Red-Handed

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What, seriously, Brookins? Seriously? You're just taunting me now, aren't you? Fine:

"Y-yep! Pistachios! Boy, I sure do love 'em!"

He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead, hear the roaring starting in his ears, and she still wasn't letting go of his hands -- his hands that were still stained, he'd scrubbed and scrubbed but still the stain was there...

She let go. "Well, don't spoil your dinner," she replied with a little smile, before walking away.

His eyes narrowed. He knew he'd been sloppy, worn out after his work out in the woodshed; he should have kept scrubbing, should have cleaned his hands until no trace of blood remained. But there was so much work to do, and he was just so tired...

But that smile. That smile she had given him, as she released his hands.

Had she been out there to the woodshed? Had she seen his work, or the signs it left behind -- the remains that had to be disposed of, the bodies dumped in the woods, or burned and scattered out by the old gravel pit? Had she seen something there? Or had he left other signs for her to discover?

Did she suspect?

His red hands flexed.

Did she know?

There you go, Gary. I took the bait and addressed the obvious, and, frankly, only interpretation of that dog-man's expression given the situation. I hope you're happy.

Also, I should figure out a way to distinguish italic me-comments from italic fic-text. Let's try a different font and color, see if that works. Any color-deficient folks out there? I wanna make sure this dark reddish is clear enough for everyone.

Out In The Rough

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It took a while to hunt him down, although finding the bodies helped. After all, a half-dozen corpses in the woods by the golf course meant that all those missing persons cases really were related. And it gave the cops somewhere to stake out and wait for the perp to show. If there was one thing the Ashland cops loved, it was a stakeout.

The bodies weren't too mutilated, and the families of the most recent victim were even able to do an open-casket funeral, after the mortician put in a few hours of reconstructive work. So the guy was crazy, but it could've been worse. Most of his kills were even adults. Sergeant Douglas had a cousin on the force in Colorado, and he'd had to clean up a quarry full of dead kids last spring. Their murderer was still at large.

This guy, though, there didn't seem to be too much pattern to his victims. They came from all over town, and some from out of town; they were all ages, both sexes, and of no particular note but for the fact that they were all rotting a couple hundred yards from the green. No one had even realized, except the last couple he'd apparently gotten lazy and hadn't buried properly. People'd thought the stench was from a dead deer.

The selection of bodies confused the hell out of the cops at first, until someone figured out that they'd all had dealings with Ed Cobbs at one time or another. The guy who'd briefly dated Ed's daughter despite the old man's vehement disapproval, who'd seemingly run off one spring day; the drifter who'd panhandled outside Ed's hardware store for maybe a week before apparently moving on; even Petey Marsh was here, who'd delivered Ed's newspaper until one went through a window. When he disappeared six months later, his parents thought he'd run off.

It didn't take long to get a warrant.

When they got to the Cobbs residence, Ed and his wife were out in the front yard. She was raking leaves, obviously not paying him much attention as he recounted his golf-related exploits.

"...by the fourth hole," Ed was saying excitedly, "weeds up to my thighs, mosquitoes the size of small schnauzers swarming around my face..."

"Uh huh," his wife replied, frowning at the drifts of leaves still covering the lawn, and obviously mostly ignoring him.

Ed bared his teeth in a manic grin, eyes wide in his sweating face. "It's so much easier to drag them to my special place in the woods now, since the hole was redesigned and I don't have to go around the water trap anymore." He giggled.

"That's nice, dear. Maybe you should get a rake before you finish telling me about your golf game..."

They both looked up as the cops crunched across the leaves towards them. "Ed Cobb?" one of them said. "You're under arrest for the murder of Sarah Linwood, Albert Frohm, James O'Sullivan, Petey Marsh..."

Ed twitched a little as each name was read, then flung his arms wide and laughed. "Hole in one!" he yelled gleefully; and that was about as much sense as they were able to get out of him, so they put him in handcuffs and led him away.


What, two serial-killer fics in a row? Yeesh. It smells like the dread specter of continuity around here.

But you tell me what I was supposed to make of those eyes.

Left At The Railroad Tracks

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The man drove hunched over the wheel, knuckles bulging yellowly beneath the skin of his hands. He cast the occasional quick glance at the truck's passenger seat, but mainly he kept his eyes forward. He had the headlights off, and the last streetlight had been about twenty miles back.

"Just a little farther," he muttered yet again. "Almost there. Almost there."

