Meet Your Favorite Serial Killer Read online

  "Is Satan behind this?"

  Bert's proud expression deflated into confusion. "What do you mean?"

  "Has my dad worked out a deal to fix the games for profit with the great one? Does Satan know of your ideas?"

  "I, I don't know."

  "He hasn't, has he?"

  It was Luke's turn to smile.

  He pulled the trigger and watched a big bite explode out of the side of old friend's head. The corpse dropped to the floor.

  That was step one, Luke thought. Now it was time for the next step. He was thinking on the fly now. He wasn't sure this would work.

  He had to try.

  There was a good chance he was going to die tonight. Worse, that everything he truly loved in this life was going to be taken away from him. Bliss could fuck herself with a tailpipe for all he cared. But these games, seeing his favorite killers in action, and creating new ideas for the program was what he lived for, and to have it be ripped away from him was unacceptable.

  The goons outside continued to bang on the door. There wasn't much time before they would kick it down, or take the door off its hinges. They might shoot their guns through the door, but then again, they would damage the expensive equipment. It would also disrupt the game. Their clients were probably alerted by the gunshot that killed Bert.

  That bought him time.

  Luke was swift. He picked up Bert's body. He pressed Bert's bleeding broken head against the wall. He drew a pentagram in fresh blood and gray matter.

  It was time to appeal to a higher power.

  David's elbows and knees were rubbed raw. He had fallen into a large steel duct. The worse smells permeated in the confining walls. Putrid wafts of decay. Fresh blood. Meat cooked by various and morbid methods. Sulfur stenches. It was enough to make him wretch. He kept moving despite the need to purge.

  He wouldn't last long in this confining space. There was an opening up ahead, and he decided to crawl upwards into it. What he entered was a large room with many shelves. The lights above were muted a soft red. The room was cast in many shadows, but it was easy to tell what this place was, and it didn't bring any relief to him.

  This was the inside of a hardware store.

  He stood in place and trained his ears to any movements.

  Footsteps came his way. The owner of those steps stood at the front of the aisle. He was six foot four with a bulging gut that made him stand awkwardly. He wore a netted baseball cap with greasy strands of gray sticking out from the sides. His jeans were held up by thick suspenders.

  "Welcome to Hardware Harry's. How many I help you die today?"

  Hardware Harry grabbed a plumbing snake from the nearest shelf.

  "I can clean your pipes. How long have you been in this game? You should be shitting blood by now. Why aren't you shitting blood? Well, let me remedy that problem."

  "Stay away from me." David grabbed a pick axe from the shelf. "I'll use it."

  "I know you will." Hardware Harry licked his lips. "Hmmm. Looks like I'm breaking your cherry in this game. I get to inflict the killing wounds."

  Hardware Harry's tongue licked his chapped lips and coated them in thick saliva. "Perhaps a snake isn't enough? Yeah. We need something better. I know when I fucked my first virgin behind the woodshed, I loaded her up with top shelf whiskey. You know, if they don't have a bad rot gut hangover the next day, they won't report you to the cops. It's worth spending the extra money on good booze. Trade secret. I give you the tip for free. Not that you're going to use that information for anything, dead man."

  He didn't want to hear any of it. "You're preaching to the wrong choir, you fat fuck."

  His words did nothing to change the killer's mindset.

  "You're going to suffer something real unusual, stranger. By the end of it, we'll both be covered in blood."

  Hardware Harry roved his giant hands through the shelves. He knocked over plungers, crowbars, and parts for bathroom fixtures, until he came up with a strange tool. It was a long black steel rod as tall as the man himself.

  "I can shove this up your soft pink asshole," Hardware Harry grumbled in his deep gruff. "Mmmmmm, yeah. It'll go in real deep. Then when I shove that up your hole, I can press this button on the end of this rod, and then these smaller rods will stick out. When they do, it'll break the right bones in your body so that your arms and leg bones won't be connected to your torso anymore. It means I'm free to rip you limb from limb with my bare hands.

