author’s note

well, this time i’m not publishing  anything because i’ve got this family crisis.

every time the moon is full, there’s been a crisis lately.  every time the moon is new, there’s a like crisis.  both basically the same tension.

this time my ex, greg (the model for one of my characters), fell down the stairs and broke a hard object and some fragile ones, and is in the hospital.  i’ll give him your best wishes.  so i’ve been sitting in the hospital all day.

got my first taste of xanax, however.  how’s that for research?

so while i’m currently working on my story, i’m only beginning the process, which means shuffling the existing notes and adding new things that have to happen.  i’m filling out things as i go along, and eventually i’ll end up with a bunch of one-liners expanded out into multiple paragraphs and dialogs, and then i’ll post it.  these days it seems to be taking a day for each stage,  5-6 hour days.  i’m anticipating that since this little tiny section in my notes is much bigger than that, because i have to kill off gordon, and cindy, and laurie too, and that’s a lot for a day’s work.

i’m off to the hospital now.

author’s note

2600 words today

80,000 words total.

and now rick’s dead.

tomorrow gordon, cindy and laurie have to die, and i don’t know how i’m going to kill off laurie.

obviously it’ll take more than one day to do all this…

Day thirty-one

Chapter Twenty-Five

There was some noise at the back door, and in walked a bunch of the guys Gordon had seen on the security camera.  He was reading over the deed of sale, and thought to go out and tell them they should go around to the front door like regular customers, but three of them waltzed into the office and blocked his way before he could rise.

They were holding automatic weapons.  Gordon slipped the bag of coke into the desk drawer and closed it gently.  Addict’s rule number one:  Always guard your stash.

He tried a friendly Hey There, but the men looked angry.  They were military.  Or police.  Special Ops.  Something.  One of the three said something into his phone.  More guys came in the back way.  Gordon could see a small crowd on the parking lot monitors.  Someone muscled his way thru the office door and stood in front of him.  Everything was happening too fast for him to think about it.

“Where’s the owner?” the guy asked him.  He was gray-haired and wiry, the shortest guy in the room.  He had a blue tattoo on his neck, and a gold front tooth.

Gordon wondered at this.  Gang leader?  “I don’t know,” he answered.  “I thought maybe he was in the john.  Who are you?”

The man ignored him and spoke to the guy with the phone, who then made a call.  He gestured to the group behind him, and they started off toward the public area of the club.  The guy made another phone call.

“Where are they going?” Gordon asked.

Still no answer.  The men were all wearing black fatigues and vests, with shit-stompers, and all sorts of things bulged from pockets and dangled from belts and rings.  They all had short haircuts.  They were all big and burly.  They could pass for bouncers at the club, except they didn’t seem to have a sense of humor.  Cops, maybe.

“Maybe you want to talk to me,” Gordon spoke up.  “I’m the new owner.”

The leader was interested.  “Oh, really?  Where’s the old guy?”

“Like I said.  I don’t know.  He signed the place over to me and gave me the keys.  His car is still in the lot, maybe he’s having a nap.”

The men stepped closer.  “Well,” said the little one, “perhaps we need to have a little talk about some business facts you may not be aware of.”  He looked suddenly menacing.  Gordon began to sweat.  “Where’s the money?” he asked softly.

“Hey, what money?  I’m only new,” Gordon protested.  The chief frowned, and one of the burly guys came up and mashed Gordon’s face in a bit.

“Let’s try it this way.  Where’s the safe?”

Gordon led them to the safe, and used the combination that was written on his cheat sheet, and was impressed to find the safe more like a vault.  And flabbergasted to find it completely empty.

The chief wasn’t, however.  He barked something to the guy with the phone, who disappeared around the corner and had a few more quick conversations.  Then he was back to whisper in the chief’s ear.

They all heard a shot and screams out in the lounge, from way back in the office.  His guards weren’t very curious.  Their leader was trying to figure out how to break the news to the virgin, while they stood around wishing they could be out front with their buddies, teaching the sheep a lesson.

Gordon was a little alarmed.  His bouncers were out there spoiling for a fight.  There were guys in the lounge and in front of the building, waiting for a signal.  Maybe someone was trigger happy.  He would have liked to go see, but the goons weren’t going to let him.  He looked at the monitors with the side of his eyes.

A bunch of couches were turned over near the bar, and Jake and Dan worked the trenches.  The DJ was commanding a couple of girls and customers in the booth.  Allen’s head peeked around the bathroom door.  The stage and floor were empty, the lights flashing on dusty black walls, the music pounding at a bunch of empty and overturned seats.

There was a small gathering of black uniforms near the door to the corridor.  They were posturing menacingly and using violent gestures, pointing a lot with intimidating weapons.  Then one fired off a shot as a bouncer dived behind a palm.

There was an awful lot of return fire.

Ben recorded the scene with his cellphone for posterity.

The uniforms in the office looked a little nervous.  Gordon wondered at that.  They weren’t expecting any opposition.  The chief gestured, and his guy made another call.  Suddenly the sound of gunfire was cut in half, and Gordon heard soldiers running back down the hall.  In step.

“I’m going to want to talk to you,” the chief said as he turned to go.  “Next time.  Here’s my calling card.”  And he drew his weapon and shot Gordon in the foot.

The soldiers left thru the back door as bouncers, dancers and customers came rushing down the corridor shouting and spraying bullets.  People crowded into the office to see Gordon rolling around on the floor, his foot all bloody, with raw bits sticking out of what remained of his runners.

He looked up with a bright smile on his face, despite the pain.  “Is there a doctor in the house?” he asked.  Three customers stepped forward.  “I’ve always wanted to say that.  Hurry, fellas, it’s killing me.”

The docs fixed him up in return for free drinks for a month.  By the time they were finished, he was joking about being robbed his first day on the job.  The steep price he paid to buy the joint.  No arm and no leg jokes.

He waited until they were gone before prescribing himself a liberal dose of cocaine, a renowned analgesic.  He promised himself he would sprinkle some on the wound when he changed the bandages later.

Then he hobbled out to inspect the damage to his club, leaning on Allen’s shoulder.  He was shocked.  There were several dead bodies, several writhing moaning figures, and several walking wounded.  The place smelled like cordite.  There was broken glass and broken furniture everywhere.  And everyone was looking at him for decisions.

What would the owner do?  Give the problem to the bouncers.  He called Jake over and started telling him to deal with it in the usual way.  Problem was that the usual way involved taking customers out to the parking lot and beating them up, then leaving them to sleep it off behind the dumpster, or handcuffing them and calling the cops on them for being drunk and disorderly.  But these were bullet wounds.

Okay.  Put the dead ones in the dumpster.  No.  That would lead back to the club.  Put them in a taxi and take them to the airport.  The driver would notice when they didn’t pay the fare.  Load them into the back of a pickup and drop them off at the hospital.  Crude, but it might could work.  Large thank you gifts for everyone involved.

The bouncers rounded up the dead and dying, the girls straightened the place up, Dan reopened the bar and the DJ put on some gangsta rap.  Gordon called for a round for everyone, on the house.

He sat at his table, working the bullet-scratched surface with a fingernail.  Sam and Dave came up to him and stood there silently.  He looked up at them in a mental fog.  It was the pain.  His consciousness was shrunk to the size of a walnut because of the pain.  He hated pain.  He ordered another drink.

“You two never got to play the heavies, did you?” he asked them.  “Things sure happened differently than I’d planned.”  Then he remembered he was supposed to turn over the owner.  “Sorry, boys,” he said heavily, “he gave us the slip right before the badguys showed up.  He’s gone.”

Sam and Dave shared wide-eyed, panicky looks.  Dave whipped his phone out and started punching buttons.  He looked at Gordon with doubt in his eyes.  “His car’s out back.”

“Yes it is,” he replied.  How did he know that?

Sam said, “GPS.”

Gordon nodded.  Gadgets.  They had a GPS on the owner’s car?  Did they have one on his car?

“Do we even know his name?” Dave asked.

Gordon fished out the deed of sale.  “I think he’s going to the airport.  There was this taxi driver with a big bag.  It was before the shooting.  I was suspicious.  They’re probably there by now.”

“Too big to fit in the overhead?” Sam asked.

“Twice the size.  Must have been full of cash.  Maybe half a million.”

Dave spelled the owner’s name into the phone.  He discussed the luggage issue.  Then he hung up.  Sam shook Gordon’s hand and muttered how great about the club.  Dave hit him up for a bag of marching powder.  They left in a hurry.  Got to get to those reports.

Gordon sat back and examined the past few hours.  He was now the proud owner of a strip club.  His men had beaten off an army.  He was King Gordon and this was the first night of his new life as a player.  Mom would be proud.  Like he could tell her about it.

Allen sat down next to him.  Gordon called for another round on the house.  They cheered him.

“I guess we won’t rob the place, then,” Allen wondered.

“Right, Allen.  We can’t rob it.  The owner robbed it on his way out of here.”

“That bastard.”  Allen looked at Gordon’s foot.  The bandage was beginning to seep.  “I was kinda looking forward to robbing the place,” he moped.

“We’ll rob it tomorrow,” Gordon soothed.  “We’ll rob it every night.”  The Vicodin was kicking in on top of a couple of stiff post-trauma drinks.  He was not caring much about anything at the moment.  “We’ll make it a show.  Wild West Night.  Come get robbed, and not just by the girls.  All nude badguys.  Wait, no.”

That’s when he opened the bar.  He and Allen paid a customer for a table dance.  The girls sat around drinking, stuffing dollars into the garters of hairy, naked men.  The DJ got a blow job while he was queuing up songs.  There was heavy betting on it.

