Flypaper Con: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 4 Read online

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

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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 Con

  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

  “Mommy, look! It’s a Dogman.”

  Dogman. He liked that. It suited him. Better than the other name that haunted him.

  Dogman sat in a chair in the pristine lobby of the Vera Vista Suites, a veritable jungle of glass and marble. He watched the parade of sick-minded deviants line up and check in at the hotel front desk, one after another. Men, women and children of every age and size, each one with a head full of murder, sadism, brutality and gore. None with enough balls—or hatred—to do anything about it.

  GutsCon 2015.

  Someone’s idea of a joke, cramming this many people with a hard-on for violence into a building for an entire weekend. Whoever put it on practically begged for terrible things to happen.

  He would be more than happy to oblige.

  By Dogman’s estimation, the crowd consisted mostly of people in weird hairdos and Rob Zombie t-shirts. Scattered throughout, however, were the so-called ‘cosplayers’. These people would spend the weekend dressed in Halloween costumes, despite the fact GutsCon took place in late April.

  Near the front desk, a man carried a baby dressed as a killer doll. A woman dressed in black leather scantily covering her naughty bits took their picture.

  On an escalator to the second floor, men were dressed as werewolves. One of them howled while the other laughed and took a selfie of the two of them together.

  In the glass elevator overlooking the organized insanity, a woman was covered in what Dogman presumed to be fake blood. Why? Who could say? But no one blinked an eye. In this place, this weekend, a blood-spattered woman didn’t stand out. None of these things did. It was all par for the course; an unending river of madness flowing through the heart of downtown Austin, Texas.

  Among the things that didn’t stand out to a point of contention: a well-dressed man in a rubber dog mask. And that was the idea. Dogman had big plans for the weekend and he didn’t need to be recognized before he was ready. The cheap mask, purchased at a dollar store the night before, would suffice as a disguise until it was time to make his move.

  Even with this crowd, in this atmosphere, there were limits to what people could do without becoming a spectacle. A crowd gathered around someone at the far end of the lobby. People gasped, laughed and took pictures.

  Dogman craned his head in the direction of the commotion.

  The crowd parted, revealing a man in a skin-tone leotard covered in peanut butter; a reference to The Inn, by Nick Dawkins. A short story originally, it was supposed to be a movie at one point, before one of Nick’s friskier fans turned the Shady Thicket into an abattoir and scuttled its poorly-timed release.

  Dogman looked up at the GutsCon banner hanging over the lobby. It prominently displayed a picture of Nick Dawkins alongside the author’s name and the text First Con Appearance in Four Years. Nick was quite the attraction. The conventions expected attendance was said to be double the previous years.

  Another kid stared at Dogman’s artificial canine visage. He barked and the kid ran away. Dogman would have chuckled to himself, but his chuckler seemed to be broken. A lot of things inside him did. It had occurred to him—between the bouts of blinding, uncontrollable rage—that there might be something very wrong with him.

  He opened his smart phone. He hadn’t checked on Nick’s whereabouts in some time.

  He swiped his thumb and opened the Twitter app. He’d found, in the past few months, that Twitter was the easiest and fastest way to know what was happening in the world at any given time. It was an entire network of millions of people broadcasting their thoughts, movements and surroundings in real time every second of every day.

  People were stupid.

  He pulled up the first thing in his search history. Nick Dawkins.

  A litany of results popped up. Hundreds of people tweeted about the reclusive writer.

  Any guesses on what Nick Dawkins’ new book is about?

  Can’t wait to meet Nick Dawkins this weekend, XOXO.

  The usual stuff. There was bound to be something useful buried in it somewhere, but it’d take forever to sift through. Dogman modified his search to Nick Dawkins Austin.

  A handful of results popped up. The latest one was forty-three minutes old and read: Just spotted Nick Dawkins in Austin at the Waffle Lodge on 35. #GutsCon.

  His prey was near.

  Dogman looked at the revolving glass doors at the entrance. He wondered if Nick would be so bold as to use the front door, or if he’d find a less conspicuous way in. Dogman wouldn’t blame him if he wanted to keep a low profile.

  He scanned the growing crowd of convention attendees milling about the lobby and saw no less than a couple dozen tiny red flies in his close proximity. Pins stuck to t-shirts and lapels. Stickers on luggage. One guy was dressed as a red fly, complete with elaborate pipe-cleaner wings.

  The red fly. The de facto totem of Myiasis and its members; the Maggots. Thousands of internet-addled losers gathered on one site with the singular purpose of obsessing over everything Nick Dawkins.

  The general population of this convention may have been a throng of horror-obsessed lunatics, but the real shitstorm was the swarm of Maggots teeming throughout the crowd. Dogman was amazed Nick planned to be there, given how many of these guys would be in attendance and how many had lost their shit and tried to kill him already. It was a good indication of how immortal Nick thought he was.

  “Did you get the DawkinsCon app?”

