Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  I tried the front door, expecting it to be locked. It opened. Drawing both my .45s, my gloved hands wrapped tightly around their pearl grips, I stepped into the house.

  Inside looked very different than the outside. The walls and floors met each other in a beautiful collusion of somber grays and silent blacks. All the furniture was wrought iron, masterfully crafted and eerie like the set props from a Tim Burton nightmare. In the foyer where I stood, several large paintings lined the rounded walls, each one a skilled exploration into the macabre. Some depicted demonic scenes of torture and rape, others filled their canvas with more human slaughters, and still others boasted an abstract form that, while it didn’t directly display its horror, hinted at foul deeds and dark minds in a way that realism can’t.

  In front of me in the center of the room, a large pedestal of twisted metal rose from the dark gray floor. On it sat a small black envelope embossed with red script, reading: Mr. Parker.

  Before I go on, it’s important that I fill in a few gaps.

  First things first: about two hours after I’d struck out for my home in Illinois, I changed my mind, deciding against a direct trip to the address on my license. I ended up laying low in Detroit for a few weeks instead. Along the way, I disposed of Rachel’s and the big black guy’s bodies using a funeral home’s crematorium—without the proprietor’s permission, of course.

  In Detroit, I decided to buy some new guns, custom made and really cool-looking, and I set out to locate a black market gun dealer. The big problem was that I had no idea at all of how to search out a black market anything in Detroit.

  The best way to go about it, I thought, would be to play Batman—I’m serious! See, whenever the Dark Knight needs to find a crook and has no leads, he starts busting heads all over the city until he stomps some asshole who knows what he’s looking to know. So, full of comic book know-how, I spent several nights torturing and killing shady characters all over the city. I learned a couple of things too: first, using the Batman method, all you end up doing is killing a lot of street trash and gangsta wannabes, and second, street hoods don’t traffic in made to order weapons, they just sell whatever shit they’re talking about in rap songs these days.

  I did eventually find what I was looking for, though not on the street. Think about it, if you want to buy guns, where better to look than at a gun show?

  I tracked one down and discovered it easier to get what I wanted than I’d ever imagined. I walked around for a while and spent a few hours trading service stories with the inbred rednecks who play at being dealers before I met the right guy. First business I did with him, I paid him two hundred dollars to make my old .45 and Rachel’s 9mm disappear. With that out of the way, I ordered the guns I sought.

  They arrived a week later, delivered to my hotel by UPS. I could only keep my cool just long enough to sign for the package and tip the delivery guy. I shut and locked my door, raced over to the bed, and ripped into the package like a kid on Christmas Eve.

  They were beautiful, exactly what I’d had in mind. I pulled them, one at a time, from their packaging and caressed them with care, like a virgin lover.

  Twin .45s.

  Not just regular .45s either but chrome plated, pearl handled beauties. To make them perfect, on their grips I’d ordered a symbol worked into the pearl—the immolated kid from the cover of the Bad Religion album Suffer.

  In addition to my guns, the package contained black leather shoulder holsters. The whole thing had set me back about seven grand. That’s a lot, but they’re untraceable, and good work doesn’t come cheap.

  The guns represented the beginning of a new style for me, and I wanted to outfit myself accordingly.

  Two days later, I left Detroit for Illinois, dressed in black dress slacks, an un-tucked red button down, and a three-quarter length leather trench coat. From that point on, I also took to wearing gloves at all times. I settled on a tight-fitting black pair made out of lambskin and finished it all off with a pair of square toed, Doc Marten dress boots.

  Which brings us back to the little black envelope and the message it contained.

  It shocked me to find it there. To be honest, I’d expected the address on my license to belong to somebody else, maybe a rich bachelor or a well-off family, I don’t know. I’d originally planned to scope the place out and then kill everyone inside. Hell, I might even have stayed for a couple of days.

  The letter changed everything. It seems the place did, in fact, belong to me.

