Flypaper Opus: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Flypaper: Opus
Copyright © 2015
C.K. Vile
http://ckvile.com
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner, except as allowable under "fair use," without the express written permission of the author.
Chapter 1
A dim light glinted off the stainless steel tray, in stark contrast to the rest of the room. The wooden walls, floor and ceiling were so rotten with termites and water damage it was barely a room at all. It was a ghastly place for someone to begin their career as a bona fide artiste, but it would have to do.
This entire region could hardly be called civilization, if honesty were paramount. It was a backwater hole in the ground where a handful of people erected a handful of buildings decades ago and cut a damn ribbon. Abandoned structures like the one Clark stood in now were evidence that the town was not meant to be, but had endured in pure spite of itself. Endured the elements, endured time, and endured the forward progress made everywhere else in the world.
The local yokels would no doubt assert this endurance as good old fashioned small-town resilience, but Clark knew better. Places like this were resilient in the same manner that infectious disease was resilient. Some things just wouldn’t go away.
A small dog yapped from its cage on the floor. Clark kicked the container.
“Be quiet, mongrel, I’m thinking.”
What on Earth had prompted Nick Dawkins, a modern day literary genius of unfathomable talent, to settle in Forest Down of all places? He should have taken up residence in Rome, or Athens. Somewhere more befitting the author’s stature.
The cat hissed at the rabbit one cage over and furiously swiped at it through the metal bars. The rabbit cowered in the corner, eyes wide in terror.
Clark walked to the far end of the room, the boards beneath him groaning every inch of the way. His steps were light and furtive. He wasn’t sure his weight wouldn’t break through the mildewed wood like damp paper.
He picked up a black leather bag and the floor creaked, thanking him for relieving it of its burden.
Water from the previous night’s rain dripped onto Clark’s face as he approached his workstation. He set the bag on the table next to the steel tray and pulled off his glasses. He wiped the dirty runoff from them, brushed a strand of wet hair from his eyes, and put the glasses back on. Flecks of grime still obscured his sight, but he could see well enough for the task at hand.
Clark opened the bag and pulled free a large plastic bag filled with capped syringes. The opaque fluid within them danced as he set the collection down on the table. He counted them; eleven… twelve… thirteen. A larger number might have been prudent, but this was all he could manage, given the circumstances. The interruption had been short lived, in every sense of the word—stupid bastard—but effective enough to send him running with only half the doses he’d intended to obtain.
The dog yapped again. Speaking of short lived interruptions. Clark kicked the cage, but the barking only grew louder and more incessant.
“You’ll be first,” he said, leaning down at the creature. The dog continued to bark, teeth bared, haunches raised. Its ear shattering sounds were accompanied by deep rumbling growls.
Clark ran his fingers through his long, matted hair and took a deep breath. Don’t let the beast get the better. Don’t let it break your creativity, he repeated to himself.
What had Nick Dawkins said in that interview a couple of years ago? “The world is full of distractions,” Nick had said and Clark closed his eyes as the words washed through his mind. “Learn to tune them out and stay in your headspace and you can do great and terrible things.”
Great and terrible things.
Calmer now, Clark reached into the black bag and pulled out a metal case. He opened it and marveled at the case’s contents. It was a series of surgical instruments, each held snugly in a pocket perfectly contoured to its individual shape. Scalpels, a bone saw, forceps; each one a work of art in its own right, though not quite like the kind he had planned. These were merely well constructed tools, instruments for his masterpiece. Masterpieces, plural. He would be a brilliant and prolific creative comparable to Nick Dawkins himself, and that night, in that dank and foul smelling room, he would begin his first great work.
His hand trembled with excitement as he pulled the last item he needed from his black bag of beauty.
Surgical thread.
He placed it on the steel tray and surveyed the entire scene as a whole. That was everything. He was ready to begin.
Clark picked up a small digital video camera, clicked it on and peered through the lens. The image quality was low, not even in the same ball park of newer models, but great artists made do with what they had. Nick Dawkins, as best as he could recall, had written some of his first short stories in a yellow notebook during long shifts at a video store. And look at what he had gone on to create.
He panned the camera across the table, filming the tray and the implements that surrounded it. He knelt down and pointed the camera at the row of small crates and cages that lined the floor. Each one contained a different domesticated animal: A dog. A cat. A rabbit. A gerbil. An iguana. A snake. They all awaited fulfillment of their individual purposes, ready to become a part of something bigger and more important than themselves.
Clark stopped recording and set the camera down. He could contain himself no longer. He would have jumped up and down if not for the extreme probability that he would have gone through the floor with the first hop.
He tore open the plastic bag and pulled forth a single capped syringe. He flicked the cap free with his thumb, sending it clattering to the wooden floor below.
The dog was all bark and no bite when Clark reached in and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck.
The budding artist smiled, revealing his yellow teeth.
“I told you, you’d be first.”
