Dead to Writes (April Almighty #1) (2 page)

Chapter 3

     Herbert read through his ebook copy of “Tunnel of Doom.” He wasn’t sure why he was trying to finish it. It was horrible. If the plot were just predictable that wouldn’t be so bad. This was downright silly. The writer obviously fancied himself some kind of master of horror, but his writing was way over the top dramatic. In writing, especially horror, there was such a thing as trying too hard and this guy had done it. M.C. McDougal whoever that was. The bio was mostly bullshit.

     “M.C. McDougal was born in the darkest reaches of the shadows. Where no one dares to go, M.C. has been. He has dedicated his life to instilling his nightmares upon the masses…blah blah blah.”

     Herbert’s theory in horror was, “If you have to tell me how scary you are, then you’re probably not.” And that held true. This showed up in his Crashbooks email list which is the only reason he bought it. He’d post a review for it on his blog, “HorrorUpYourAss.com” It would give his readers a good chuckle. Just as he was about to finish, his girlfriend Lydia stepped in the room.

     “You still reading that piece of shit?” she asked.

     “Yeah. Almost done.”

     “Why even finish if it sucks?”

     “I don’t know. This fleeting hope it will get better, plus I’m curious enough to see how it ends.”

     “Or you’re just a glutton for punishment,” she said, laughing.

     “That too.” He closed his tablet cover and tossed it onto the desk. “What are you up to?”

     “I have to run to the store to pick up a few things. Did you need anything?”

     “I could use some more Redbull,” He said.

     “That shit is gonna make your heart explode if you keep drinking so many.”

     “Yeah, but it also keeps my dick hard, you don’t mind that do you?” he said as she stepped back out, flipping him the bird as she did so.

     “Classy,” he yelled to her, but all he could hear was her laughing as she left.

     He turned to his desk and flipped open his laptop. As he pulled up the browser, he went to the Crashbooks page for “Tunnel of Doom.” The book had only been out for a day or two and it already had some reviews. There were only three or four. One was a five star, the rest were one stars. Herbert was about to add another. He pushed up his glasses and began typing.

     His rule of thumb when leaving a bad review was to at least go into detail. Some of the reviews just said “This book sucks!” That isn’t very helpful to a potential reader. So he made it a point to go through and explain what he liked or didn’t like and why. This was a big reason why his blog was getting more and more traffic.

      He pounded out a review; it came out much longer than he’d expected. He went through and cleaned it up, which was good he did as he found a few typos in the process. Nothing pissed him off more than reading a review of a book which reads something like “This book has horrible grammer.” Crashbooks shouldn’t even publish these, but they do.

     He hit “submit” and his review was off to the Crashbooks queue and would likely be published in the next fifteen or twenty minutes. In the meantime, he copied and pasted the review to post on his blog. Though for the blog version, he’d expand it and add some of his own colorful phrases to liven it up a bit. As he typed away on the blog, he got an email from Crashbooks that the review was now live.

     He clicked onto it just to admire seeing his review live on the Crashbooks site. He’d written dozens of them, but it always felt cool to see a new one go live. After admiring it and re-reading it a few times, he went back to the blog. The final result was a few more paragraphs longer than the Crashbooks version, but that was typical. Gave readers a reason to visit the site instead of just reading it on Crashbooks.

     Once it was finished, he hit “post” and watched it load onto the page. He loved how his homepage was set up. On the background he had hockey masks, blood splatter, and a bloody knife. He used to have it animated so it floated around, but too many complained it slowed down their computers. So he changed it to the still images.

     As he looked it over, there was another email alert. He clicked on the email link and read the message.

     “You’re dead. M.C. McDougal,” it read.

     What the fuck?

     Herbert was furious and typed a reply. He’s had authors comment on his reviews before. Some were plain shitty, but no one ever threatened him.

     “Excuse me? How dare you threaten me? I’m going to forward your message to the police,” Herbert replied.

