Flypaper: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 1 Page 2

  “You know what, never mind, let her keep it. Souvenir, right?”

  Reed got uncomfortably close to Nick’s face. “It’s way too early for your shit, Dawkins. Have I ever told you how close you are to being outside my jurisdiction? Another half-a-mile up the road and you and your insane groupies would be someone else’s problem.” She sighed, the long, drawn-out moan of the heavily betrodden. “But as it is, you’re mine. That said, we are not your private security and my coffee is doing jack-shit, so how about you show me and my men some respect?”

  “Right, sorry.” He looked down at his socks, properly chastised. “Look, I appreciate you guys coming all the way out here, I do. You saved my ass, and most likely my penis.”

  His attempt at humor deflected off her like an armored vehicle.

  “Take responsibility for yourself, Mr. Dawkins, that’s all we ask. Help us out, yeah? I’ll send a truck around for her car later.”

  Kern and Roberts drove away with Plain Jane secured in the back seat of their squad car, her head craned so she could see Nick until they turned out of his heavily-shaded driveway.

  “Oh, she left some stuff in here, would you take it for me?”

  Reed rolled her eyes and walked with Nick to his bedroom. He gestured at the nightmarish set of playthings Jane had brought with her.

  “Urethral probes, Sheriff. Sweet mother of God. Apparently her favorite is still in the living room.”

  “Would it have killed you to go into children’s publishing? I’ll bet Shel Silverstein’s Sheriff never had to deal with this shit.”

  “I can’t imagine that’s true.”

  The busted phone on Nick’s floor caught his eye.

  “Awww. You believe this crap? My phone. There is no way Bonnie and Chuck carry smartphones up at the store, is there?”

  “I doubt it, Mr. Dawkins. But there’s only one way for you to find out now, isn’t there?”

  He’d have to go into town.

  And it’d been a good two weeks since anyone had cursed or spit at him, too.

  Chapter 2

  Nick parked in the only viable space on Main Street, in front of the police station, which looked more like a renovated shop-front than the headquarters of the only police department within who-knows-how-many miles. Nick imagined it was an ice-cream shop way back when. The idea of “long arm of the law” dispensing justice like scoops of butter-brickle both amused and terrified him. It was a funny image, but when people like Plain Jane invite themselves into a person’s bed, it’d be nice to feel like the cavalry has their shit together.

  Kern and Roberts stood out front, chatting with a bearded man in overalls. Nick took a deep breath and steeled himself for the inevitable. He climbed out of his jet-black four-door and nodded politely at the three men.

  “Hey, look who we got here.” Roberts’ voice dripped with condescension.

  “You know who this is, right?” Kern asked Overalls. “Big-time writer walking.”

  “Sure I know him.” Overalls chewed on tobacco like a cow with no manners. “What say you there, fancy-pants?”

  Nick recalled his days in elementary school. He spent a lot of time out of school so he wasn’t the most popular person on the playground. Children—and evidently grown adults with nothing better to do with their time—tended to pick on the weird kid. Human nature was a spiteful and vicious beast, and experience both then and now told him to keep moving. He pretended not to hear them and continued toward the general store two buildings down.

  “Mr. Dawkins,” Kern admonished, “in this town when someone says how-do-you-do, it is considered polite to respond in kind.”

  Nick stopped, but shouldn’t have. He turned to face the locals. “I’m doing fine, thank you.”

  “Saw your groupie bein’ dragged in the station. Hollerin’ and carryin’ on.” Overalls spit tobacco juice at Nick’s feet. Brown droplets clung to his Grizzly Adams.

  “Yep.” Nick shrugged and played along. His heart raced as his fight-or-flight kicked in. Years of encounters with an uncommonly strange and unusual fan-base had honed that particular survival instinct to a fine point. And since fight typically won out over flight, it was all he could do not to tell the three men to sit-and-spin. “Crazy people, am I right?”

  Roberts turned to Kern. “Doug, I don’t remember there being a lot of crazy people around all that long ago, do you?”