  It read:

  Mr. Parker,

  Congratulations on having made it to this point. From the beginning I had every confidence that you would. In fact, I have taken the liberty of preparing this place for you. As I’ve said, I am quite an admirer of your work and—like any true patron of the arts—I feel compelled to ensure its continuation. I trust that you will find all that you could need in order to pursue your art form to its perfection located within this house. In addition, you will find all papers pertaining to your identity as well as your ownership of this estate in the master bedroom.

  Enjoy,

  Louis

  I began to question who the hell Louis was. Obviously he had money; shit, he was loaded. But it bothered me that he had in-depth knowledge of my tastes and my murders. I explored the rest of my new house. I came to realize that Louis had a staggering, all-encompassing knowledge of me. From my likes to my clothing sizes, he seemed to know everything about me.

  Yet, the more I saw, the less it bothered me. Whoever he was, he’d just given me everything I could possibly need for the work ahead. If he wanted to be a patron of the arts, then so be it, I’d be the artist. God knows the house had all the brushes I could ever want.

  There were many different rooms and myriad attractions, but right away some things drew my attention to them more than the others.

  For instance, the torture room.

  A horrific place, like something out of the inquisition, it boasted a rack, an iron maiden, a wheel of pain, hell, there was even a generator and alligator clips (of course, they didn’t have generators during the inquisition, but I’m willing to bet they’d have used them if they had). All in all, fifty-odd devices of human suffering littered the room. I knew I’d be spending quite a good bit of my time there.

  Next door to the torture chamber was the sex room.

  If I’d thought the previous room contained everything imaginably useful for its intended purpose, then this room went beyond the bounds. I’d never even heard of some of the toys there—yet another good place for me to invest my free time.

  In my master bedroom (two floors away from the sex and torture dungeon) I found a four-poster bed of gigantic proportion, easily measuring ten feet wide and fifteen feet long. The room had doorways to no fewer than four walk-in closets, and each contained a unique treasure horde.

  The first of the four housed row upon row of clothing, all of it dark—mostly blacks and grays—and all of it in just the style I would have chosen.

  The second closet harbored just as many clothes, but instead of suits and everyday wear, it held costumes. I’m not talking about Halloween costumes either (although there were a few of them), but things like police uniforms, doctor’s scrubs, and mechanic’s overalls—virtually everything I could need to impersonate almost any type of person.

  The next closet held all the badges, briefcases, and other accessories that would be needed for the costumes.

  The final closet took my breath away. From floor to ceiling, all around the medium-sized room were weapons. Shotguns, rifles, machine guns, pistols—even a Bizon sub-machine gun. Not just guns either. Far from it, the room boasted knives, swords, axes, caltrops—every imaginable tool of hand-held death right down to piano wire.

  It occurred to me that the contents of the house alone could fetch me close to a few decades in prison if discovered, never mind the murders I’d committed.

  I dismissed the notion offhandedly; after all, you can’t perfect murder if you’re worried ab
out getting caught.

  I rummaged through the dressers of the room, laying out pajamas, and got ready to grab a shower. I moved to fetch a towel from the linen closet and caught sight of a safe embedded in a wall.

  After investigation, I found the safe’s combination taped to the door. 15-35-68-24. The tumblers fell into place, and the door cracked open. A stack of papers about two inches thick lay inside.

  I pulled them out and looked through them. The stack contained the deed to the house (in Robert Parker’s name, of course); my new persona’s birth certificate, social security card, and passport (with up-to-date visas from Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Taiwan, and France); both my high school and college diplomas (it seems I held a degree in psychology); tax returns for the last six years, six credit cards, and a bank book.

  I flipped through the bank book and discovered that I was quite wealthy—filthy fucking rich in fact, with a net worth of over four million dollars.

  It took a while for that to sink in. Quite a while.

  Once I’d come to terms with my sudden windfall, I caught that shower.

  I spent almost an hour and a half in there, letting the steaming water ease the road ache from my bones while marveling at the house’s seemingly inexhaustible hot water tank. Afterwards, I turned in and fell dead asleep.

  I dreamed of murder.

