Flypaper: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 1

by C. K. Vile

  Nick walked out of the store and found that Forest Down was gone, replaced by an immense field of tall grass. Each gust of wind blew ripples across the never-ending sea of green. It was breathtaking.

  On the far end of the field, a grey mass appeared on the horizon. A strange noise rose over the landscape, mechanical and broken, like a hundred slot machines being tortured.

  It was the screaming of the Robot Army. They charged toward him, firing their laser weapons into the sky in a neon-colored reverse rain of death. Their rigid metal faces were contorted with hatred.

  Nick was puzzled. Were they attacking him? What the hell had he ever done to the Robot Kingdom? He baked them cookies one time—chocolate chip. Maybe robots were allergic to chocolate, like dogs.

  Another din cascaded over him, this one from behind.

  He turned, in slow-motion, to see platoons of black-haired ape-men riding dinosaurs bareback. It was utterly insane. Those ape-men should have been on saddles.

  The ape-men had cross-bows and weren’t afraid to brandish them as their dino-mounts stampeded in his direction.

  Nick looked back at the Robot Army. It all made sense.

  He launched himself into the sky to get a better vantage point on the chaos. In the field below, the two charging armies collided with one another and the battle was joined. Arrows and lasers flew in every direction.

  He pointed his rocket launcher downward. Whose side was he on this time?

  A wayward arrow struck him and sent him hurtling toward the ground at a fantastic rate. He collided with an ape-man, knocking him off his T-Rex. The ape-man got up and leveled his cross-bow at him. Nick pointed his rocket launcher right back.

  The ape-man’s face split open vertically. Rows of teeth lined each side of the gaping hole and a snake-like tongue whipped from the center of it. The excitement of the battle was replaced by sheer terror.

  This unholy thing wanted to eat him, devour him whole.

  Nick had to escape. He had to run, far and fast, but his legs refused to work. They were moving as quickly as he could pump them, but it was like the air had turned to water and he could get no traction.

  He fell down, stumbled to his feet, and fell again. Why weren’t his effing legs doing their job?

  He looked up at the former ape-man looming over him. The black hair that covered its body had grown to the ground, enveloping the creature like a fuzzy cloak. As Nick watched, it expanded outward, swallowing the entire field.

  Nick’s breathing grew shallow. This thing wasn’t going to let him go. It planned to devour him alive. No one would ever know what happened to him. He would disappear into the dark, never to be seen again. Vanish. No milk carton could save him.

  He tried to scramble away, but couldn’t move fast enough. The long-haired Ebon-beast clawed at him, shredding his legs like paper. The tattered strands of flesh and sinew flapped in the wind.

  He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out.

  He was dreaming. The whole thing was a dream.

  Wake up.

  He could feel the sheets of his bed beneath him. All he had to do was open his eyes.

  The Ebon-beast leaned its gaping face full of teeth into his. The thing’s tongue slapped against his cheek.

  It’s a dream, wake up. Come on, motherfucker, wake up.

  Nick’s eyes tried to open, but it was like they’d been glued shut. He strained to wrench them wider and was rewarded with a sliver of light. He could almost see his room, or at least the dark shapes that composed his room. If only he could roll out of bed, feel the floor beneath his feet, he could wake up.

  Wait. Was someone there? In his room?

  The Ebon-beast stood over him. It was in his room. It was real. He managed to get his arms and legs to move enough to flop from bed and onto the floor. He tried to stand, but couldn’t. His legs were useless.

  He was back in bed. He’d never been out of bed once. He tried to get his limbs to move again, but the long-tongued horror held him down, leering at him. He tried to throw it off, but couldn’t. His arms weren’t working. And he still couldn’t scream. He could barely squeak.

  God please, wake up. Someone, anyone help me.

  “Nick?”

  He still couldn’t move, but he knew the voice. The Ebon-beast was gone. It was gone, but replaced with someone else. They were still in the room, standing over him, pinning him to the bed.