Gordon hobbled off to the back to spend some time in his new office.  He sat and looked thru the desk drawers.  He looked thru the files.  He looked thru the computer hard drive.  He looked a good part of the way thru the big bag of coke.

He wondered about the attack on the club.  Who were those guys?  Why were they there?  What did they want?  He didn’t bother wondering if they’d be back.  He never for a moment thought he could be in above his head.  He never noticed the circling shadows beneath him.

He had a lot of ideas.  Ways of improving the club.  New decor.  New theme.  What if they were to start a retail line?  Videos.  Clothing.  Condoms.  Ah, energy drinks.  A few secret ingredients (cocaine and speed) and they’d be a real hit.  Or some concoction of prescription drugs and cocaine he could call marching powder, in honor of Sam and Dave.

He wanted to liven up the routine in the club.  It was always naked girls dancing and rushing the customers for money.  What if they had theme nights?  Slumber party, and all the girls could wear baby doll costumes.  Halloween.  How about a beauty pageant?  Miss Nude Girl.  Why not mud wrestling?

King Gordon the Great.

He was in the middle of unwrapping his foot to use a line of coke as a topical anesthetic.  He glanced at the security monitors.  There were lots of them.  On rotation, nine at a time tiling the screen.  Finally he noticed the camera that was focused on the dumpster in the parking lot.  Rick was out there, fiddling with something.  He called Jake, who sent Thumper the bouncer out to see what was going on.  Thumper reported that Rick was fucked up, and that he’d been escorted to his car.

Gordon was hobbling down the long corridor to the front of the building, halfway decided to warn Ben so he could save Alice, when he heard another shot.  The army was back.

But there was no second shot until Gordon came busting thru the door and Rick took aim at him.

Rick had eaten the chocolate he snatched from Alice earlier.  He was unsteady, he couldn’t see straight, sweat was pouring into his eyes.  He was shooting with his left hand.  He’d been sleeping it off in the car but woke up and decided to come back in and get even with Roxy for mangling his fingers.

Laurie was sitting on the edge of the stage, her shoes dangling.  She was rubbing her shoulder where Rick’s first shot had grazed her.  Dan the bartender handed up a drink and she took it gratefully.

The bouncers surrounded Rick and disarmed him.  Gordon had a few things to say about the reputation the club was going to develop if they let this kind of thing continue.  They dragged Rick outside to teach him a lesson.

Rick staggered in a circle under the security lights, surrounded by grinning bouncers.  They’d never liked him.  He was a lousy tipper.  And so superior.  Only the fact that he was Gordon’s brother had kept them from giving him a whipping months before.  And since he’d just shot at his loving brother, they figured all bets were off.

Rick was defiant.  He slurred his words, announcing in a whiny yell that he’d been recording everything that went on at the club, for months.  He had the shit on everyone of them.  He knew what each one was up to, and had enough evidence to close the club down and put them all in prison.  He postured, he threatened, he insulted them.  He was still trying to come out on top, even surrounded by a pack of snarling bouncers.  He still wanted to bully a big bribe out of someone to keep quiet about it.

The bouncers circled closer.  It started out as a standard ass-whipping.  But then he slipped and went down, and they moved in.

Gordon appeared at the back door, hobbling over to have a look.  Rick was curled up.  He was dirty, his clothes were torn, he was scraped and scratched, and blood leaked out of the side of his mouth.

“You okay, big brother?” Gordon asked, bending down to look into Rick’s eyes.  Rick began to cough and spit, and started trying to get to his hands and knees.

But Gordon kicked him viciously in the head, and Rick went down again.

Gordon fainted right on top of him.  He’d kicked his brother with his wounded foot and the pain shut him right down.  The bouncers pulled Gordon off of Rick and propped him up on the side of the dumpster.  He came around a few moments later, and looked over at his brother.

Rick was lying in blood and vomit and piss, left for dead by the bouncers.  Gordon decided the club needed a different policy for undesirable customers.  He struggled to his feet with difficulty, kicked his brother once more in the head for old time’s sake, with his other foot, and stepped over him on his way back inside.

* * *

Go to chapter twenty-six

author’s note

day thirty.  on the 14th of december.  a month and a half to get thirty days worth of work.

4000 words in this multi-day chapter, with the hardest part of what was going to be this chapter, but will now be the next chapter, to come.

i’ve got 77,863 words at the moment.  more tomorrow.

Day thirty

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cindy awoke to the sound of the blaring television.  A bright and chipper woman bellowing in her kitchen.  “Top of the local news this morning,” she squawked.  “Three convenience store employees are in critical condition after being apparently poisoned by an unknown customer.”

She got to the TV to turn it off, and saw footage of a blurry woman on security cameras, weaving and bobbing to the cash register with her arms full of junk food.  “The assailant evidently traded what she called ‘magic chocolates’ for $28.59 worth of merchandise and walked away.  Employees ate the chocolates, which were later found to be heavily adulterated with barbiturates.  The three are suffering from organ failure and respiratory depression, one is in a coma.”  A closeup filled the screen.  Someone with a wig on backwards, and red lipstick used for eye liner and blusher as well as the lips.  Certainly nobody Cindy would recognize.  “Police are looking for a middle aged white woman, about five foot five, last seen dressed in a bloody bathrobe and high heels.”

* * *

Judy sat at the kitchen table all morning and paid no attention to her TV.  She worked her way thru a fifth of whisky and a quarter ounce of weed.  She slept all afternoon.  She didn’t have many thoughts, but she wrote them all down on sticky notes.

* * *

Overnight, Sindi had driven over and left a chocolate in the mailbox for Alice.  Rick noticed the flag was up, and checked it to find a black plastic convenience store bag with three boxes of animal crackers (for the kids) and a beautiful little handmade chocolate bonbon wrapped in a note.

Alice protested with growing hysteria that she didn’t know anything about it.  But the note had red lipstick hearts and arrows, and an indecipherable scrawl of a signature.  It must be Cindy.

Alice continued playing dumb.  He saw an animal fear in her eyes that drove him crazy.  He emptied the bag on the table, shouting at them all.  The children wanted the cookies, but he put the boxes in the disposal and turned it on, lecturing as they cried about manners and being greedy.

Alice went to snatch the chocolate, but he whacked her hand aside.  She stood nursing her fingers, her eyes welling with tears.  Looking pitiful.  Bitch.  Fornicator.  Lesbian.  He licked his fingers, sticky with cinnamon syrup.  She turned to see about the children.

Alice turned her back on Rick.

He wasn’t about to take that kind of disrespect.  He pushed her, hard, up against the door.  Everyone heard the crunch as her face hit the door jam.  She crumpled to the floor, sobbing and bleeding.  Rick couldn’t take the Camille act, and walked out, taking the chocolate with him.  He put it into one of the kids’ fruit cup containers, and took it along for a treat.  He liked chocolate.

* * *

Allen met Ben after work in the same row of gravestones where they’d met before.  Allen really enjoyed the place.  Judy was supposed to meet them there, but never showed.  They took care of business.  Allen tried to interest Ben in an upgrade this time – the dealer he got his pot from wanted to test the waters for some hydroponic shit.  He produced a dime bag stuffed full of fuzzy looking pot.  White widow.  The good stuff.

“Wow,” Ben said, holding the pouch in his palm.  “Looks great.”  He rubbed the seal open and smelled.  “Wow, I’m getting high just on the smell of the bud.”  He looked at Allen.  “How much is it?”  Then he took another deep sniff, resealed the ziplock, handed it back with a sad smile, and took the usual.  Allen wasn’t going to make a lot of converts to $500 an ounce weed among his clientele.  His customers wanted the cheapest weed possible.

They watched the sun go down.  They watched the moon come up.  “Yeah, I guess when the moon’s full, you’d have the moon on one side and the sun on the other.  I never thought about it before.”  They were stoned, and things like full moons and coincidences meant a lot to them, so they talked while it got dark around them.

“What did you give Sam and Dave the other night?” Allen asked.  “They weren’t too happy.”

Ben shrugged.  “A joke.  A montage of various cameras on off nights.”

“Why?”

Ben looked at him like he was a child.  “Because they’re cops, Allen.  They came around undercover with Rick one day, and asked me a bunch of cop questions.”

Allen laughed “Hey, no, man, we thought they was cops when they first started hanging at the club.  But they’re foreign.  From Russia or somewhere.  Organized crime, just like here.”

“But they seem like cops to me.”

“Yeah, they’re good.  Gordon’s planning to get them to act like cops when we take the place down.”  That should have been an oops-too-much-information moment for Allen.  But he liked a good story.

Ben didn’t object to spilling his secrets, either.  “Rick’s been putting cameras and microphones around the club for awhile.”

This was news to Allen.  “But he’s not in on Gordon’s plan, so I don’t know why.”

“He must have a plan of his own,” Ben mused.  “Wonder what?”

It got cold.  It got kind of creepy.  Allen talked Ben into talking to Sam and Dave again, so they both went on to the club.  But Ben still regretted the cover charge.  This time Sam and Dave asked questions, and Ben gave them lots of vital information, lots of footage, lots of recorded phone calls, lots of emails, lots of memory sticks.  Everything that would make an airtight case against Rick.

Jake came in to work late, looking like death.  He’d been sick as a dog all night, and nearly didn’t get to work at all.  He still felt sluggish, even tho he’d overslept the alarm by a couple of hours.  Stomach flu.  He nursed a V8 until after midnight.

Gordon followed him in, feeling a little ill himself.  But nothing out of the ordinary, nothing a couple of energy drinks and some blow wouldn’t cure.  It was probably nerves.  Because tonight was the night.  He looked around, noted who was there, who met his eye and who didn’t.  Everything was ready.