     He sat back and tried to shake it off, but it was still unsettling. McDougal was a shitty writer, though he had no idea how he’d gotten his email. Just as he opened the blog back up there was a reply.

     “You won’t live long enough to go to the police. I’m going to rip your heart out and shove it so far up your ass, you’ll taste it. M.C. McDougal.”

     That mother fucker! That’s it. Herbert printed the conversation out and put the pages in a folder. He wasn’t sure what the laws were, but this had to be illegal. There was another email before he closed the laptop.

     “I’m going to fuck your girlfriend’s cunt with a blowtorch” it said. Then, there as another.

     “I’m going to cut your dick off and feed it to your ugly girlfriend.”

     “You are going to die, slowly. You will watch as I peel the flesh off your girlfriend, fuck her repeatedly and fuck her ass with a baseball bat. Then I might let you die.”

     Herbert slammed the laptop closed and stood.

     “Jesus fuck!” he said. He looked out the window but saw no one outside. It was early afternoon, so there was plenty of daylight but no sign of anyone. He opened the laptop back up. Found the emails and clicked “block user.” There was no point in going to the police. This guy was just a troll. His emails were more interesting than his book had been. Maybe he should have just used those for the story instead of the crap he published. Herbert closed the laptop back up and sat back. Lydia would be home soon, then he could forget about this McDougal nut.

Chapter 4

     “Look what you did to her! You busted her cooter!” Cletus yelled.

     The girl was still alive, but Marty had somehow ruptured her vagina with the ax handle. Now her vaginal area was bloody and swollen. Marty thought it looked like a big, red cauliflower.

     “It don’t matter. We don’t eat her lady parts,” Marty said.

     “Still. Ma’s not gonna be too happy. She know you been banging the meat out here?”

     “No. She don’t need to know. You ain’t gonna tell her.”

     “The hell I ain’t.” Cletus held up his GoPro and began filming the girl. She was barely conscious and whimpering as he walked around filming her. He knelt down to get a close up of her ruptured cooter.

     “You can’t put this in no movie,” Marty said. “It’ll be X-rated.”

     “This is for my personal collection. Come on, you gonna help? I need to get her ready for dinner tonight.”

     Marty walked over and helped as Cletus undid her restraints. They carried her over the table. Marty carried her legs while Cletus carried her under the arms. They heaved her onto the table which caused her to grunt. She began to stir as Cletus dug around for his tools, and turned around holding a hatchet.

     “Ok,” Cletus said. “You know the drill. Hold her down good.”

     “How come you always get to do the cutting?”

     “Cause I’m the oldest. Ma said it’s my job.”

     “She made that rule when we were twelve. I think I can do the cutting now.”

     “Bullshit. You’re not strong enough.”

     “Just because you’re a big fat ox doesn’t mean I’m weak. I can’t help it you grew so much bigger than me,” Marty argued.

     “I’m not fat. This is muscle.” Cletus said pinching a chunk of fat off his belly.

     “That is fat. That is greasy, gelatinous, artery hardening fat!”

     “Fuck you. You think you can cut? Fine, here.” Cletus tossed the hatchet across the table to Marty. The toss was too hard. Marty had to pull his hand away so as not to catch the thing by the blade.

     “Watch it!” he yelled.

     “Well, quit being a little bitch and get to cuttin’. I don’t mind anyway. I can get this on film. It’ll be funny as shit.”

     Marty awkwardly held the hatchet in his right hand. He took a few practice swings as if he were about to take tee ball batting practice for the first time. The girl began stirring on the table; she moaned as her eyes fluttered open. They went wide once she saw the hatchet as she began screaming and flailing.

     “Stop fuckin’ around and do it!” Cletus yelled, trying to hold her down with one hand, and leaning across her with his body while still filming.

     “Alright, alright,” Marty said as he grabbed a handful of her hair with the left hand. She let out another scream as he swung the hatchet, hitting her in the throat. The blade broke skin but only penetrated a little ways. Blood oozed from her neck as her screams turned to gagging and gurgling.