  It was his mother.

  Mom? Mom, help me. Help me wake up.

  “Nick, wake up.”

  I’m trying Mom, help me up. I’m so scared, help me, I don’t know what’s happening

  Nick’s mother was inches away from him, her long hair draped over his face. He could see her, smell her breath. She was on top of him and he still couldn’t move.

  “I’ll help you baby, take this.”

  No Mom, please. I’ll be sick again. I don’t want to be sick anymore.

  She pried open his mouth with her fingers. He could swear he was screaming, doing everything right with his vocal cords, but there was no sound. There was no one there to help him even if it did. He was alone; alone in that house, miles from anyone. Why was he so far from everyone?

  “Open wide.”

  Nick’s mom held a rusty spoon over his mouth.

  No, Mommy, no. I’m going to throw up.

  She tipped the spoon over and a thick white liquid poured out and down his throat.

  “Here you go, baby. Get it all.”

  He gagged on the venomous tonic and a bitter-salty taste filled his mouth.

  Mommy, stop, you’re killing me.

  It filled his nose, his lungs; it filled him from his head to his guts, coating his insides.

  Help, I’m dying. I don’t want to die.

  Nick bolted up in bed with a tremendous and protracted gasp, like he was breathing for the first time in minutes. His lungs burned, his blood rushed. Both he and his sheets were drenched in layers of sweat.

  Danielle touched him on the shoulder, sending him leaping to the floor. He gasped for air as she reached for him again. “Nick, it’s okay. You were dreaming. It was only a dream.”

  Nick could hardly breathe. The air seemed thick and suffocating. “It was here. It was right here, in the room.”

  Danielle followed him to the floor. “Babe, there’s nothing here. It’s you and me. See?”

  Nick scanned the room and took deep breaths. No Ebon-beast.

  No Mom.

  It was him and Danielle, and a head full of messed-up memories.

  She got up and took his hand, coaxing him back into bed.

  “Come on, come back to bed. I’ll take care of you.”

  His brain rebelled. Fuck no. He would never sleep again if he could help it.

  “No, no way. Definitely not going back to sleep right now. I’m going to stay up, you sleep.”

  Danielle looked hurt. “You sure?”

  Nick wiped his brow. He’d been sweating bullets, it dripped from his fingers.

  “Completely sure. I’m gonna go turn on all the lights, hang around out there for a while. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Danielle got up and gave him a kiss, lingering too long, touching too much. She let him go.

  “Okay then. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  He shut the bedroom door and turned on every light he could find, cursing the boy within that still wanted to scream. Grown-ass man, still afraid of the dark after a bad dream. Granted, that wasn’t only a bad dream. That was full-blown sleep paralysis. The mind is half-awake, but the body is still in sleep mode.

  Back in the day, they attributed that sort of thing to supernatural elements. “Old hag” dreams they were called on account of people feeling like they were being held down by some kind of witch woman.

  And they’d never even met his mother.

  Huh. Old hag dreams. There’s a good story right there.

  Nick went to the kitchen and booted up his laptop. He tried to shake the cobwebs from his head, but
it wasn’t happening. Nuts to that. He was in no shape to write anything but notes, but he needed something to do. He opened up his e-mail.

  From: Flypap3r.

  Here we go. Let’s see what kind of brilliance Danielle was capable of cobbling together.

  How bad could it be?

  Chapter 9

  It was bad.

  Unbelievably bad.

  Forget the dream he’d had earlier. This was the real nightmare.

  Nick scrolled through the pages of the word document on his laptop, hardly believing it’d come from the beautiful and engaging girl still asleep in his bed.

  “Flypaper” was, at best, an interesting concept wrapped in some of the worst writing Nick had seen in a good, long while. That was the nicest possible way to put it, and if he didn’t like Danielle so damn much, he wouldn’t have bothered to sugar-coat it quite so generously.

