Flypaper Opus: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 2 Read online

  Nick straightened his back. He had a good couple of inches on either of them. “Me? You pricks, what was the one thing we told you I wouldn’t talk about?”

  The DJ’s shrugged at each other, their mouths slack with feigned ignorance.

  Nick reached across the table and grabbed the piece of paper with the burn on it. Donny tried to stop him. Too slow, buddy-boy. Nick held the paper up. “Off-limits: Danielle Johnson. It’s literally the one thing I asked when I agreed to this.”

  Donny cracked a smile. “Shit man, I guess we forgot.”

  The producer-agent whirlwind of profanity and pointing joined the yelling match in the studio. The room’s volume was driven up by the combined maelstroms.

  “Forgot my ass.” Nick turned to Blaire. “You believe these jerk-offs?”

  Blaire was busy with her own fight. “Never again, you hear me? You don’t get Dawkins, you don’t get Cookbook Carl. You get nothing from us again.”

  Nick jabbed a finger at the DJ’s. “They don’t give a shit Blaire, they knew exactly what they were doing. They asked what they wanted to ask. Their chance to put me on the spot was far more important to them than getting me back. Fucking bottom feeders.”

  Spitz once again lived up to his name. Specks of spittle soared through the studio. “Damn straight, you know why? Because you’re done. Your books haven’t been good in years. I didn’t even finish Love Shits and Bricks.”

  Something ignited in Nick. He flicked his cigarette into a nearby trash can and pulled his jacket off while stomping over to Spitz. He raised his left hand in the air and the DJ wilted, waiting for a blow. Nick swung his arm and stopped his scarred hand inches from the grease ball’s pock-marked face.

  “See this? Hmm?”

  Spitz said nothing. He looked toward the other three people in the studio.

  Nick leaned into Spitz’s face. “Look at me, not them. See this?” He turned to Donny. “You too. See this? Goes all the way up my arm? I got this when someone I cared about lost her fucking mind and set me on fire. Both of us. I watched her go up like a human matchstick. You know what burning flesh smells like?”

  Nick backed away from Spitz and picked up his jacket. “I do. I still smell it every time I think about it. Right now, this second, it’s all I can smell. And that’s saying something, because you two reek.” He pulled his jacket on one sleeve at a time, covering the scar tissue that covered his left arm. “I heard her make sounds I didn’t know a person could make. I live with that shit every day. Day in, day out. When I close my eyes at night. I fucking see her.”

  The room was quiet. An audience of interns and office staff had gathered at the studio door. They couldn’t hear anything, but they were sure getting an eyeful.

  “One simple request. Don’t bring her up. You assholes.” Nick walked to the studio door. The spectators scattered like roaches in the light. “Come on, Blaire.”

  Nick opened the studio door, a wisp of smoke in the corner of his eye. “And by the way, your trash can’s on fire.”

  “Holy shit!” Nick heard Donny yell before the studio door closed itself. The writer smiled. That was as close to a badass walk away in slow motion while something explodes behind you moment as he’d ever gotten. He and Blaire waited patiently for the elevator, neither saying a word. The receptionist peeked out from behind her desk.

  “Hi again,” Nick said with a wave.

  The receptionist waggled her fingers meekly. The elevator door opened with a ding.

  Nick and Blaire walked in. The doors closed. He glanced at her. “I think that went pretty well, don’t you?”

  Blair pushed the button to the building’s parking garage. “I am so sorry Nick darling. You know I had no idea they would do that.”

  Nick gave her a nudge in the arm with his elbow. “I know. You’re one of the good ones, Blaire. Sorry your biggest client is such a—” He wanted to say train wreck but stopped himself. Old habit.

  The elevator door opened and the two walked through the underground concrete slab to their waiting limo. The driver met them at the car door and opened it for them.

  Blaire smiled weakly as they climbed in and got settled. “It’s hard to blame them, you know. It’s something people want to know about, and—”

  “—And the general public finds me inaccessible, I know.” Nick shook his head. “Apparently unless you tweet, blog, and post every single piss you take, you’re not ‘relevant’ anymore.” He air quoted the word “relevant”.

