Authors: Ian Maxwell
“Great, so not only was Lone Lake apathetic, but when forced to take a side the dudes just deserted. Classic. But whatever, where does that leave us with this cashmere quagmire?”
Deputy Jake scratched his beard thoughtfully.
“If he isn’t getting plugged by dudes or devoured by inbreds what did happen to him? Abducted by UFOs?” Tyler persisted.
“
Serial killer.
”
“Serial killer?”
“Yeah a good old fashioned serial killer,” Jake said ominously.
“Serial killer… what the fuck? Where did you get that from dude… I mean Deputy Jake?”
“I don’t know,” said Jake, “we all know the woods aren’t dangerous and Lone Lake isn’t some redneck bastion. Sure we got a few rednecks but what place doesn’t.”
“Yeah dude, we are neither libtards nor retards. I know all that,” retorted Tyler, “but what made you arrive from a lack of rednecks and half eaten berries to a fucking
serial killer?
”
“Umm, if it’s inexplicable, it’s probably a serial killer. It always is.”
“But… but to be a serial killer,” stuttered Tyler, “the killings have to be serialized… as in, there has to be a history of killings… as in several killings and abductions preceding our missing Kip in the cashmere…”
“Yeah, but they gotta start somewhere…”
“What?”
“The serial killer’s gotta start somewhere. Remember, every serial killer was just a killer at one point.”
“Jesus dude…”
“…and from the looks of it, whoever he is… he’s just getting started…”
“Jesus dude… wait, so you are saying…”
“… I’m saying that we are on the precipice of some sweet serial killer history in the making…”
WHUMP… WHUMP…
The killer woke up to darkness and the sounds of a chopper rhythmically whumping the dense night air.
“Wufk.”
His senses heightened, Lars listened harder. A couple of dogs howled in the distance as a bunch of mosquitos jazzed nearby. Plus there was some sort of a cacophony going on in the background.
WOOF. WOOF. CHOP. CHOP. BZZZ. BZZZ. WHUMP. WHUMP.
‘Shit. No good’, thought the killer surveying the sounds and engulfing darkness. ‘How long had he been out?’
Earlier, he’d dumped the cashmere guy into a shallow grave and covered him up with top soil. Tired from the exertion, he had laid next to the cool grave to catch some shut eye. He’d planned to rest for like ten minutes… twenty tops. Not eight freaking hours.
WOOF. WOOF. CHOP. CHOP. BZZZ. BZZZ. WHUMP. WHUMP.
From the slant of its weaving searchlight, the chopper was at least five miles away, somewhere over the gorge. Good. The dogs on the other hand seemed closer. Their barks amplified and modulated. A mile, perhaps more, perhaps less. From their eager doggy yelps they seemed to be homing in on him. Not good. Not good at all.
‘Damn those bitches, always crampin’ my style,’ thought Lars as he got up and began formulating a new plan… a Plan B…
***
With a rudimentary Plan B in place, Lars quickly disinterred the grave and pulled out the dead guy. His initial plan had been to follow his instincts and dump the body into Lone Lake. But then the killer wasn’t an asshole… he deeply cared about the environment and waterbodies and the dangers posed by toxins in the food chain. Plus Lone Lake was a friggin
lake
not a river, wherein its water was largely stagnant. Would only be a matter of time before the thing got stuck in some old fisherman’s line. Nope, the killer needed something safer… something more permanent.
Brainstorming with himself, Lars stumbled onto the proverbial, ‘dead hooker in the trunk’. The cashmere guy was good looking enough to pass as a male hooker and the town, despite its size had universal needs – air, water, DirecTV and hookers. The killer thought through some potential stashing locations. Most houses in Lone Lake didn’t have garages which was good, but then again most people owned trucks out here which lacked trunks. Eliminating trucks, the shortlisted old lady Martha’s maroon Taurus… the librarian Janice’s new Civic… drunk Bob’s El Camino… the Jensens’ rotting Cutlass… the pastor’s Volvo…
… shit the Jensens.
The Jensens were weirdos. Plain and simple weirdos. While other Lone Lakers referred to them as
retirees
, Lars preferred weirdos. A couple of summers ago they had abandoned their tacky and eponymous Jensen Manor and driven off in a caravan in search of Arizona. So lame. So kitschy.