The boy stirred fitfully on the seat beside the man. It'd been a trick to get him into the vehicle with his wrists and ankles all bound up together like that, but once that was done, he hadn't moved much. A couple of blows to the head with a chunk of wood had helped. Now the boy barely moved but for the occasional twitch, or a flutter of lids over unfocused brown eyes. It'd been those eyes that had caught the man's attention in the first place.

"I guess you didn't want to play anymore," the man muttered, as he turned from the country road onto an even smaller one. "And that's fine. That's fine. But if playtime's over, then everyone has to take their toys and go home." The man glanced over at the boy again. "Time to put my toys away."

Woods grew up thick to either side of the road as they traveled on. At last the man slowed to a stop. He flicked his headlights on briefly, and the set of railroad tracks crossing the road reflected dimly back.

"Left," he said to himself, turning the truck in that direction. "Left. Left at the railroad tracks."

There was a faint path through the woods by the tracks, where a set of wheelruts could be seen if you knew enough to look; he followed them now, the truck bouncing along the uneven ground. A tree branch snapped against the passenger window, and the boy moaned thickly. His eyes opened fully for the first time since the trip had started.

"Hey," he said now, his voice fearful, but not panicked yet. "Hey, mister. Please. I just want to go home."

The man glanced over at the boy. Those were really wonderful brown eyes; dark, deep, promising all sorts of secrets. The man had learned lots of secrets from the boy during all those lovely days down in the basement. The boy had called for help, of course -- they all tried that, all the boys he had played with since discovering this game -- but to no avail. The man lived far from any neighbors, alone but for the playmates he would sometimes smuggle home in his truck.

"Please, mister," the boy tried again. "I won't tell anyone. Just... just let me go." He swallowed. "Right here is fine, even."

The man didn't answer, and the boy seemed to give up, falling silent again. When they reached the abandoned quarry, though, he tried one more time. "I just want to go home," he said to the man, and now he began to cry. "Why won't you let me go home?"

He struggled when the man tried to get him out of the truck, of course, but a couple swings of the tire iron and the boy went limp. The man dragged him to the quarry and sent him tumbling over the edge. The boy's body hit the still water with a loud splash. It was too dark for the man to see, but he imagined the boy sinking, falling to rest alongside all the other boys that the man had played with over the years.

"All done," he murmured, returning to the truck. "All cleaned up from playtime." He swung the truck around until it was pointing back toward the trail through the woods, and smiled as he started driving back toward the road. "Maybe I'll find some new toys to play with tomorrow."


Okay, so let me explain.

The comic shows a dog-man and a dog-dog. There is an obvious imbalance of power and of -- for lack of a better word -- humanity between the two of them. Why is this? Why does the dog-man get to drive the dog-dog around wherever he wants? Why should the dog-dog be subservient to the dog-man?

If you translated them into a human-man and a human-boy, what kind of relationship might you wind up with?

Serial killer and hapless victim, that's what.

See? It makes perfect sense!

Biofuel

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Looked like the backyard hummingbird feeder needed a refill again. Well, that was easily enough done.

Ben stepped outside to grab the bottle from the feeder, then carried it into the garage, humming idly. He rinsed it out in the sink by the clothes washer, letting the hot water run for a couple minutes before adding a bit of bleach to kill any mold. Once the bleach was rinsed out, he stood the bottle on an old towel while he fetched his nectar solution from a shelf.

His ma had used a homemade mixture of sugar and water, boiled and stored in the freezer till needed; for a while after she'd died and left him the house and its hummingbird population, he'd tried various commercial solutions. Eventually, though, he'd tired of the results those gave him. After a few tries he'd come up with the mixture he used now, which had the benefit of being easy to whip up while also managing to not attract any bugs along with the birds. Ma's old sugar-water do had always wound up getting pillaged by ants.

Ben half-filled the feeder bottle from the gallon jug of nectar solution -- almost empty, now, he'd have to make some more soon -- then put the jug back and carefully carried the bottle back out to the backyard. Still humming, he screwed the bottle back onto the feeder, then stood back and admired his handiwork. He turned to go, and something went "crunch" under his shoe. He looked down.

"Heh," he said, scraping dead hummingbird off his shoe. "Guess you just couldn't help yourself, huh, little guy?" He surveyed the lawn around the feeder, where maybe a dozen dead hummingbirds lay in various stages of rot. "Was it tasty, fellas? I sure hope it was." He sneered. "Little bastards."

He went back into the house, careful to take off his shoes before entering. "Almost out of nectar..." he muttered to himself as he walked into the kitchen. Stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a cow was the beginnings of a grocery list; eggs, milk, toilet paper, Hamburger Helper. Ben rummaged through a drawer until he found a pencil, then walked over to the list.

