Bad Games: Hellbent - A Dark Psychological Thriller (Bad Games)

by Menapace, Jeff

  “Hey, Kelly.”

  THE END

  Author’s note:

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read Bad Games: Hellbent. What a ride it’s been! I hope you enjoyed reading the Bad Games series as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  I’ve said it before, and I’m gonna say it again: every single reader is important to me, and my number one goal is to entertain you. I’ve received so much wonderful mail about my Bad Games books this past year, and it never fails to put a big ol’ smile on my face.

  If I succeeded in entertaining you with Bad Games: Hellbent, I would be very grateful if you took a few minutes to write a review on Amazon. Great reviews can be very helpful, and I absolutely love to read the various insights from satisfied readers.

  Thank you so very much, my friends. Until next time…

  Jeff

  * * *

  Turn the page for a sneak peek of Jeff Menapace’s next dark thriller, Hair of the Bitch, coming soon!

  The Bar

  I enter the bar—a dive—just before closing. I need to get drunk.

  The place is empty save for a bartender wiping down the counter with his back to me. He calls over his shoulder: “Already did last call. Sorry about—”

  He turns and my face cuts him off. I put a hundred dollar bill on the bar and slide it toward him.

  “That’s yours if you lock the door and get me drunk,” I say.

  The bartender looks at the hundred, then back at me. He’s about sixty, heavy, salt and pepper hair.

  “You alright, man?” he asks.

  I pull another hundred and place it on the bar. “Door locked; me drunk. Yes or no?”

  The guy takes the two bills, ducks out from behind the bar, locks the front door, draws the shades, then ducks back under the bar to face me.

  “What’re you having?” he asks.

  “One glass and one bottle of Jim Beam.”

  “Ice?”

  “No.”

  He gets the bottle and glass and sets them in front of me. “What happened to you, man? You look really busted-up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is…is your ear…?”

  “Gone? Yes.”

  “Jesus.” He fills the glass with Beam and sets the bottle next to it.

  I finish the drink in three gulps. He fills my glass again.

  I take a sip and say, “Why don’t you grab a glass?”

  He shows me his palms. “No thanks—gotta clean-up after.”

  I place another hundred on the bar. “Have a drink with me.”

  He doesn’t take the bill immediately. “You sure you’re alright, man? There’s not going to be any trouble is there?”

  I chuckle, and my ribs ache. I then finish my second Beam, pour myself a third, and say, “No sir—no trouble. Just offering you a drink.”

  He slides the third bill off the bar, stuffs it quickly into his pocket as though we’d just completed some kind of drug deal, then pours himself a small Beam with ice.

  “Cheers,” I say, raising my glass.

  He clinks my glass and takes a modest sip.

  The whiskey is beginning to warm my belly, fuzz my head, and I’m on the verge of entering the Fuck It stage.

  So I finish my third, pour a healthy fourth, pull the curtain and greet the audience with a bow on the infinitely trodden boards of Fuck It, and then start talking to this poor guy as though he wants me to.

  1

  Philadelphia Suburbs

  I arrived at work and immediately checked my client list.

  No.

  No.

  Yes!

  She was my last one.

  Sound desperate? I’m not. But when you rub naked bodies for a living, you occasionally pine for a star amongst the usual cast of extras.

  And Angela Thorne was a fucking supernova.

  Let me reiterate; I am not some creepy massage therapist pining to touch a beautiful woman. In fact, to prove my point, I wouldn’t have been so eager to massage Angela if she hadn’t been the one to start things rolling some six months ago.

  During those six months it had been innocent flirting with subtle, yet erotic quips peppered in here and there. Harmless stuff, but good stuff—an hour that can often seem like a week never went so fast.

  She was not the first client to ever make a pass at me. Let’s face it, massage is a sensual art; you’re bound to instill a feeling or two in even the most timid of individuals.

  Most times, it was subtle digging about my background before attempting further inquiry. If I found the client attractive, I’d tell them I was single. This was not for my intention on pursuing them on a romantic basis, but come on, ask any heterosexual man if he’d mind some enticing chitchat with an attractive naked woman (a beautiful naked woman he happened to be rubbing with oil, mind you) in order to kill an hour, and what do you think his answer would be?

  Now, if I found the client unattractive, I would simply tell them I was involved with someone. I wasn’t blunt about it of course—after all, their money was putting food on my table; I had to be sure their embarrassment was quickly extinguished in hopes of having them back for further sessions. This was usually accomplished by informing them that if I were not romantically involved, I would have almost certainly taken them up on their offer—you know, giving them an honorable exit and all. Unfortunately, whenever this did happen, nine times out of ten I never saw them again.