It was a crowded night, there was plenty of money coming in.  Plenty of money had been coming in for the past three days, not just the daily take from the club, but outside money, coming in and being secreted away.  Money from the owner’s shadow businesses.  Bunches of money piling up in the safe, waiting to be snuck out in the trash and picked up offsite.

But his plan and all its contingencies had the dumpster full of trash only.  Well, maybe the owner and his henchmen, too.  But the money – several hundred thousand – was going home with him.

King Gordon.

There was just a little tiny conflict.  Gordon was supposed to take over as manager in a matter of days.  The little angel on his shoulder said that he was going to be running the joint soon, so his plan to rob the club had to be cancelled.  But the little devil on his other shoulder said that robbing the club now would make the owner look bad, and since Gordon hadn’t started working there yet, it would make him look good.

Gordon was working on a revised version of his plan, a version where they would get to rob the club every few months, starting tonight.  He stared into the distance.  The pounding beat of the music soothed the tension in his neck.  Some more snow would be nice.

Laurie was on stage, looking a little tired.  She’d been sleeping more.  She was never in a good mood lately, either.  And she was getting a little thick about the middle.  With a girl that skinny, an ounce showed up.  She wasn’t going to be dancing for much longer.  He was going to have to support her, and the baby.  And he wasn’t sure it was his kid.  But what the fuck, what else were they going to do, break up?  They were just too comfortable, crazy as that sounded.

Rick was down in front of Laurie, his elbows hanging on the stage.  Usually he sat at a table in the middle of the floor, but this time he was lolling around like he was drunk, right under her feet.  But Rick didn’t drink.  Rick looked down his nose at intoxication of any kind.  Rick was holier than everyone in the room.

But Rick was drooling.  Rick was staring.  Rick was moving slowly.  Rick was sweeping the stage with outstretched arms, reaching for his Roxy.

Laurie brought a stiletto heel down on Rick’s fingers and ground the point in with a hip roll.  He yowled in pain and sat back in his seat, stuffing his fingers in his mouth and rocking.  He moaned Roxy over and over.  Rocking.  Roxy.

Gordon watched Laurie ruin his brother’s writing hand.  Poor bastard.  He hadn’t seen Rick rocking like that since Mom threw out his play carpenter bench.

Chloe brought him a drink, and plopped a presentation box onto his table.  “The house mom found these in the back,” she said.  “Chocolate.  I thought you’d want one.”

He thanked her, and tipped her extra, and went back to brooding about his plan.  He liked chocolates.  The taste of the one he had the night before had left him wanting more.  So he had another one.  He watched Rick stumble out of the club, and almost got up to go see if he was okay.  He licked his fingers instead.

A few people ate chocolate at the club that night.  The cinnamon centers were just yummy.  Some of the girls got a little sticky.

Allen came up to Gordon’s table with Ben in tow.  “Hey, meet my friend Ben.  He works for old Rick the Prick there.  Poor bastard.  Told her he was broke.  Did you see his hand?”

Gordon looked Ben over.  “You picked a good night to show up.”

“It’s a full moon,” Ben said.  Gordon nodded at a chair.  Allen brought over another for himself.

“Allen was telling me you’ve got plans for this place,” Ben said.  “Nothing specific, of course.”

“I’ll fill you in,” Gordon said.  “Work for Rick, eh?  Let me guess.  Security.”

“Told you he was good,” Allen crowed.  But to keep it even, he announced, “Ben’s been giving information to the Russians.”

Gordon said, “Hmmm.  Like what?”

“Well,” Ben said, not quite meeting Gordon’s eye, “they’re looking for anything they can get on my boss.  I’ve got evidence of illegal stock trades, wire fraud, embezzlement, bribery, extortion.  That I know of.  There are wire taps, video footage, computer files.  I’m not exactly sure what he’s up to here in the club,” he said, looking Gordon in the eye,  “but since he broke Alice’s nose this morning, I feel obliged to step in and remove him from the family environment.”

Gordon regarded him evenly.  “Because of Alice?  Not because of how he treats you as an employee or anything?  Didn’t give you a raise?”

Ben colored.  “Alice.”

Gordon frowned.  “That’s my brother you’re turning in to the Feds, you know.”

Ben felt really sorry.  “She’s so helpless…”

“I see.”  Love.  Why did it always come down to a girl?  “Well, good luck with that.”  He could fix it himself.

Allen and Ben exchanged glances.

“I told you they were cops,” Ben said.

“They’re not.” Allen said.

“They are,” Gordon stopped the argument.  “I’ve just figured it out.  They’ve been here all along, gathering information.  This is all some kind of sting operation.  And we’re caught up in it.  They want the owner, don’t you see?  Not Rick.  Not us.”  Certainly not, they agreed.  “Maybe they don’t know they want the owner,” he mused.  He looked at Ben.  “Can you handle a gun?”

Gordon ordered a round of drinks sent to Sam and Dave, and joined them at their table in time to pay Chloe.  “I understand you boys are closing in on the kill,” he said.  Sam pretended not to understand.  “Professionally,” Gordon continued, indicating Sam’s badge pocket.  Then he grinned and slapped them on the shoulders.  “Come on, boys, I’ve  known all along you were official.”  Dave choked on his ice.

Gordon propped his chair on its back legs and stretched out between them.  “I’ve got to hand it to you, it’s a really slick operation.  First rate.  It’s been a long haul, and you’ve worked real hard to get your man.”

Sam looked proud.  Dave smiled shyly.  It was nice to have some respect.

“Yep,” Gordon continued.  “Selling state secrets.  That’s impressive.  Say, did you know that Rick is my brother?”

“Well, kind of,” Dave said, and trailed off.

Gordon brought his chair down and leaned into the table.  “What if I told you that there was someone even bigger, that Rick is only small time compared to?”  They didn’t get it.  “Someone who’s dealing arms?  And running hundreds of pounds of cocaine?”  He mentioned white slavery and money laundering and their faces grew serious.  Someone who actually fit the MO they got at their briefing all those months ago.

“Well,” Sam said, “Rick is what we’ve got.”  Even tho most of it was cut from the whole cloth.

“That’s not happening.  He’s my brother.  What if I could get you proof of this other guy’s operations?” Gordon offered.

“What kind of proof?”

He thought fast.  “Oh, how about bank accounts, records?”  He saw them pausing.  “Security tapes?  Witnesses?”  He looked around, panicking.  “And of course I’ll deliver him to you for hassle free removal.  Tied up with garlic slivers if you want.”

Dave looked at Sam.  “I don’t know.  We’ve got backup waiting to dive in and pick up Rick with a minimum loss of life.  Ten minutes.”

Gordon envisioned a gun battle in the club that night.  “Oh, let’s not be hasty.  You want to be very careful about the timing.”  He was doing a lot of high speed thinking tonight, and his brain was getting tired.  “I’ve got delicate operations just about to hit the skillet and you might mess everything up.”

“What’s going on, then?” Sam asked, peering at him over bifocals he hadn’t worn before.

Gordon told them about his plan.  The dumpster was going to be picked up at four in the morning.  He and most of the bouncers and some of the customers were going to interrupt things at three, sequester everyone into the office, pull all the packages out of the dumpster, and run away.  Sam and Dave were welcomed to join them, for an equal share.  There would be plenty of time to deal with Rick tomorrow.  And by tomorrow, there would be a super premium replacement suspect, and everything would turn out fine.

Sam and Dave looked a little reluctant.  “Action?” Sam mused, “I don’t know…”

With a little persuasion, they warmed to the idea of an improv heist.  They would be the heavies, if need be.  Step in and control things, get them all lined up against the wall and quiet.  If it came to that.

“A little money tonight, maybe a better suspect tomorrow.  It’s not good enough,” Sam growled.  “We’re getting a lot of pressure from above.”  His voice sounded a lot different than it had when he was Russian.  Higher.

Dave was grim.  “If we don’t have something soon, we’re going to have to go with option one.”

Jake appeared at the table, looking haggard.  “The owner wants to see you,” he rasped.

“Fine.”  He handed his vial of cocaine to Dave.  “Go powder your noses,” he said, getting up.  “I’ll be back in a flash with something you’ll be happy to trade for.”  It was like Monopoly, trading the orange for the purple.  How fitting, him rescuing his shark brother.  Gordon the great.

The owner was in his office, pacing nervously, a cigarette dangling from his lips.  Sweat marked his armpits.  Usually he was so suave.  He was so smooth that Gordon just assumed he was part of the regular Italian Mafia.  The American Mafia.  The Real Mafia ™.  He always kind of looked up to the owner.  Now, tho, he seemed a little ratlike.

“Here, kid,” he said, forcing a bright, salesman’s face.  “I forgot to get you to sign another form.”  He laughed.  “Always another form, eh?  But for the lawyers…”  He pulled a folder out of his desk and flipped from the title page to the signature lines.  “Sign here.”

Gordon had caught a glimpse of several words.

DEED OF SALE

That was one.  Deed of what?  Something important was trying to stick in his brain.  The owner’s name.  Some weirdass name he couldn’t pronounce.  No wonder everyone referred to him by his title.

(hereinafter called the “Seller”)

The owner was going on in a droning voice, reassuring, a narcotic voice.  Sign here and here and here and here.

A moment later, Gordon wondered what that name was again.  There was another line that featured his very own name, written in as Purchaser.  His head began to spin.

“Bareass Entertainment dba The Scarlet Pimpernel,” Gordon read wonderingly.

sum of one (1) dollar.

Twenties were the smallest bills he was carrying at the moment.  He patted his pockets and tried to focus.  The document blurred in front of his eyes.

Possession and occupation. Have and hold. Sole.

“Sign here at the big yellow X,” the owner said, wrapping Gordon’s fingers around a pen.  The signature was almost legible.  It didn’t seem to matter.

