Flypaper: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 1

  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

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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

  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

  Nick awoke to find a complete stranger cuddled next to him.

  This wasn’t a stranger in the sense they’d gone to bed together in a drunken haze. That might have been okay. This was an oh-my-god-I’ve-never-seen-this-woman-in-my-life kind of stranger—decidedly less okay.

  The unknown woman blinked at him. “Hey, sleepy-head.”

  He lay still, as though the woman were a forest animal he didn’t want to startle. Calm. Stay calm. Isn’t the first rule in Home Invasion 101: don’t panic? Panicking could alarm the presumably unstable personality who had broken into his home in the dead of night, put on one of his favorite t-shirts, and burrowed under his covers alongside him.

  His mind raced, jumping from one dangerous scenario to another. Pretty spectacular considering that, moments earlier, he’d been lost in dreams of cocker spaniels and power-mowers. How should he respond?

  “I don’t know you.” One for the ages, genius. We’ll call that ‘idiot response number one’.

  “I’m Jane.” That was it. She seemed to think her first name explained everything.

  Nick fumbled for a follow-up and failed. “Um.” Idiot response number two—check.

  “Don’t be mad. I just wanted to cuddle!”

  How the hell should he respond? Don’t be mad? Was mind-numbing fear an acceptable response? He’d settle for that.

  Jane appeared to be about ten years older than him, mid-forties and plain. Unnervingly plain. Plain Jane, the asshole side of his brain wanted to say. She looked like one of the quiet ones nobody suspected… until long after the human flesh in her fridge went bad and the missing person signs had faded.

  But that’s alright because she “just wanted to cuddle.”

  As first impressions went, this one sucked. Plain Jane seemed to realize this and tapped her fingers on her chin in a nervous fashion. Nick considered that a good sign. The far out-there ones were never nervous. They were dead certain.

  The guy at the book signing in Tulsa was a perfect example. He sure wasn’t nervous; he’d humped that pumpkin like he had a purpose. Nick hadn’t the first clue which of his works had inspired the morbidly-obese Oklahoman to fornicate with a member of the squash family in the middle of a book store. And the pumpkin-pumper’s accompanying recitation of the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ was a real head-scratcher, too. What he did know was he found it oddly-flattering that the guy had replaced the word ‘God’ with ‘Nick Dawkins’.

  He didn’t share that last bit with anyone. It might make him come across as narcissistic.

  So these things—insane people doing insane things—happened on occasion; an odd package here, an overzealous fan there, but almost never at the ass-crack of dawn while wiping the sleep-crud out of his eyes.

  At least he’d worn pants to bed. Small favors.

  Nick glanced at his nightstand. He needed a weapon in case things went south when he tried to extricate himself from bed. Not a single item was useful for self-defense, even the lamp was bolted to the desk. He stared at it; it seemed like such a convenient purchase at the time.

  His phone sat there, plugged into its charger. It was useful in its own right.

  He faked a huge yawn and stretched toward his phone, wishing he’d taken acting classes in college. Plain Jane wasn’t fooled because she sat up, clearly agitated. It was as though a switch had flipped in her head. She squealed, little keening noises deep in her throat, and flapped the blankets up and down as if she were fanning a hot flash.

  He scooted further away, unsure how to interpret her actions. He knew one thing… it was the kind of reaction he’d hoped to avoid.

  Nick unlocked his phone and eyed the Forest Down Police Department icon he’d saved on speed-dial. A twinge of guilt speared him: it was the third time he’d called it in as many months.

  Not without legitimate reason, but still, what if they one day decided to leave the troublesome new guy in town to his own devices? He’d be screwed then—perhaps like that pumpkin. He kept a close eye on the shrieking dervish still in his bed.

  “Jane, I think it’s time for you to go,” Nick said and waited for her response. She quieted and pushed the hair out of her face. She smiled at him, blinked a few times and pushed the covers away. She slid to the side of the bed where he was now standing.

  He backed away a few steps to give him reaction room if he needed it, but still unprepared for Jane’s hyper-quick lunge. As she tried to wrap her arms around him, any hesitation Nick had about summoning the police went out the window. He thumbed the icon in desperation, but Jane slapped the phone out of his hand. He watched as it spiraled through the air, as if in slow motion, and shattered against the wall.

  Nick braced for an attack, but Jane threw her hands up non-threateningly, all innocence and sugary sweet.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Nick stood motionless. The woman was fast and unpredictable, her moods swinging faster than Babe Ruth on an inside curve. He had no idea what might set her off. She lay back on the bed and made grunts and moans he’d never heard before. She anxiously stretched out the t-shirt she wore. His shirt. The one that read “Wile E. Coyote don’t care” and had the cartoon character straddling a lit rocket. Wile E. pleaded with cartoon eyes for Nick to rescue him.

  “Could you not—?”

  Jane stilled and looked at him and down to the t-shirt he gestured to. She had the grace to blush and stopped stretching out the shirt she’d ‘borrowed’ from him.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She reached for Nick again, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. He backed away and walked around the foot of his bed to put some distance between himself and the crazy woman.