  The agent looked at her phone as the car moved up the parking garage’s ramp and onto the city street. Her face betrayed the still chipper timbre in her voice. “Well, as far as that sort of thing goes, you could be doing worse. You’re trending locally right now. Probably nationally before the day is out.”

  Leave it to Blaire to find the silver lining in every situation, no matter how pear shaped. The woman must have had a unicorn up her ass. He shoved his hand into his pocket in search of his phone. “Oh good, here, I’ll join the conversation. What should I tweet?”

  Blaire waved a hand at him. “Stop it. Do you even have a Twitter account?”

  He pulled out his phone. “I’ll make one. I don’t know the etiquette here, should I mention Donny and Spitz by name, or should I hashtag them? Should I throw a YOLO in there? The kids are still saying that, right?”

  He stopped talking when he saw his phone’s screen. Four missed calls and two voicemails from CorpseFlower. He couldn’t think of any positive reason for his long time webmaster and confidant to be calling him that early in the day, and the chances she wanted to talk about his most recent foray into morning radio were microscopic. She typically only called for one reason.

  Myiasis.

  A fringe website of Nick’s more fervent fans, if ‘fervent’ was a synonym for ‘toxic’. Corpse monitored the site regularly so Nick didn’t have to; a person could only read so many posts about his genitals being turned into key-chains.

  Nick hit ‘call back’. Blaire continued to talk, bits and pieces of which Nick processed between rings. Six markets. Good water-cooler fodder. No such thing as bad publicity.

  CorpseFlower picked up and immediately got down to business.

  “Nick. Don’t freak out.”

  He blinked and began the process of freaking out. “You do realize that is completely the wrong thing to say someone if you don’t want them to freak out.”

  “Okay, fair point, fair point. I wanted to let you know that everything is totes fine. When I tried to call you I didn’t realize you were out.”

  “Yeah, I flew out for a radio interview, but—”

  CorpseFlower became enthused and loud, one of her more endearing qualities. “I know! I saw you trending! Congratulations!”

  Nick held up a hand that Corpse could in no way see. “Wait, wait. What’s happening? Why did you call?”

  “Dude, Myiasis was off the leash this morning. Blowing up big time. Lots of chatter.”

  Nick rubbed his eyes. “I don’t suppose they’re all big Donny and Spitz fans.”

  Corpse got quiet, which freaked him out even more. She finally spoke. “Someone posted a video. It’s all any of these crazy fucks are talking about. But don’t worry, I’m sure you can have the cops or whoever take care of it before you get home.”

  Nick looked at Blaire, who was still having a conversation with herself, oblivious that the interview had dropped to number two on the oh-shit-o-meter.

  “Take care of what?” Nick paused. “What happened at my house?”

  “Nick,” CorpseFlower said, her voice crawling into his ear like a snake. “Don’t freak out.”

  Chapter 3

  Nick pulled into his driveway in time to see the Forest Down Police Department’s newest recruit breathing into a paper bag. Poor kid. He didn’t sign up for this weirdness any more than the rest of them.

  The FDPD all-star squad gathered on Nick’s front lawn, combined with the generous application of yellow police tape, made the place look lik
e the set of a folksy procedural.

  He climbed out of his car and into a light drizzle. The hyperventilating rookie, whose name escaped Nick, used the black four-door to prop himself up.

  “Jesus, that bad, huh?”

  The rookie responded with a series of wheezes as the bag in front of his mouth inflated and deflated.

  Sheriff Reed emerged from the handful of uniforms gathered around Nick’s porch. Tiny droplets of rain clung to her sunglasses. It was a wonder she could see anything at all.

  “Mr. Dawkins.”

  “Sheriff.”

  A moment of silence hung in the air—silence in which the usual back and forth between Nick and Reed now played itself out between them…

  Thanks for coming over to deal with the fallout from yet another of my wildly unstable readers, he would say.

  Mr. Dawkins, you’re a nice enough guy, but are you sure you wouldn’t be happier in Florida? Lots of beaches there, she would reply.

