How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers

by Max Booth III

  If you wanted to be a writer, you couldn’t afford to be lazy. You had to be like Sergio and treat it like any other job. It was when you started acting like it was different from normal jobs that things started going south. If you treated writing like a typical nine to five, then you would get the work done. But if you acted like you were a special snowflake who was better than everybody else, then you weren’t gonna get shit done. If you worked at Walmart, you couldn’t sit around and wait for inspiration to kick in. You either stocked the shelves or your ass was canned. Sergio held the same philosophy about writing. He knew he wasn’t special. Nobody was special. People who thought they were special were actually just assholes.

  When he was first starting out and still spoiled like everybody else, he had a certain mantra he’d repeat every day before writing. After so long, his words finally stuck, and now he was actually getting shit done.

  You are not special.

  You do not deserve leniency.

  You are an employee of the mind. You wanted to work, well here’s your chance to work. Now work.

  You are no different than the kid who flips burgers at McDonald’s.

  You are the garbage man outside your house.

  You are the person scraping road kill off the side of the highway.

  You do not get a speed-pass to skip ahead in line. There is nothing remarkable about you that differentiates you from any other soul out there trying to make a dollar.

  You are a person with a job to do. You either do your job, or you’re fired. You sit around, fucking off, complaining enough, then they’ll just find someone else to do it.

  You don’t feel like writing? Too bad. Do you think the waitress down the block feels like busting her ass, listening to your problems, only for a two dollar tip? No, but she does it anyway. Why? Because she has a job to do. She wants to get paid. Your worries are pathetic in her eyes. She doesn’t sit around and wait for something to inspire her to refill your coffee.

  Every second you aren’t writing is another second you’re wasting on the clock. What are you even doing here?

  You may not have a spatula or a box cutter, but you do have a pen, you do have a keyboard. Your tools may be different, but it doesn’t change the fact that your shift isn’t even close to over.

  So either piss off or do your fucking job.

  So that’s what Sergio did. His fucking job.

  Well, he was doing his job. Now he wanted to sleep. But something had come up. Nick needed him over at his apartment right away. They were putting the sequel to The Cumming of Christ up for pre-order already, which was strange, since the first book only came out a few months ago. His publisher hadn’t sounded like his normal self. Something was wrong. Maybe he owed somebody money, and he was being threatened. Sergio considered the possibility, then wondered if maybe he could turn that idea into a novella. He would call it Bizarro Sorrows.

  Sergio got dressed, gathered his laptop and USB stick in his messenger bag, and walked across town to his publisher’s apartment. He didn’t have a car. Cars were for people who had places to be. The only place Sergio needed to be was at home, writing. Or at his uncle’s cabin, also writing. Except when his publisher randomly demanded his presence. But such times were rare. And besides, Sergio didn’t mind walking. Walking was good for you. It was the best way to brainstorm future books.

  If The Cumming of Christ continued to be such a success, then the sequel, Cunnilingus is Close to Godliness, would be a hit. His fans would demand a third one. He certainly had ideas. Hell, the way his buzz was going lately, he could continue this series for the rest of his life. Writing sleazy stories about Jesus just came naturally to him.

  It was weird, how word-of-mouth moved for The Cumming of Christ. When it was first released, it got shared around on Facebook and Twitter like it usually did. A few laughs here and there. It moved up the ranks on Amazon. The same as his other books. Nothing too special, but still decent for a small press weird fiction author. But then, almost two months after its release, there was an article hitting all the usual news websites. A high school English teacher in Washington had been fired for assigning The Cumming of Christ as required reading for his students. The news story went viral, and soon The Cumming of Christ was in the top one hundred of most sold books on Amazon. Well, for a few hours at least, and then a James Patterson book knocked it back out. But still, Sergio’s book was selling. The article was being shared even today. More copies were being moved. He had no idea who this teacher was, but he pretty much saved Sergio’s life. He couldn’t wait until that first royalty statement. It already tasted sweet and delicious.

  Sergio eventually made it across town, still thinking about turning The Cumming of Christ into a trilogy. Nick’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, but the apartment was unlocked.

  Inside, Eliza was on the floor, hogtied. Next to her was another man, also hogtied. Their faces cried blood.

  Sergio stood in the doorway, frozen. A guy walked out of the kitchen, into the living room, smiling. He held a knife.

  “I haven’t seen you yet,” the man said.

  Sergio had no words.

  “Where are the rest?”

  “What . . .”

  “Ah, well.” He lunged at Sergio before he could figure out what was going on, driving the knife into his throat and making his world wet and hot.

  30. TWACK

  Sergio collapsed to the floor and Lewis kept stabbing him. It dawned on Eliza that he was trying to saw off his head, but he was having a hell of a time, considering his tool of choice was a shitty steak knife.

  She almost vomited, but managed to keep her ill down. Vomiting with your mouth sealed was a sure way to choke to death. And she wasn’t about to die today. Instead she started bobbing herself back and forth until she built up enough momentum to roll herself over, then she continued rolling until she made it into the kitchen, out of sight of the vicious bastard in the living room. The duct tape had loosened a bit. She kept moving around until it loosened enough and she was finally able to break free.

