Bad Games- The Complete Series

by Jeff Menapace

  Back in the kitchen, Amy cried in Allan’s arms. Later that night, Caleb back home after the solicitor, oddly enough, told police he did not want to press charges (was probably some scam the guy was pushing, Allan had said), sleep eluded Amy for obvious reasons. Yet curiously, her son’s violent behavior towards the solicitor was not what occupied her mind the majority of the time. It was the conversation she’d started to have with her son at the kitchen table before the doorbell had rang.

  What Caleb had been insinuating at that table was nothing new; she’d had the same conversation with Allan a couple of times already: before she’d agreed to her very first appearance on a popular morning talk show years ago, and again after recently signing over more rights for another book deal detailing accounts of her experiences with all things psychopaths who fancied killing her and her family.

  The bulk of those conversations with Allan played back now as she struggled to find sleep:

  Amy: “In addition to being cathartic for me, let’s be honest; the money sure as hell helps. College funds for the kids. Caleb and Carrie’s therapy bills—our therapy bills—no longer need to be groaned over every month…”

  Allan: “I don’t care about the money. I would moonlight at Denny’s if I had to.”

  Amy: “Spoken like a man who knows he’ll never have to.”

  Allan: “Are you even aware of your hypocrisy?”

  Amy: “Come again?”

  Allan: “You bitch about the stigma your family’s under, and yet you continue to feed the world ammo.”

  Amy: “Our family was under a stigma before I first agreed to let someone put pen to paper about us.”

  Allan: “And you’re not fanning those flames with that paper?”

  Amy: “I’m telling our story—our story—not theirs. That’s the difference. That’s the catharsis.”

  Allan: “And I’m happy it’s therapeutic for you. I just feel the more you put out there, the more unwanted attention it will draw. And I’m not talking the usual shit.”

  Amy: “What do you mean?”

  Allan: “Serial killers themselves. How many letters have you received since you’ve been published? Every psycho behind bars wants to be your damned pen pal, hoping you’ll use your celebrity status to talk about them next. You could be putting us in danger.”

  Amy: “From men behind bars?”

  Allan: “From sicko groupies. Kelly Blaine had no trouble finding some.”

  Amy: “They were drug addicts.”

  Allan: “But groupies are out there. Unstable people who might be urged to do something dramatic as an homage to their idols. Or how about serial killers who’ve yet to be caught? Killers whose need for notoriety outweighs their want for anonymity? You and I both know that what does a good number of these killers in is their need for fame and recognition. The Fannelli brothers knew this. They were as…prolific as they were because they never sought the limelight. They were only caught because—”

  Amy: “They were caught because they fucked with the wrong family.”

  A dutiful pause and nod from Allan. Then…

  Allan: “What I mean is, there could be someone out there right now, right this second, who’s murdered countless times and who, worst of all, has been getting away with it. The police have nothing but a trail of bodies. And this killer delights in that knowledge, that he’s outwitting the police. Except soon that knowledge isn’t enough. Soon he needs the world to know too. He needs the world to know that he was smarter than everybody. Better than everybody. That the only reason he was caught was because he allowed himself to be caught…under one condition, of course. That you tell his story.”

  Amy: “And in the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve had how many of these psychos ringing my doorbell?”

  Allan: “Nice attitude, Amy. You of all people should know bad luck is your soulmate.”

  Amy: “Fuck you, Allan.”

  A guilty pause from Allan this time.

  Allan: “I’m sorry—that was very uncool. But you have to admit, the prospect of such a thing is real. Especially the groupie angle. Fledgling killers who are just—forgive the pun; it is not meant to be in bad taste—getting their feet wet.”

  Amy: “…”

  7

  They’d watched only two more tapes since the first. It was maddening not to binge watch all of them into the wee hours of the morning, but they’d both agreed their prize was too great, and such a great prize deserved to be portioned out and savored with fresh eyes each and every time.