Antifreeze, he wrote.

Ben grinned. "Little bastards," he said again.

What The Hell, Man, Since When Can I Not Form A Somewhat Relevant Title From The Comic Text

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(Seriously, "crude awakening" does not contain anywhere within it the seeds of a title for this'un.)


"Hey, you gotta dollar?" the man asked as Evan got out of his car. "Change for a dollar?"

Evan closed the door to the Suburban, after carefully making sure it was locked. "No, I don't got no money," he answered a bit too loudly. Then he mentally cursed himself as he entered the gas station convenience store. Don't got no? What kind of language was that, anyway? The guy was going to think Evan was trying to talk street to seem tough, except he really hadn't been, it had just been a slip of the grammatical tongue...

He forced himself to smile as he approached the register. "Hi," he said, setting a bottle of Fanta down on the counter. Then he held out his Visa. "And pump three." The clerk grunted and hit a couple of buttons on the register.

Evan took a swig of his Fanta as he walked back out to the pump. "This is gonna hurt," he muttered, grabbing the gas nozzle and starting it pumping black gold into his Suburban. He winced at how fast the "THIS SALE" number was going up.

Suddenly something hard pressed against his right side. "You got that right," a voice said quietly. "Wallet. Keys. Now." Evan opened his mouth, and the pressure against his side increased. "Bullets move faster'n yells. Gimme the money."

"Bu -- but I don't have any money," Evan managed to choke out. His eyes felt about ready to pop out of his head. "I told you. No cash."

"Whaddaya mean, you told me?" Evan risked a glance to his right, and realized his mistake. The man asking for change had been black. The one with a gun jammed into his ribcage was white.

The gas pump clicked off with a loud THUNK noise that drew a terrified whimper from Evan. The man with the gun didn't flinch. "Give me the money or you die," he snarled.

Evan squeezed his eyes shut. Please let this be a nightmare please let this be a nightmare please -- "My bank card is in with the store clerk. Go in, tell him Evan sent you to get his card. My PIN is 8510 and I've got a $200-a-day ATM limit. It also works as a Visa." He drew in a sobbing gasp. "Take it, it's yours."

The gunman made an irritated noise. The pressure against his side miraculously disappeared, and Evan fell thankfully to the ground and listened to the sound of rapidly receding footsteps. Then common sense returned to its post inside his skull, and he fumbled for his keys, unlocked the car and all but threw himself inside, and cranked the engine.

As he squealed out onto the street and fled towards home, he spotted the man who'd asked him for change, waiting to cross the street three blocks south of the gas station. Evan roared past him without so much as a second glance.

Reunion

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They had been the hellraisers of their graduating class, although the be-pink-mohawked waitress assigned to them would probably not believe it. Said be-pink-mohawked waitress was currently ignoring them in favor of the teenagers three booths down. They were wearing approximately enough black leather to re-cover the cow.

Herb and Tricia had come off the worst from the last forty years, really. Tricia had wound up a born-again kindergarten teacher with diabetes, who looked the first two and wouldn't quit talking about the third. Herb -- "H.B." back in those days, thank you, "Herbert Bloom" was his father and the old man was a square -- had done a bout with cocaine in the 80s, done another one with cancer in the 90s, and now mainly sat there nodding his head constantly. Lorraine didn't think he was actually agreeing with anything; she was pretty sure he just couldn't help it.

Jerry had always been the creative mind of their group, the one who came up with the really good gags. Gluing the mackerel to their English teacher's windows had been his idea -- fifty pounds of expired fish, salvaged from behind the butcher's shop, carefully arranged in smelly lines across the windowpanes and stuck fast with industrial-strength adhesive swiped from his dad, all while the old woman slept. Or Lorraine's personal favorite, swapping the mayor's wife's prized terrier with another one they'd found by the train tracks, and dumping the "missing" pet in the yard of a woman suspected of being the mayor's bit on the side. That'd been good for a month's worth of laughs. Jerry had probably aged the best of any of them; and as if to prove it, he was wearing his sunglasses even in the dim restaurant, and somehow managing to pull it off.

As for herself, Lorraine supposed she had done all right. No drastic personality changes like Tricia, no drug problems like Herb (at least not after the 70s, and not so much that you could really call it a problem)... she hadn't managed to make her living as a free-wheeling poet, despite all her youthful plans, but being an art historian wasn't bad either. It certainly let her visit a lot of museums, where she could reflect on the past and how many, many stupid decisions it held.