SIGNED  That’s today’s date already written in, he noticed.
AS WITNESSES:  1. He thought it might be Jake’s scrawl.  2. And DJ’s scribble.

“Keep up the good work, kid,” the owner said, putting the pen back in his pocket.  He handed Gordon a sheet of computer codes and the combination to the safe.  “Sorry to be so hasty, but I’ve got to go out of town for a little while.  You’re in charge until I get back, and then I’ll show you the ropes.  Until then, you’ve got lots of latitude.  Run it however you want.”  He tossed him a ring of keys.  “Enjoy,” the owner said, and escorted him out of the office.

Gordon skipped thru the corridor back to the lounge.  Emperor Gordon.  Time to celebrate.  Then, damn – Sam and Dave had his vial.  He skipped faster.  Ben would watch him on the replay later and think how childlike he seemed.

Sam and Dave weren’t at their table, so Gordon sat down and waited.  He signaled Chloe for another round.

Sam and Dave were in the bathroom, making Allen turn his pockets inside out.  They relieved him of his cash, and a nice little bag of high-grade marijuana.  Protection money, plus a tip.  Dave thanked him for the weed, they washed their hands, and left.  Allen was only a little beat up.  He was very confused.  Were they Feds or Mafia?

Gordon was busy wowing Sam and Dave when Allen came out of the john.  He was in a rare mood.  They were drooling as he described what he had on the owner.  Gordon was getting a little antsy even as he was working the Feds.  Sam and Dave still had his coke vial, and he was tempted to run out to the car for his stash, but he had this deal to negotiate.

He was going to make their careers.  Sam could retire, Dave could move up.  They had all this stuff on Rick – corporate spy, high tech pirate, selling high tech to enemies, securities fraud, tax evasion, conspiracy murder – they could take all that, and add it to all the stuff they were going to get on the owner.  All they hade to do was to write Rick completely out of the reports, exonerate him from all charges.  And Gordon would give them their hearts’ desires.

Gordon darted off to the door to take care of something.  Sam and Dave whispered between themselves.  It was possible.  They could say their informant had changed his story, and it altered a bunch of known history on the players.

Gordon went to intercept a taxi driver.  He’d come thru the restricted area and was heading for the front door, trundling a large suitcase.  Gordon blocked his way and held the door.  “Where did you get that?” he asked.

The driver shrugged.  “Passenger luggage.  Airport.”  He held out his hand for his club kickback.

“Fuck off,” Gordon said, and opened the door.  “You don’t get paid when you take them back.”  He continued out to his car to fetch his stash.

“I am call strike,” the driver shouted as he got in his cab.  Gordon shrugged.  After tonight, things would be different.

Back inside, Sam and Dave worked out the problem.  Their existing reports actually conflicted with what they’d just gotten on the owner, so they needed another patsy to blame all their made-up reports on.  It only took them a few moments to pick Bill.  Dave began to grumble.  Such a huge waste of effort – keeping records, making up records, fabricating witnesses, coming up with entire plots, dialog.  All that work.  And then just toss it out in the street when something better came along.

But it was a good deal, because a lot of what they had against Rick wouldn’t hold water.  They weren’t going to pass it up because of a little work.  Dave called and told backup to be ready for new orders, and when Gordon came back to the table, Sam hit him up for more marching powder.  Something to help get all those reports rewritten asap.

Gordon walked back over to his table and ordered a drink.  He was tired.  Suddenly Laurie came up, looking for a fight.  She weaved thru the tables, muttering to herself and batting off assistance.  She was heading for Gordon.  She was going to kill him.  It was the last thing he needed that night.  She screamed a collection of obscenities and attacked him with tooth and nail, leaving blood.  Screaming.  He drew back and slapped her in the face.  She kicked at him with her long, stilleto heeled foot.  He lifted her up and threw her over his shoulder and spanked her.  In front of God and everyone.  She screamed for the bouncers to throw him out.  The house applauded.  Gordon the World Champion.

Gordon looked around him and did a quick count of people on his side.  He was fairly sure of his numbers.  He’d been recruiting heavily, and they were mostly all on his side at this point.  Fuck the owner.  Because they were going to get away with it.  Now that it was his club, he controlled the security cameras.  They were all going to be blank when the cops had a look tomorrow.

But they didn’t need Laurie making a scene right before they busted the safe.  He got closer to Laurie, wanting to enfold her and calm her down, the Stripper Whisperer, but she spat at him, and hissed, and arched her back, so he asked Jake and Weasel to escort her to the house mom for a rest.  Give her a Valium,” he suggested as they passed.

Everybody was on high alert.  Some of his boys were starting to look a little trigger happy.  He decided he might as well act now, when the blood was hot.  So he told Allen to alert them, and waited until they were in their places, and then went sauntering back to the office to rob the owner of three days of receipts.

Nobody was in the office.  He let himself in with the key, after fidding with a number of wrong ones.  The owner wasn’t there either.  Gordon checked the security cameras.  There was the owner’s car, in the parking lot.  Was there a bathroom in the office?  He checked around.  He found a big bag of coke in the desk.  He stopped for the pause that refreshes.  He noticed the camera picking up a bunch of the same make and model SUVs pull into the parking lot.  A group, maybe a bachelor party.  How nice.  A bunch of guys got out and started for the door.  He was going to have to be more strict about the dress code from now on.  None of those guys were wearing ties.

* * *

Go to chapter twenty-five

author’s note

i wrote half a section the day before yesterday, and my ex father in law came into town and visited, so i spent all day cleaning (and he never got past the kitchen).  i’ll write more tomorrow.  not that anybody’s reading, but thanks for your patience.

i’m almost to the end.  in my notes, we’re at the point where the owner goes down, and after that there’s nothing left but killing everyone off, and then wrapping everything up.  this is three sections.  in my notes.  in reality, i expect it’ll take a whole day’s work killing each one off.  on the other hand, i could just go right thru it, like i did the death of frank.

i was a little hesitant after i wrote frank’s death.  there was my first character dead, and i had so many more to go, it all seemed a little much, emotionally.  so i was reluctant to go back to work the next day, and i planned to sit in bed and read, or sleep (swine head cold relapse), or even paint.  but the internet was down momentarily, so i went back to work on my story.  and then i felt fine.  so much for mourning.

author’s note

on dec 7, i wrote:

2646 words today, for today’s total of 67658 words, or 163 pages single spaced.  plowing right along.

on dec 8, i wrote:

2111

69969

141 p

today i wrote:

73626 words, just under 4000 for today and yesterday, and  probably the day before, however long since i’ve published a chapter.

stuff happens, and i forget to update it.

Day twenty-nine

Chapter Twenty-Three

Frank and Judy took a long walk after breakfast.  They walked arm in arm, talking about the changing seasons.  They wondered how many more autumns they would see.  After fifty you don’t assume you’ll see tomorrow, the way you did when you were a kid.  They kept the conversation light.  They were both exhausted.  The family had already been talked to death.  Neither of them wanted to dissect Mom’s kinks or Cindy’s neuroses, or dwell on anyone else’s flaws.  It was enough to be moving slowly down the street, leaning against each other in the sunshine, pausing to catch their breaths going up a hill, stopping to look at a house that was being renovated.

* * *

Rick and Alice weren’t speaking to each other.  Rick for punishment, Alice because her vocal chords were damaged.  Dark bruises colored her neck and shoulders.  She had an indentation on her forehead where his wedding ring landed during the fight last night.  She had dared to stand up to him over the kids.

He was being abusive to the children, trying to force them overnight to be perfect children, because he couldn’t face the fact that his kids were so badly behaved.  He’d picked them up from school and taken them out for an ice cream, and they ran around like wild indians.  So he was in the kitchen hectoring those poor children into being the perfect examples of his perfect fathering.  And they were sobbing and crying their little hearts out.  It echoed in the kitchen.  It echoed in her head.  She couldn’t ignore it.

So she broke the lock, came out of her room, marched down to the kitchen, and yelled at him for mistreating the children.  He ordered her back to her room.  She glowered at him, and Rick saw that she was serious.  He tried the usual silent treatment, sneering at her like she was a cockroach, showing her all the contempt he felt for her failure as a human.  Usually it was enough to cow her, send her scuttling under cover.

He never expected a different response.  She stood there, in front of the children, and refused to go back to her room.  She raised her voice to him, called him abusive and mean spirited, told him he was ruining the children, and promised to call a lawyer in the morning.

So he taught her some manners.  In front of the children.  He left her there when she passed out, and went and spanked the kids and put them to bed, unplugging the night lights for extra punishment.

* * *

Tzingdii woke up next to Bill in the middle of the night and found a Tiffany box.  It was wrapped like Christmas, blue with a white ribbon.  It was a magic box.  She opened it up, and it was full of fish food, so she gave some to the fishies in the tank.  She opened it again, and it contained doggie biscuits, so she took a walk and gave them to her friends.  She left some nuts for the squirrels even tho they were sleeping.  Finally, as she began to get tired again, she left one for the dragon in the basement, and went back to bed.

When Cindy woke up, it was to find a chocolate on her pillow.  Smeared all over it.  Sticky sweet, with the metallic taste of sleeping pills: she’d know that taste anywhere.  She felt nauseated.  The attacks had just gotten too close for comfort.

She still had no idea how someone was getting in to mess up the place like that.  And her pillow was only the beginning.  Bill’s wardrobe had been cut to pieces with scissors.  His suitcase, half full of shredded clothes, had been peed in.  His wallet had been emptied into the sink and set on fire.  His private den was untouched except for fatal scratches on every CD and DVD he owned.  His car – locked in the garage – had been coated with paint stripper, the tires were punctured, the windows were smashed in with his own golf clubs, the leather seats had multiple stab wounds, and the seatbelts were cut to pieces.