  Like a shadow, I crept through the city, leaving the dead in my wake—hundreds upon thousands, their bodies innumerable. Their blood flowed dark and red and formed a river, a fetid waterway of death, fed by the tributaries I’d created. Fueled by the seeping life of the newly dead, my shadowy form took on substance. It hardened and congealed, becoming my true form. There, amidst the wasteland of the damned, I stood, naked and glorified. Before my eyes, the bodies of my victims decayed, rotting at impossible speeds until only their bones remained. Then, beautifully, the bones crept towards me, lifting me, raising me on high as they knitted together beneath me. I sat enthroned upon a chair of my victims’ remains. I smiled, victorious, and threw my head back in wild laughter. From somewhere far away, another laughed with me.

  I awoke from my dream at around ten p.m. I’d only slept about four hours but I felt rested. For the first time in my adult life, all was right in the world—in my world. Finally, I was serving my purpose in life. Expectant destiny stretched on before me, I had but to proceed.

  I decided to do something special in order to celebrate. After all, it’s not every day that you find you’re a millionaire. I dressed in black slacks and a long-sleeved, gray pullover, pulled on my boots and gloves and strode to the garage.

  After everything I’d received for free already, I had no right to expect anything to be there, but something told me there would be.

  A dark gray Taurus, complete with incognito siren and lights, was the first of the three vehicles I saw—the second, a Cadillac SSR, black in color, and with a black mock rag. Last and best, though, was the Hummer—nice, to say the least, black like the Caddie, and packed with extras. Back when I was in the Corps, I was a 3531—my method of service (MOS) was driver—we had hundreds of Hummers that we tooled around in, and they were always the butt of our jokes—most of which centered around taking pride in the fact that everything Uncle Sam provides is supplied by the lowest bidder. Truth to be told, though, there’s no finer vehicle, off road or on.

  Naturally, I chose to take the Hummer.

  I checked the ignition. The keys dangled from it, waiting for me. Smiling, I headed back to my bedroom and straight to the fourth closet. I took down the Bizon and loaded up ten clips with the ammunition I’d need. You’ve got to love the Bizon, at just under seventeen inches in length, it packs a lethal wallop and holds sixty-five rounds per clip. It’s the pride of Russian security forces, and rightly so.

  I slipped on my shoulder holsters, loaded up my .45s, and threw on my trench. Long pockets, just big enough to conceal a pump shotgun—or in this case, a Bizon—lined either side of the coat’s interior. I holstered the machine gun, spiked my hair, and made my way back out to the Hummer.

  Half an hour later, I reached Chicago, not wanting to kill in the quiet little ‘burb I now called home. It’s like the song says: Don’t shit where you eat, my friend.

  It took me about forty-five minutes of hunting to find what I wanted. I parked the Hummer, slipped a clip in the Bizon, and rechecked all ten clips, making sure they were loaded correctly. Once out of the vehicle, I walked to the front door.

  The sign above read: PLAYAS.

  I smiled at the mass of idiocy that one word moniker intoned, patted my coat in anticipation, and stepped over the threshold.

  Inside, a wall to wall sea of grinding, writhing bodies furiously moved to the beat of yet another Puff Daddy remix. Various Don Juans of the ghetto did their best to seduce the prettiest un-wed mothers any dance club could boast. Wave upon wave of dancers rolled across my view, taking no notice of the lone white guy at the door.

  My anonymity only lasted a minute, though. Two mountains of muscle—each wearing a skin-tight, black T-shirt reading STAFF—moved to block my view and glared down at me.

  “What the hell you think you’re doin’ here?” the smaller (if six and a half feet can be called small), bald one demanded.

  “You trying to get killed, White Boy? This ain’t your people’s place,” the larger guy with the Afro added.

  I smiled broadly. “I don’t know, I thought I might pick up a couple of crack whores.”

  Their faces, already clouded with hate, turned to tempests of rage. I didn’t give them a chance to react (though I’ll bet their reaction would have been very, very violent). I whipped my .45s out and started firing.