Suddenly Jerry grinned. "Remember the time we filled the principal's trunk with limburger?"

"In the middle of July!" Lorraine replied, laughing. "You and Tricia were so mad about having to go to summer school."

Tricia's mouth turned down. "What little monsters we were back then. Shameful, really." Herb nodded vaguely, staring in no particular direction.

"So we pooled our money together -- " Jerry continued.

Lorraine snorted. "Sure, 'our' money in that we acquired it somehow -- "

"Bought out the town's entire supply, I think -- "

"And Herb jimmied open the trunk with a paper clip!"

Lorraine and Jerry both laughed. Tricia tweaked at the cross hanging around her neck, muttering something about forgiveness; Herb scratched his arm vaguely.

One of the teenagers three booths down leaned over to yell past the be-pink-mohawked waitress. "Howzabout you shut up, huh, y'old geezers? Go talk about your bingo or whatever somewhere else." Then the waitress said something, and the entire group of teenagers erupted into unkind laughter.

Jerry looked at Lorraine again, and there was a hard light in his eyes. He ignored Herb and Tricia completely. "There's a cheese shop a block away, and I saw which car those kids came in. What say we go for Stinking Bishop this time?"




If you think about it, the principal would've had to have his "new '39 Ford" some sixty-nine years ago. Assuming these folks were all early bloomers, and already in high school at a mere ten years old, that would still make them older than John McCain.

They've actually aged remarkably well.

Back In My Neighborhood

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"Of course, that was assuming you didn’t ask where the car’d come from," he added offhandedly, pulling the Porsche back onto the highway. "You could be particular about that if you wanted, but then you’d have to pay a bit more."

"Oh?"

"Local guy ran the biggest stolen-car operation in the state," he replied. "Small-time mobster, name of Magliore. Half the teenagers on my block were working for him – running errands, or… ‘supplying’ him with stock. All under the table, of course."

His passenger frowned. "How dreadful. I assume you weren’t involved in all this."

"Are you kidding?" he asked, eyebrow raised. "I was one of Magliore’s boys before I’d even learned how to ride a bike. How did you think I learned how to hotwire cars?"

"Well," his passenger sniffed, her frown deepening. "At least you’re old enough to know better than to mess around with any stolen cars."

There was expectant silence for a moment; finally, he coughed. "Sure. Of course I am."

Preparing Next Week's Medications

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She watched him out of the corner of one eye as she worked, carefully removing the cap from each of her prescription bottles, measuring out seven or fourteen or twenty-one of each pill and depositing them carefully in her pill organizer. He was doing the same, brows furrowing every time he had to twist open another bottle. His arthritis had been so bad lately, despite the medication.

She waited patiently, and at last he raised his head to look at her. "Could you do the rest of mine, dear? My hands..." He flexed them, once, then winced.

"Of course," she answered calmly, reaching across the table to take the bottle from him. "Shall I do all the rest of them for you, too?" He nodded gratefully, and she busied herself with the task as he rose and padded to the fridge. She could have offered to help without waiting to be asked, of course, but it was better this way. He wasn't even paying attention to her, now; he was up to his shoulders in the refrigerator, looking for the milk that she had buried at the far back of the shelf.

She worked with unhurried efficiency, opening the bottle that had stymied him -- the big orange pills, prescribed by Doctor Farson for his blood pressure -- and carefully placed one pill into each of the seven compartments of his pill organizer. Next were the pills for his kidneys; two small green pills each day, tik-tik, tik-tik as she filled out the container. The last bottle was his arthritis medication, nondescript yellow things with numbers embossed into them far too small for his failing eyes to detect.

Without pausing, she uncapped this last bottle and measured out a week's dosage. Then her hand slipped quietly into her pocket, to emerge bearing seven nondescript yellow pills, which she distributed methodically into each compartment. No numbers showed on these pills; there were, in fact, no markings of any kind, but she needed none to know what would happen to him if he kept up this dosage. Very soon they would start doing more than simply fail to help with his arthritis. Perhaps even this time next week she would be preparing her medications alone.

She closed up the prescription bottle and set it back with his other pills on his side of the table. When he finally came back over, glass of milk clutched carefully in both gnarled hands, she was just finishing up with her own medications. She smiled briefly at him as he approached.

"Thanks, love," he said, reaching out to take the container of pills. She smiled again at the sight of it in his hand, seven little boxes in a row, each with its own little secret of a clever yellow pill that was not for arthritis.