The scissors ended up less than an inch from Bill’s comatose head.  He’d gotten home at 4 a.m. and fell into bed, and didn’t move once until he opened his eyes on a ruined pair of shears stained dark with something sticky.

The police dusted this time.  There were no prints.  But Cindy noticed that her white opera gloves were lying on top of her silk scarves instead of under them.  They were folded differently, as well.  And they were slightly damp.  She almost said something, but a tiny voice persuaded her not to.

* * *

Gordon had this elaborate plan that depended on timing, the kind of plan that would make a great thriller.  Using everyone’s expertise, knowledge, skill, natural talent, intelligence.  He couldn’t fail.  In his fantasy.

In reality, he had Allen as a sidekick, more like comic relief.  He had Sam and Dave as heavies, but they were like the two Stooges.  Several of the bouncers and bartenders were tentatively on his side, waiting to hear the details before committing themselves.  And there were a few guys he used for other things that he could bring in at the last minute, for whatever they ended up doing.

He could use Rick on the operation, and Bill, and were still hoping to get them in on it before the shit went down.  Bill’s trucks, Rick’s cameras.  They would add a lot.

He had all the information he needed.  There was that tunnel he found weeks before, and had not gone near since, once he noticed a camera watching.  A tunnel, a trap door, a safe, a scheduled dumpster pickup.

Gordon’s plans, altho mostly complete, were still incredibly flexible.  It may turn out that they only robbed the place once, and never tried it again.  It might turn out that they actually pulled a coup on the owner and ended up robbing it every night.  Or it might lead to something even bigger, something with the guys who owned the owner.  He had to have a contingency plan for every little wrinkle.  He’d been working on it for months.  He was very confident.

He was also coked out.  He slept little, rattled on in conversation, was irritated when disturbed, easily distracted, and inclined to sudden fits of depression, when he thought about killing himself.  He was obsessed with his plans, and thought of nothing else except sex and drugs.  There was an intensity about him that made people nervous.  His hair was lanky, his eyes were hollow, and his sweat stank.  He itched all over.  He was always pausing for the snort that refreshes.

In the cavernous pit that was his brain, Gordon had mislaid a prime piece of information.  The owner was into some deep shit that wouldn’t just sit there when the place was hit.  The moment the regular system was upset, they would send someone to un-upset it.  Gordon and his little operation were like flies in the window, annoying dirty little no-brains that were just there to give somebody’s fly-swatting wrist some exercise.  If he weren’t so obsessed, he would have noticed this detail.  If he weren’t so drugged all the time, so full of the little games that made up his personality.

He was so caught up in the fantasy that he never noticed the trap.  He had a meeting with the owner later that morning, during which he intended to offer his services as manager of the club – aim high.  He was going to say that he felt ready for responsibility (as in the safe’s combination), and that it was only right that he give something back to the place that was like a second home.

This was his big first step, after which all the little details of his plan would suddenly fall into place.

He never noticed that the owner was more than happy to hire him right into the top management spot, with no references, no trial period.  It was more than just, “Can you start now?”  It was like being on Queen for the Day.  The owner stuffed a bundle of cash into his jacket pocket, handed him a big bag of coke, and made him sit in the big office chair he always used.  He asked Gordon to sign a bunch of papers he said were just ways of avoiding taxes, but which were really complex legal deals, the nature of which wasn’t apparent on the cover page or where he had to sign.

The owner hustled Gordon out before he had time to ask any real questions.  All his concerns would be addressed at Orientation, he was told, as the owner bundled him out of the office to make room for another meeting.  He didn’t tell Gordon that the meeting was with his mercenary army bosses.  He didn’t tell Gordon that the meeting wasn’t going to turn out in the club’s favor.  He didn’t tell Gordon that a whole lot of shit was going to be coming down.  Gordon would have merely filed it in his cavernous brain and continued walking right into the trap.

* * *

Frank felt better after lunch.  He went downstairs to tinker in his shop for an hour, and then declared his intention to drive to the store for a part, and wouldn’t listen to Judy’s protests, and wouldn’t let her come with him.  He got a little testy insisting that he could do it by himself.

He drove to Mom’s.  In his pocket was a device he had made.  It was an electric necklace. It lit up.  It provided a healing tingle.  It was beautiful.  Mom loved it.

In no time, she had him in the bedroom closet, a belt around his neck, the buckle around a sturdy coat hook on the back of the door.  He was naked, desperately trying to activate the remote control.  But Mom discovered it.  He’d hidden it where the sun don’t shine, and it worked by compression.  She pulled it out, and turned it on.

Five minutes later, the necklace was wrapped around Frank’s genitals, and Mom was exploring the power settings.

* * *

Rick noticed Cindy’s car headed to the mall, and followed her.  She was going to lunch with the girls, as usual, and was running late.  As usual.  She never noticed him behind her.  She parked her car out in the stratosphere because it was lunchtime, and saw the girls gathered on the sidewalk, waiting for her, as she hiked to the mall entrance.  She never noticed Rick parked at the curb in front of the restaurant.

She greeted the girls, who were full of news, and they were just turning to go in when Rick sprang out of his Porsche – somebody of that build shouldn’t go around in tiny cars – and oh my god shot Amanda with a Taser.

Cindy yelled at him; she wondered why he was attacking Amanda; she called 911.  On her own brother.  And it felt good.  She enjoyed telling the police about his awful behavior toward his wife and kids.  She told them that he’d been a bully all his life, always ready to beat down the slightest opposition.  But they didn’t want to go back to Rick’s childhood.  They wanted to know if he’d said anything.  They wanted to know if he appeared intoxicated.  They wanted to know if he had a gun.

* * *

Laurie waited a day, and when Cindy didn’t die from eating her stolen chocolates, she felt it was time to escalate.  She drove by Cindy’s house after dark, and left another attractively wrapped gift on her front porch.  From an admirer.  Laurie got back in her car to go to work, and thought no more about it.

That night in the club, Allen brought in Mom’s chocolates in their presentation box, and offered them around.  Gordon ate one.  He liked it.  Jake said he was on a diet but took one anyway.

Sam had a bite and spat it out.  “I hate liquor centers,” he said, spewing peppermint schnapps all over the table.

Dave wiped himself off fastidiously.  “None for me, thanks.  What else have you got for us?”

Allen didn’t know whether he meant money or information.  He ended up giving them both.  Most of his ready cash; everything he knew about Rick.

“Hey,” he started.  “I want you to know what Rick’s like at home.”

Sam grunted.  “We know.”

“No, I mean this guy who works for Rick, he’s got a lot of security footage that show everything he’s up to.”

“We know.  He came.”  Sam spat.  “Useless.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, nothing,” Dave said.  “No motion.  Twenty cameras and no movement at all.  For hours.”

“You watched?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.

Dave nodded.  “Everything.”

“Strange,” Allen remarked.  “He said he had proof of all sorts of shit Rick was up to.”

Ten minutes later, Bill came in with a further down payment for killing Cindy.  He brought it into the club inside a briefcase.  Sam put on his best foreign accent. Dave tried to act nonchalant as he covered the case with his feet.

“Is it safe?” Bill wanted to know.

“We’ll take exactly the same care as we did for hit on Mother-in-Law,” Sam assured him.  That worried him.  They clarified.  “Down payment goes straight to hit man.  He’s waiting in car.”

Bill looked curiously at the cars as he left, but didn’t see anyone.  Maybe there was someone lying on the seat, out of sight.  He was afraid to check, in case he got shot.

Laurie came by Gordon’s table while he was in the bathroom, and found the presentation box of death that she’d given to Mom.  Like bad pennies.  She took it and tossed it into the dressing room, in roughly the direction of the trash can.

* * *

Cindy had developed an instant disgust for chocolate.  Since waking up covered with it, she gagged whenever she thought about chocolate.  And of course it was everywhere, so she went about constantly nauseated.  She had to run out of Starbucks.  She felt like barfing on the display in the grocery checkout line.  She almost lost it at lunch when one of the girls ordered the chocolate souffle.

Cindy found the gift when she got home.  She opened the package carefully.  Chocolates.  Her stomach heaved.  She walked to the garbage can with them, but looked at them again carefully.  They looked very familiar.  She tasted the goo that oozed out of one corner.  Just like what stained her pillow.  Then she threw up lunch.

Was Judy behind all this stalking?  Furious, Cindy swallowed a couple of Xanax to calm her down, and then called Judy and cussed her out.  Twenty years of stupid, useless, insulting home-made crappy presents to wash away the guilt of a sin she can never be forgiven for.  Twenty years of the pain of betrayal, constantly thrown in her face with cheap junk that can never make up for it.  Twenty years of being a stupid waste of a time sister.  Cindy yelled at Judy like she was still eight years old.  Dull-witted, slow, peaceable, easy to outwit.  Judy was stunned, and had no reply.  Cindy took it as an invitation, and out poured forty years of resentment and hatred.

Well, Judy wasn’t eight.  She was 53.  She was the mother of two grown children.  She was a qualified homeopath, a licensed massage professional, a Reiki master, and a certified floral designer.  She wrote an award winning blog, she raised prize winning tomatoes, she treated homeless people with respect.  She was a well-adjusted, mature, middle-aged woman, being treated like she was a teenager living at home.  Something was drastically wrong.

She’d show Cindy and the others to respect her, simply for who she had become.

Judy retrieved all her craft tools from their cabinet, proud of herself for finally having put them all in one place.  She spotted the chocolate she’d brought home for Frank, still on the kitchen table.  She wondered how to do it.  Something simple and elegant.  She looked at her straw broom, something she hardly ever used.  She got busy.

