Flypaper Con: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 4

by C. K. Vile

  He hobbled around the bed. His legs were still wobbly from nerves, exhaustion, the chloroform or all of the above. Hellen gave him a shoulder to lean on. “You know they don’t allow smoking in here, right?”

  Nick took a drag and pointed his cigarette at Delbert and Brundle. “Yeah, they can kiss my ass. I think I’ve earned this one.”

  Corpse didn’t move from her position over Nick’s motionless captor. “Boss? You okay okay?”

  Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t have one.

  Chapter 21

  The hotel lobby buzzed with Maggots and conventioneers. Some trickled in off the streets following a long night of soaking in the Austin nightlife. Others wandered down once news of Nick Dawkins’ safe return got around. Almost all of them displayed their Myiasis pride with one form of decorative red fly or another.

  A veritable Maggot army, assembled in his name.

  Nick pushed the sheer absurdity of the whole thing out of his mind and went back to his post-kidnapping-hostage-torture-murder witness report. “I dunno, man, it all happened so fast. I was fighting for my life; I’ve got this kid bleeding out on top of me...” He held an ice pack to his hand. Cold condensation dribbled off the bag and onto his wrist. “...next thing I know, the door’s busted in and the room is swarming with Maggots. Mostly people I don’t know, and to be honest, I’m not super-great with faces.”

  “Sorry, did you say Maggots?” The scruff-faced detective didn’t follow. Understandable. Nick took it for granted that Sheriff Reed had a working knowledge of the lunacy that permeated his life.

  “Yeah, it’s this fan site, the members call themselves Maggots.” He waved a hand at the spontaneous gathering. A bunch of maggots waved back. “You can tell them by all the little red flies they’re wearing. That’s their thing.”

  “Right.” The detective clearly didn’t want to be standing there dealing with Nick and his deranged rogue’s gallery.

  “But no, I didn’t get a good look at who beaned Delbert. You said someone left a bat behind?” Nick caught Corpse in the corner of his eye. She hid in plain sight, hunched over her laptop in a small arrangement of couches and surrounded by Hellen, Starla, Jane and Brian. He’d left Corpse out of the retelling of his ordeal entirely. The authorities would have wanted a statement from her and a nagging voice in the back of his skull told him the Princess Angelina Contesa alias wouldn’t sit with the local law enforcement.

  “Yeah, helluva thing. No one’s come forward to claim it or, you know, responsibility.” He leaned in and spoke softly enough that Nick had to lean in as well. “They probably just don’t want the attention, but frankly, given what we know of the situation, I doubt they’d be in any sort of trouble, you know? But what are you going to do?”

  He’d be buying Corpse a new bat, for starters, but he kept that to himself.

  Blaire left a conversation with the hotel management and wandered to the isolated corner of the lobby where Nick and the detective had parked themselves. “They said you can have a late check out. They’re also comping us for the weekend on account of their massive lapses in security.”

  Nick turned away from the detective in the blind hope that they were done talking. “Well, that’s nice of them.”

  Blaire tapped at her phone. “To be fair, that was only after I threatened to sue the shit out of them.”

  Nick and the detective looked at Blaire in stunned silence with a trace of collective amusement. She looked up from her phone. “What? You could have been killed.”

  Nick tossed the ice pack onto the table in front of him. “Can we be done here?”

  Blaire, ever eager to please her client, answered for the detective. “Yeah, Nick, we’re done here. I’ll wrap up with him and they can call you with any more questions they have. Yes?”

  The detective didn’t protest. He was more than happy to continue his report with the attractive agent. “Yes ma’am, that’d be just fine.”

  Nick stood up and shook the detective’s hand. “Hey, I did want to ask, what kind of shape is Delbert in?”

  The detective glanced around and spoke below a normal volume. “Someone did a number on his head with the aforementioned aluminum bat, but he’s stable.” He added, “Well, he’s physically stable. Mentally...?” The detective let out a long, low whistle. “That guy’s got issues, tell you what. You say you get this kind of thing a lot?”

  Understatement of the weekend. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  The detective watched a fanged and bloodied clown walk past on his way to the elevators. “You should think about switching to kids’ books.”