  The story focused on, no joke, a girl who worked in a flypaper factory. This girl fell for her manager, an average sort of guy who was likeable only in the sense that the story demanded he be liked. The girl wasn’t any better fleshed out. Both main characters were as flat as that kid who met with the steam-roller in Maximum Overdrive. There were drawings in caves of stick men spearing mammoths with more depth than both of them combined.

  The story culminated with the two characters making love on a giant piece of flypaper, bound together mid-coitus, until death.

  It wasn’t a story, it was a music video, and a bad one at that. The kind of thing you’d have seen attributed to Tool wanna-be’s on MTV’s late-night slots, back when MTV played music videos.

  Why did he always sound so old? He was barely over thirty.

  Nick rubbed his face. This was what he got for reading a budding writer’s work. Especially a writer he’d recently started a relationship with. Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? Had he been thinking? If his brain had been run by committee, there’d be an investigation into who signed off on this.

  “The frontal lobe formally accuses the penis.”

  “Now see here,” the penis shouts, “this is all the heart’s fault.”

  “You’re out of order,” cries the brain. “The whole damn system is out of order.”

  Nick concluded that he needed more sleep. But in the meantime, how in the hell was he supposed to approach this?

  He ran the conversation through his head several times. In most versions, Danielle cried. In a couple of them, he cried.

  In the most optimistic scenarios, she understood where he came from. She understood that if she ever wrote another paragraph, she had a lot to learn.

  In the least optimistic ones, her head literally exploded. It was like that scene in Scanners. He’d find brains and bits of skull in his rug a month later. The stains would never come out.

  The gap between the person he’d come to know and the words on his computer screen were so drastic, he wondered if he knew her in the least.

  Would it be rude to ask if she had a learning disability?

  He shook his head. Stop being a judgmental prick. Not everyone is Thomas Harris.

  Nick plunged a fork into the eggs he’d made without vomiting. Maybe she wouldn’t bring the story up this morning. She’d e-mailed it from her phone the night before. Maybe she’d eat breakfast and be eager to go do some art shit.

  Forget understanding, that was the best-case scenario; she simply never brought it up again.

  Danielle went into the kitchen, scratching at her scalp. She still had sleepy-eyes. Nick greeted her with the natural enthusiasm of a sociopath.

  “Heeeey, how’d you sleep? I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  She rubbed her mascara-smeared eyes. “That’s okay. I’m sorry you had a bad dream. What was that all about?”

  Nick cringed. “Friggin’ anxiety dream. Happens on the rare occasion. Used to happen a lot more.”

  This was good. Maybe she’d be focused on that, or morning-after awkwardness, or the majestic view of another glorious morning. Any of the above would be nice.

  Nick gestured at the plate of eggs on the table. “Check it out, I made eggs without burning them or losing my lunch. Or both.”

  Danielle jumped up and down excitedly behind him.

  “Are you reading my stuff? You’re reading my stuff!”

  This was rapidly becoming a trend—privacy wasn't a priority, and boundaries weren't much of a consideration for her.

  “What did you think? Did you love it? You loved it, right? Will you help me get published?”

  No, that would never happen. Not any time soon.

  What could he say? As a writer, he had plenty of words at his disposal, but they failed him.

  Lie.

  No, don’t lie, that wasn’t nice. She needed advice, not smoke blown up her ass.

  The words erupted from Nick’s mouth like a slow-motion volcano. He was powerless to stop them. “It needs some work.”

  Great, that was diplomatic. Non-committal. A good start, or so he thought. Danielle’s expression said otherwise. It wasn’t the response she expected. Nick launched into damage control again. “It’s not bad.”

  That was too much of a walk-back, bud. Find some middle-ground, you’re all over the place.

  “You’ve got some good imagery here.”

  Was that true? He wasn’t sure. It was pulled directly from his ass, like he was a magician with extremely unsanitary predilections.

  He shoveled a piece of scrambled egg into his mouth. Maybe if he talked with his mouth full it’d muffle the impact of his words.