  Some propositions were not so subtle. I once had a woman who was adamant about having her ass massaged. Now, to the uninformed, massaging one’s butt is a very legitimate and common massage technique. It’s a great way to relieve tension in the lower back, and it flat-out feels good. However, I soon found out that lower back relief was not this particular woman’s goal. Apparently, right before treatment, this lady informed me that she enjoyed having her ass massaged because, as she so succinctly put it, it always made her horny.

  After massaging her butt (yes, I did it, she was hot), the woman made an offer for dinner at her place, to which I gracefully declined. Why? I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe it’s that whole thing about the fantasy being better.

  Or maybe I needed a few drinks first.

  With a few (or preferably, many) drinks in me, anything was possible. I will openly admit that for quite some time alcohol has steered my twenty-nine-year-old life and given me the necessary lifts that no antidepressant could ever match. But alas, those lifts were always fleeting. Fleeting and habitually accompanied by the inevitable drop below rock-bottom come morning.

  Come morning when flashbacks of the previous night’s debauchery eventually came together and burned my face with shameful recall.

  Come morning when the poison thumped my head, leaked nausea from my pores, and frequently jammed an invisible finger down my throat.

  Come morning when the depression I didn’t think capable of getting worse, somehow managed to plummet further still.

  But did that stop me from doing it again?

  As soon as the hangover and memories of a deeper blue faded, I was back at it, chipping away at my questionable existence with a temporary solution.

  But so what. It made me feel wonderful—if only for a short, deceitful time—and it stopped all the voices in my head.

  Wait. That’s not right.

  When I say voices, I’m not talking Son of Sam shit, like I’m receiving homicidal advice from a dog. I’m talking about thoughts. The constant negative thoughts about who I am and what I am that bring my depression further south.

  The paradox is that I’ve been told I give off an admirable appearance to others. I’m no stud or anything—especially not looking the way I do now—but I’m tall, reasonably fit, and on my less-miserable days I would say an above-average looking face stares back at me in the mirror.

  I’m also a good bull-shitter. Not a con-man or anything like that. I just mean I’m able to convince people that my head is filled with optimism as opposed to razor shards from half-empty glasses
.

  The problem is that it’s hard to be “on” all the time. Being a little blue periodically is one thing, but being riddled with such intense feelings of inadequacy 24/7 while your shell tries to portray a different story to the public without cracking? It can take a toll on you. And what does that toll end up costing?

  Numbness.

  You become numb. Act the part long enough and soon you forget who you are. How to feel.

  And that was me. Numb. Numb and…disturbed? No. Numb and…I don’t know…numb and dark, I guess. Disturbed would mean I was nuts, wouldn’t it? I’m not there yet. How to explain…

  Okay, here’s a start: I don’t like people. In fact, with the exception of a rare few, I must confess an actual disgust for the human race, and, more often than not, I have morbid and violent thoughts playing over and over in my head…

  The Bar

  The bartender sets down his drink and takes a step back. I smile what must be a gruesome smile and assure him all is well. He doesn’t look assured. I sigh and dig for another hundred, lay it on the bar. He eyes it like it’s some kind of rare artifact. I remind him I said the word “was”—I was numb and disturbed. I then promise him I’m not anymore (at least not numb—disturbed, I’m not so sure).

  He eventually takes the money, again quick and cautious like it’s a drug deal.

  I smile the gruesome smile again, notice his drink is near empty, pick up the bottle, and gesture a refill towards his glass. He accepts.

  I tell him again that all is well and that I’ve had enough trouble for a zillion lifetimes, so he needn’t worry. As my story progresses he will no doubt grow cagier; the content of my tale will become so sensationally fucked-up and absurd that he will figure me for a drunk (probably, I am) who is embellishing events in his pickled mind (unfortunately, I won’t be), or just flat-out lying (again, unfortunately, I won’t be).

  But this is a good thing. I don’t want this guy freaking out halfway through and calling the police or pulling a shotgun out from beneath the bar. If he thinks I’m full of shit and eventually starts to accommodate me with a whatever you say, pal smirk as I babble on, so much the better.

  Soon he is sipping his new Beam with ice.

  I continue…

  1 (still)

  So…how is all my personal bullshit relevant to massaging a sexy woman you ask? Well, believe it or not, it was all my personal bullshit that got her noticing me from the start.

  Crazy, huh? Thinking I’m fooling the world (and for the most part, I believe I was), letting them think that I was as stable as a horse’s home, yet during the past six sessions with this lady she sees right through my act and informs me that not only was she well aware of my dark side, but found it intriguing. Once she had even said arousing.

