She neatly wiped the dirt from the table, then stepped back to admire her handiwork.
Lois stares down at what she's done. Blood and crystal everywhere. Her son's face is all but gone. She looks into his remaining eye, breathing raggedly though her teeth.
Slowly she calms.
She looks up and around. It is broad daylight, but there is no one around to have seen. Nothing around but trees. She is alone.
Alone.
She swallows and eases herself up. Her knees pop and crack, but she makes it. She carefully places the pieces of the dish on the porch, then wipes her hands on her shirt.
She breathes in deep and lets it out.
Then she turns and heads across her yard, aiming for a metal shed set in one corner. There is a shovel inside.
A pain grew in the small of Lois' back. A pain from too much standing, too much scurrying around. She ignored it. Her whole family was getting together. It was too joyous an occasion for aches.
She put some finishing touches on the table setting and smiled. “I think we're ready.” She stepped back, nodding, then smiled at her husband.
“Oh sweetheart,” she said, “I swear you look as handsome as the day I married you.”
Her husband was propped up in a chair at the head of the table. His skin was dry and tight over his eyeless skull. Rotten teeth hung from his gaping mouth and dirt clung to his body. A beetle crawled from an eye socket, then retreated back inside.
“You're so sweet to say that,” she said, then leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. A bit of his skin came loose and stayed on her lip as she pulled back.
“Oh my,” she said, wiping it off with her dish towel.
The doorbell rang.
“And there's Jody,” she said, turning to head for the front door. She stopped, considering something. She picked up a long knife from the table, then went to the door.
She looked out the peephole. There was Jody, blond hair framing her sweet earnest face.
“Such a good girl,” said Lois. She held the knife behind her back, then opened the door.
All Kinds Of Things Kill
October 12
So this is my notebook. It’s not a diary or journal or any of that shit. It’s just a notebook I’m going to write in, because I promised Carla I would. Our prissy little marriage counselor thought it was a good idea to write down my thoughts, and unfortunately Carla agreed. I would do anything for Carla, so here I am.
If you’re reading this, I’m either dead or you’re about to be. Unless you're Carla. And if you are Carla, I’m sorry for keeping things from you, baby. I had to. No one can know what I do.
What is it I do? Well, first someone offers me a bunch of money. Then I find some guy I’m supposed to find. And I shoot him, stab him, strangle him, something of that nature. He looks at me all surprised and then he dies. Then the someone from the beginning gives me the bunch of money. It’s actually surprising what a big deal it isn’t, once you get used to it.
But that’s the problem. Most people aren’t used to it, so I make sure that most people don’t know. Not even Carla, and she’s my wife. She’s never seen the ‘office’ I supposedly go to every day. And she never acts like she wants to. That’s some trusting shit.
Why, just the other day she came in all smiles and thank-you's over this frilly skimpy thing I’d bought her. And a silver necklace with real diamonds. Man, did we ever screw that night and I love the hell out of her. But what office am I supposedly working at where I'm making that kind of money? Like I said, she’s very trusting.
So I kill, if you want to boil it down. That's what I do. But so what? All kinds of things kill.
October 17
So I met with this guy today. Down at the bar where I do a lot of my meetings. It must be the ‘office’ Carla’s thinking of. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. A few days ago this woman I know comes in, sits next to me at the bar and says “I got a friend who’d like to meet that cousin of yours.”
I say “Well, perhaps the two of them can meet here in two days at noon.” And she leaves. But there’s no cousin, right? This lady’s chum is going to be meeting me. We just say ‘cousin’ in case anyone’s overhearing.
So, today at noon this guy I’ve never seen before comes in. He’s a nervous chubby little jack-off and he keeps looking around like he expects the germs on the walls to jump off and attack him.
We sit down in a booth together, across the table from each other. He coughs and runs his hand through his thin hair. “Well, no point in beating around the bush, I suppose,” he says. Then he gives this dipshit little laugh and takes a picture out of his pocket.
“I want you to kill this man,” he says, sliding the picture across the table to me.
I look at the asshole in the picture, then flip it over. His name and address are on the back, no doubt written by chubs across from me. The guy lives fairly close to me. Which makes me nervous. I like the bodies I leave to be a good distance from my home.
“For how much?” I ask.
And the guy says a figure. A large figure. One of the largest I’ve ever heard for a job. And I’m looking at this guy and thinking, where’s he getting all this fucking money? I briefly consider killing him and taking whatever cash he has on him. But that wouldn’t be very professional, now would it?
So, the money overrides my nervousness. I nod, slip the picture into my coat and say “Consider it done.”
“There’s one other thing,” says the guy. And he reaches into a pocket and pulls out a gun. Now, if I thought this guy had the balls to shoot he’d have a knife in his throat before he had a chance to point it. But he doesn’t point it. Instead, he sets it down on the table and slides it across to me.