  “Yo chargders ura lil flad.”

  Danielle looked at him quizzically. Damn it, shoot straight with the poor girl. She’d said the ‘L’ word. It may have been premature, but that took balls. Have the balls to be honest in return.

  He swallowed. “Your characters need work.”

  Danielle crossed her arms. “The characters are perfect the way they are.” It was blunt. Direct. And wrong.

  Nick set his fork down and mused through the document. “I know it might seem like that, right? You’re still new at this. But take it from me—”

  “What’s wrong with the characters?”

  Progress. If she asked questions, it meant she was receptive.

  “Alright, for example. The manager. Why does she like him?”

  Her answer was curt. “Because he’s perfect for her. He’s the perfect guy for her. There’s no one else like him.”

  There was no one else like him because real people had depth. They had flaws and fears. Pathos.

  “Okay, but have you ever met anyone who was ‘perfect’? For real?”

  Danielle was stone-faced. “Haven’t you?”

  “Defcon 2,” shouts the frontal lobe. “We’re now at Defcon 2.”

  “I was lonely,” sobs the heart as it blows its aorta using the left lung as a hanky.

  This had gone off the rails and maybe it was the lack of sleep, but it was quickly growing tiresome. Nick closed his laptop.

  “Hey, look, you asked me to read your stuff, I thought you’d want some honest feedback. That’s all it is.”

  Danielle bit her bottom lip and thrust her hand into Nick’s chest. It was like the night he’d scared her at The Shady Thicket, except this time he didn’t have it coming.

  “Feedback?” She raised her voice. “I wanted to share it with you. I wanted you to read it and fucking enjoy it. You were supposed to think it was nice.”

  Nick stood up. His patience ran low. If it had a gauge, it would have hugged the big ‘E’.

  “Hey. Not cool. Don’t hit me.”

  The two stood almost nose-to-nose.

  In a matter of seconds, Danielle went from furious to crying. She hugged Nick tight. For such a little thing she had a hell of a grasp.

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Nick hugged her back. Shit, maybe he’d been too hard on her. He forgot that not everyone knew how to take criticism. She had no friends. No supportive fami
ly. Small-town education. Who’d have given her criticism worth a damn? He’d assumed she wanted the no bullshit approach.

  Stupid. The whole thing was stupid.

  He gripped tight the one person within hundreds of miles he had any kind of connection with. She gripped him back and blubbered into his chest.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I hit you, please don’t hate me.”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m sorry too. I liked your story, I did.”

  “The frontal lobe and the heart have come to blows. Somebody stop this!”

  Fucking liar. Panderer.

  Danielle wiped her face with his t-shirt. “You did?”

  “Yeah, I liked that they ended up together, even if it was in the sickest way imaginable.”

  She sniffled and instantly brightened up. “I liked that too. It was a perfect ending.”

  Nick grimaced. She threw that word around an awful lot. But being in a relationship meant overlooking petty shit like that.

  Mental note: whatever it looked like, don’t criticize her art.

  The rest of breakfast passed without incident. They both ate and talked and everything was like the night before. They got along like peanut butter and chocolate. An image of The Shady Thicket’s desk clerk popped into Nick’s head. That metaphor was ruined forever.

  Still, the past sixteen hours had taken their toll on Nick, and besides that, he needed to get back to writing while the getting was good. Bad enough that he’d taken the previous day off. Another day and he might lose whatever roll he’d started with The Inn.

  He had no idea how Danielle would respond to this.

  “What are you doing today?”

  Good prompt. See what she had in mind.

  “I have no idea. What are you up to?”

  Damn it. “Truthfully, I didn’t get much work done yesterday. I had kind of a late night the night before.”

  “Yeah, you were writing, right?”

  A nerve in the back of Nick’s head flinched.

  Danielle took her plate to the sink and rinsed it off. “I mean, I assume. You said you were busy working the other day at Bonnie and Chuck’s.”