  She scrambled to her feet and scanned the kitchen in a hurry. Lewis would notice her absence any second now, if he hadn’t already. She picked up a frying pan from the sink and ran back into the living room. The sick sonofabitch was still on top of Sergio, cutting at him. She spotted the dildo crucifix on the floor next to them and her eyes widened. She lowered the frying pan and picked up the crucifix, preferring its weight. She raised the new weapon and smashed it against the back of his head, expecting him to go unconscious like they did on TV. Instead he just cursed and stood up, giving Eliza a mean stare.

  “That stung,” he said, and stabbed the knife at her. He missed completely, leaving himself open for another twack from the dildo crucifix. This time a tooth flew out of his mouth. He stood in place, temporarily dazed. Eliza took advantage and started smashing the dildo crucifix into his face over and over until he stopped moving.

  She picked up his knife and threw it across the living room, disgusted. She grabbed the duct tape and bound his hands behind his back, using up the rest of the roll. How the fuck did he even get himself untied last time? She looked around, saw his belt on the floor. It’d been ripped in half, like he’d been picking at it all afternoon until the fabric finally gave.

  The front door was still wide open. If anybody walked by, they’d discover a scene that’d make Eli Roth come in his pants. Eliza grabbed Sergio’s feet and dragged him inside, crying and wishing none of this was real. She closed the door and locked it. She found a blanket and threw it over Sergio’s face. The sight was awful. Everything was so goddamn awful.

  She needed out of this apartment. Surely somebody had heard them and called the police. There was no way in hell all of that had gone unnoticed.

  Eliza called Louise on her cell, told her to get their asses back here and pick her up. Shit had hit the fan and they had to figure out a new game plan pronto.

  Five minutes later, there was a knock at the front door. She u
nlocked it, expecting to find Nick and the rest of the group.

  “Hey, sis,” Billy said.

  31. PAPERBACK GRAVEYARD

  Joseph could not believe a high school teacher had actually assigned The Cumming of Christ as required reading to a class of teenagers. He was all about expanding what children and teenagers were allowed to read in school, but holy shit, The Cumming of Christ was a fucked-up book. He had never read anything quite like it before. It was intriguing. It was filthy. It was perverted. It was gross. It was beautiful.

  The fact that this book was published seemed completely ridiculous and, at the same time, kind of inspiring. It showed that no matter how weird you really were, there would always be freaks just like you to back up your ideas.

  Joseph looked the author up on his smart phone while sitting at his speed trap. Sergio Placid had over sixty books in print, and he was supposedly only twenty-seven years ago. How was that even possible? Joseph was almost forty and he hadn’t accomplished shit.

  What Joseph really found interesting, though, was that Placid actually lived in the same town as he did. In fact, the majority of the publishing company that produced Placid’s books lived here, too. He wondered if he ever arrested any of them before. They could be anyone, really. Joseph had no idea. He wanted to believe the company consisted of upstanding citizens, but seriously, anyone who approved of something like The Cumming of Christ was one depraved animal.

  He wondered what that said about himself.

  A new call came on his radio. A noise disturbance at a nearby apartment. Of course he was called to the scene. Everybody else was busy. Joseph wanted to say he was busy, too. This book was really grabbing him.

  He set it down and drove to the apartment, knowing if he hadn’t answered the call he would be in even deeper shit than he already was with his captain. A door on the ground level of the apartment was wide open. He stood in the entrance and shouted his presence. Nobody answered. He peered inside and lost his breath at the sight of a man sprawled out on the carpet floor. There was a blanket over his face, but the blanket was drenched in what looked like blood. The carpet below him was also soaked in the same red liquid.

  “Oh shit,” Joseph said, and radioed for backup. Then he stepped into the apartment, gun drawn. He was going to have to shoot somebody. He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in his genes. He wasn’t a killer. Fuck. Why did he take the call? He should have just stayed at his speed trap and continued reading The Cumming of Christ in peace.

  But it was just him and the corpse. He discovered dozens of paperbacks scattered on the floor. Some had blood soaked into their pages. He recognized many of the covers. They belonged to titles the Books I’d Like to Fuck company had published. They all did.

  That was a little too much of a coincidence for Joseph to handle, so he walked outside and puked into some bushes and thought about the meaning of life. He could be home right now with his dachshund and everything would be okay. Instead he had chosen to get dressed and go to work, and this was his punishment. Maybe it was God playing an evil trick. Or maybe it was just destiny, going on as scheduled.

  Later, once Joseph discovered the identity of the corpse in the apartment, he decided he would put his two weeks’ in at the police department.

  32. A WARM WELCOME

  “You motherfucker.”

  Billy tried to look innocent, but the bullshit was in such abundance it was practically seeping from his eyeballs. “What?”

  Eliza didn’t answer. She punched him in the face. Hard. His face exploded with blood as he covered himself with his hands, crying.