  “I’m literally installing it right now. Give me a hot second, will you?”

  DawkinsCon?

  A few feet away, two girls in outfits that could hardly be called clothes poked at their phones. Each one wore a red fly in her hair.

  Dogman lifted his arm to get their attention. “Excuse me.”

  They looked at him like his existence was a nuisance. He plowed through it.

  “Did you say ‘DawkinsCon’?”

  The girls looked at each other. Neither wanted to waste the effort on the creep in the dog mask, but the shorter of the two broke down first. “Are you on Myiasis?”

  She had no idea. Dogman simply nodded.

  “Someone posted a new thread yesterday. It’s, like, kind of a game.” The short one held up her phone. “Maggots register on this app and then spend the weekend scaring the shit out of Nick Dawkins.”

  The tall one wanted to get her two cents in now that the short one was on a rol
l. “The more you fuck with Dawkins, the more points you get. And there’s like, a prize for the winner, but no one knows what it is.”

  The short one interrupted her friend. “I heard it was moderator status on Myiasis.”

  The tall one spoke up again. Kids. They all wanted to be the center of attention. “I heard it was a paid trip to Forest Down.”

  The short one looked Dogman in his rubber mask eyeholes. “Anyway, there’s a scoring system and all these rules…”

  “No killing him,” the tall one sighed, examining her nails.

  “Yeah, that’s one.”

  Of course it was. Couldn’t have anything happening to their precious Nick Dawkins.

  True to their generation’s form, the two girls’ attention spans petered out after about a minute-and-a-half of uninterrupted conversation. The short one was ready to break it off. “So that’s DawkinsCon. Also the name of the app if you want it. Good luck.”

  The two girls turned away and went back to their naïve and pointless lives. Dogman took a moment to process everything. Sometimes his upstairs light flickered a bit and he needed time to work through it.

  It sounded like Nick Dawkins would have an interesting two days ahead of him even without what Dogman had planned for him.

  DawkinsCon. The nerve these people had.

  Another ripple of excitement washed over the room, the origin traced to the lobby’s entrance. People were drawn to the area like flies to a carcass. Dogman snorted at his own humor and followed along, becoming part of the horde. Only one person on the bill that weekend would have that effect. Truthfully, a couple of the scheduled guests might draw a crowd, but it seemed as though all the little red flies—and the Myiasis Maggots who wore them—swarmed in that direction.

  Nick Dawkins had entered the building.

  “Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly. Dogman sang the children’s poem in his head.

  Dogman watched from afar as Nick and a purple-haired girl pushed their way through the crowd. He controlled his heart rate and his racing thoughts. He bided his time.

  I have many curious things to show you when you are there.

  This was not the place. Not the time.

  Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.

  Soon—very soon—he would meet Nick Dawkins face to face.

  He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den.

  Then, and only then, the real game would begin.

  Within his little parlor - but she ne’er came out again!

  Chapter 2

  “In retrospect, maybe we could have found another entrance.”

  Nick and CorpseFlower waded through the crowd of GutsCon attendees congregating around them in the Vera Vista Suites lobby. She glanced over her shoulder, her bright hair whipping around her head. “So why didn’t we?”

  “We’ve been on the road for a day; the only thing I cared about at the time was not being in my car.” Nick gripped the handle of his walking cane tight. The sensation drained from his fingers.

  It was the most people he’d been around at once in about four years. He’d expected it to be an adjustment, but the sheer anxiety crawling up his spine; that was a surprise. He’d never been claustrophobic—small spaces didn’t bother him, especially if they weren’t filled with starving rats—but the waves of people around him made him feel a nightmare combination of adrift and boxed in.

  “Get back, neckbeard.” Corpse nudged a man in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre tee out of Nick’s path with her elbow.

  “Corpse,” Nick said, a gentle admonition hanging onto the word.

  She rolled her eyes. “Get back neckbeard, please.”

  Red flies were everywhere. The Maggots were fully represented this weekend; that much was apparent. Nick found comfort knowing if anyone tried anything he’d always have a weapon on hand. Granted, he wouldn’t have needed a walking cane at all if his pseudo surgical superfan, Clark Abernathy, hadn’t chased him onto a dark back road and into the path of an oncoming car. The additional trauma it took on the Night of the Maggots couldn’t have helped.

  But as silver linings go, having a constant blunt-force weapon in hand wasn’t bad. He’d have to check into the ones that wielded a pointy end.

  Nick’s gaze was drawn upwards, to the giant banner with his face plastered across it. “Okay, that seems like a bit much.”

  Corpse followed his line of sight and puffed out a breath. “Oh, you know you love it.”

  He pulled the strap of his laptop bag further up onto his shoulder. “It’s not my favorite picture. I was going for distinguished and ended up looking like a funeral director.”

  Nick and Corpse approached the front desk, each with a rolling suitcase behind them. Nick also had a laptop bag over his shoulder. He leaned over the counter and spoke to one of the desk clerks in a hushed tone. “Two rooms, one reserved under the name Sam Loomis.”