  “Huh-uh. That would be what you call a recent development.” Kern poked Overalls in the shoulder. “You know what him moving here has cost the tax-payers of this community over the past couple years? For all the times we get called out to some disturbance at his house, or up in the cemetery?”

  “I don’t.” Overalls spit again and the foul substance landed next to Nick’s shoes this time.

  “How much?” Nick was surprised to have said a word.

  Kern stood up straight. “Enough that I think maybe you owe us.”

  Reed barked at the men from the front door of the station. “Kern! Roberts! You have someplace to be?”

  Kern and Roberts moved into the station without a word. Kern’s eyes spoke volumes.

  The Sheriff looked from Nick to the bearded man. The growing stain on the sidewalk next to Nick’s feet told her the story. “Keep it moving, fellas.”

  Nick nodded his thanks and hurried to the general store, stopping at the entrance. He exhaled slowly, steadying himself. There was a reason he never came into town. Nobody there seemed to like him much.

  Well. Almost nobody.

  The bell above the door announced Nick’s arrival.

  “Hey stranger,” Bonnie Littleberry shouted from behind the counter, “Barely recognized ya!”

  She said that every time Nick came into the store, a joke on his increasingly rare appearances.

  Bonnie looked like a character on a cookie package. Short, plump, glasses, gray hair pulled back, and a little grin that said she’d seen a World War, but all she cared about was a damn fine gingersnap recipe.

  “Mornin’ Nick,” Chuck Littleberry grumbled happily, ever the walking contradiction. Chuck was an optimistic pessimist—uncommon in the wilds of Forest Down. Someday he’d use Chuck as a broad template for a character—too good not to.

  Chuck tipped the trucker cap permanently perched atop his bald head. He was also short and plump with glasses. It gave him and Bonnie a Tweedledee and Tweedledum vibe that was strange, but warm.

  He had the morning paper in his hand, which meant he’d mention the country had gone to hell, but at least they had their health. “Some excitement up there on 2273 this morning?”

  “Jesus, Chuck, you wouldn’t believe it.” Nick moved from aisle to aisle and picked up random items he needed around the store. “I wake up, and there’s a strange woman in my bed.”

  “Well now,” Chuck breathed.

  “Oh my,” Bonnie gasped.

  “That might’ve been okay like, back in college, you know?” Nick said, nodding at Chuck with a wink. “But this was not that. This was another of these ‘overzealous fans,’ to use a way nicer word than I probably should.”

  “Another one?” Bonnie’s brow furrowed. “Didn’t you have someone out there last month?”

  Nick nodded. “The guy with the rock collection, yeah. Wanted me to bless them or something. I ended up having to replace four windows. And the month before, it was Mr. Bonzo.”

  Bonnie stared at him, puzzlement written across her face.

  “Guy with a ventriloquist dummy. I never told you? Guy said the puppet was the fan. He didn’t like my stuff. This woman today though, she was a case. She had—”

  Nick stopped himself. Bonnie and Chuck may have known what urethral probes were, but if they didn’t, he didn’t want to explain it them. “This woman had problems; I’ll leave it at that.”

  “You need to take care up there, we don’t get to see you enough as it is. Be a shame, anything happened to you.” Bonnie choked up a little. Nick appreciated the sentiment, even if he didn’t get why she w
as so attached to the weird out-of-towner everyone hated.

  “I do appreciate that, Bonnie.”

  “Oh, and she smashed my phone, so there’s that. There is no way you guys have smart phones for sale here, is there?”

  “Oh goodness no, dear. You’d need to go up to Beasley for that. They have a Wal-Mart.”

  Being thirty miles from the nearest Wal-Mart had appealed to Nick when he moved to Forest Down. ‘Away from the bullshit’ he’d told his agent—away from the convenience, too.

  Then again, that was why man invented overnight shipping.

  Nick stopped at the VHS rental section of the store. There weren’t many places that could pull that off—and holy crap, the selection.

  Bonnie and Chuck’s store housed a handful of horror movies that’d yet to see print on DVD. Nick had offered to pay a hefty sum for them on his first trip into the store, but Bonnie was adamant… she thought the movies belonged to the entire town.