“You have to use this gun.”
I shake my head. “I have my own equipment. It’ll do the job.”
The guy looks at me, then around the room. He picks up the gun, opens the chamber and dumps out the bullets. He pushes the bullets over to me. They are the shiniest bullets I’ve ever seen.
“Then at least use these bullets.”
Again, I shake my head. “I make my own.” Which is true. I have my own set-up at home. I figure it gives the cops one less thing to trace if the bullets don’t come from some store. My wife thinks I make them because I’m a gun enthusiast. Which I guess is true, now that I think of it.
“You have to use the bullets or there’s no deal,” he says. He looks afraid I might punch him. And I might at that.
All this is making me nervous again. “How much money did you say?”
He repeats the figure. Again, it’s a pretty large fucking figure.
I give him the eye. “You’ve got some balls, don’t you?”
“Please,” he says, “just use the bullets.”
Seeing as how he’s about to make me cry with all his pleading and shit, I pick up the gun and bullets. “Fine,” I say. “Just don’t expect it back afterwards.”
The guy nods. “Fine, fine. Just please make sure it gets done. And, one more thing.”
Another 'one more thing'?, I’m thinking. How many 'one more things' is this? He leans in close, like he’s sharing some big secret, something bigger than hiring a stranger to kill somebody.
“Try to avoid doing it at night.”
October 19
You wouldn’t believe my fucking luck.
See, I have something of a taco fetish. No, that doesn’t mean I jack off to pictures of tacos or want a woman to blow me while holding a taco. It just means I like tacos a whole fucking lot, despite the number they do on my plumbing.
So there’s this taco joint where I get my usual fix. And I pull up like I always do, get out of the car, and there’s the guy. Standing there, at my taco joint, is the guy I’m supposed to kill with chubs' gun.
He’s on his way through the door, and we happen to lock eyes. And I swear sure as fuck, I’m scared for a second. This random little prick scares me with his eyes. There’s something wrong with them. Th
ey remind me of this dog that scared me and my buddies when we were kids. Eyes of crazy random killing, not the clean professional stuff I do.
He blinks and goes inside. And I’m pissed at him for looking like that damned fucking dog, and decide to do him right then and there.
Well, not right then and right there. That wouldn’t do. I lean back into the car, get chubs' gun from the glove box, then shut the door. I wait in the shadow of an awning near the door to the taco place. It’s getting dark. I remember chubs' big secret of not doing it at night, but fuck chubs and fuck dog-face in there. I’m not afraid of the dark. I kill people, for fuck’s sake.
The air gets cold surprisingly quick, and dog-face is in there for quite some time. He must be having a sit-down meal, a big dog-bowl of tacos. I laugh and try not to think about that damned dog from my kiddie days. The gun is heavy in my pocket.
I feel a yawn coming on when he bursts out of the door. He runs past me, clutching his stomach, and stumbles up an alley. Too many tacos, I figure. I look side to side, grip the gun, and follow.
The alley is dark and I have trouble seeing. I can hear groaning up ahead, like my mark is having a hellacious puke. But something in the sound makes my spine cold. I decide to get this over fast.
“Hey buddy?” I say, hoping to lure him out where I can see him. “You okay?”
And there is no sound. No more moaning, but dog-face isn’t talking, either. I listen hard in the dark and can make out the sound of breathing.
“Buddy?” I say, getting sick of this shit.
Then this huge fucking dog leaps at me out of the darkness. I know it's just an effect of the dark and my own mind, but for a moment it’s that big dog from the old neighborhood. Moonlight glints in its crazy eyes.
The thing knocks me down, snarling and sinking its fucking teeth into my leg. I hear the dog’s growls blubbering in my blood.
“Fucker!” I yell, and start shooting. I empty all of chubs' bullets at the dog, not even bothering to aim. At least one must hit, because the dog whines and lets go, running back into the dark.
“Shit,” I say, working hard to keep calm so I don’t bleed too much. I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and wrap it around the wound. It gets red and soppy, but the bleeding mostly stops.
So by now I’m pretty pissed. One, I’ve got this huge dog bite. Two, I’ve emptied the only weapon I have on me. Three, I’ve made a heck of a lot of noise, enough to draw a crowd (as in, witnesses.) And four, my mark has no doubt high-tailed it out the other end of the alley.
It wouldn’t do to walk out the way I’d come in, right next to the taco joint with people no doubt starting to peek their heads out the door. So, I limp my sorry ass deeper into the alley, hoping to find my way to the other exit and escape unseen.
But on my way, I come to a spot where the moon has lit everything up, and there sure as shit is my mark. Dog-face. He’s deader than shit, with more than one bullet hole in him. His clothes are torn all to hell and there’s even blood on his face. I wonder which killed him, me or the freakin' dog. But I guess it doesn’t matter. I wipe the fingerprints off chubs' gun, drop it and make my way down to the other side of the alley and then to home undetected.
