Flypaper Cast: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 3 Read online

  “Counting you guys, I’ve had five people try to kill me in the past year.” Nick screamed in Longpig’s face. “Five. And regardless of what he thought, I didn’t kill any of them.” Nick pressed the gun deeper into Longpig’s flesh. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I need to send a message that I am not someone with whom to fuck.”

  The rage bottomed out and fell away. It was terrible timing. The rage was all that held back the tears. The first of them sped down his face like it was on fire.

  Nick looked at Corpse. His mother knelt over her. More tears. They dripped onto his arm. His knees weakened. He turned back to Longpig and his resolve returned. He pushed the barrel of the gun along Longpig’s mouth, leaving behind the burn mark it had made on the side of his jaw. He forced the barrel of the gun between Longpig’s lips. He shoved it deeper inside until the man gagged on it.

  “You broke into my home.” His voice cracked. “You attacked us. You…” killed Corpse. He couldn’t bring himself to say it. It was as if saying it aloud were the only thing that prevented it from being true. His found his voice again. “I could kill all three of you right now. That’s what you would do, right?” He nodded in Longpig’s face. “It is. It’s what anyone would do.” He sobbed. “It’s what she would have done.”

  “Shoot him in the dick.”

  Nick’s arm went limp at the sound of her voice. The gun fell out of Longpig’s mouth and hung by his side, heavier than he’d have thought possible. It threatened to pull him to the ground, though that could have been his legs giving out.

  “Nickie…” His mother wept with relief.

  He turned and saw Corpse writhing on her back, one hand on her shoulder. “Corpse?”

  Corpse coughed. “Ow. I’d shoot him in the dick. I’d shoot them all in the dick.”

  Nick backhanded Longpig in the face with the gun. The psycho dropped to the floor and made himself comfortable. He’d been more bark than bite. Nick would find the time to laugh at that thought later. He stumbled toward Corpse and collapsed next to her. “Holy shit. Holy shitting fuck, Corpse.”

  Corpse let out a little laugh and then whimpered. “You sound like me.”

  “I thought you were dead.” He looked at her bloody shoulder. It was hard to tell how severe the damage was beneath her black hoodie. He pressed his hands on the wound. “Geez, I should probably put pressure on this or something. I honestly have no idea.”

  “Not dead, just passed out, I think. I have a super low pain threshold.” She put a sticky hand on Nick’s arm. “Tell anyone that and I’ll kill you myself.”

  Squamata cried out. He rocked back and forth, blood dripping from his nose, his hands on his legs. Defcon spit a tooth into the air. It clattered somewhere near the couch.

  Corpse picked up her helmet and lifted her head just enough to slip it on. “War is hell, bro.”

  Nick smiled. Even gunshot, the kid had an infectious sense of humor. “Hang in there, soldier. We’ll get you home.”

  ***

  “Three perps. One with one cut to the face. One with severe facial lacerations and multiple missing teeth. One with a broken nose and two gunshot wounds, one in each leg.” Sheriff Reed looked up from her notepad. “You had to shoot him twice?”

  Nick raised his heavily bandaged hands. “Hey, I only shot him the once. And yeah, I had to do that. I mean, look at the guy.”

  Snow continued to fall from the night sky amid the plethora of flashing lights on and around his front lawn. A parade of paramedics and officers wheeled gurney after gurney up the driveway and into a number of ambulances. One of them, the one that held Squamata, was pushed by four men up the icy incline.

  Reed shrugged. “Hey, you were defending yourself in your home, you did what you had to do. Now. As for you and your houseguests…” She glanced down at Nick’s hands. “Severe lacerations… your mother took a couple of bumps on the noggin and a skinned knee, not too bad… and ‘Qualsnarg’… one gunshot wound, right shoulder.”

  Nick watched Corpse being loaded into an ambulance. Officer York walked along beside her. “Would you like for me to accompany you to the hospital, Miss… uh, Miss?”

  She shouted at a volume they could hear in the next county. “If you don’t leave me alone, you will be accompanying me to the hospital.”