  Never forgot that session.

  So can you blame me for treasuring this woman’s uncanny insight and separating her from all of the other offers I’d received in the past? I mean come on; the most I had ever told her about myself was a few lame yarns about my past and my love for horror films.

  Yeah, yeah—one could argue that my mentioning of horror films was her beacon of insight, but I don’t think so; I delivered that information with the weight of a cloud. Intrigued by my dark side or not, I doubted that any person lying naked and vulnerable on a table wanted to be touched by someone who just adamantly declared that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original 1974 version, damn it) was the single greatest movie in cinematic history.

  Oh, and yes—I am well aware of the irony: me in a profession focused on making people feel good while having an interest in violence. Just remember that with the exception of Angela, my interests were relatively invisible to the general public, hidden safely behind my amicable façade. My job is a job. And I’m good at it. That’s all.

  Moving on. The fact that Angela was scalding hot was also a wonderful bonus. Any sexy client was a wonderful bonus. And I’d had a few over the years. What’s sad is that many of them were married. Beautiful wives starving for the attention their husbands no longer gave them. They would flirt a little, bat an eye or two, but their guns were never loaded; they just wanted to be fawned over and reassured of their neglected beauty. And that was fine. As I mentioned earlier, even if a hot single woman hit on me I usually declined, never mind a married one. Don’t need any jealous guns with wedding bands pounding on my door at 3 a.m., thank you.

  Thing is, even if I did take one of these clients—married or not—up on their offer, I doubted it would be any good. I’ve been with my share of women, and straight sex just wasn’t enough anymore. I needed something different. I’m not talking farm animals or men or anything like that, but no matter how beautiful a woman was to me, she simply had to bring more to the table than a hot body for me to be aroused for more than a few minutes.

  Lately I had been likening sex to a bad B-movie: the plot was predictable, the setting ultimately superfluous once you got going, and the actors—me; maybe her too, I don’t fucking know—lumbered through their scenes until the took-its-fucking-time ending mercifully rescued us from our dignity.

  Can you believe it? I mean can you fucking believe it? My cynicism had finally done the impossible.

  Swam in the Loch with Nessie.

  Romped in the woods with Big Foot.

  Found a way to make sex unappealing.

  I had taken the joy out of the most joyous act since the dawn of time.

  So—if you’ve been doing the math: I was emotionally cracked, sex was a redundant script that continually lost its zeal, and I self-medicated with too much booze.

  All of that adds up to: how the hell was I ever going to be able to communicate, never mind form some type of relationship, with a woman again?

  There had to be something or someone out there capable of ripping off my numb-tailored wetsuit (or at least tear the fucker), and I thought Angela Thorne might just be the one to accommodate me.

  The things she would say, the subtle hints, all delivered as though marked fragile, never actually crossing the line, but taunting it, giving me just enough to fill in the tantalizing blanks on my own.

  And believe me I did.

  I just wondered, if the time ever came, whether or not I’d have the balls to act on it. Or would I end up turning a grand prize like Angela into a consolation fantasy, best left to a shameful stint of masturbation.

  About The Author

  A Philadelphia area native, Jeff Menapace is a former school teacher turned writer. He has published multiple works, both fiction and nonfiction. His short story “Sugar Daddy – A Dark Thriller” received the 2011 Red Adept Reviews Indie Award for Horror.

  Jeff’s recent novel, Bad Games: Hellbent, is the third and final book in the acclaimed Bad Games series.

  Free time is spent reading, watching mixed martial arts, horror films and The Three Stooges, and paying more attention to animals than people. He is still determined to pet (and maybe cuddle) a lion one day.

  Jeff loves to hear from his readers. Please feel free to contact him to discuss anything and everything. Be sure to sign up and leave your email address (don’t worry, Jeff hates spam as much as he does spiders) for occasional updates on all future works!

  info@jeffmenapace.com

  http://jeffmenapace.com/books/

  Connect with Jeff on Facebook and Twitter:

  www.facebook.com/JeffMenapace.writer

  http://twitter.com/JeffMenapace

  Other Works by Jeff Menapace

  Please visit Jeff’s Amazon Author Page or his website for a complete list of all available works!

  http://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Menapace/e/B004R09M0S

  www.jeffmenapace.com

  BAD GAMES: HELLBENT

  By

  Jeff Menapace

  Copyright © 2013 by Jeff Menapace

  Published by Mind Mess Press

  All Rights Reserved

  BAD GAMES: HELLBENT

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright a
bove, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover Design: Boulevard Photografica/Patty G. Henderson, www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com