     “See?” Cletus called out. “You’re fucking it all up!”

     “Shut up. I ain’t done!” Marty said as he took another whack at her neck, this time cutting a little deeper. She twitched and flailed again as he took another whack, and then another. He hacked away at her neck fifteen times before her head fell away, rolling onto the floor.

     “See?” Marty said, wiping blood off his face.

     “Took ya long enough.”

     “I just need some practice is all. You been doing it for years.”

     “It ain’t rocket science Mr. Book Writer.”

     “Shut up. That why you all mad? Cause I have a published book and you still ain’t got no movie?”

     “Oh, I’ll have my movie. It will blow your goofy ass book away. Your book don’t even got no pitchers,” Cletus said.

     “Grown up books don’t have pitchers you dumbass.”

     “They do if they any good. Like naked girly pitchers.”

     “You got a naked girly right here,” Marty said.

     “She ain’t no fun. You done fucked her up before I could play with her. I get the next one.”

     “Whatever,” Marty said as he went to work, hacking up the girl’s limbs.

     It took a few hours for Marty to clean and skin the girl’s body. Cletus took most of her skin once they had the meat separated. He liked to tan the skin to make props for his movies and who knows what else with them. Marty skinned her head and cut the hair away and took it back to his room. They put the rest of the meat in their deep freezer except for what was needed for dinner. Usually one girl her size would be food for a couple weeks.

     Marty got to his room and placed the head in a large aquarium filled with maggots. The maggots would eat the remaining tissue away over the next few days. He sat and watched the little critters crawling all over the skull. He wondered how much meat each of them little buggers could eat at once. Then did they shit it out? Did they eat their own shit later? He’d have to look that stuff up.

     For now, he wanted to check on his sales. He opened his laptop and logged into his Crashbooks author page. The book had just gone live the day before and he spent the extra money to put it on some mailing lists. When he looked, he about squealed with glee as he saw he’d had three hundred downloads in just twenty four hours. From what he’d read, you’re lucky on a first book if you have twenty or thirty.

     He got up and danced around his room, almost knocking the maggot aquarium off its stand. He corrected it and sat back down. Clicking off the page, he clicked over to the book listing on Crashbooks and saw there were already five reviews. Yes! Though his excitement faded once he actually started reading the reviews.

     “Stupidest piece of crap I’ve ever read.”

     “Should be called Tunnel of Stupidity.”

     “The only thing scary here is the author’s lack of ability.”

     “This writer needs to go back to the third grade.”

     “M.C. McDougal, please kill yourself before torturing us with anymore crap!”

     And then there was his favorite:

     “I wish someone had killed M.C. McDougal’s mom a long time ago. Then we may have been spared this garbage.”

     He picked up the laptop and hurled it across the room. It busted into several pieces as he kicked over his chair and flipped his desk as he screamed.

     “Motherfuckers! Kill my ma! Kill myself! I’ll kill all of you cocksuckers!”

      His room door swung open as his Ma looked around.

     “What in the hell is going on boy?” she said.

     “It’s time for me to make some real horror.”

Chapter 5

     “Why’d you have to take my computer?” Cletus said.

     “Cause mine broke,” Marty said from the desk as he logged into Cletus’ laptop.

     “You mean you broke it.”

     “Shut up. I need you to help me though.”

     “With what?” Cletus once again was filming.

     “You’re good at like finding people and shit. I got these assholes on Crashbooks. They let any old person leave a review. So I got a whole bunch of shitty ones from these wannabe critics.”

     “And you want me to find them?”

     “Yeah! I seen you do it before.”

     “Yeah, I can do it,” Cletus said.

     “So you can find ‘em for me?”

     “Yeah. But what for?”

     “What do you mean what for? What happens when someone does a McDougal wrong?”

     “We kill ‘em I guess.”

     “Hell yeah we kill ‘em. We fuck them up good too!”