  That conversation was now unspoken and understood.

  “You know,” Nick said out loud, nodding at the grey hanging above them. “The sun technically isn’t even out.”

  She stared at him blankly. He tapped the skin next to his eyes.

  Reed scoffed. “I like my sunglasses, thank you. If I could get by with it, I’d wear them at night.”

  Nick followed her toward the small crowd. “You’re kind of weird, Sheriff.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Dawkins?” The officers parted for her like a black and blue sea. “Don’t talk to me about weird. The only thing on my front porch is a welcome mat.”

  Reed gestured at what had been left on Nick’s front porch. It was neither welcoming, nor a mat.

  “Touché,” he said, leaning in for a closer look.

  The lengthy discussion thread on Myiasis hadn’t done it justice. There had been a video uploaded to the site as well, but it had refused to buffer on his phone.

  Still, he had thought himself prepared. He was wrong. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah,” Reed said, “This is a new one for us too. You said on the phone you knew what it meant?”

  Short answer yes, long answer no. Or was it the other way around?

  Nick cocked his head back and forth indecisively. “Kind of.”

  Local Gillette poster-boy Deputy Douglas Kern spoke up. “Kind of? You know what it is, or you don’t.”

  Nick got down on his hands and knees to get a better angle. “Well, Deputy Kern, what we have here is clearly a bunch of dead animals sewn together.”

  It was a smartass response, but also the most apt way to describe the spectacle. First, it was a dog, some kind of beagle-mutt that had been bisected at its midsection. Where the canine’s hindquarters should have been was now the front half of a black cat stitched into place. One of the cat’s arms had been removed and replaced with an iguana, like a reptilian prosthetic. The front half of a rabbit had been sewn onto the ‘back’ of the dogcat and positioned upright, giving it the appearance of being a long-eared jockey. A gerbil had been threaded to the dog’s head, like the world’s fluffiest safety helmet. A snake was coiled around the entire thing and its head came to rest between the rabbit’s ears.

  Nick let out a long, deep breath.

  “It’s the Animalgamation. And I can’t believe I said that out loud.”

  The officers standing around him murmured between themselves. Not a single one had an idea what he’d said.

  “It’s something I wrote about. My first real short story, as a matter of fact. It was called Pet Project.” Nick looked up at a handful of confused faces. “No? No one?”

  Officer Eric ‘No relation to the famous actor’ Roberts raised a hand. “I was waiting for the movie.” Kern chuckled and poked Roberts in the ribs.

  Nick closely examined the stitching on the gerbil. “It was about a kid who hodge-podged a bunch of animals together Frankenstein style. I described it almost exactly like this fifteen years ago. I can’t believe I’m looking at this right now. It’s insane.”

  “Christ, Dawkins, at least wait until we leave to start jerking yourself off.”

  “Kern.” Reed’s voice cracked the air. “You drew the short straw. Dawkins, let’s step inside.”

  Nick stepped around the disinterred pet cemetery on his front step and unlocked his door. The Sheriff followed him into his hardwood foyer.

  “I apologize for that, Dawkins.”

  He flicked a light on and tossed his keys onto a table. “No, Kern’s right. I was totally about to jerk myself off.”

  Nick caught Reed crack a smile, a rare occurrence. “What was that business about the short straw?”

  Reed took off her sunglasses. “When you got here, they were debating who had to bag up the damn thing. I settled it for them.”

  Nick walked into his kitchen and pulled a juice box out of his fridge. Reed looked up from her pad. “Are you drinking juice out of a box?”

  Nick plunged a plastic straw into the top of it. “Would you rather I have a beer, like everyone else?”

  “The juice isn’t the issue, it’s—” Reed shook her head as she struggled to find the words. “What are you, twelve?”

  He sucked juice from his straw. “Juice is good for you and tamperproof boxes are legit. Don’t judge me.”

  Reed started up again, but changed the course of dialogue as she pulled her trademark yellow pad and pen from her pocket.

  “You said it was almost exactly how you described it in your book. What was off?”