  As for this afternoon, eager to leave school for an entirely different reason than the norm (the bullying, ever present, seemed to bounce right off today, a cardboard box with ten VHS tapes waiting for them at home their armor, that armor coated with a promising shine that assured them their time was coming), they’d rushed home and replayed the first tape.

  The first minute of the first tape, to be precise. And from there they’d paused it. Paused it at the precise moment both brothers leaned forward in their chairs towards the camera. Save for the dated quality of the VHS tapes, which was out of their hands (they certainly couldn’t bring the tapes somewhere in an attempt to get them remastered onto a disk), the paused image on Andy’s television set in his bedroom gave them a damn good visage of the infamous brothers.

  Certainly enough to begin modifications on one another.

  Charlie was first. And a relatively easy one at that. Jim Fannelli always had a shaved head. That meant Charlie Hall would now always have a shaved head. Out came the clippers. Ten minutes of buzzing—excited, nervous giggles throughout—and Charlie Hall no longer had hair. And Andy, seizing upon something he’d noticed Arty consistently doing to his little brother throughout the three tapes they’d watched thus far, immediately ran his hand back and forth over Charlie’s buzzed head with a devilish grin.

  Charlie’s transformation couldn’t stop there, though. And the next one would not be so easy a fix. Jim Fannelli was fairly muscular. Charlie Hall was not. Worse still, Charlie was scrawny. If he’d been more on the pudgy side, a few layers of cleverly worn clothing might have been able to convince many that his girth was more muscle than fat.

  Scrawny, however, was not so easy a fix with clothing, and Charlie had certainly tried in the past, ironically with the layers approach, hoping to create the appearance of girth as opposed to minimizing it. Even when school was heading towards its end, and May and June produced classrooms like bath houses, Charlie never dared strip his layers.

  Not that it did much. Especially during gym time when uniforms—standard shorts and T-shirts—were mandatory, and it was open season on Charlie’s bony frame, both on the field and in the showers. In the showers where, in tenth grade, Charlie had flat-out refused to shower with his classmates, as the gym teacher had insisted he do. And for once, his scrawny frame was not the issue. Charlie was a late bloomer. In tenth grade, his baby-bare genitalia was still the size it had always been for as long as he could remember.

  The gym teacher had left matters in Charlie’s classmates’ hands, who were all too happy to oblige, the gym teacher disappearing into his office while those matters were sorted. And after their shocking—and delighted—discovery of Charlie’s lack of development, his classmates simply could not leave matters at a mere naked toss into the showers amongst a chorus of laughter. No, they needed the whole school to know Charlie’s shame.

  And so Charlie was dragged out of the locker room, kicking and flailing to no avail, where he was then paraded up and down the halls for all to see. By the time a teacher had intervened, Charlie had stopped resisting, had in fact gone into a sort of trance, retreating into himself. He never spoke a single word for the rest of the day, even to Andy.

  Worse still, if it could get any worse, when Charlie’s parents had been alerted to what had transpired, nothing was done. No outrage had been expressed, no demands that the perpetrators, the gym teacher in particular, be reprimanded. Charlie was simply brought home; his mother, a woman who live
d under constant fear of her domineering husband, had offered no support, and his brutish father, constantly ashamed of his son’s diminutive stature, had graced Charlie with one and only one visit that day as Charlie wept silently in his bedroom. “Get over it. Kids fuck around. Maybe the experience will finally grow some hair on your balls,” his father had said.

  And though physically developed below the waist now, Charlie’s frame was still unforgiving in its development. He would need to bulk up if he wished to match the stature of his idol, Jim Fannelli. But how? It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried before, giving up almost immediately each time when his lack of strength seemed like a mountain so high its peak could not be seen from any distance.

  But that was then. Now, the same cardboard box filled with VHS tapes that had granted them their day’s armor had granted Charlie a greater will. He and Andy had decided it was time for Charlie to embark on a serious program. Pullups and pushups (and they’d shared a great laugh when mentioning pushups, recalling the contents of the game the Fannelli brothers had played on the man in the first video) and constant force-feeding were in order. They’d even shoplifted a tub of high-protein weight-gain powder from a local vitamin shop, through which Charlie vowed to chug at every conceivable opportunity.