  "Of course, I've got a whole store of cool shit to kill you with. What do you think the audience wants?"

  He noticed the small pane of glass to their right. He distinguished the shapes of heads and faces looking in through the other side. Rich, well dressed people were wide-eyed, eager-faced, and having the time of their lives.

  David was enraged. "You enjoy watching us getting killed? Why don't you join in on the fun? Let's see how long you last, you sons-of-bitches! You wouldn't last a second."

  He grabbed the nearest weapon from the shelf. He hurled a pick axe at the window with both hands. The weapon bounced off the glass and clanged to the ground. He didn't have a chance to be disappointed the window didn't shatter. Hardware Harry pursued him. He had the curious steel pole clutched in both hands. David imagined where that pole was going and wanted nothing to do with it.

  There wasn't anywhere to really run to, because behind him was a wall. There was the grate on the floor he could escape back into from earlier, but he sensed something inside the ducts coming up to grab him. More killers. More ways to die.

  The only way out of this was through Hardware Harry.

  David grabbed the closest thing to him and threw it at the raving lunatic.

  He realized his mistake.

  It was a useless bag of grass seed.

  Hardware Harry was about to drive home his weapon when a shadow darted into the room. The roar of the power saw disturbed Harry's attack, especially when the spinning blade split his head in two and sawed through all the way down to his sternum cage.

  "Kayla!"

  He couldn't believe his eyes. She stood there covered in countless shades of blood. Her short blonde hair was matted in wads of flesh and hunks of sticky bodily matter. She threw aside the power saw, grabbed him, and guided him out of the store.

  "There's a safety pod nearby. Come on. Hurry. I'm glad I checked in here. I thought I heard your voice. Thank God I'm not alone anymore."

  "I agree with you on that one. It's nice to see someone who isn't a psycho."

  He followed Kayla out of the hardware store, but not before grabbing a new pick-axe from the store's selection.

  From a distance, he could see the jungle gym of death. There was a large body of water between where he stood and that death area.

  She pointed up the cavern walls to the next yellow box.

  Another safety box.

  Had it been there before? He would've seen it, he thought. But then again, this was Satan's game. He could change the rules, the scenery, and the weapons at will. The evil bastard had all the tricks at his disposal. It didn't matter. The box was there, and he wanted safety. That was enough for him.

  The two ran to the pod as fast as they could. When they entered it, David turned around one last time before the doors shut. What he saw standing from afar disturbed him.

  "Holy shit. Is that every killer out there?"

  He swore a hundred different figures stood side-by-side facing them from a distance.

  "Don't worry about them," Kayla said. "Something real interesting has come up. I have a plan. We're going to take them all out."

  The moment Luke drew the pentagram on the wall with Bert's blood, a black sooty fog filled up the room. It churned up from the floor, the ceiling, from nowhere and everywhere. The room stank of sulfur pits and human suffering. The TV screens went black. The pentagram glowed a fiery cherry orange.

  Something wasn't right. He couldn't breathe. The noxious fog was filling his lungs. He swore it was forcing its way up his nose, into his
ears, under his nails, and even absorbing painfully through his skin. He curled up into a ball and endured the agony of having every inch of him invaded.

  Each incoming word was a jolt of lightening striking his body. He yawped in horrid pain as he was assaulted by words only he could hear.

  The warning rocked him.

  You think I need you to protect my interests? You have been deemed unworthy to deliver my wants. Judgment day is here, and none of you are prepared to uphold my dark name. You will be punished for your failure. You no longer represent me. The Blooms are finished.

  You and your audience have cheapened my game.

  Your family thought they could manipulate me.

  Big mistake.

  The game as you know it is over.

  The new game begins.

  My game.

  All is not lost, however. Your father's indiscretions aren't your indiscretions.

  Survive the next three hours, and I will dub you my servant.