  “Oh, that? Just the dog. The breed was different. The one out there is some kind of beagle, but it’s a cocker spaniel in the story.”

  Reed scribbled in her pad. “Any special significance to that breed?”

  Nick opened the laptop on his kitchen table. “I thought that word was funny.” He turned back to Reed while the machine booted up. “You know…”

  Reed waited for it.

  “Spaniel.”

  “It’s been a long day, Dawkins.”

  Nick tapped at his computer. “Don’t talk to me about long, I was up at four a.m. with Dobby and Shitz In The Morning.”

  “Oh right, how’d that go?”

  The Myiasis website sprang up on the screen. Nick clicked a link. “Do not ask.”

  An embedded video appeared. Reed leaned in over his shoulder. “This is the video you mentioned on the phone?”

  Nick sat back in his chair, arms crossed. “Yeah, I haven’t watched it, though. Just read the comments. You ready for this?”

  Reed nodded. “Sure, do it.”

  Nick clicked on the play icon and the screen came to life. The video panned across a silver tray and a series of surgical instruments.

  Reed pointed at the screen. “This stuff looks like proper medical equipment, right?”

  Nick sucked the last of his juice from his box. The sound of it briefly drowned out the video’s audio. “Yeah, but like, come on, he’s clearly not a surgeon or anything. Did you see that hack-job out there? Amateur hour at the freak show.”

  The video panned across the animals that were now cobbled together in front of Nick’s house, pre-surgery, each one in their own little cage. The dog’s barks echoed throughout his kitchen.

  “Ugh, I hate it when you’re watching a movie and you know the dog is going to die.” Nick had never heard Reed make a joke before. He turned and stared at her in disbelief. She stared back. “I do have a sense of humor, you know.”

  He turned back to the video. “It’s a fact, audiences do hate it when you kill off the animals.”

  “So, of course, that was the first thing you did.”

  Nick sat up. “Oh, of course. You may not know this about me, but I have a propensity for pissing people off. An innate talent in fact.”

  “I’ve noticed. So how did you end up with so many adoring fans?”

  Nick shrugged. “The only thing people like more than being pissed off is being scared.”

  Reed looked down at him. She couldn’t tell i
f he was joking. “You think people like being pissed off?”

  “Sure they do. When people are pissed off at someone they feel better about themselves. Proven fact.” The video cut to each of the dead animals mid mutilation. The director seemed to want to show his or her process step by step. Nick turned away and swallowed down a gag.

  Reed gawked at him. “Seriously, you’re squeamish?”

  He threw his hands up. “What do you want? My job isn’t to look at dead bodies all day.”

  “Neither is mine, this is Forest Down, not fucking Detroit.”

  The video continued to cut from image to image as the final creation came together. A hand emerged from off-screen to adjust the positioning of the rabbit.

  “Looks like a man’s hand,” Nick said.

  Reed nodded. “I agree.”

  The video ended and the word ‘Replay’ appeared on the screen.

  Nick closed the laptop and stood up. “Nope, I’m done. You gotta watch it again? You have fun with that.”

  Reed jotted in her pad. “Send me a link, yeah?”

  He opened his trashcan lid and sent the juice box off to a landfill. “Yep.”

  The sheriff took a breath and held it, mouth slightly open.

  Nick shut the lid. “Whatever it is, just ask.”

  She closed her notepad. “How are you doing truthfully?”

  He walked aimlessly into the living room and watched the drizzling rain on the other side of the massive windows that surrounded him. “I don’t know. Days like today, I wonder if maybe you were right. Maybe I should have gone into children’s fiction. Or erotica. I hear there’s big money in erotica.”

  Reed followed him. “Would you have been happier doing those?”

  “You think I’m happy now?” He plopped onto his couch. “That site, Reed. You have no idea. Well, I guess you do. You have to read it every time one of these people show up at my front door. But that damn site. Imagine a place where hundreds or thousands of people go every day to talk about the things they want to do to you, or for you. Not in a fun way, but a scary way. There’s a woman on there who wants to put a car battery on my junk. And here’s the real kicker. She thinks I’d be into it.”