  Chuck had put up a small amount of resistance after he heard the number Nick threw out to claim them. He asked Nick to repeat it and repeat it again one more time before he was sure he’d heard it right. In the end, the movies stayed with the Littleberrys. Nick was pretty sure he was the only person who rented them.

  Nick grabbed the copy of Brainreaper 2: The Reapening off the shelf and added it to the armful of items he’d collected. Bonnie rang the items up by memory on a hilariously old-timey cash register, and Chuck lamented the state of the Middle East as he understood it from the morning’s paper. By the time Bonnie had swiped Nick’s credit card, Chuck noted, “at least he and Bonnie were in good health.”

  Nick gathered the bagged groceries in arms. “See ya guys in a couple weeks again.”

  The bell above the door tinkled and Nick stopped, turned, and was met face-to-face with another strange woman.

  Her hair was dark, two-toned; black with dark-brown highlights. Her eyes matched it, brown with a liberal use of black eye-shadow, uncommon for the area.

  Her clothes were dark, but not “modern-pilgrim dark,” like the more conservative women in town. It was something one of his college girlfriends might’ve worn. Not “goth”, but definitely on the Nihilist spectrum.

  She threw him off kilter, a traveler from a time and place that wasn’t Forest Down. This woman looked like a fan. She could be perfectly normal, or she could want to keep his big toe on a key-chain. Either way, she was the reason he couldn’t come into town without being harassed.

  He’d had it for the day.

  “Hi there.” The girl, late-twenties and curvy, waved and approached the counter.

  Nick strained to be polite, but the best he could manage was a curt, “Hi.”

  “I’m Danielle.”

  Awkward silence descended. Danielle broke it. “You don’t know me, but—”

  Nick nodded quickly and held up a hand, interrupting her. “I appreciate it, thanks, would you like me to sign something for you? I have to be going.”

  This was true; he was eager to be on his way home. He couldn’t think of anything more enticing than another two weeks without seeing a living soul.

  Danielle’s smile peeled off her face like bad wallpaper.

  “Nick, dear, Dani lives upstairs.” Bonnie fidgeted with a rag in her hand. “About three months, now. I thought for sure we’d introduced you. Lovely girl.”

  Nick looked back at Danielle. He expected a wilted flower in need of an apology and comfort.

  Danielle had not wilted.

  “I was actually going to say you don’t know me, but I’ve heard how nice you are from them.” She lifted her chin in Bonnie’s direction. “You may not realize it, but everyone else constantly talks shit about you. And now I can see why.”

  Chuck snorted. “Boy stepped in it, didn’t he Bon?”

  “Charles Abraham Littleberry!” Bonnie whipped the rag in Chuck’s direction.

  Nick had no words. Story of his life. Ironic, considering his profession.

  Nick felt naked. Exposed. The words he thought in his mind, he actually said out loud. “I’m an asshole.”

  “Oh dear, you are not—!” Bonnie read the room and stopped talking.

  “I’m sorry for—for everything about that whole situation. It’s no excuse, but—” Nick laughed a little too loudly. “The day I’ve had. The year I’ve had.”

  Nick found it incredibly difficult to look Danielle in the eyes. He was used to being the target of scorn from essentially everyone within the town limits, but he wasn’t used to feeling he deserved it.

  “Anyway, I apologize.”

  Nobody said anything. In the back of the store, a cricket joined the conversation, but had nothing of substance to add. Nick turned to leave.

  “So make it up to me.” Danielle’s voice was commanding. She had his attention. “Dinner.”

  Bonnie silently and repeatedly clapped her hands together.

  Nick tussled his hair nervously. “Oh, geez. No. I don’t think so. I don’t have a lot of time, you know, with all the writing.”

  Lie. That was a huge lie. In truth, Nick hadn’t been to dinner with a girl in years. He felt out of practice and ill-prepared. Better to walk away now with what remained of his dignity.

  “Seriously?”

  Nick was surprised Danielle didn’t immediately acquiesce. “Seriously what?”