  Reed closed her pad. “Okay, so free rides to Beasley Medical for everyone. You need a minute to lock up?”

  Nick looked into the darkened house. “Sure. I’d like to at least grab a bag. My laptop.”

  Deputy Kern walked out of the dark, a flashlight in hand. “Nice job in there, Dawkins.” He didn’t stop. He walked out into the snow and towards a couple of other officers.

  Nick was speechless. “I—I think he meant that. That wasn’t sarcasm, right? I’m not crazy. Deputy.” He called to Kern, who was either hard of hearing or pretended to be. “Deputy, are we friends now? Is this a thing?”

  Reed tapped Nick with her pen. “Hey, another thing. I got a call on the radio on the way here. Patched through from a dispatcher in Texas, of all places. A woman called in a domestic disturbance, some fight with the boyfriend got ugly.”

  Nick gave up on Kern and gave his attention back to Reed. “Texas? No shit? You know what happened?”

  She shook her head. “Not really, no. Here’s the weird thing. When she called it in, she also gave them your name and address and reported a home invasion in progress.”

  His eyes widened. “No shit. Huh.” He turned that around in his head a bit. Interesting. “Was she okay?”

  “I think so, yeah. The dispatcher didn’t mention any injuries. Not to her anyway. Boyfriend lost an eye, though.”

  “Heh. Heh heh.” A laugh crept up through Nick’s esophagus. Just one at first, a little guy. His friends soon followed, until a stream of them spilled out, driven forth by amusement, relief and a keen sense of irony.

  Reed let out her own little laugh. The kind someone does when they don’t get the joke, but are infected by someone else’s case of the giggles. “What? What’s so funny?”

  “I need to grab that stuff. Can you bring your flashlight?” Nick laughed again and wiped a tear from his eye as he limped into the house.

  He thought of Corpse as he sang ‘Karma Police’ as loudly as he could.

  Chapter 21

  “Nick, we’ve got another one.” Corpse called to him from the foyer.

  “Another one?” Nick pushed himself away from his laptop and off his bed. He grabbed his crutch and moved into the hallway. The cast on his leg was an anchor he’d be glad to be rid of. One more friggin’ day. “That’s the third one this week.”

  He’d been amazed at how many of them had shown up in the week and change since the Night of the Maggots, as Corpse called it. It was like they all wanted a piece of him.

  Corpse stood at the front door, her right arm in a sling. Quite the pair they made. “It never ends, does it?”

  He hobbled to her side. “Nope. Let me see.”

  Corpse held up a sheet of paper and a ripped open envelope. Nick took the sheet and skimmed to the bottom.

  Balance due: $226,458.13

  He rolled his eyes so far back into his head he saw through space and time. “The medical system in this country is a joke.”

  Nick moved into the kitchen and set the bill down on a stack of others. Hospital bills, bills for construction deposits, and of course the one for his car’s new windshield.

  Corpse followed. “I’m sorry.”

  He opened the fridge and pulled out a juice box. “Don’t be, I told you I’d take care of it. It’s only fair. Technically, you were injured on the clock. It’s what any self-respecting employer would do. Although in retrospect, I sure wish we’d gotten around to getting you insurance.” He held up the juice box. “You want one?”

  “Sure.” Corpse pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. “No can do the insurance, Brobama. I don’t get to live on the grid anymore. Price of being a bonafide badass with a computer.”
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  Nick sat at the table across from her and handed her a juice. “Okay, we’ll get back to that. But as it turns out, it costs quite a bit more to pull a bullet out of person than it does to rebuild a general store. You believe that shit?”

  Corpse unwrapped her juice box’s straw and poked it into the box. “You’re still helping Bonnie and Chuck rebuild the general store too, huh?”

  He punched his straw into his box. “Of course. It’s the least I can do, especially after I spent a week talking Chuck into it. They’ve never been anything but good to me. I have to make things right.”

  Corpse slurped at her straw. “I thought you guys were cool now.”