  Fail and die, and I will cast thee into the most wretched pits where you will writhe for all eternity!

  Endure the battle.

  Luke Bloom, it's time to meet your favorite serial killer.

  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

  Luke's eyes shot open. The fog was gone. He viewed the camera angles on the screens, and he couldn't believe what had happened.

  The dark one was right.

  A new game had indeed begun.

  The safety pod was exactly the same as the one David had entered before. There were metal slots on the wall that would open up and give them a weapon when their time ran out. A timer was ticking down from thirty minutes. There was food and water and medical supplies. Kayla drank the water and rested on the cot.

  "Wait? Aren't we forming a plan?"

  "The plan is already in effect."

  He was attacked by a sudden fear. What if Kayla wasn't who she was supposed to be? How else had she survived so long in this battle situation alone? She was covered in blood. She could've died and come back a killer, or a zombie, or Satan's evil thing.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  He wasn't sure how to answer that question.

  "I'm paranoid. I've been attacked by all kinds of things tonight. It's hard to trust anything."

  Kayla was just as exhausted as he was, and it showed.

  "You saw all those killers coming after us. They were lined up to get us. I think we're the last ones alive in this game. That means our odds of surviving have drastically decreased. We're in this together, whether you fully trust me or not."

  "You sounded confident earlier about taking all of them out. Why are you so sure of yourself?"

  "This is going to get tricky. You already think I could be one of them, which I'm absolutely not. How many contestants, like us, have come back from the dead during the game? Huh? Have you seen anybody?"

  "No, I guess not. There's also no clear rules to all of this."

  "Please hear me out," Kayla pressed him. "I was almost killed by a man wearing a hat that said DEMO across the front. This man was famously nicknamed Demolition Dan in the papers. Demo used to be into pyrotechnics and special effects for movies. He made all of those awesome Hollywood explosions in dozens of big budget action movies.

  "The problem was, Demo was a bit crazy. I don't know if the adrenaline built up in his brain, and he went nuts, or what. When he was out of work for long stretches, he started to set up real explosions. He leveled buildings with people still in them. He rigged cars to explode when you turned on the ignition. He would set little bombs in public places for the fun of it. I guess it figures he would go to hell. But he recognized me, David. He's my uncle. That's why Demo is going to help us."

  "What? Your uncle? No fucking way. I don't understand. I saw him jam two sticks of dynamite into somebody's eyes. It was sick. You want to trust this guy? I know he's your uncle..."

  "He loved me before he went off the deep end," Kayla explained. "I was his favorite niece. He wasn't always a killer, David. He wants to help us survive.

  "Demo had an interesting piece of information. Hell can only allow these killers out for a certain period of time. There's about three hours left before the opening closes, and we're safe again."

  "Three hours, huh? It'll take about three seconds for them to kill us."

  "Not with my uncle's help."

  "You really trust him?"

  Kayla threw back another drink from her water bottle. "He's our only chance. There is I don't know how many killers out there, and only two of us to watch each other's backs. Any help, even if it's a risk, is worth it. What do we have to lose?"

  "Our lives. That's what." He quenched his thirst with his own bottle of water. "So Uncle Demo wants to help us. What can he do?"

  "He's going to meet us outside the safety pod when our time is up. He said he would explain more once we meet up."

  "Yeah. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing suspicious there."

  Kayla poured water onto her hands and splashed it into her face. "We're most likely going to die even with my uncle's help. But at least it's a shot. Think about it."

  "I know. Our odds are terrible. I get it. I don't like it, but I get it."

  He checked the timer.

  They had fifteen minutes left.

  "Whatever happens, David, I'm glad I met you. I barely know you. Maybe after this is over..."

  "Not to upset you, but I have a girlfriend."

  "Oh. Of course you do."

  "Kayla."

  "Yeah."

  "If we make it out of here alive, I'll make it my personal mission to make sure you get laid."