  “Whoa! Whoa, let’s take it easy,” he said and glanced at the remnants of his phone, the screen smashed to bits. “Aw, you broke my phone. Why would you do that?”

  “I said I was sorry,” she pouted, her bottom lip stuck out in reproach. Jane jumped from the bed again and faced him. “I didn’t want us to be interrupted. I want to get to know you. You’ll like me when you get to know me, I promise. I’m lots of fun.”

  Hopefully, Jane’s idea of fun didn’t involve wearing a best-selling author’s face as a mask. He leaned on the wall next to his bedroom door, trying to appear casual. If she did anything completely bonkers, he could always make a run for it; maybe even make it to the front door before she clawed his eyes out. Hell, the smart thing to do was keep her calm and engaged in friendly conversation.

>   “Okay, how about you tell me about yourself? You married?”

  Jane laughed, if you could call it that. She was like a parrot, mimicking what it heard come out of other people. The sound made Nick’s spine twitch.

  “No, no, not married. Boyfriend though.”

  Nick nodded. “Oh, a boyfriend. He, uh—does he know where you are? I mean, is he okay with you, y’know, visiting people?”

  ‘Visiting people’ was a more-than-generous interpretation of what this was. Nick’s next book would be Diplomacy with Stalkers: A Fool-Proof Guide to Not Getting Bitten, Stabbed or Involuntarily Cuddled. He was a natural.

  “Oh yeah, he’s fine with me being here. You’re one of my ass-passes.”

  The last two words struck him a couple of beats too late. Nick would admit he wasn’t caught up with the latest trends, but ‘ass-pass’ was a foreign concept.

  “Sorry, ‘ass-passes’?”

  “You don’t know what an ass-pass is? It’s when you have a list of people you’re allowed to screw if you ever get a chance. You’re number three on mine.”

  Number three? What an honor. What had she done with numbers one and two? Were they in the trunk of her car? Nick shook his head. Focus, man: priorities. First up, steer the conversation away from ass-passes.

  “You guys have kids? Want kids?”

  Jane slinked toward Nick a bit, her eyes connected with his as she answered, a small smile curving her lips. “Nooo, no kids. Can you imagine me with children?” She laughed her unnatural laugh and the hair on Nick’s neck stood up. He could imagine her eating children.

  “We have a cat named Gurt, though.”

  Nick knew that name intimately. “Gurt, right, from Cancer Man.”

  Cancer Man was Nick’s second book. It was about a guy afflicted with a type of cancer that transmitted to anyone he came in contact with. Gurt was the character who stood by the protagonist even though the disease consuming him, consumed her too. “You know, Cancer Man isn’t even my favorite,” Nick said, sliding into interview mode. “After the first book, I got concerned with what people thought and tried to get serious, but it was hackery. I’d make a super-dark comedy if I could do that one over again.”

  He came back to the super-dark situation-at-hand and refocused on Jane. Her expression was the illegitimate offspring of hurt and anger’s one-night-stand.

  “I don’t want to have this conversation anymore,” Jane said and clapped her hands together loudly. “I know. Let me show you my toys.”

  The walls closed in. There wasn’t a universe in which Jane said those words and everything ended happily. The Little-Basket-Case-That-Could leapt across Nick’s bed and snatched a denim backpack off the floor.

  “Behold,” she exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a mad scientist, “I brought toys.”

  In Nick’s mind, he screamed and clawed at the wall, scrambling right up it and onto the ceiling, like a scene out of Nightmare on Elm Street. Outwardly, he projected a façade of calm, mostly because he was frozen to the spot. He did manage to sputter out a few words. “Oh, great, what kind of toys?”

  Could he run while she was distracted? He had a rather large knife in a drawer in the kitchen. Or was it best to make for the front door? What if Nick’s cooperation was the only thing keeping Jane from tripping into some kind of red haze?

  “I’m a semi-professional dominatrix.”

  Holy shitting hell.

  Jane plopped the backpack onto the bed and unzipped it while Nick did mental math. How many feet was it to the kitchen? How many to the front door? More importantly, how many hundreds of yards was it to the nearest neighbor? He had no idea where his car-keys were off-hand. He hadn’t used them in two weeks.

  The kitchen was the smart play.

  Jane presented a cylindrical black case. “From your writing, I thought you’d be into these.”

  She unrolled the case across the bed. Inside, lined up one-by-one, were tools made out of stainless-steel. They were varying lengths and slightly curved. At first, Nick thought they were for stabbing, but the ends were rounded; not pointy enough to penetrate flesh.

  “Hoo-boy, and what would those be? Do you play dentist?”

  Jane pulled one of the tools from its slot and held it up so Nick could have a better look at it. “These are urethral probes.”

  And with that, Nick was done.

  He turned and ran. The living room was between his bedroom and the kitchen, a sprawling area covered in hard-wood floors. He bounded over a couch that suddenly felt ill-placed. His socks did their best to slide him off the floor and onto his back with each step.