  He drank until the empty box caved in. He set it down. “We’ve talked, sure, and they’re not the types to hold grudges, but damn. What would you do in my position?”

  She raised her juice box to him “Point. Salude.”

  Nick picked up his crumpled box and held it up. “Salude. Anyway, between all those bills, Mom’s hotel room in Beasley…”

  Corpse raised an eyebrow. “You could have just let her stay here while they rebuilt the store.”

  He took another drink from his box and put it back down. “You kidding? The last night you two were in the same place—”

  “The Night of the Maggots.”

  “—Excuse me, The Night of the Maggots, you threatened to feed her to the birds.”

  “Hey, she was fiddling with your juice box. Whether it was innocent or not, it looked sketchy as hell.” She bobbed her head back and forth. “But like, it wasn’t so bad having her around. And she definitely saved my ass that night.”

  Nick smiled. “What night was that again?”

  Corpse’s voice went up an octave. “The Night of the Maggots, muthafuckaaaaa.”

  “Anyway, maybe we’ll have her over for dinner tonight if you think you can play nice.” He cleared his throat. “But back to my point. Between that stuff, and the new balcony, the King’s coffers have taken a hit.”

  Corpse nodded. “Bet you’re starting to wish they’d released The Inn after all, huh?”

  “I said I took a hit to the coffers, not a hit to the head.” He leaned back in his chair. “I mean, I took one of those too, but it wasn’t that bad. Seriously, though? The struggle is real. We need to consider options.”

  Corpse drank from her straw for several seconds and then gasped for air. “Such as?”

  “Well, first… I need to finish this book I’m working on. I’m almost done. Then we can hope my usual publisher picks it up because that’s money in the bank. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” He held up a single finger. “That’s option one.”

  She finished her juice and three-pointed it into the trash can across the room from her. “And option two?”

  Nick leaned forward and tapped his fingers on the table. “Something Blaire and I talked about once. Self-publishing. Self-promotion. Self-everything. We release it digitally, we do some horror cons…”

  “Wow, that’s legit. I don’t remember the last time you did anything like that.”

  “A bit before I moved into this place. Stopped going anywhere. Stopped being a part of the world.” He patted his fiberglass leg anchor. “I’m ready to take the cast off now, though. Rejoin the rest of the world. Plus, bonus. If we go that route, we get to keep all the profits. Minus some promotional bullshit, which I’ll pay Blaire to take care of. You can take care of all the online stuff. You know, if you still want.”

  Corpse’s eyes widened with excitement. “Maybe knock some fuckheads around every now and again?”

  He nodded his head in the direction of her sling. “Yeah, I don’t know if I can afford to keep you on as a bodyguard.”

  She made a faux-serious face and lowered her voice to match his. “Okay, we’ll get back to that.”

  Nick frowned. “I don’t sound like that.”

  She mimicked him. “I don’t sound like that.”

  Nick’s phone rang. He picked it up. “We’ll continue this later.”

  “We’ll continue this later.”

  He answered it. “Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  Hellen’s voice greeted him. “Nick? It’s Hellen.”

  He motioned at Corpse to knock it off. “Hey Hellen, what’s up?”

  “Hey Hellen, what’s—” Her imitation game came to a screeching halt. “—the heck does she want?”

  Hellen cleared her throat. “Have I mentioned how sorry I am for everything we did to you?”

  “About fifty times. Everything okay?” Nick looked at Corpse, who had a finger stuck down her throat; the universal symbol of gag me.

  Hellen sounded worried. “I just saw a story online about twenty pizzas being mysteriously charged to a Texas senator’s credit card. I kind of just wanted to know if I’m okay. Since I’m pretty sure they were delivered to our house and all.”

  Nick held the phone away from his mouth. “Corpse. They can’t trace the pizzas to Hellen, can they?”

  The webmaster stuck her lip out. “Not anymore.”

  He went back to the call. “She says not anymore.”

  Corpse muttered to herself. “That was going to be so funny, too. Waste of a good set-up…”

  Nick got up and took his crutch under his arm. “How are you? I saw your ‘Fuck you all, I quit’ post on Myiasis the other day. That was fairly brave of you considering your personal information was up there.”