The barking stopped, replaced by the distant thunder that signaled another storm rolling into Forest Down.
Chapter 2
Nick squinted under the florescent lights and tried to remember a world outside the current hell in which he found himself.
In the past year, he’d had his home broken into—twice, his property trespassed upon half a dozen times, received a number of death threats and suspicious packages, and the girl he’d briefly dated lit him on fire. Still, nothing prepared him for this. This was agony.
Who even listened to morning radio anymore?
“Looks like it’s gonna be another cold and rainy one out there, kids.”
“That’s right, so bundle up!”
Donny and Spitz chattered back and forth like short-circuiting walkie-talkies; a lot of noise was transmitted, but no actual communication took pla
ce.
Nick spotted wonderkin literary agent Blaire Coutrice through the studio’s soundproof glass and attempted to project his thoughts into her head: I want to kill Donny and Spitz right now. How’d you talk me into this? I hate them and I might hate you.
The thought transmission didn’t work. Blaire arched her back, grinned broadly and stuck both thumbs in the air.
Donny spoke like he’d discovered the cure for cancer and was selling it for nineteen ninety-five. “Coming up right now, we have someone I’m personally very excited about.”
Spitz spoke like the guy at the party who told dirty jokes at an inappropriate volume. “Me too, I tell you, I’ve read all his books and they creep the pants off me.”
Nick adjusted his headphones. The clunky studio things never felt comfortable. Donny’s voice pounded in his ears. “Now lemme tell ya folks, this is a pretty good ‘get’ for ol’ Donny and Spitz, because this guy doesn’t do a lot of publicity.”
No, Nick didn’t do a lot of publicity. He hadn’t done a book tour in three years, a radio interview in nearly as long. Now he remembered why.
“We’ve got Nick Dawkins here in the studio. Good morning, Nick.”
It was technically morning, although Nick could have sworn it was incredibly late at night. “Good morning, yeah.” Donny talked over the “yeah”.
“Nick Dawkins is, of course, the author of some good stuff. He wrote Cancer Man.”
Spitz chimed in. “Fists of Hair, that one was crazy.”
Donny swiveled around in his chair. “Rat King, oh man.”
“I loved the movie!”
Nick winced. Of course Spitz loved the movie; he hadn’t read a book since the Grinch stuffed a fuckin’ tree up Cindy Lou’s fireplace.
Donny gesticulated an awful lot for a man broadcasting in a purely audial medium. “That’s one of my favorite movies of the last few years, hands down. What was it like working on that? Did you spend a lot of time with Victor Trumble?”
Nick shot a look at Blaire, who gave him a wink. Either she didn’t know he was perturbed, or pretended not to notice. Each possibility equally annoyed him.
He moved in close to the microphone. Maybe too close. He was never sure.
“If I’m honest, I didn’t have anything to do with the movie. In fact, the movie deviates pretty significantly from—”
Spitz blew right past the rest of Nick’s sentence. “And now you’ve got The Inn coming out in a couple of weeks. Man, I’m looking forward to that one. You did that one with Trumble too, am I right?”
Nick looked at Blaire again. Her facade had cracked and was crumbling. Her face pleaded for him to play ball.
“Again, with The Inn, I didn’t have much to do with it outside of writing the story it was loosely based on. I write books. You know, books? Little things, lots of pages, no pictures?”
If Donny and Spitz picked up on any sarcastic animosity, they disregarded it.
“That’s right, most recently you wrote an interesting book called Love Scars and Marks. Tell us about that, Nick.”
The writer nodded. Finally, the glad handing over the movies was out of the way. On to brass tacks, as they say.
“Sure, it’s about a girl who becomes romantically obsessed with a guy. Dangerously obsessed.”
“Yikes,” Spitz said. “Sounds like my ex-wife.”
Nick pulled at the reins of the conversation.
“She’s not a bad person, at least not from her point of view. She’s actually well meaning; she just doesn’t know or feel love like you or I. She has a perverse understanding of what that word means and it makes living in the real world difficult for her and for anyone caught in her sphere of destruction.”
Donny replied directly to Nick, but still managed to give the impression that he hadn’t heard a word he said. “Very heady stuff, man. Tell us about this girl you encountered, the one people say the book is based on. Danielle Johnson. What happened there?”
Nick tapped the fingers of his still scarred left hand on the desk in front of him.
“I don’t—” Nick glared into the production room where the show’s producer, Kari, stood next to Blaire, shifting from foot to foot. “That’s not something I like to get into. Besides the fact that it was a painful experience, I feel it’s ultimately disrespectful to the person in question. I don’t talk about it. I’d rather focus on the book, which, to the best of my understanding, is why I’m here.”
Donny played obtuse, but unlike the listening audience, Nick could see into his eyes. They were adversarial; daring him to shut down. ‘No comment’ was often more damning in the public eye than anything else someone could say, and morning drive-time Donny knew it.