  Nick rested on his cane. The day wasn’t getting any shorter. “I get that a lot too.”

  “Right.” The detective gave him a sympathetic nod. “Be careful out there, Mr. Dawkins.”

  Blaire and the detective walked away together. Nick made his way over to Corpse and the others. “So. A Maggot army. Well played.”

  Corpse pointed at Jane. “Jane’s idea. Credit or blame goes to her.”

  “Credit. Definitely credit.” He gave Jane a small bow. “Thank you, Jane.”

  She squealed and clutched at her face. “You’re so welcome, Nick, anytime, really. I love you.”

  He pivoted away from Jane on his good leg. “And with that, ladies—gentleman. It’s well past that time for me. You’d think bed is the last place I’d want to be, but the alternative is to fall asleep standing up. I’ll see all of you around, I’m sure.” He focused on Hellen for a moment. “Some of you even before we leave tomorrow, I hope?”

  Everyone on the couches threw him a flurry of casual goodnights, except for Corpse, who hopped up, grabbed her laptop, and followed him toward the elevators.

  “Sweet shit snacks on toast,” she said, “I’m going to sleep for like six whole hours.”

  “Dear god.” Sarcasm slid off Nick’s tongue. “You’ll end up with bed sores at that rate.”

  They walked past multiple gatherings of Maggots and other spectators, waving, saying ‘thank you’ and getting fist bumped until his knuckles ached. Each one watched him with admiration, or pity, or – for all he knew – a tremendous desire to turn his face into a beer cozy. It just depended on whether or not Brewf4ce had decided to attend.

  A huge part of Nick was glad he didn’t have to ask Corpse to come with him. Although he’d plastered a Blaire-worthy smile on his face, he’d have hated for the others to know exactly how spooked he was at getting into an elevator by himself.

  Chapter 22

  “Nick?” Corpse sat on the bed next to Nick and poked him in the ribs.

  He turned over and looked at the wall of the dark hotel room. It was midday, but impossible to tell with the heavy curtains drawn. “This fucking room looks just like Delbert’s.”

  “Minus the raging psycho, am I right? Heyoooo.” Corpse held her hand up and waited for a high-five. It never came. “Come on, Broseph. I got a good nap in, and the hotel was nice enough to give us a late check-out, but eventually I’d like to actually, you know, get on the road. Forest Down is forever away.”

  Nick didn’t move. “You know I had a kid bleed out, like, right on top of me last night, right?”

  She laid down next to him and made a face that was almost sympathetic. “I know, but you can be traumatized in the car.”

  He let out a long, heavy sigh. “Everywhere I go. Everything I do. It follows me.”

  Corpse patted him gently. It was a gesture devoid of actual comfort; an imitation of what people did in these circumstances. She’d seen it on TV once. “Crazy happens, duder. You can’t take responsibility for what other people do.”

  Nick rolled onto his back and rubbed his hand. It ached, but was thankfully free of serious injury. In fact, aside from some tenderness on his wrists where he’d been strapped to Delbert’s bed, he was—for once—relatively unharmed.

  Physically unharmed, at any rate.

  He raised his scarred left hand as a fist into the air above him. “Let’s review.”
/>
  Corpse rolled onto her back as well. “Fair enough, let’s.”

  “Danielle, dead.” Nick extended one finger.

  Corpse countered. “Total psycho. Obsessed with you. Lit herself and you on fire. And the way you tell it, you tried really hard to save her. Like, harder than most people would have.”

  “Tried and failed. Moving on. Clark.” Nick extended another finger.

  “Psycho with an artistic streak. And he was killed in a totally justified cop shooting. You were in a barrel for fuck’s sake.”

  “And his straight-up murder victims, Harold and Daryl.” He extended two more fingers.

  Corpse sniffed. “Harold and Daryl. Sounds like a cartoon.”