  Corpse enthusiastically nodded her approval. “Nice reference.”

  “Thank you.” Nick turned back to the desk clerk. “The other is reserved under…” He took a deep breath and resigned himself to the fact that his webmaster had become his best friend in all the whole wide world, and a person could tell because he played along with things like this. “…Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca.”

  Corpse cleared her throat loudly.

  He smiled. “…the Third.”

  “Thank you.” Corpse took their keys from the unfazed desk clerk and turned around to the mass of people who had collected at their backs. “Holy—people, can we have some room? Coming through.”

  “Thanks, guys. Hi.” Nick was cordial to his fans in general. He didn’t see the point in giving any more of them a reason to wish him harm.

  A black haired girl of about sixteen burst out of the crowd. The first thing Nick noticed was the red fly pinned to her shirt, just above the text Pinhead Was Right. Then he saw the determined look on her face. She moved toward him with a purpose. He braced himself for a slap, or a stabbing, or at best an awkward hug.

  The girl lunged past him, slapped a red fly sticker on his rolling suitcase and thrust her arms into the air. “Myiasis, motherfuckers! Points!”

  “Hey, back off.” Corpse flung eye knives at the girl, who didn’t seem to notice. She hopped up and down and was besieged by other Maggots. High fives flew everywhere.

  They moved again. “You should have let me carry my bat.”

  “I let you pack it, didn’t I? But I figured bludgeoning someone on the first morning would set the wrong tone for the weekend.”

  Digital dings and whistles rippled through the growing mob. The Maggots tittered excitedly and lowered their heads all at once to look at their phones. It looked like some kind of weird techno-religious group prayer.

  Nick felt like he’d walked in on the middle of a movie. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Keep moving, I’ll tell you in the elevator.” Corpse raised a fist at a tall man in a Jason Voorhees costume. “One side, Gretsky.”

  A woman in a tutu raised a hand at the back of the crowd and screamed. “Nick, I love your books.”

  He waved back. “Thank you.” To the woman’s side, a husky man in a suit sat in a leather chair, his hands folded in his lap and a rubber dog mask on his head. Unlike most of the other costumes dotting the lobby, Nick didn’t recognize the dog man from anything he’d seen. “—the fuck movie is he supposed to be?”

  “Make way, please.” Corpse swung her arm back and forth in front of her. She looked back at Nick. “You say something?”

  “Nothing. Almost there.” The elevator was a few feet away. All he had to do was hobble along the marble floor a little farther and he would be home free, at least for the moment.

  Corpse jabbed her finger at the ‘up’ button repeatedly, like a woodpecker on speed. “Open, open, open.”

  The elevator dinged and the door slid wide. Nick and Corpse walked in, each pulling their o
wn luggage. “Sorry guys, catch the next one.” She smiled as the doors closed on a dozen frothing Nick Dawkins fans.

  “My God,” she said. “Thirsty buncha bastards.” She punched the button for the twelfth floor.

  Nick was nervous. He didn’t like feeling out of the loop. “What was that deal with the sticker before? And the cell phones? Shit sounded organized.”

  Corpse rolled her hand around at its wrist. “It’s a whole thing. Happened literally overnight. I was waiting for the right time to tell you.”

  Nick jerked his head around the elevator, emphasizing the distinct lack of people surrounding them. “Now seems like a good time for pretty much anything.”

  Corpse nodded. “Yesterday, Myiasis blew up a little bit. At first it was one post, you know? Like who gives a shit? These little pissant ‘look at me’ posts happen all the time.”

  “Right…” Nick sensed a but coming. There was always a but when it came to this stuff.

  “But it really took off.” She leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator. “The title was ‘DawkinsCon’ and people bit hard.”

  DawkinsCon. Nick wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or petrified. He bit at the pinky nail that had bothered him all morning. “And what exactly is ‘DawkinsCon’, may I ask?”

  Corpse pulled out her smartphone, never breaking eye contact with him. Her thumbs acted on pure instinct. “Hold on, let me pull up the original post.”

  Nick stared at the mirrored walls of the elevator. An infinite number of Nick Dawkins stared back at him, each reflected again and again and again in a forever repeating pattern of sleep-deprived horror authors. The one non-mirrored wall was glass, providing a view of the busy lobby below.

  Corpse handed him her phone. “You can read the whole thing yourself whenever, but the gist of it is this: Dick with Nick Dawkins for points.”

  Nick skimmed the post, picking up bits and pieces. Nick Dawkins’ first public… GutsCon 2015 in Austin, Texas… Non-lethal harassment of Nick Dawkins… Leaderboards updated in real time. “Oh hell, they’ve turned me into a video game.”

  “At least it’s not the shooty kind?” Corpse shrugged. “Still, the rules are fairly broad. Basically the only things they can’t do are outright kill you or light you on fire.”