Like I said, you wouldn’t believe my fucking luck.
October 20
I can’t believe what just happened.
I hit Carla.
I’ve never done anything like that in my life. Hell, I’ve never even wanted to.
I’d just gotten home from sitting all day at that stupid bar, waiting for chubs to come and pay me. No word from him, but he’s not supposed to check in for another few days. So I should have expected no word from him, but for some reason it made me madder than shit. So mad I could have gunned down the whole bar. No, I didn’t want to gun them down. I wanted to rip them all to pieces with my hands. What’s the matter with me? I’m a professional, not some half-cocked asshole.
So, after a whole day of fuming I go back home. So far I'd managed to hide the dog bite from Carla. But sometime during the day it started bleeding again and I didn’t notice. Blood seeped into my pants and she saw it plain as day when I came in.
“What’s the matter with your leg?” She’s wearing the frilly little thing and the necklace I got her, like she’s hoping for some action.
“Nothing, dammit,” I say, much meaner than usual. I’m never mean to Carla.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” she says, coming over to inspect. “Let me look.”
“Get the fuck away from me!” I yell and smack her across the face. Hard. The shock of it stuns us both for a second, then she runs to the bathroom to cry.
That’s where she is now, as I’m writing this. Crying in the bathroom.
You’ve got to understand, I’m no wife beater. When I first started killing for money, I would tell myself the marks were wife beaters and shit like that. To make me feel better about killing them.
I feel like such shit I don’t even want to think about it. I’m going to bed. Maybe it’ll be better in the morning.
(Date not written)
Oh god. Oh my fucking god. I don’t know what’s happened. Oh god.
Carla.
I woke up a few minutes ago. Blood everywhere. Like someone dumped a bunch of just-butchered meat into our bed. Bloody chunks of gore, all over the sheets and pillows. And Carla, where the fuck is Carla?
I know where she is.
Fuck me, I know where she is.
I woke up to find this mess everywhere. I jump out of the bed, screaming for Carla. I’m terrified something’s happened to her, and raging to find whoever caused all this blood and tear the shit out of them.
Then my stomach seizes up. It’s not the blood, I’ve seen my share of blood. I scream for Carla one more time then run to the bathroom. I puke like I’ve never done before. And what comes out of me?
Meat. Hunks of raw meat and blood come pouring out of my mouth, into the toilet. I scream at the puke as it’s coming out.
It finally stops and I slump forward against the bowl. Blood is all over my face and swimming around in the toilet. Chunks of meat bob in front of me. Something catches in my throat. I cough and hack into my hand, then feel something hit my palm. I pull my hand back and look.
It’s the necklace. The one I gave Carla. I coughed up the necklace and you know what that means about what’s in the bowl. Oh shit. Oh shit.
So now I’m writing my suicide note. I understand what attacked me in the alley, and I know why chubs insisted I use his gun. And those bullets. They were silver, weren't they? Call me crazy if you want, but all that shit is true. I know that now. That fucker bit me and now I’ve eaten my wife. Oh, god, Carla I’m so sorry. I never wanted anything to happen to you.
There’s some silver in this house, I know it. Some fancy spoons Carla was so proud of, some jewelry. Fuck, the necklace I just puked up. I’m going downstairs and making a bullet from them. It won’t be much of a bullet, what with how my hands are shaking, but it’ll get the job done.
Goodbye.
Carla, I love you and I know you’ll be in heaven and I will be in hell.
Forgive me.
Note from Dr Breakman, Ashton Mental Health Facility:
These notes were found when the patient was arrested in his home on the early morning of October 21. He had bled significantly and had a crude silver projectile lodged in his chest. The wound was shallow and we were able to save him.
Details of what happened that night are still unclear. We hope to glean more from the patient once his psychosis can be stabilized. He is still suffering from the delusion that he is a lycanthrope, or werewolf. I will be disproving that tonight. I will stay up all night with the patient in his cell. He will be restrained, of course, but we will stay up overnight and disprove this werewolf nonsense. It should be easy enough.
Tonight is a full moon.
Boil Order
The stove ran constantly in twelve-year-old Timothy Bayer’s house. Big stock pots of wat
er boiled night and day. When the water was boiled, his mother would dump it into many large buckets spread across the kitchen. Only this water was safe.
The town of Lakewood had been under a boil order for three weeks and counting. Any water used by anyone had to be boiled. No one in power would say why.
Nobody knew what was wrong. The water looked fine. Aaron said it smelled fine. Timothy found his older cousin sniffing a cup in the bathroom. He yelled at Aaron to stop. Aaron laughed and called him a sissy. Then he stuck a finger in the water and flicked at Timothy’s hand.
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