  Nick slid across the kitchen tile and slammed hard into the countertop like a first-time roller-skater who didn’t know how to stop. That would hurt later, leave a bruise. He pulled open a drawer and grabbed the kitchen knife. The ‘Michael Myers’ knife. He wracked his brain for a Halloween-related quip for Jane. Nothing presented itself. His mind was busy screaming itself hoarse with terror instead.

  Jane stood in the living room, bathed in the sunlight filtering through the trees and the massive windows which spanned the walls of Nick’s home. The light glinted off the urethral probe she brandished.

  “How do you know you won’t like it if you don’t try it, Nick?”

  Nick’s blood curdled. He stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, trying to appear confident. Plain Jane reminded him of someone he hadn’t thought about in a long time. He clutched the kitchen knife. He’d kill this woman if he had to.

  “Nick, I want you to trust me. Give me your penis.”

  The words were a cattle prod to Nick’s brain; they jolted him into action. He swung the knife, striking it against Jane’s probe.

  “You asshole!”

  Jane swung her probe at Nick and knocked the knife right out of his grip. So much for making a stand. The hell with this.

  Nick sprinted for the front door and offered silent thanks for the time he’d put into his treadmill. It’d be a long-ass run up the road. Why did he never put his car keys in a sensible place?

  He reached the front door and swung it open and ran straight into three surprised police officers, their guns drawn. Nick tumbled backwards and onto the floor.

  The three officers yelled for Jane to freeze, which she promptly did. The urethral probe clattered to the ground. She fell to her knees and collapsed into a pile of tears and apologies.

  Deputy Kern led the charge through the door with his unnaturally clean-shaven face. Douglas Kern didn’t smile. Ever. Whatever it was inside a person that made them smile, Kern lacked it.

  Officer Eric “No Relation” Roberts moved in behind the Deputy. Roberts had come by the nickname because he had to reiterate that he wasn’t related to Hollywood’s Eric Roberts—even though Officer Roberts himself was black.

  Kern and Roberts pulled at Jane, whose eyes bulged with desperation, fear and something Nick couldn’t quite put a finger on. She twisted her body in a way it wasn’t meant to and broke from the officers’ grasp, lunging at Nick. He only had time to flinch, expecting a slap, but instead, Jane attempted an approximation of a caress. Kern and Roberts dragged her off, and the gesture took a sliver of Nick’s cheek along with it.

  “Ow! Dammit!”

  “Oh my god, I’m sorry,” Jane cried, as though aware of how inappropriate this was. “Let me help you. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

  When it became clear she wasn’t going to get her wish, she assaulted Kern. “You fuckers! Look what you made me do. No, Nick!”

  Sheriff Reed poked her head through the front door, “Y’all need help with this?” Her wry grin said it all.

  Kern grunted and her grin widened. Roberts hand-cuffed Jane and moved her out of the house.

  Karen Reed was the Sheriff in this small town, but to the locals she was ‘Karen’.

  With Nick, she insisted on ‘Sheriff’ or ‘Sheriff Reed’.

  “We got your call.”

  “Thank Christ. I do believe I w
as about to be probed.”

  “You have an alarm system that gets routed directly to us.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “I know, I know. I forget.”

  Reed rubbed her eyes. “I’ve arrested a number of people on your property over the past two years, Dawkins. How do you forget you have an alarm system?”

  “I don’t forget I have an alarm system, I forget to arm it sometimes. Usually I don’t. That one kid tripped it last Christmas, remember? Wanted to steal my tree? Good times.”

  Reed pulled out a small notepad and glanced around the interior of Nick’s sparsely-furnished home. “Point-of-entry?”

  “Hmm? Oh. I uh—” Nick hadn’t seen any broken glass anywhere. He had no idea how Jane had gotten in. He stepped onto the porch and looked down at the screeching woman. They dragged her, kicking and screaming, toward a squad car sitting at the top of the long driveway leading to FM-2273. “Hey, how did you get in here?” he yelled at her.

  “The front door,” she yelled back. “You left it unlocked for me!”

  Reed sighed and scribbled on the notepad. “Jesus Christ, Dawkins.”

  “What? I didn’t leave it unlocked. I haven’t left the house in like two weeks.” The last time he’d gone out was on a grocery run into town. “My hands were full when I came back from Bonnie and Chuck’s. I just shut the door behind me.” He paused and swallowed, then grimaced. “My door’s been unlocked for two weeks, okay, yeah, my bad.”

  Sheriff Reed stared daggers at him.

  “Normally it wouldn’t matter. I’m out in the middle of nowhere, most people would never have to worry about—I’m gonna shut up now because there’s nothing I can say to make this better.”

  “Arm your security system and lock your doors, Mr. Dawkins. I do not want to come out here one day to find you’ve been dead a month.”

  “Aw, that’s nice, I didn’t know you—oh, dammit.”

  Reed shot Nick puzzlement through her bangs.

  “She’s wearing one of my favorite shirts; can you get it back for me?”

  Reed scratched into her notepad and snapped it shut. Behind her, Jane shrieked at the top of her lungs as Kern and Roberts tried to shove her into the back of their car. She didn’t go easy.