkie whore. Very nice. Classy. One gold star for little Jack Handy.

  He didn’t say a word. He never did.

  “Fuck you, fucking buzz-kill,” Jack said, slurring it somewhat. “You are killing my buzz. Literally. You are a killer of buzzes.”

  Zane’s hand stilled on his head. “What? You owe that buzz to me, Jack. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Not you,” Jack said. He brought an arm up and pointed to the clown standing in the corner watching them. “Him.”

  Zane glanced there, but he didn’t see anything. “Him who?”

  “Phineas,” Jack said. “Evil clown. Bastard. I hate him.”

  “Uh-huh,” Zane said. “You’re having a weird trip, Jack, that’s all it is. Ain’t no one there.”

  “You can’t see him,” Jack said. He sighed. “No one can.”

  “Okay. You sure you’re gonna be okay to go on back to wherever you’re staying at? You need a ride?”

  Jack shook his head. Then he braced his hand on the couch between Zane’s legs and pushed himself up. “Nope. I’m fine. Gotta go. Steve will be back.”

  “Then I guess you better get,” Zane said, though he didn’t sound happy about it.

  He was probably thinking again about how one day Steve was going to kill Jack and fuck his corpse. Because Zane liked him, it bothered him to think about it, but Jack was a junkie and a whore and it happened sometimes. He didn’t let it bother him too much.

  Jack walked some of the way back then caught the bus and rode the rest. Phineas sat across from him on the bus and rode home with him, his bright green eyes judging and mocking Jack all the way.