  Andy’s transformation was an easier one. Arty Fannelli was slim with dark hair. Andy was slim with dark hair. While it might have seemed a relief to Andy that his metamorphosis would require less work, it was actually a disappointment; he wanted to put forth more of an effort towards his change. He’d felt like the kid with the crappy Halloween costume.

  So they’d settled on tattoos.

  After researching the best methods used by prisoners on the internet, they stayed up late that night and carved into one another with razor blades and pen ink. “Arty” on Andy’s shoulder, “Jim” on Charlie’s.

  Things were coming along nicely. They were now ready to watch the next tape. Better yet, they were beginning to plot their first outing as the new Arty and Jim Fannelli.

  8

  “Honey? Caleb? Where are you going?”

  Caleb finished zipping up his father’s Penn State hoodie and told his mother: “Just out for a bit.”

  “Out where?” And then, with a curious scrunch of the eyebrows: “Out how?”

  He scrunched his eyebrows right back. “What do you mean?”

  “How are you going to get where you’re going?”

  “I called a cab.”

  “A cab to where?”

  “I don’t know. Out.”

  “You want to borrow the car?”

  “I might grab a drink somewhere.”

  Amy inched closer to her son. “You’re underage, Caleb.”

  “I’ve got ID.”

  “Oh do you? Help me out here; what would you suggest a mother do when her underage son with a fake ID—an underage son who’s damn lucky he’s not in jail after recently beating the crap out of a solicitor—casually tells her he’s going out drinking?”

  Caleb only stared at her.

  “I can say ‘no,’ you know,” Amy said.

  “Are you?”

  She hesitated. To flat-out deny her son, end of story, or dig deeper? “If you want a drink, you can have one here. I’ll have one with you.”

  “Pass.”

  The familiar pain in her heart started to burn. Perhaps he might feel better talking to a man?

  “What if Allan went with you? You could have a guys’ night out.” It felt lame the moment it left her lips. Was she really suggesting her underage son and—

  (and who? Just who exactly is Allan to you, Amy? The status of your relationship is as trivial as the status of your son’s current mental state, and not for Allan’s lack of trying to gain some clarity on the subject)

  —Allan go out boozing together like a bunch of old college buddies getting together for a night of laughs?

  “Pass,” Caleb said again.

  “What if you get caught?” Amy tried. Flat-out denying her son, while a perfectly justifiable option, felt like a cheap win; she would gain no satisfaction from it whatsoever. In fact, it shamed her to even think of stripping the situation down to winning and losing—no matter what ended up being recorded in the win/loss column, it would feel like a loss.

  Caleb shrugged. “Then I get caught.”

  There was a honk from outside.

  “My cab’s here,” Caleb said. “Can I go or not?”

  “Will you at least call?”

  “Call you from the bar?”

  It had felt like the thing to say, and like the suggestion that he and Allan go out drinking together, this too felt as lame as ever the moment it left her lips. Had this been a nineteen-year-old Carrie before her, there would have been zero second-guessing. “Absolutely not” would have been out of Amy’s mouth without hesitation. But then, hadn’t she always had that type of relationship with Carrie? Carrie pushing with Amy pushing back harder? Carrie’s intentions an open book, carrying nary a hint of mystery from the day she was born? If the squeaky wheel ever existed, it was Carrie Lambert. And the squeaky wheel, in Amy’s experience, required more discipline than analysis to manage.

  Caleb had always been the antithesis of the squeaky wheel. Except to Amy, her son’s quiet, introverted nature held little mystery, did not require deep analysis. He was a sensitive, loving boy through and through.