  Nick carried on. “I should count the animals too, but I won’t. And then there was Clark’s surviving victim, Delbert. You saw what crossing paths with my life did to him. He went completely batshit and…” Nick trailed off. He looked for patterns in the ceiling. A boat. A house. Anything that didn’t resemble a dog or blood spatter. “I don’t even know the names of the two people he killed. Brundle and that poor bastard in the room next door. And I’m sure that guy had a kid or someone who’ll seek me out and murder me in the next few years.” He stuck out his left thumb and had to go to his right hand to continue counting. “That’s six dead people. Six people who were alive... walking, talking, breathing people, who were born and went to school and had mothers and fathers and people who loved them and now they’re dead, and it’s my fault.”

  “Oh my god.” Corpse flopped around on the bed like a fish on the sidewalk. “It’s not your fault.”

  Nick dropped his hands to his stomach and interlaced his fingers. “Well, I know it’s not directly my fault, I’m not a murderer, but it’s definitely indirectly my fault.”

  “Okay, okay, wait...” Corpse raised a finger in the air above them. “Let’s say I have a friend. Who is not you. And I find out that my friend’s boyfriend is cheating on her. And I tell her and she goes out and butchers the guy. I mean she spreads him across three states. Like his head is in Wisconsin and his lungs are in Denver and his testicles are in—”

  “I get it, Corpse.”

  “Okay. Is his death my fault?”

  Nick shifted uncomfortably. “Well, not directly your fault, but—”

  “No. No buts.” Corpse sat up in bed and turned toward Nick, meeting his eyes. “I’m going to show you something almost no one ever sees. You ready?”

  He nodded.

  “This...” Corpse waved her hand downward in front of her face. “...this is my serious face. I’m being very serious now.”

  Nick smiled. Somehow the idea of Corpse being serious was funnier than her just being Corpse.

  She swatted him. “Don’t smile, fucker, I’m being serious.”

  He tightened his lips. “Sorry, go ahead.”

  “It’s not my fault what my hypothetical nutbar friend does. She could do all kinds of things with that information. Like break up with him. If she decides to turn him into chum, that’s totally on her.”

  Nick sat up as well. “That seems a little short-sighted. What if you knew she might react that way in advance and told her anyway? Does that not put some of the responsibility on you?”

  Corpse folded her arms. “This is my hypothetical, don’t complicate my shit. I’m trying to prove a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Everyone is responsible for their own actions and theirs alone. You write fiction. That is literally the extent of your culpability in all of those deaths you listed. The end. Did Jodie Foster quit acting because John Hinkley shot Reagan to impress her? Fuck no.”

  Nick lowered his head and examined his left hand. “What about Danielle?”

  “Shit, what about her?”

  He traced the scars in his palm with his right finger. “I was right there. Just like with Brundle, I was right there. And I couldn’t save either of them.”

  Corpse knocked his hands apart and pulled his attention back to her. “Hey. You tried to pull Danielle from the car, right?”

  Nick gave a half-shrug. “Yeah.”

  “Did you half-ass it?”

  “No.”

  Corpse exaggerated a shrug of her own. “I don’t know what to tell you. It sounds like you’re guilt-free to me, man.”

  “Huh.” Nick allowed himself a half-smile. “I wish.”

  Knock knock knock

  Corpse hopped off the bed and sprinted for the door. “I’ll get it. You get ready to go.” She paused. “Oh mother—it’s just Hellen.”

  Nick pulled his tee back into place. “Who were you expecting?”

  “Never mind that.” Corpse’s voice was followed by the unlatching of the door and light from the hallway pouring into the room. “Hellen.”

  “Corpse.” Hellen said as she walked into Nick’s field of view. “Contain your enthusiasm to see me, won’t you?”

  “Don’t mind her,” Nick said, the corner of his mouth smirking up. “I think she was hoping Star-la,” he sing-songed the word “would come say good-bye. Well, not say good-bye, but you know what I mean.”

  “Silence, infidel. Not in front of the square.” Corpse looked at Hellen. “By square I mean you.”

  Hellen looked around the room at the lack of anyone else. “I gathered.” She turned to Nick. “I wanted to say bye before I left. How are you doing?”

  Corpse zipped up her suitcase and set it next to the bed. “He’s all traumatized and shit.”

  “Understandable.” Hellen turned to Nick. “From being strapped to a bed by the mad crab guy, or from... you know.”