Grand Theft Auto

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Within ten seconds of deciding he was tired of walking, Carl was already speeding away -- "speeding" being a relative term in the aging Walton, but whatever. He'd jumped into the road in the path of the oncoming truck; its driver, some aging redneck in a greasy baseball cap, had come to a screeching stop; with practiced ease, Carl yanked the unlocked door open, threw the driver to the ground, and took his place behind the wheel. "This is a jacking," he snarled. "Don't make it a murder."

Then he was off, the truck's former occupant too stunned to even think of fighting back.

* * *

It took a couple hours before Mack's outstretched thumb got any response. The ride back to town was a bumpy one, sprawled in the back of a truck that must've had even worse shocks than his did. Than his had. Mack rested his head in his hands. Of all the people who used this road, why'd that bastard have to carjack him?

The guy who'd given him a lift dropped him off at the El Quebrados town limits before chugging off, trailing a rooster-tail of dust behind it that left Mack coughing for several minutes afterwards. His house was at the far end of town, maybe a two-mile walk from here, but this was as close as his ride had been willing to take him. The desert night was cold, and Mack wasn't wearing anything heavier than a worn flannel. Too late to worry about that now. Too late to worry about what he'd do without his truck, either.

Mack coughed a few more times, then started walking.



I have logged literally thousands of hours playing Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas, along with a few hundred playing Vice City and vanilla III. I have spent some time thinking about how much woe I'm causing my carjacking victims... but not much.

In a Pluggerverse, everyone is a victimized NPC. Poor bastards.

No Cash

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Phillip growled, more in frustration than anything else. "I should've known that guy didn't actually have anything on him. He was in Wal-Mart, for god's sakes."

"Probably there with a pocketful of food stamps," Tommy agreed, voice dripping with amusement. "You sure know how to pick 'em."

"Yeah? Well, what have you accomplished today, huh?"

Tommy held up another wallet, this one an obviously expensive leather affair. "Two hundred and twenty-eight bucks. Cash. And a debit card with his PIN written on a Post-It. Though I gave that to Sarah. I ain't gettin' caught on camera at the ATM, but if she wants ice that bad, she can go right on ahead."

"Dammit, you always have the luck," Phillip groused. He leaned on the railing, legs dangling over the edge of the balcony; were anyone to look up, they might wonder what someone was doing sitting around in an abandoned building, but nobody did. "Whoever said crime doesn't pay obviously never met you."

"Heh, yeah." Tommy flashed a grin, then carefully tucked the wallet back into his pocket. "You meetin' your parole officer tomorrow?"

"Yep. Ten-thirty AM, sharp." Phillip stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. "Gonna tell him I've been a good, law-abidin' citizen, and that I sure have learned not to steal no more." He uttered a short laugh. "Might as well be true, for all I'm pullin' in lately."

"Downloading" (or, Another Way To Steal Music)

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Sounds of effort echoed down the alley, along with a muffled curse or two. There was a peculiar melodic thunk, followed by a hiss of "Watch it!" and a few more thumping noises. Then headlights flared in the darkness.

The truck all but jumped out of the alley, tires screeching briefly as the driver hooked a quick left onto the street, and was heading south on the highway in under a minute.

The man in the passenger seat remembered to breathe again.

"Christ, Louie, what are we thinking?! I mean, stealing from the job is one thing when it's just a couple of small things here or there, but this..."

Louie continued driving, calm now that the distance was unrolling between them and the scene of the crime. "We spent two weeks fixing that damn piano. Tuned it up nice and everything -- it'll play better now than it ever did new. Now, if it turns out the customer can't actually pay for all our hard work, are we supposed to just give it back? We worked hard. We deserve some compensation." He idly leaned an arm out the open window. "Walt is a great friend, but he makes a lousy business owner. He'd just give the thing back, not charge anything, and tell us 'tough luck, boys, guess you won't be making commission on this one.' And I don't know about you, Danny-me-boy, but I've got bills to pay."

"Even if this guy you say you know does give us a good price, though, what's to stop him from goin' to the cops afterwards?" Danny glanced nervously at the dark shape in the bed of the truck, then looked back at his companion. "Maybe he's a whaddayacallem, a plant, or something."

Louie snorted. "Don't you worry about a thing. In another hour, my man will have this here bee-yootiful piano, and you and I will each be several hundred dollars richer. And Walt can explain to the deadbeat why it's smart not to try to cheat your servicepeople." He grinned over at Danny. "Trust me, Danno. We will suffer no ill effects from this little venture what-so-ever."