  Two rounds to the face dropped Baldy. Afro Boy took one to the throat and two to the chest before he followed. Screams ripped through the club, and within seconds, everyone in the place focused their attention on me.

  I killed haphazardly then, emptying both of my clips and dropping about thirteen more bodies.

  Like most ghetto clubs, Playas appeared to have just one entrance or exit. I couldn’t see any rooms or doors other than the bathrooms and the one I stood in. My victims were trapped.

  Standing between the mob and the only visible way out, I holstered my .45s, their heat comforting against my ribs, and pulled out my sub-machine gun.

  Eight or so would-be heroes moved to rush me when they saw me holstering my guns, realizing all too late the mistake that they’d made. They were the next to die.

  The crowd surged away from me, desperate to seek some escape from the deathtrap their club had become. A few people, those who’d managed to smuggle small pistols past the security, had pulled their guns out by then and returned fire. With a second volley of fire, I cut most of them down. The ones I didn’t hit on my first try managed to get off several shots. Unfortunately for them, small caliber guns aren’t very accurate when being shot by inexperienced and untrained marksmen, especially when their owners are dealing with the intense pressure of being fired on while aiming.

  None of them hit me.

  Round after round, clip after clip, I fired into the crowd. They fell by the scores, bullet ridden and blood stained. Their bodies piled upon each other in a mass of cycle jackets and Tommy gear.

  Barely fifteen minutes after I had entered Playas, pretty much everyone was dead.

  I employed a quick search of the place, finding and killing about eighteen more people who had managed to hide from me. Some crouched behind the bar, others behind the DJ booth, most of them in the restrooms. Regardless of where they hid, I found them, taking time to kill each of them up close, relishing their deaths.

  I strode into the center of the club, the remains of my victims all around me. I guestimated the body count at around three hundred or so—a damn good night’s work. I left.

  My guestimation turned out to be off on the body count—there’d only been two hundred and thirty-seven people there. I found out the exact numbers the next day in the paper. Surprisingly,
no one had discovered the bodies until the next morning when the cleaning crew had shown up—no one who reported it anyway. Evidently, people hadn’t paid much attention to the gunshots—which had to have sounded like a small war—and the police chalked the whole thing up as a gang massacre. The club’s owner had quite an illicit reputation with the cops and had been making all sorts of enemies around the city.

  But back to the evening at hand. The club wasn’t my final stop that night. It was, after all, a celebration, and it had been a long time since I’d gotten drunk.

  On the east side of town, I found a nice upscale joint called Kippers. The Bizon and the .45s got stowed away in one of the Hummer’s back compartments, safely hidden—along with my trench. Confident of my guns’ security, I walked into the club.

  A much different club than Playas, the whole place, and everyone in it, stank of money. Real money, not the meager thousands of fast cash that pimps and dealers throw around, but the kind of cash that comes from the upwardly mobile, those whose steady inflow of money will last for quite a while with no threat of interruption by prison time or stray bullets. The DJ still played Puffy, though.

  A two-hundred-dollar tip convinced him to avoid playing any more. Several of the savvier bar girls took eager note of the transaction; there’s nothing better, after all, than a guy who’s willing to throw away money to get it exactly how he likes it.

  I took a seat at the bar and ordered an eight-dollar Jack and Coke that tasted like fifty-cent soda. I called the bartender back and slipped him a twenty, explaining the difference between what he normally served and what he would be serving me. The next drink he brought me was right, though still not worth eight dollars. But, hey, the extra cost was for the atmosphere, and considering that the place literally crawled with women, I considered it a fair mark up.

  I sipped my drink and waited.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It didn’t take long for my wait to pay off. A huntress approached me. Her tight, low-cut dress clung to her body, accentuating every curve and highlighting her breasts. With blonde, shoulder length hair, soft blue eyes, and pouty lips, the girl looked amazing, from head to toe a child of beauty who’d never known any other way. She seated herself beside me with the instinctual grace of a lioness closing in for the kill.