It was a work of art.  A lake of nasty tasting peppermint around a chocolate mountain, iced broomstraw trees and rosemary tops for the pines, and a gentle dusting of powdered sugar.  It was beautiful, meticulous.  Sure proof, if anyone ever stopped to examine it, that Judy was an artist.

She sat and cried for awhile, sad for all the injuries she received in childhood, angry about how mean her sisters and brothers had been, how there was no real love in their family.  None of her siblings respected or admired any of her achievements, none of them were willing to treat her as the adult she had become.  And nobody but her family would ever dare to treat her that way.  After a single fortifying drink, she got in her car and drove over to Cindy’s house, where she left her present, as usual, on the front steps.

Judy sat in her car, parked in the street, waiting for Cindy to come out and find her greatest gift.  She got more angry and much less sad, and finally decided on a special finish for her present.  She got out, snuck back up to the front steps, got out her lighter, and set the bag on fire.  As it began to catch, she rang the doorbell and ducked behind a nearby tree.

Cindy never answered her front door.  But she saw the flames thru the sidelights, and came bursting thru the door to see what was wrong.  The bag was flaming higher, burning brightly because of the glue and the sticks.  Cindy pictured her house going up in flames, and kicked out at the burning bag, stomping it with her Bruno Maglis.  The bag squished as she put out the fire, her foot slipped, and Cindy fell and bruised her hip on the bricks.  Judy giggled in the shadows.  Cindy realized what it was all over her shoes, and threw up on top of them.

Cindy was freaked out by the molotov cocktail some stalker had left on her porch.  She was sure it was Judy.  She had her hand on the phone to call the police, but remembered how many times they’d been out lately, and how insinuating and rude they were the last time.

That night Cindy had trouble sleeping.  So she took extra of all her usual medications, and had Oxycontin with a wine chaser for a nightcap.  Later that night, Sindi would be patrolling with her gun and her magic box of chocolates.  The dragons would send her messages.  Bill would make it thru the night by the skin of his teeth.

Her last conscious thought was that she really ought to be killing Bill.  He was the one who really deserved it.  Never mind killing Mom, she couldn’t help it.  Or Judy, she was her own worst enemy.  But Bill had a choice, every single girl, every single dollar.  He really deserved to die.  Any court in the country would acquit her.

* * *

Frank came home with burns and bruises, and as pale as a glass of milk.  After bathing and dressing his wounds and putting him to bed, Judy did some thinking.  He was Mom’s victim, but he kept going back for more.  So it must be something inside of him.  He’d confessed to a fascination for pain.  Spanking.  Strangulation.  Past the edge of sexual politeness and right into kinkiness and perversion.

They talked about it.  Frank’s color was good; he sat up in bed and they discussed the roots of his sexuality.  His earliest sexual memories were of his mother, how she reacted when he got a hardon while she was changing him.  He noticed her big eyes.  She laughed at him.  He had felt love for his mom, and also shame, because he was small and helpless and her laughter hurt.  They talked about how what he’d felt then translated into his feelings now.  He was powerless to keep from revisiting it whenever he could.  But he hated every minute.

They wondered if role-playing would help them to understand what he was going thru.  They decided to try an experiment, and so Judy spanked him a little.  She popped his butt, and he flinched.  The spot got red, in the shape of her hand.  She rubbed it.  The rubbing helped.  Neither of them were comfortable spanking.

He asked her to tie him to the bed, so she got out some silk scarves.  But she didn’t know what to do with him if he just wanted to lie there.  He asked her to tighten a scarf around his neck, and she thought about it and said no.  Finally she lay down, and he kneeled and straddled her leg, holding the bedboard.  Looking into each other’s eyes, she slowly jerked him off.  Not very kinky at all, but they loved each other.

After a rousing finish, Frank collapsed on the bed, breathing heavily, his heart pounding.  He’d moaned, he’d quivered, he’d shaken.  The loose skin of his arms and neck waved like linen on a line, his belly heaved and rolled, the tendons pulled away from his bones like ship’s rigging.

He lay there comatose for some time.  She dozed off next to him for a few moments, but then thought of something she wanted to look up before she went to sleep.  So she propped him up on his pillows, kissed his forehead, and turned out the light.

Judy sat in front of her computer for an hour or so, smoking weed and looking things up – one thing leading to another on the internet.  She started yawning, and figured it was time for bed.  Brushing her teeth, she went to inspect her husband.  He was exactly where she’d left him.  She couldn’t be sure, but in the dark it looked like his eyes were open.

She got into bed and resisted the temptation to wake him up to tell him how funny he looked.  But when she woke up later to pee, she noticed that he’d never moved, never turned over.  She touched him.  He was cold.

She leaped up and stood dithering at the foot of the bed.  Then she called 911.  Then she ran around and cleared away all the evidence of illegal drugs.  There were roaches and rolling papers and used baggies everywhere.  Then she ran around picking things off the floor, clearing a path from the front door for the ambulance crew.  She would have been proud of her work if there hadn’t been more serious things to think about.

They came in fast.  They went back out more slowly.  There was nothing to be done.  They took Frank away, and left Judy sobbing in a corner, waiting for them to leave so she could drown her sorrows.  But she didn’t.  She was out of booze.  But thank God for marijuana.  She wandered thru the house, wailing and thinking, for the rest of the night and into the bleak daylight.

She decided that Mom had to die.

* * *

Go to chapter twenty-four

Day twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-Two

The new day dawned bright and rosy.  A soft breeze fluffed the air.  The birdies, glad to be alive, went twittering about their business.  An entire family of grown up kids woke from dreams of killing their mother.  Intense dreams, deeply revealing of their own psychoses.

Scary, really, to think that real, grown up people with jobs, families of their own, whole unique existences – productive members of society, would dream of stabbing and shooting and gutting and ripping and beating the soil of their very souls.

* * *

Judy woke next to Frank, felt his pulse, felt his forehead, then snuggled next to him.  They lay in bed watching the room getting light for a long time.  Eventually Judy made coffee and they sat in bed and talked some more.  It was like they were just getting to know each other.  Later, they made love.  It was comfortable.  They both got out of bed smiling to themselves.

* * *

Rick woke next to Alice, who shrank from his energy even in sleep.  He wanted Roxy so bad it hurt.  A woman of substance, energy, intelligence.  A real woman, unafraid of being a woman, able to take his maleness.  To nurture him as a woman should.  Not like this parody of a marriage, this ersatz female just lying there, passive and afraid.

Alice got up, and in her doziness, wasn’t as careful as she should have been, and mentioned Cindy.  She asked for it, really.  She shouldn’t make him mad.  It was a casual mention, about how Cindy seemed to have mellowed over the years.

Something in her voice made him suspicious, and he soon had her pinned down and sobbing as she told him the truth.  One more reason why she wasn’t a fit mother.  One more reason why she didn’t deserve him, and he was wasting his time thinking she could be taught to satisfy him.  He didn’t want just adequate, anyway.  He wanted perfection.  And Alice had just failed on yet another front.  Infidelity.  Other women.  His own sister.

But it wasn’t really Alice’s fault.  She’d already proved herself a failure as a human being, and he no longer expected anything but failure from her.  This time it was all Cindy’s doing.  It was obvious that Cindy had seduced her as a way of getting to him.  It was nothing more than a plot to hurt him.  Alice deserved what she got for betraying him, certainly.  But Cindy was to blame for the whole sick idea.  She deserved the worst.

So Rick set out to kill Cindy.  It seemed so logical.  If he was willing to kill his mother, what harm would it do to rid the world of another evil at the same time?  He only needed to get Cindy and Mom together, and he could take them out with one little device.  He’d seen them on the internet.  Mini car bombs.  Attach them anywhere, timer or remote, magnetic or glue-on.  And boom.

Or use a long-range rifle.  He began fantasizing complex scenes where the two heads would line up and explode as he caressed the trigger.  He could even get into practice by taking out his dear brother Gordon so he could have Roxy all to himself.  He dreamed about that for a long while.

* * *

Cindy woke up late, feeling fatigued.  As if she hadn’t slept at all.  Yet the pills she was taking were supposed to leave her refreshed and alert.  She needed several extra Adderall just to get going.  Maybe she could blame it on her latest drug cocktail, a mixture of Ambien, Valium and Vicodin.

Bill had already gone to work.  The TV news was on in the kitchen.  The serial killer was at it again, uncomfortably close.  This time it was execution style in the driveway as the poor bastard got home from work.  Cindy felt afraid.  Maybe it was the serial killer who was menacing them.  Maybe they were in mortal danger.  She called Bill and insisted he take her off to a resort that very minute.  But he put her off firmly with all sorts of business crises he had to deal with at the moment.  She was on her own.

Scratching a bad case of poison ivy, Cindy decided that she’d had about enough of Bill’s deer-in-the-headlight reaction.  It was obvious that he was getting ready to bolt.  His suitcase stuck out from under his side of the bed, his jewelry was missing from his sock drawer, his checkbook was gone from the bill box.  A business trip, he’d swear, if asked.

And then he would split and she wouldn’t see him again.  She knew it.  But he wasn’t going to get very far.  She already had a lawyer, just waiting to pounce.  No matter where he went, she would break him because he betrayed her, and would continue breaking him for the rest of his life, once for every slut he’d ever touched.

She liked her revenge stretched out.  She wanted to see Bill suffer for the rest of his life.  And she wanted him to live forever.

* * *

Around 4:30 in the afternoon, Gordon woke up with a hardon, and Laurie cooperated until she got nauseous in the middle and ran off to the bathroom.  When she came back, neither of them were in the mood, but they did it anyway, and Gordon lost his erection half way thru.  Laurie taunted him.  Both Rick and Bill were better in bed than he was.  She told him just how much she’d rather marry either of his brothers than to have to settle for him.