“Right, but the book was based in part on this real girl, wasn’t it? How much of that was first-hand experience?”
Nick made one last stand on the high road, but he saw the off-ramp to Rantland coming up on the right.
“Look, all writers draw from personal and private experiences. Anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous. But the character portrayed in Love Scars and Marks was fictional. The end.”
Donny stuck his lip out, but his voice continued to drip honey. “Fair enough, can’t blame a guy for trying.”
The DJ smiled wryly at Nick, a question on his lips. It was the look of a kid about to pull a cat’s tail just to hear it yowl.
Nick furrowed his brow. Don’t you do it.
“What would you say to the majority of critics and audiences who felt this last book was weak compared to your old stuff? Do you have any plans to get back to ‘classic’ Nick Dawkins, the stuff that people still talk about?”
Spitz lived up to his namesake by launching a piece of bacon out of his mouth and across his desk. “Rat King.”
Nick turned to face Blaire. He once again attempted to transmit his thoughts directly into her head. Are you seeing this? This passive-aggressive dick is trying to start shit with me. And I’m super fucking inclined to oblige with extreme prejudice.
This time the message got across loud and clear. Blaire shook her head and flailed her arms. He wasn’t sure how she thought it would help, but it didn’t stop her from trying.
Nick turned back to Donny and Spitz. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and ejected one into his hand. “You want to know about Rat King?”
Now exiting onto Rantland. Population: these two bumblefucks.
The rock-jockeys exchanged glances. Indistinct chatter in Donny’s earpiece caught his attention. “Uh, Mr. Dawkins, our producer, Kari, is reminding us that there’s no smoking in the studio.”
Nick sparked his cigarette with a lighter and waved at the frazzled producer on the other side of the soundproof glass. Blair stood next to her, her forehead firmly resting on the palm of her hand.
“I’ll tell you about Rat King. I wrote a—if I may blow my own bagpipe for a second—killer piece of fiction about the horrors that wait on the other side of any front door in America and the terrible things that can befall us simply for doing the right thing.”
He dropped ashes onto the sheet of prepared questions in front of Donny.
“Hollywood calls me up one night, invites me over to her place. We have a few drinks, a few laughs. Next thing I know, Hollywood is starting to look pretty good. Like I’ve heard this girl gets around a bit, but I figure what the hell, right? I’ll double-bag it.”
Donny slapped at the smoke rising from the piece of paper on the desk. Nick ignored it.
“So Hollywood and I, we get it on, in every position you can imagine. Missionary. Doggy. Reverse cowgirl.”
Spitz coughed and pressed his hands to his headphones. “Whoa-oh-oh, earmuffs, kids, earmuffs.”
Kari’s voice blasted into Nick’s headphones. “Mr. Dawkins, we need to go to commercial now.”
Nick pulled the headphones off and dropped them to the desk. “Nine months later, Hollywood gives birth to this soulless, pandering abomination with ‘directed by Victor Trumble’ stamped o
n its ass.”
He turned to look at the production room. The producer was shouting mouthfuls at him through the soundproof glass. Showed how smart she was. Blair was on the phone, yelling at someone.
“And The Inn.” Nick laughed heartily. “See, I know what you guys want is some real dirt, so here you go.” He lifted his arm up and pulled his jacket sleeve back, displaying faint scars that crisscrossed the length of it. “Now, you listeners out on the road can’t see this, but I caught fire once. I’m fine now, thanks for asking, but for about two to three months, I was on a lot of drugs. And who should come knocking at my door? Donny, take a guess? Spitz? No?”
Donny shrugged helplessly at the production room where things were beginning to get interesting. Kari and Blaire were shouting at one another—a symphony of balled up fists and pointed fingers.
“That’s right, it was Hollywood again, and boy did she want it bad. She was aching for it. Pleading. And damned if, once again, she didn’t start to look real good through my pink, fluffy Vicodin induced haze.”
Donny stuttered, which would probably get the DJ card he’d found in a cereal box taken away. “Uh, folks, I hate to interrupt Mr. Dawkins here, but we need to go to break.”
Nick was undeterred. Rantland was nice this time of year. “You know, they invited me to the premiere of The Inn, coming soon to a theater near you. You know what I said? You’ll love this. I told them I’d only go if Jennifer Lawrence would be there. Now I know what you’re thinking, she’s not even in the movie. I know, I adore J-Law. I figure if she shows, hot damn. If she doesn’t, it’s an excuse to bail. Because fuck, if I’m flying all the way to L.A. to watch mistress Hollywood squeeze out another Trumble bastard, I want to cut the cord. Am I right, gentlemen? Can I get a hallelujah?”
“And we’re clear.” Donny threw off his headphones. “You piece of shit, what was that?”
Nick blew smoke across the table at the DJ’s. “What, the f-bomb? I know you’re on a delay, you can bleep it.”
Spitz hauled himself up from his chair. “You sandbagged us you fucking hack.”