  Danielle crossed her arms, but had a playful demeanor. “Seriously, you’re an asshole to me, you know you were an asshole, even said you were an asshole and you turn me down for dinner?”

  “That’s—” Nick searched for a counter-point but found none. He had to agree. That was pretty much what had happened. “Fair point. I don’t have an argument here, do I?”

  Danielle shook her head. “You don’t. And I have witnesses.” She gestured toward Bonnie and Chuck.

  Bonnie looked as though she might explode with glee. Chuck lifted his cap and rubbed his bald head, eager to see how this played out. Nick wondered if they had a television or if this was pretty much the first real entertainment they’d seen in years.

  He sighed. A mixture of apprehension and excitement swirled about his innards.

  “Dinner?”

  Danielle nodded. “Dinner, that’s all I ask. Then we’ll be even.”

  Nick had to admit, he liked the girl’s style. She had tenacity. Balls. It was even more attractive than her already, quite fetching, outward appearance.

  “You know there’s, like, one place to eat in the whole town, right? So I hope you like Italian.”

  Danielle’s face lit up. “I love Italian.”

  Nick smirked. She certainly had him. How could he say no?

  Well played, new girl. Well played.

  Chapter 3

  He was full of shit.

  When Nick told Danielle he didn’t have time to go to dinner because he was busy writing, he not only lied to her but to himself. He had written less than nothing for several months. Truth was, the thought of going on a date scared the hell out of him. It’d been ages since he’d been on anything resembling a date, he wasn’t sure he remembered how.

  The idea of sitting across a table from Danielle and being the focus of her attention made him want to ralph on the laptop he’d used to order a new phone. He’d ordered a brand new smart-phone complete with one-day shipping and a few accessories. To take his mind off the night ahead, he was now mining the morning’s events for inspiration. At least that’s what he told himself.

  Nick brainstormed at the keyboard; a typical day for him. He’d write down ideas, concepts, anything that might take seed and flower into a glorious monolith of savagery and dark humor.

  Jane and her morning cuddling session had given him loads of fodder to work with by virtue of scaring the holy hell out of him. It was time for step two.

  Plotting.

  He typed out a page of notes revolving around Jane Doe, a female Travis Bickle who often retreated from her lonely and dismal life into a fantasy relationship with a local waiter. Ja
ne would sink into a pit of obsession and, when confronted with the waiter’s engagement to another woman, torture and kill them both.

  Not bad. He saved his work and got up for a break on the balcony. Nick’s house was built onto the side of a steep incline that dove into a dense forest. The view inspired him.

  “Somewhere out there,” the realtor had said, “is a person who would look at this view and bet their last dollar it’s proof of the Lord Almighty.”

  Nick wouldn’t have gone that far. When he imagined a ‘god’, it was an entity closer to the horror of Lovecraft than the artistic perfection of Bob Ross. But the realtor was right… the balcony was a hell of a selling point and gave him a place to escape, especially the days he spent up his own ass, verbally abusing himself. The view was breathing room from the shit fest.

  The mid-day balcony break typically consisted of chain-smoking and entertaining various existential crises. These included everything from dying alone to what he’d do if he’d already written the last word he could.

  That day’s break consisted of what he’d wear that night. What he’d talk about. If he’d make a jackass of himself. And how he’d disentangle himself should the date go south.

  He ground his cigarette into the maw of his mouth-shaped ashtray and returned inside, sliding the balcony’s glass door closed behind him.

  The prose came slowly. Not like it should have. He pecked out words and sentences in spurts over the course of several hours. Inspiration was like that sometimes, a pouty toddler stamping its feet.

  That metaphor was better than any of the prosaic feces he’d been flinging at the page. He sighed, a long exhale bought him another few seconds of procrastination.

  Nick buried his face in his hands.

  He was a hack, a fraud. Someday, everyone would realize it too. This was his special brand of petulant self-loathing and it meant he’d lost perspective.

  Nick conceded defeat to the page for the day. It was over, folks. Nothing to see here.

  He looked at the clock on his wall. It was time to get ready anyway. His stomach lurched. Down boy. It would be fine. Flawless, in fact.