     “Well. I reckon I don’t…Holy shit. They said they should kill our Ma?” Cletus said as he read the Crashbooks screen.

     “See? I told you. Don’t nobody talk about us that way.”

     “All right. Give me a few minutes.”

     Marty nodded and walked down the hall back to his room. The skull was sitting in the aquarium, maggots still crawling all over it. He looked in to see they had eaten almost half the meat off it. Wouldn’t be much longer now. The shelf just above it was lined with skulls. Soon he’d have to build another one. For some reason, one of the skulls was much larger than the others. He picked it up and ran his fingers across the fissures in the bone.

     Looking closely at it, he remembered now. The skull belonged to some great big colored fellow. The poor bastard had gotten lost and ended up running out of gas just down the road from their house. He’d walked right up to their front door asking to use their phone. Ma had let him in and as soon as Cletus heard him come in, he knew what to do.

     The guy barely got a few steps inside, when Cletus cracked him over the head with a wooden baseball bat. The guy tumbled like a sack of potatoes. Of course, Marty had to help Clete drag the guy out to the garage. The guy weighed a ton. He wasn’t fat, just tall and muscular. They got about halfway there when the guy woke up though and kicked Marty clear across the yard.

     Marty laughed now, but it sure pissed him off to no end at the time. The guy even got ahold of Clete and throttled him good. Busted Clete’s nose wide open, even knocked a tooth out. He started to run, but Cletus is pretty fast too. He ran after the guy and tackled him. They were about the same size and tussled around real good. Finally Cletus got his knife out and jammed it right into the guy’s guts. He squealed and squealed.

     Cletus got up to catch his breath, while Marty ran over and kicked the guy in the face a bunch.

     “Oh sure, now you come along after I got him down,” Cletus said.

     “I wasn’t gonna fight this great big fella. He hurt my ribs when he kicked me.”

     “As usual, I do all the work.”

     “You do not, Clete.”

     “Fine, then you take him back to the shed,” Cletus said as he walked into the house.

     The guy was grunting as he held his hands over his stomach while blood oozed out. He tried talking to Mary as he grabbed the guy’s feet and began dragging him into the shed.

     “Please don’t do this. I need a doctor. Just let me go. I won’t tell nobody.” The guy kept crying. It took Marty forever to get him into the shed. By then he had bled out, or at least bled enough to pass out. Either way he finally shut up.

     Snapping out of the memory, Marty placed the skull back on the shelf next to a tiny one. That was from a little boy not too long ago. He still wasn’t sure what to think of that one. Cletus had grabbed the kid and his family a few miles down the road. Ma didn’t want to eat the boy, so she had Clete just cut his throat real quick. That was the first time they’d killed a kid. Ma said it was no big deal. Anyone not family didn’t matter anyway. Cletus didn’t seem to mind much either.

     Marty was startled by the door opening behind him. He turned and Cletus was walking in.

     “Can’t you knock?” Marty said.

     “I got your stuff here,” Cletus said, showing him a printout. “There’s several of them. I got their addresses right here.”

     Marty took the sheet and looked them over. There were five names and addresses on the list, two of them were right there in Texas. The others were further away. He’d deal with them, but it would have to be later.

     “Come on Clete. Let’s get the truck and your gear,” Marty said.

     “For what?”

     “For a road trip!”

     “Man, I don’t wanna go on no road trip,” Cletus said.

     “Come on. We gotta go to Austin and San Antonio and get these folks. They can’t get away with this. The whole world will see them reviews. Besides, you know Stephen King don’t never put up with shit like that.”

     “How do you know?”

     “Because man. He wrote ‘It’ and ‘The Stand’. He has like a deal with the devil. He just has to say he wants them dead and the devil gets ‘em.”

     “Really?” Cletus asked.

     Marty really had no idea, but he was sure he’d read that somewhere.

     “Serious. This is about honor. Mama would agree.”

     “Well, all right I guess. Lemme go get my stuff.”