  Nick lowered his voice as his eyes watered beyond his control. “Little of both. Mostly what happened to the kid, I think. I don’t think he was totally bad, you know.”

  Hellen looked at Corpse, then back at Nick. “You know he was going to kill you, right? That was why he was there. He got himself into that situation.”

  Nick stood up and began gathering his belongings, including the bags full of formaldehyde-drenched clothing that had been delivered to Corpse’s room. “True. But I had a moment there with him, and I don’t think he’d have gone through with it. I think he was just a dumb kid who got caught up in the Myiasis bullshit.”

  “Oh, speaking of which...” Hellen held up her phone. “did you see the DawkinsCon results? Blood vomit guy won.”

  “Yay for him.” The vague amusement Nick had derived from the previous day’s antics had been obliterated by the horror he’d witnessed overnight. “What’d he win?”

  “Good question.” Hellen slid her finger along her phone’s screen several times. “Huh. This says he won ‘a digital copy of Nick Dawkins’ new book, God Complex’.”

  Nick shoved his clothing haphazardly into his foul-smelling suitcase. “That’s kind of a lame prize. That dude got beat up and arrested for what? A ten-dollar prize?”

  “This says ‘prize delivered immediately’.”

  Nick zipped up his suitcase. “Wait, what? Let me see that.”

  He examined Hellen’s phone. “That can’t be right. There are like, three or four people in the world who would have a copy of that.”

  “Shit.” Corpse closed her laptop in preparation for the journey home. “We haven’t really talked since last night. I’d forgotten in the chaos…”

  Nick and Hellen both watched her with rapt attention.

  Corpse shoved her laptop into her shoulder bag. “I was looking into all the weird security stuff. The cameras, the Houdini brain trick. All that stuff. I was getting nowhere. So I started looking at the DawkinsCon app.”

  Nick waited for the payoff to another slow build. Everyone was a damn storyteller. “And...?”

  “And I saw something I recognized. It could be a coincidence. But it’s super unlikely. Bottom line...” Corpse set her shoulder bag with the rest of their luggage. “I don’t think The Administrator built Myiasis, or the DawkinsCon app. But I think I know who did. And this person would totally be our Anti-Corpse
. Getting into—say—Blaire’s computer would be cake for him.”

  A long pause. Too long. “Are you going to tell us who it is?”

  Corpse threw a chin at Hellen. “Not in front of her. In fact, come to think of it, I shouldn’t have said that much. Damn, I’m still tired.”

  Hellen stomped a foot. “You mean after last night you still don’t trust me?”

  “I trust one person in the world.” Corpse picked up the last full can of energy drink on the table and popped it open. She side-eyed Nick. “And you’re not him.”

  Nick sighed. “Okay, save it for the car ride home, then.” He extended a hand to Hellen. “Hellen... I’m sorry our date got screwed up.”

  She wrapped her fingers around his. “Don’t you dare apologize for last night. We’ll try again another time, yes? Maybe next year?”

  He smiled. “If not sooner.”

  Hellen hugged him and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Nick.” She pointed at Corpse. “Keep him safe for me.”

  The webmaster squinted at her as she walked out the hotel room door. “Right.”

  Nick grabbed his suitcase. “You ready?”

  “Yes and no.” Corpse frowned as she slung her bag over her shoulder. “They kept my bat as evidence. I feel naked. Stupid of me to have left it behind in the first place.”

  “We’ll get you a new one.” Nick held the door to the room open for her.

  “Good,” she said as she pulled her suitcase into the hallway. “I think I know the first person I’m going to use it on.”

  The hotel room door closed behind them. “Well you’ve gotta be excited for that, right?”

  Corpse stopped walking and looked at Nick. “Okay, with the serious face, one last time.” She looked up and down the hall. “If I’m right… if this guy is involved, and I make a move against him… we’re not ready. We’ll never be ready.”

  A chill coursed its way through Nick’s blood. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

  “I told you… serious face.” But then her eyes brightened again. “But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s a kid in his mom’s basement jerking off to your misery and not a sociopathic nightmare the likes of which you’ve never met. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”