  And then a thought burned her heart that much deeper: Perhaps the introvert needed more consideration than the squeaky wheel. The quiet, unassuming lack of burden that was Caleb Lambert the equivalent of some growing secret kept under wraps for years, going whichever direction it wanted without structure, raising no alarms—until it was too late.

  Again, managing her two children had been night and day, even after the horror they’d endured. Carrie suffered on the outside. Nightmares, outbursts, defiance, bad grades, substance abuse.

  Caleb, more often than not, carried himself as though he’d endured no such horror. Both he and Carrie had, of course, lost the same father. Had, of course, experienced similar hells. But hadn’t Caleb’s hell been that much worse than Carrie’s? Losing a father figure in Domino after Patrick? Then—oh God, then—being forced to bludgeon a man to death when he was nine? Nine? Oh God, had the squeaky wheel that was Carrie diverted her attention from a boy who was actually squeaking far louder within the shell of its seemingly stable structure? Imperceptible to all unless you really looked?

  No. No. None of this was news to Amy. None of it. She worried constantly about the mental health of her baby boy. Sent him to countless therapists, even his beloved Dr. Bogan. And what had their consensus been? Dr. Bogan’s consensus? Caleb was fine. The boy just processed things differently. Expressed things differently than his sister.

  And your consensus, Amy? What had your consensus been all that time? What’s your consensus now? How well do you really know your son? Really know him?

  And then a final poker, glowing bright orange from the coals of her doubt, plunged and singed impossibly deeper into her chest. All her studies since becoming a worldwide bestseller. All her knowledge, never mind experience, on evil, how the sinister mind basically fell into the two categories of born or made, or both. How the psychopath could routinely fool society by emulating normal emotions it simply did not possess. Fool professionals. Fool her. Her son had been born good; she knew that much in the deepest regions of her soul. But made? Had her son been made into…?

  Amy could not even complete the thought. Her pain now spread like a flu—guilt and sorrow and helplessness and countless more all blending together and pumping generous amounts of sickness throughout her body. Her eyes filled with tears. And when Caleb said, stoically, and with the same flat affect that had been his face for the past several

  (forever?)

  years, “Don’t cry, Mom,” and then turned and left, Amy lost it.

  9

  Roughly twenty-five miles north from the city of Philadelphia, Doylestown was a thriving town in subur
ban Bucks County, Pennsylvania, its prosperous town center boasting no shortage of upscale bars and restaurants.

  Caleb wanted nothing to do with them. And not for the likely reason that his fake ID would be scrutinized more heavily at such places. He wanted a dingy place where he could sit and drink in silence. A place where mention of the word “ambience” would likely be mistaken for “ambulance”—and to haughtily mention the place’s distinct lack of the former would quite possibly find you traveling to a hospital in the latter. Caleb wanted a dive bar.

  And he told the cab driver this. And the cabbie, after a curious look, after considering the sizeable home and affluent neighborhood from which he’d picked Caleb up, ultimately shrugged and obliged.

  And so after a good fifteen-minute drive to a seedy little dwelling nestled in a seedy little town, Caleb finally got what he was after and was soon tucked away in a dimly lit nook at the end of the bar (the bartender did not even bother to check his ID), where he began taking his preferred choice of medication to quiet his addled mind.

  • • •

  It was perhaps four or five rounds later when the young woman took a seat next to him. Her presence was no great shock to Caleb; he’d spotted her making the rounds of the bar the moment he’d taken a stool. He’d initially chalked it up to her being a barfly, the type who hit up every man drinking alone in hopes of being offered a free drink. In Caleb’s—albeit limited—experience, every dive bar seemed to have one.

  Only this woman was young and attractive. And again, in Caleb’s limited experience, these types tended to look how you would expect: as weathered as the bar itself. And there was something else curious about the woman he’d noticed: she did not seem interested in obtaining a drink from the men she approached. Did, in fact, seem keener to disappear outside with them for a short spell, only to enter the bar once again and quickly make her way out back with the bartender hot on her heels, emerging from the back a minute later to do the dance again with any patron who was willing.