  "Fair enough."

  She shook his hand.

  "One thing you must promise me, David. No matter what works out or falls through, we're fighting them with everything we got."

  "You know we will. They'll be running away from us when we're through with them."

  "Fucking a."

  I can't believe this is happening.

  I just can't.

  The walls of the room had vanished. Luke smelled things. The musty air. The death. The stink of guts and opened up bodies. The earthy, mineral stench of cavern walls. He was standing in the control room one moment, and the next, he was suddenly inside the arena.

  He stood on a wooden stage. The same stage where Dr. Kevhorkian and his choir had plucked the heartstrings of their audience.

  Bliss was standing in place wearing a tight black and red bodice. It cast her body in an exaggerated hourglass figure. Her face was still flushed from getting gangbanged. Or was that flush from Jack the Ripper's blade against her throat?

  Jack the Ripper wore a black overcoat that was in dirty tatters. The top hat over his head disguised his features. He remained a man of mystery and shadow.

  Bliss called out to him. "Help me, Luke. Please!"

  He was too enamored by the killer to hear his wife.

  "Jack, it's really you. It's a pleasure to share a stage with a real legend. So I understand you like to cut up bitches? You got a knife. You got a bitch. Start cutting, my friend."

  "Luke, I'm so sorry. Forgive me. Forgive m--!"

  The knife plunged into her traitorous throat. Air bubbles popped and gurgled from the spout for a hole.

  "Bleed, you bitch. Bleed all over yourself. Bleed the fuck out. Bleed from all of your holes! Bleed until your dead."

  "Now that's no way to talk to your wife, is it?"

  Marlow Bloom stepped onto the stage. His stride was confident. He had a 9mm clutched in his hand. The barrel was pointed right at Luke's heart.

  Bliss was carried off by Jack the Ripper. He lugged her over his back and vanished into the shadows. Luke didn't care. He could cut off that whore's tits and wear them for ear muffs for all he cared.

  "I knew this might happen one day," Marlow sighed. "You have to be careful when dealing with the devil. Satan offers no free passes when it comes to enjoying what he can offer the living. I thought he would be pleased wi
th my ideas. I guess he wasn't."

  "You were belittling his name, Dad. You were going to turn his blessings into a joke. Why did you have to fuck Bliss, huh? Maybe I can forgive greed, but that, I can't."

  "Bliss practically jumped on my dick. I can't turn down pussy. It's the sweetest gash I've ever had. No wonder you like it. It's well kept despite its wear. It's like a flower you step on that stands right back up like nothing happened to it.

  "She wanted more power, and she knew that wasn't going to be obtained working through you. You believe in honor and tradition. I believe in upward mobility and forward thinking. I'm a risk taker. I'm a wheeler and a dealer. You're nothing like me, son."

  "We'll see about that," Luke said, smiling big. "I'll survive the night. Then Satan will give me the gifts because I earned them. It's how he works. He's constantly changing and evolving, and we're here to follow his head, not skip ahead of him. You play the game by his rules, and not your own, and you are justly rewarded. I will prove myself to Satan. I will succeed where you have failed."

  "You've got that wrong, son. I'll prove myself to him, and you'll be dead."

  Marlow was seconds away from pulling the trigger.

  There was nothing Luke could do but let it happen.

  Three minutes remained before the entrance to the safety pod would open. David stood next to Kayla nervously. They faced the inevitable horror together with surprising courage.

  "It's not like they can kill us twice," Kayla said.

  David wasn't so sure. "If they can bring back all of these killers from hell, who says they can't."

  "Oh. You're probably right. Fuck it."

  "Yeah. Fuck it."

  Two hisses of compressed air made them both gasp in fright. They couldn't help but laugh at what startled them. Two metal slots had sprang open on the side wall. Two different weapons were presented to them.

  One offering was a fully loaded .357 magnum.

  The other offering was three smoke grenades.