Unbeknownst to the killer, before driving off, the Jensens had paid Mitch Marsh, Lone Lake Union Bank’s loan guy to take care of their lame ass manor. The Jensens’ only statute to Mitch had been, “
Don’t let our home become a haunted house.
” After spending some of that old Jensen money on basic upkeep, Mitch had funneled the rest of it to fund his dark hobby – prepping. Yep, he was one of those guys who obsessed about defending the perimeter, bugout bags and honor and guns. He was part of the redneck revival movement... an attempt to bring back redneck-chic.
But Lars, in his nightly walks around Lone Lake had noticed a couple of broken windows and maybe even an open door at Jensen Manor. Both were on the rear, invisible to passerbys on the street. Thus to casual observers, the frontal façade presented an air of pseudo-normalcy. The manicured lawns, trimmed hedges, cleared cobwebs and picket fences all implied that the caretaker had done his job – and kept the rambler compliant with Lone Lake’s Lawn Laws.
With that sweet thought, the killer set off to Jensen Manor.
But unlike earlier when the body had been all dead and lithe, the rigor mortified body presented quite the conundrum to the rookie killer. For starters, it had an odd center of mass near the chest with no apparent love handles, and the guy’s garb – the cashmere sweater, Gucci shirt and designer belt were all pusillanimous to say the least. One good tug and they had ripped off clean.
Being a total stiff at that point, the killer found it real hard to bend and rearrange the limbs to form a more convenient shape for transport. Then of course, there was that stupid dead guy grin with soil and shit pouring out of his mouth. Lars so wanted to slap him silly.
But after several attempts at panic driven self-motivation, the killer lucked out and realized that the body was in essence, a weird Christmas tree. Unwieldy, heavy in the wrong places and yet, totally dead. His soul at peace, Lars balanced the dead dude over his shoulder and trudged towards Jensen Manor in Lone Lake’s North Street. Not wanting to be seen for obvious reasons, Lars stuck to the backwoods and disused footpaths.
GRRR
What the fuck was that, wondered the killer. Or had he just imagine it.
GWARRR
Nope, not his imagination playing games. Shit was totally really real. Easily above the 100 db barrier. Lars quickly checked his bearings. He was a mile off of Jensen Manor and at least a hundred yards from the town streets.
GRRR
Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting closer and perhaps angrier. Totally panicking, the killer lost his balance and dropped the dead guy on his head. The body hit the ground with a muffled thud.
“Wufk,” exclaimed the killer. It must be those police dogs. It had to be.
After sneaking a quick peek at the stiff on the floor, the killer squinted into the darkness and scanned for those rabid canines. If it came to it, he wasn’t disinclined towards expanding the range of his killings. Humans… canines… urchins… critters… cretins… whatever it took… he was willing to go all the way… willing to take them all down. His freedom was his last possession and he had no intention of surrendering it to these K9 bitches.
GRROOWLL
For some reason that last growl didn’t seem like a dog at all, trained K9 or otherwise. The noise was deeper and not really yelpy. Perhaps a fox. Foxes were sly fuckers, but they never went on the offensive, especially not against large threats like himself.
Wolves? GTFO.
Twigs crackled as the thing got closer. Despite his petrified state, the killer blurted out a, “Wufk.”
Taking a few deep breaths Lars thought about abandoning the body and making a dash to Lone Lake – not the town but the waterbody, and if confronted he could always use his karate. As he thought about the cool karate kicks in his arsenal, the source of the nasty growl emerged into the moonlight.
GRRR
The friggin thing was large, like really, really large, probably weighed a thousand pounds and stood nine feet tall. As realization hit him like a bear claw, the killer let out a whimper, “Wuufffk.”
Twenty yards ahead, stood North America’s last apex predator – a nasty ass grizzly bear.
As fear and panic took over, a tiny corner in the killer’s brain brought up an anecdotal story about some friend, whose cousin’s Russian fiancé had lost his face to a grizzly. Faceless? Gross. Immediately, another little corner of the killer’s brain countered with a story of how a friend’s step-brother’s aunt’s American brother had escaped from a grizzly by…
The killer collapsed in a heap next to the stiff body.
***
Grizz the grizzly, jauntily sauntered over to get a better look at the idiots. The one in the silly sweater was clearly dead. No coroner worth his gag reflex was going to say otherwise. But something seemed to be off about him though. While the dude smelt like he’d been dead for a few hours, he looked all green and brown, sorta mothy and roachy… like a botched zombie costume on Halloween. So unfashionable… so out of touch with reality.