  “Shit, sis, I think you broke my nose.”

  “Well, now you and I match.”

  He removed his hands and looked at her and seemed to realize for the first time how gory she was. “Holy shit, who did that to you?”

  Eliza thought about punching her brother again, but her hand was still stinging from the last one, so instead she stepped aside and gestured to the tied-up hostages on the ground. Specifically, Lewis.

  “You went ahead and kidnapped a deranged psycho.”

  Billy nodded. “Yeah, I already figured that out. Sorry about that.”

  Eliza eyed him strangely. “How?”

  He laughed. “There’s a bunch of severed heads in the trunk.”

  “How is that funny?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then why are you laughing?”

  “Because otherwise I will kill myself.”

  Eliza stared at Lewis on the ground, still unconscious. Or, at least, he looked like he was unconscious. Maybe he was playing possum. She looked back to her brother, only now realizing the gravity of his words.

  “Did you say there are heads in the trunk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whose heads?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Just a bunch of heads.”

  “Are you high?”

  “Yeah.”

  She was still having a difficult time comprehending the situation. “Heads. In the trunk.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “Who the fuck drives around with heads in their trunk?”

  Billy nodded to Lewis. “That dude, apparently.” Then he noticed Sergio on the ground. “What happened to Sergio?”

  She pointed at Lewis. “He fucking killed him.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, dude. Shit indeed.”

  “What are we gonna do?” Billy asked.

  “I thought maybe you’d know, considering you’re the one who got us all into this situation.”

  “Maybe we should call the police.”

  “I don’t really want to go to prison, Billy.”

  “True.”

  “Nick’s on the way. We can figure out what to do when they get here. Unless the police are coming because of all the noise we just made before you showed up, in which case we are fucked.”

  Billy sighed. “Maybe we should just leave, tell Nick to meet us someplace else.”

  “Like where?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t Sergio’s uncle still have that cabin in the woods? That might be good.”

  Eliza smiled, her face dripping blood. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

  “Should we take Harlan?” he asked, gesturing to the squirming hostage on the floor.

  “Yeah, might as well. But we’ll leave the psychopath here for the cops to collect.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Is he awake right now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if he heard us?”

  “So fucking what if he heard us?” Eliza asked.

  “Well, he could tell the cops we’re going to Sergio’s uncle’s cabin.”

  “Like the cops know where that’s at.”

  “I’m sure they could find out.”

  “I don’t want to drive with that guy in the car with me.”

  “We can put him in the trunk.” Billy paused, then pulled out the gun he’d taken from the glove compartment. “Or I could kill him, I guess.”

  Eliza gasped and backed away. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

  “His car.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  She threw her hands up in the air, defeated. “All right, fine. Throw him in the trunk. I don’t give a shit.”

  “And we’ll keep Harlan in the backseat?”

  “As long as you keep the duct tape over his mouth.”

  “Deal.”

  Billy bent down and started dragging Lewis out of the apartment. Before he left, he told Eliza to steal some clothes from Louise’s room.

  “I already planned on changing,” Eliza said. “I’m all covered in blood and shit.”

  “They’re not for you.”

  “Uh, okay.” She stared at him, afraid to ask who they were for. Unfortunately, he answered the question anyway.

  “The clothes are for Samantha.”
r />   “Who the fuck is Samantha?”

  “The girl in my trunk.”

  “One of the . . . heads?”

  “Well, she has a complete body. A naked one.”

  “She’s alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How the fuck did she get in the trunk?”

  “I had to kidnap her.”

  33. WHAT WILL OUR MOTHERS THINK

  Louise hung up her cell and told Nick there had been a change of plans, they were all meeting up at Sergio’s uncle’s cabin.

  “I thought Serg was dead.”

  “I’m just saying what they told me, okay?”

  “That cabin’s like a half hour away, at least.”

  Louise sighed. “Well, you better drive faster then.”

  “How the hell can Serg be dead? What the fuck is going on?” Nick said, more to himself than anyone else. The world was melting around them and there was nothing they could do about it.

  Stephen tapped his shoulder from the backseat. “Um, what are we going to do with Jared?”

  Nick cursed. “At this point, we’re way past the hospital. We’ll just kick him out of the car at the next stop sign.”

  “You can’t do that!” Stephen said. “What if he dies? We can’t leave him out on the street by himself.”

  “Oh, fuck him.”

  “Nick . . . ”

  “Fuck, all right. We’ll take him to the cabin and he can die there and then you can bury him in the woods. Happy?”

  “I don’t think I’m ever gonna be happy again.”

  “I can’t believe Sergio’s dead,” Louise said, quiet.

  “So the one guy, the one that isn’t Harlan, just snapped?” Nick asked. “What did you say about heads in a trunk?”

  “The car, the one Billy stole. He found heads in the trunk. The guy’s a serial killer or something.”

  “Jesus motherfucking Christ.”

  “Don’t mention Jesus,” Louise said. “It makes me think of Sergio.”

  “I think we’re way over our heads, guys,” Stephen said.