When she’d grabbed what was left of the bottle and gone off to the liquor store for more, dressed in only a baby doll top and a thong – with heels, he found a roach and lay back in bed, resting with his arm behind his head to smoke it..  He had two people to think about killing now.  Mom, and Laurie.

How?  Drug overdose was the first thing that occurred to him.  But Allen would be able to handle anything, right up to too much heroin.  Outright poison, but that wasn’t his style.  It hurt too much.  Bashing with blunt objects, well, not women – his mom raised him right.  Only in anger, anyway.  Gunplay, and he certainly had his choice of guns, since he did a tidy side business selling them without permits.  His style leaned toward sniping from a good hiding place.

He should just walk up to the front door, shoot Allen, and then walk into the den and interrupt Mom’s afternoon programming to shoot her in the chest with a shotgun.  That way he could have the last word.  He would see her reaction.  He would shed a little tear and ask forgiveness in a whisper, right before blowing his own head off.

As for killing Laurie, well, he could do that any time he liked, simply by pressing her gently underneath a pillow as she lay comatose in bed.  Maybe tonight.

* * *

Down at the club, Bill went inside scratching furiously at his poison ivy.  He walked up to Sam and Dave’s table and pulled out a chair.  Sam started bugging him for more money not to kill Mom.  He brushed it off.  “Now I want you to hit my wife, Cindy.”

“Not so fast.  You no have finish paying off hit on Mom,” Sam said.

“Cancel it.”

“Can’t cancel.  Told you before.”

He stalked off when he learned Roxy wasn’t coming in.

* * *

Ben came into the club for the very first time that night, rueing the cover charge and declining to get more than a soda water.  He was uninterested in buying a lapdance.  He’d called the FBI and been told to come into the club and see the two agents who would listen to what he had to say.  He went up to Sam and Dave, ready to tell them everything, but it was the two guys his boss Rick had brought around, potential clients that had wanted to grill him.  He hadn’t liked them, and didn’t trust anything they said.  So they were Feds?  Hmm.  He thought quickly, and then gave them a CD and walked away before they could ask any questions.

* * *

Allen came in.  He’d been to see Alice, carefully timing his visit to avoid her jailers.  She gave him her cellphone, which had dozens of pictures of the contents of Rick’s study.  Especially his diary.  Allen was very anxious to help the Russian mafia get the better of his ex landlord.  He’d figured out that they had a counter-scam and were planning on taking Rick for everything he was worth, and kill him into the bargain.  So he was helping them out with information.  Allen couldn’t do enough for his new friends.  He even included a little something extra on his weekly protection payments.

He went over to see Gordon once he was done with the mafia.  They weren’t such good friends yet that he wanted to hang out with them.

“So,” Gordon said, waving the waitress over.  “How’s it going with Mom?”

Allen looked a little glum.  “Okay, I guess.”

“What’s wrong?”  He ordered the usual.  Carmen tossed her hips as she walked away.  Gordon noticed.

“Well,” Allen said, putting his head in his hands, “she’s a sweet old girl and everything, and she really needs me.  It’s just that,” he looked around.  “Well,’ he said, “I’m not getting any.”

Gordon dropped his cigarette.  “Whoa, buddy, that’s my mother you’re talking about.”  He paused to let it sink in.  “Is she, like, frigid?  Dried up?”

Allen winced.  “I don’t know, man, I’m telling you she’s not letting me touch her.  Not before the wedding.”

“Have you set a date?”

He hung his head.  “No.”

“But you, like, want to, um, do her, right?”  Gordon couldn’t help being curious.  Carmen was back with their drinks.  He tipped her a twenty and copped a feel.  She winked.  He winked back.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Allen shrugged.  “She’s pretty hot for an old lady, I guess.  I’ve always had a thing for older women.”  He took a sip of his drink.  “It’s just that I didn’t think what that would be like when I was older myself.  The wrinkles must be like a vulture’s.”  He looked seriously at Gordon.  “You know, your mom is like my mom to me.  It kind of feels like incest.”  He took another drink.  “But I figure, old people don’t have sex, so I won’t have to deal with it much.”  He lowered his voice.  “Right now it’s kind of painful.  It hurts when I visit the club, you know?  All that pussy walking around and I’m  not getting any.”

“I know how you feel,” Gordon said.  “When I got a vasectomy I had to abstain for two weeks.  It was almost impossible.  No jerking off, nothing.”

“Yeah,” Allen said wonderingly.

“In fact, I didn’t last more than 24 hours.  And boy did my scrotum swell up.  Lasted about a week.  Frightening.”

“Hey, too much information.  That’s going to put me off sex for awhile.  Thanks, man.”

“Sure.  You’re welcome.”

Later, they were in the bathroom, sitting in adjoining stalls.  They were working on an eight-ball, passing the ziplock back and forth under the partition.  Gordon thought for awhile.  “You know, if I can be of any service, you know, just tell me,” he said in a way Allen picked up on.

“Really?”  Allen grabbed his own crotch and squeezed.  He had tears in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Gordon said.  “I know what it’s like to go without.  I don’t mind.”  He paused.  “Just this once.”

They squeezed into a single stall together.  Gordon sat on the john with his pants on, Allen stood between Gordon’s knees, his pants down.

“Hey, this’ll be a hand job only, okay?” Gordon stated, just to make sure.

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” Allen insisted.

A few minutes later he asked Gordon to use some spit.  He did.  Then Allen asked him to cup his balls.  Gordon did, laying a finger tenderly on Allen’s anus.

When it was over, Gordon dodging a real wallop that hit the wall and slumped toward the floor, he noticed a tender look in Allen’s eyes.

“Hey, don’t fall in love with me, okay?  It was just a hand job.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “but don’t you feel…?”

“No.”  Gordon reached behind Allen and unlocked the stall door.  “Sometimes it’s not mutual, okay?” he said to be clear, and pushed Allen out the door.

* * *

Go to chapter twenty-three

Day twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-One continued

Cindy was afraid to touch her things, assuming Bill had already brought Laurie around, and she’d already contaminated everything with her cheap, nasty germs.  She looked around her, wondering if they’d had sex on that table, that sink, the back of that couch.  She went for the cleaners and the gloves.

Bill came in as she was emptying caustic chemicals down the drain.  She could have flung them into his eyes, but that’s the kind of sweet person she was.  She rinsed the container and put it back under the sink.  “So, you’re seeing Gordon’s fiancee?”

Bill stared at her.  “No, of course not.”  Oh no.

“Oh?  So, whose fur coat was that in Mom’s closet?”

“Um.  Mom’s?”

“Don’t be stupid.”  She read from the jewelry receipt she’d fished out of the trash.  “Mrs. Kiepon.  I don’t recall a new fur coat.  Maybe I dreamed it?”

“Yes, that’s it,” he said, leaping at straws.

“”Who’s Roxy?  This one’s made out to Roxy Kiepon.”  Bill swallowed.  “How charming.  Laurie.  Roxy.  How many others have there been?”  Bill backed away and raised his hands.  “It didn’t even start with Judy, did it?  You were cheating on me from the beginning.”

He tried to back out of the room.  “I wouldn’t call it cheating.  I never told you about the others because you never asked.”

“I wasn’t supposed to have to ask.  And didn’t the marriage vows say before all others?”

“But you were before all others.  You’ve gotten the lion’s share all these years, and you haven’t been half as good to me as they have.”

Amazing, his balls.  “So why have you stayed around?”

“Because you’d fall apart without me.”

“That’s bullshit.  You need me.”

“Maybe on a bad day,” he admitted.

* * *

Cindy slammed out of there and went to see Alice, making sure Rick was out.  A nurse answered the door and acted vague, but wouldn’t let her in.

She stopped off at Mom’s to get her shoe.  Mom was home, so she had to endure a blow by blow of Mom’s latest perceptions.  Mom was always tediously willing to tell the minute truth about her revelation du jour.  That was why Cindy hated repetition.

She left Mom standing in the doorway, waving like a robotic target.  Cindy had the gun out before she opened the car door.  She opened it, propped her body against the doorframe, rested her wrist on the door, and fired just as Mom turned to go inside.

The shot went wild.  It ricocheted, like in the movies.  And the cops must have been around the corner, because she had barely turned the corner and they were there.  Cindy fled, and they chased her.  It took all her skill to evade them, and she really loved the chase.  Plus, it was still her neighborhood after all these years, and it took no time to lose them.  Her thumb began to itch.  She rolled the window down and let her hair flow.  She felt like Cruella DeVille.

* * *

Laurie was driving along the same streets, on her way to Mom’s with a basket of goodies.  Her stripper bag was on the seat beside her, and her poisoned packages lay where she could see them.  She was entertaining herself with fantasies of forcing Mom to eat the chocolates, like in mud wrestling, stuffing it in her mouth. Tonight, for your entertainment, Foxy Roxy (Laurie in a sexy boxer costume, smoothing her hair with her gloves) versus Mom (old crazy woman with straggly white hair, dressed in ratty housecoat with carpet slippers, riding the pole like a broom, muttering curses.)  It’s Snow White and the Wicked Witch.

“Have an apple, little girl.”

“Apple.  I’ll show you an apple, old lady.”

Cindy pulled over to get a pill to calm her down.  She saw Laurie cruising thru the neighborhood, coasting toward Mom’s house.  She turned around and pulled up behind her just like she did with Alice that first time.  It was so easy.  This time she looked at the gun on her lap and thought of a very satisfying thing to do.