As Grizz knelt closer to get a better whiff, the other asshole who was playing dead… or possum… watched him with a slit eye. Grizz shook his head and lectured him with a pedantic, “Fuckin’ amateur”, which of course came out as, “GROWWLL… GAARRR.”
Lars simply couldn’t believe it. Despite following the
playing dead
advice to a D, the grizzly had easily discovered his undeaded-ness. What a scam? That friend’s step-brother’s aunt’s American brother had figuratively blown smoke up his ass… Lars’ sweet ass. If he lived through this, even if faceless and maimed, he would totally hunt him down and fuck him up real bad.
Fighting for control over his bowels, Lars closed his eyes and tried to go into a mini-cryogenic freeze. For the time being the grizzly seemed to be interested in the stiff…
his
stiff, but that wouldn’t last forever. At some point, the grizzly was bound to turn its attention towards him… what was that saying now? The end is night… no the end is nigh…?
As Grizz concluded that the guy had been killed, buried and dug up again, Lars lost control of his bowels.
He sharted hard.
The wet fart rose into the night air like a cloud of weaponized anthrax.
“
The fuck you eat? Dead rats?”
groaned Grizz not knowing that Lars was into veganism, which of course produced some of the worst farts in recorded history. Even shit eating pigs produced better smelling farts.
Grizz’s disgust again came out as GWAARR… GROAAN. Unable to take it anymore, Grizz reflexively turned to Lars and smacked the shit out of his silly face.
Having lost control over his bowels and now separated from his senses, Lars let go of another huge cubic feet of wet fart… and this time, a speckle went into Grizz’s eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” roared the grizzly, as in, JARRR GRRR… Grizz by then had had enough with the dead zombie and his asshole play date. Whatever sick shit they were up to, they seemed fit for each other. With that, Grizz stomped on Lars’ blueberry filled belly and walked away from the scene.
Before blacking out from the assault, Lars hastily crawled out of his fart’s fallout area. But despite his best efforts, the cashmere guy’s body took a direct hit.
***
“Wufk,” the killer woke up with a start. It was still dark. Scanning the night sky and relative position of the Pole star with respect to Ursa Major, the killer figured he’d been out for an hour tops. Not bad for someone who’d been battered by a fucking grizzly bear.
As he rubbed his eyes and gauged the surroundings he noticed the dead body still lying beside him. Fuck, this was becoming a habit. Killer or not, waking up next to dead people wasn’t a pleasant thing. It was time to put an end… a permanent end to this killing bullshit. Good God, who knew killing was such a fucking ordeal.
Still stinging from that grizzly assault, Lars gingerly picked himself up. Thankfully, nothing seemed to be broken. Which was good, in fact very good. Not many could have come out this way from a full on grizzly assault.
Fucking grizzlies.
As he stood up and stretched, Lars was relieved to notice that his wet fart had cleared off, but in its wake it had hastened the decomposition of the dead dude. But then again he was thankful for his vegan diet, which had saved him from that grizzly. Yeah, fucking grizzlies. ‘Apex predator my ass… more like degenerate ass eating apes.’
Wasting no further time, Lars lifted the body off the ground. To his pleasant surprise, it was no longer
a stiff
. It was totally flexible and pliable. It… well he had softened and transformed into a very regular body. Yep, just like it had warded off that grizzly, his badass fart had shooed off that rigor-mortis shit to hell.
Sweet.
It was a quiet, mellow night at Kitty’s Roadhouse when deputies Tyler and Jake entered the local watering hole. Other than a few regulars the place was deserted. Carli Finch their old friend from high school waved at them from the bar.
“Hey,” said Tyler taking a stool next to her while Jake went to the restroom.
“So what’s this talk about a missing guy I hear about?” Carli asked sipping a beer.
“Ongoing investigation. We aren’t allowed to share details with the public,” replied Tyler.
“Bullshit.” Somewhere in the beyond, Carli had gone to Lone Lake High with Tyler and Jake. While the boys had gotten out of high school to become badass deputies, Carli had gone to university and then returned to Lone Lake High as the school’s guidance counselor.
“No, I’m serious,” said Tyler signaling the barman Bill for two beers, “can’t… won’t… get anything out of me.”
“But, but I could be of help… I might know something,” Carli tried to pry something out of Tyler.