  She sighed. “Ugh. I meant every word. I can’t believe I ever got sucked into that mess. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I—”

  Nick pinched the bridged of his nose. “I get it, you’re sorry, you can stop apologizing. What’s next for you now?”

  “God, I don’t know. I sucked at everything except podcasting.” She paused long enough to work up the courage to ask a question. It poured out of her like a bullet. “Would it bother you terribly if I took another shot at that? Something less Nick Dawkins-centric and a little more broad horror?”

  Nick walked over to the shelf containing the memorabilia that remained intact after the night of the invasion. “Nah, go for it. Just keep me out of it. And Myiasis. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “What about, uh—” He looked back towards the kitchen and lowered his voice. “What about everything else? You know?”

  She breathed deeply. “Um. It’s going okay, I guess. One day at a time.”

  He wondered if this was an appropriate line of questioning. “You regret breaking it off at all?”

  “No. Nooooooo. I mean if it hadn’t been this it would have been something else down the line, you know? Better to find out how big of an asshole he could be now than later.” She sounded as though she tried to convince herself of that as much as anyone else.

  Nick decided to change the subject. He looked at his Screaming Mimi award. “So… a horror podcast, huh? You know I’m thinking about doing some cons again?”

  He heard her smile over the phone. “No shit? You know we have a big one in Austin every year. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

  He smiled back. “Probably not if I see you first. Take care of yourself.”

  “You too, Nick.”

  “Bye Hellen.” He hung up the phone.

  “Bye Hellen.” Corpse stood at the entrance to the living room. “God, you have the worst taste in girls.”

  He shoved his phone in his pocket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mother fucker, I have a genius I.Q. I know what you’re thinking before you do.” She plopped herself down on the couch and glanced around the living room. “You know we never come in here anymore?”

  Nick dropped onto the couch next to her. “I know. It’s weird.” He pointed at the shelves where his DVD collection used to be, before he trashed the blood and bone spattered cases in favor of a sleeved binder. “I shot a guy over there.”

  Corpse scoffed. “Psh. He lived.”

  He turned and pointed at the shelf on his wall. “I almost shot a guy over there
.”

  She shook her head. “But you didn’t.”

  Nick pointed at the floor. “I knocked several of Defcon’s teeth out right there.”

  Corpse exploded with enthusiasm. “Dude, you straight up Fight Clubbed his ass. I wish to god we had video of that. I’d never stop watching it.”

  He snickered. “I just wanted to destroy something beautiful.”

  They both burst into full on, tear-shedding laughter. Corpse wiped at the corner of her eye with her finger. “Oh man.” She caught her breath and put her head on his shoulder. “I love you.”

  Nick did a double-take and looked at her.

  She sat up. “Not like that, stupid. Gross.”

  “Oh.” He relaxed. “Oh thank god. No offense. I love you not like that too.”

  Corpse shook her head. “Boys, I swear.”

  Nick nodded. “Yeah. You’re never moving out, are you?”

  She snorted. “Fuck no. You know I was living above a crack den before this?”

  He sniffled with false modesty. “So I guess this place is a step up then?”

  Corpse put her head on Nick’s shoulder again. “Well, to be fair, I was never shot when I lived above strung out gangstas.”

  Nick rested his head on hers. “Touché.”

  Chapter 22

  The Administrator’s fingers slid along the keyboard. The symphony had been in full swing for weeks now. The orchestra played their fervent little hearts out. The Song of Nick Dawkins.

  But some of them had played off key.

  A blank document appeared and the fingers began to chastise the band in a steady rhythm.

  Beloved Maggots.

  I understand the enthusiasm. I do.

  But it’s not my tempo.

  In recent weeks, we’ve seen an unprecedented surge in membership and forum participation. To this, I say bravo. We welcome new members here with open arms.

  But there are rules. And rule breakers.

  The best among us know that at the end of the day, our community is not about us.