Laurie pulled over.  Cindy walked up to the car, the gun in her pocket, a friendly smile smeared on her face.  At least she’s got both shoes on, Laurie thought.  Cindy loomed outside Laurie’s window.  She made to open the door but Cindy leaned against it.  So Laurie rolled down the window.

Cindy slumped inward suddenly, her hand stuck in her pocket.  She caught herself and stuck her head inside.  She didn’t smell of booze, because her unsteadiness was a side effect of the chemical medly that was just kicking in.  Laurie wouldn’t have smelled booze on her, anyway.

Cindy saw the pretty package.  “What are you doing here?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was going to give this to Mom,” Laurie said.  “As a peace offering.”

Cindy laughed.  “Like that’d work.  Are you really going to marry my brother?”

Laurie shrugged.  “He’s okay.  He tries.”  He’ll do for now.

Cindy eyed her and scratched her cheek.  “Well, don’t think you’re getting the house.  It’s mine.”

Laurie rolled her eyes.  “I thought it was Rick’s.”

“As if.  Speaking of Rick, you know you’re hurting Alice by taking him to the cleaners.  He beats her up.”

Laurie disagreed.  “I’m doing Alice a favor, diverting his attention.  I’ve got bruises too, you know.  But at least I’m getting paid for them.”

“That’s what I mean.  He’s giving it all to you.  Alice has nothing.”

“Nonsense.  He’s giving it all to the bank.  He’s in so deep it’s not funny.  The house, the cars, the company, the kid’s trust, all mortgaged way beyond what they’re worth.  And he’s behind on the payments.  She’s got nothing no matter what.”  She knew all about it.  Far more than Alice knew.

“Rick wants to see Mom dead just for the insurance,” Cindy stated.  “We talked about this years ago.  He gets the money.  I want all the stuff.”

Laurie crossed her arms.  “We’ll see.”

Cindy walked back to her car.  Laurie was still alive – Cindy was beginning to like her.  She was holding Laurie’s bribe for Mom in her hand.  Cindy loved chocolates.  She threw them into the back seat and forgot all about them as she drove into town for her appointment at the hair dresser’s.

* * *

Laurie pulled up to Mom’s  house and found Allen wandering around the front yard looking at the house.  He was trying to find the bullet hole.  Laurie called him over to the car and handed him the smaller box that she’d intended for Cindy.  “For Mom,” she said.  “As a gesture.”

“She loves chocolates,” he said, and eyed it greedily.  It would end up in the trash if it got as far as Mom.

“Hey, have you seen my fur coat?  I left it in the hall closet last night.”

“Nope.  I looked around there this morning.  Nobody left any coats.”

Laurie shrugged and scratched her arm.  Another sugar daddy would replace it.

Cindy drove by Alice’s house on the way home.  The nurse was out getting the kids, so Alice talked to her at the side door, glancing out into the street nervously.  Cindy told her what Laurie knew about Rick.  Alice told Cindy about Rick’s insurance policy on Mom.  Mafia.  FBI.  Foreign spies.

They hugged and kissed.  The laughed about having itchy arms.  Then they got spooked, and Cindy fled.

* * *

Allen was on his way to the club.  He arranged to meet his customers – Ben the security guy and Judy – at the cemetery, one of the nicest places he knew for hanging out in pubic smoking dope.  They lounged on low walls and read inscriptions and talked at length about stealth smoking, about letting the sweet odor of pot fill the air so that regular people can smell it but don’t know where it is.  Urban realism.  Walking the walk for a free drug society.  As opposed to a drug-free society.  Allen and Judy scratched at poison ivy on their arms.  They were just bullshitting.  It didn’t matter what the conversation was about as long as there were drugs present.

They discussed Alice and Rick. Allen told them that Rick tried to force him to kill Mom with his bare hands.  In the septic tank.  He told them about two drive by shootings.  He told them about Cindy paying him to run a relative off the road.  He told them about Bill paying the Russian Mafia to kill Mom.  He told them about the brakes failing.

Ben told them about the tight net of suspicion Alice was under.  Child Protective Services investigated a complaint.  (Laurie.  After Rick bitched for two hours about those damned kids.)  They found evidence of abuse, and took the kids.  Alice was charged.  Alice was undergoing treatment.  Rick was orchestrating her defense.  (There were cameras in Rick’s office and his phone was recorded.)  Alice sat and cried all the time.  She never saw her kids, only heard them, and that tortured her more than anything.  They cried for her.  They asked Why?  They asked Where’s Mommy?  Her door was locked from the outside.

Everybody agreed that if anyone was abusing the kids, it was Rick.  Everybody agreed that Rick was laying the blame on Alice and punishing her so nobody would suspect it of him.  Ever the righteous Rick.

Ben was upset because Alice was being imprisoned and tortured.  He could see it all, but he couldn’t call the cops.  They would just arrest him for violating his contract.  He could only film it with a view toward releasing it on YouTube.

They all agreed that they had to do something, but what could they do?  They didn’t want Mom dead.  But they didn’t want to risk anything themselves.  They decided that Ben should contact the FBI.  Just call the hotline and the local agent would get back to him.

Talk like that made them uncomfortable, so they split up.  It was getting dark.  Judy took a few of Allen’s chocolates to give to Frank.  But he was not up to it, so she put them in the box she took from Allen’s a few weeks ago.  Surprisingly, they were just like the chocolates that came in the box originally.  She licked her fingers.  Cinnamon.  Alcohol.  Maybe later.  Maybe she could resist.  She left them on top of a stack in the kitchen and rolled a joint, and thought no more about them.  Good girl.

* * *

Rick made his attempt to kill Mom.  Paralyzed by the need to be superior, he couldn’t just drive by and shoot, as Cindy had done, even tho he knew nothing of her attempts, or anyone else’s – its vibe as an option was tainted.  He couldn’t poison her, everyone was doing that.  He couldn’t run her over, because Allen already tried that.  He couldn’t get in the house to sabotage anything, or to throw Mom down the stairs or accidentally strangle her, because of that cretin Allen.

What was left?  What was elegant?  Burn the house down.  Firebomb it.  Explosives.  Steal a truck and ram it into house with a short fuse.  Call the police and tell them terrorists were inside.  Watch them make short work of Mom and Allen.  Rick wouldn’t have to lift a finger.  He liked that.  There was even a way to make a profit from it.  He could taste it.  He got out the gas can and started fiddling with it.

On the other side of the house, Bill made his attempt on Mom’s life.  He’d tried to have her hit, only to fail by some miracle, so the Russian guy said.  So there he was in front of her house doing it in person.  He hated her house.  It was so colonial, so ostentatious.  He saw it in her eyes, the only time she’d seen his house, how much she detested the home he made for Cindy.  He could tell that she thought everything in his house was cheap and second rate, a brand new Victorian with all the gingerbread the structure would hold.  She thought her fucking daughter deserved better than Dollywood.

Well, he was just trying to please her fucking daughter.  Cindy told him she wanted Mom dead.  He figured he could help, even if he was in the middle of leaving her.

He ran into Rick, also attempting to burn down Mom’s house.

“It’s that synergy thing, isn’t it?” Bill wondered.

Rick confessed the deep financial hole he was in.  Bill confessed to planning to leave Cindy.  Rick liked Bill more all the time.

Bill felt sorry for Rick.  In the middle of listening to what was wrong with his life, Rick gave Bill an idea for automation that opened up a whole new field.  He interrupted Rick’s litany and explained his idea.  Rick saw immediately how he could do it cheaply.  They formed a partnership then and there, with warm mutual feelings.  This was how family was supposed to work.

Together they made short work of setting Mom’s house on fire.  They even left a calling card, written on the grass.  They split up and headed for their cars, smelling of gas and feeling toasty warm with brotherly love.  Rick planned to get the new idea to his lawyer in the morning, and fuck Bill.

Once he was back in the car, Bill called Cindy to give her the good news.  Cindy was incoherent.  “My blood pressure has changed.  I can feel it.”  Bill called down the phone at her.  He’d caught her just as her drugs kicked in.  “I’m only on for seven more minutes, because I am going back to sleep.”  She mumbled a bunch of things, and then said goodbye and hung up.

Bill shrugged, and decided to go to the club and see if Roxy would talk to him.  Cindy snored on, oblivious.

Allen was down in his nest, having a cigarette.  Since he and Mom got engaged, she moved him into one of the kids’ rooms.  It was now fitting that they sleep on the same floor.  Allen shrugged.  He wasn’t getting any no matter where he slept.  And she was now forcing him to keep his room clean.  He needed this refuge more than ever.

He smelled gasoline.  He heard voices outside.  He opened the sliding glass doors to see what was going on, and heard the whump of a fire starting.  Racing outside, he saw shadowy figures escaping, but was in time to turn on the hose and put out the fire.  He got to the little fires at the base of the yard last.  Die die die.  The gasoline words on the lawn were getting more original.  Better spelled, anyway.

Mom came downstairs to greet him when he came back in, wet and smelling of smoke and gasoline.  “My hero,” she cooed.  “Gun fire, arson, you’re always there to protect me.”  She snuggled in for a hug.  “You’re my guardian angel.”  Allen felt like a million dollars.

* * *

Bill crawled into bed at 3:30 in the morning, smelling of smoke, beer, and pussy.  Cindy snored on.  Forty-five minutes later, Ssyndee got out of bed, refreshed.  And looked around.  There was that troll Bill snoring away.  She could see his horned feet his spiny backbone.  He was never any help.  The dragons were in the basement.  She could hear them breathing.  They had dark breath.

It was up her.  She battled them downstairs and in the back yard.  She chased them into he neighbor’s trees.  They hid behind the neighbor’s car, and she shot them.  Then she ran back and built a barricade so they couldn’t come up the stairs after her.  Then she went back to bed.

* * *

Go to Chapter Twenty-Two