by Louise Krieg
Her daddy grabbed her and pulled her off the bed, choking her and slamming her back against the wardrobe. Frankie looked deep into her daddy’s eyes. He looked beyond her, maybe to a life without her, maybe to nothing, and tightened his grip on her throat.
The bedroom was growing darker, as though the day had already retired and night had begun. When Frankie looked beyond her daddy to the dirty window, it looked black outside.
The blackness shifted, she noticed. It wasn’t night at all. Something was covering the window.
Then they entered the trailer.
Creatures poured in like black liquid through a broken section of the window and seeped up through the broken floorboards as if the trailer was suddenly drowned in a lake of tar.
“What the hell?!” Heinrich shouted as he was swarmed in insects and spiders.
Frankie was suffocating under her daddy’s grip. Her vision was failing. Her muscles were becoming limp. Her hearing was becoming distorted, as if she was being submerged. But the whispering she had heard earlier was back.
It was a million small voices, all saying her name. She opened her eyes and tried to speak to them. Though she didn’t have the strength to speak, they heard her cries.
The black tar that was filling the trailer started to break off into thousands of little shapes. There were spiders of a hundred varieties – house spiders, money spiders, daddy long legs – and a plethora of insects – black beetles, grasshoppers, cockroaches. A carpet of small snakes and large centipedes writhed around their feet and rose, wrapping themselves around the men. Frankie’s fear overpowered her anger and she felt only joy at seeing them.
Frankie’s daddy dropped her and she fell to the floor with her back to the wall as he tried in vain to brush off hundreds of insects that were crawling up his legs and into his clothes. He started screaming as he felt their legs tickling his body all over and began hitting himself to squash them.
“What the hell is going on?!” he screamed.
Frankie covered her mouth in shock.
“Get ‘em off me!” Heinrich shouted, waving his arms and his shotgun all around in a blind panic. “Get ‘em off me!”
“Stand-” Henry began, reaching for his brother, before a deafening blast of the shotgun cut Henry’s sentence off along with the top half of his skull which exploded against the wall as Heinrich’s finger brushed the trigger.
“Oh, God!” Heinrich shouted as Henry’s corpse dropped into the tide of small insects. Heinrich lifted his gun and fired into a gap in the floorboards where long, brown swamp snakes were swarming through. “You little bastards!” he shouted. He began screaming as they lunged and bit into his legs and crotch.
After a few moments of shock, Frankie, untouched by the insects and the snakes, removed her hand from her mouth to reveal a smile. She stood up.
Heinrich fell to the floor next to the half-headless corpse of his brother. He dropped the shotgun and started writhing in agony and flapping his arms as he was bitten by a hundred snakes and stung by a thousand tiny spider bites. There were no poisonous creatures, for that’s the way Frankie wanted it. Heinrich screamed and his eyes locked on Frankie as inch-by-inch his body was nipped away and his blood merged with the black tide of the dark and low creatures.
“Help me!” he shouted to Frankie. “Do something!”
Frankie waved both hands as if conducting an orchestra and the insects and the snakes scattered away from Heinrich, parting and exposing his shredded flesh. Heinrich looked around in horror as the insects obeyed Frankie. She swirled her right hand and those to her right scurried in a spiral motion up and across the wall. Frankie laughed. Her daddy looked up at her in horror from his position on his knees on the floor as he fought off cockroaches and dragged them out of his mouth and covered his nose.
“I am doing something,” Frankie said.
She looked at Heinrich and stopped smiling.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
She brought her hands together in a clap and the insects and the spiders and the snakes came together in a wave from either side which engulfed Heinrich. He screamed with a mouth filled with centipedes until a long green-and-brown striped snake slithered out of the pool of blood on the floor and curled around Heinrich’s neck and pressed its head into his mouth. Heinrich pulled at the snake, but it was too slippery to hold. Its tail wriggled back and forth in time with horrific choking noises from Heinrich as the snake tunneled its way deep into his throat and down into his chest. Heinrich’s face turned blue as the tail of the snake disappeared down his mouth and the house spiders followed. He screamed silently, crunching spiders between his teeth as he gasped for air that wouldn’t come. He grabbed his face in agony and tore at his skin with his nails, despairing in his final moments, ripping chunks from himself until at last he stopped moving but for the pulsating of his stomach where the snake and the spiders and the centipedes were squirming within him.
Frankie’s daddy had found respite as the creatures swarmed over Heinrich and he looked back to his daughter with bloody tears in his eyes, his face red with small bites, his legs bleeding with larger ones.
“I’m-” he stuttered, looking at her, “I’m your daddy. You don’t got no-one else.”
Frankie said nothing.
“I love you, Frankie,” her daddy said, raising his hands to her to plead. “You’re my girl.”
Frankie felt her insides turn to jelly and her knees begin to give underneath her. It was everything she had always wanted to hear. One kind word, she thought. I would’ve taken one kind word from this man and I would’ve been happy.
How wrong I was, she thought.
“You’re my girl,” her daddy said.
“I’m not your girl!” Frankie screamed. “I’m not your anything!”
Frankie’s daddy jumped to his feet and pushed Frankie aside, slamming her head into the wall, as he made for the door. Holding her head, Frankie followed. The snakes zig-zagged over the bloodied carpet and into the hallway after her daddy where they leaped up at his legs and tore chunks from his ankles, sending him sprawling on his face into the lounge area. Standing over him, Frankie moved the creatures aside with a swoop of her hand.
Her daddy turned and looked up at her. “Please!” he screamed.
Frankie moved her fingers thinking of what to bring forth, and Georgia’s most dangerous of the darkest and lowest creatures presented themselves, pushing through the black tide and encircling her daddy.
First came the snakes: the dusty-colored rattlesnakes; the green cottonmouths; the deadly copperheads. They surrounded her daddy. Then came the spiders and the scorpions: the glistening black widows, as big as a human hand; the small-bodied and almost translucent brown recluses; the chunky, brown devil scorpions. They crawled into the center of the circle made by the snakes and attached themselves to her daddy’s body, crawling up his pants and down his sleeves and clinging to his screaming, white face. As the pincers closed around his skin and the scorpion’s daggers penetrated his body, her daddy begged for his life in garbled, half-formed words as his bloodstream was overcome with poison that burned him from the inside out. When the snakes began to strike, they went for his face and genitals, popping his testicles and one of his eyeballs. Frankie raised her hands once more and the floorboards cracked and snapped upwards as she summoned the oldest of the low creatures. Three grinning alligators emerged from the darkness under the floorboards, pulling themselves through with small, powerful arms and propelling themselves with slashes of their long, thick tails. When her daddy saw the alligators, he emitted a single scream that lasted from the moment they arrived to the moment of his death. His scream was distorted and broken off by the jaws of the alligators around his head and body as they span and thrashed and broke every bone in his body, but it returned spasmodically as his body returned to something approaching its normal position for a split-second in between being twisted and pulverized by rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Frankie’s f
ather and his attackers became a nightmarish biomass on the floor, a thrashing, writhing, screaming and roaring collective of nature and humanity.
Within moments, the beating heart of the biomass, Frankie’s horrified, tortured father, stopped moving. The creatures continued their feast and Frankie sat on the floor amidst them.
She was no longer afraid of any creature the earth could produce.
She tucked her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on her folded arms. She closed her eyes and wished for nothing further other than to disappear forever. She could feel it happening as she rested. A silk blanket was engulfing her, growing around her as the spiders worked to produce for her a cocoon. She opened her eyes and the darkness was complete. She was wrapped from head-to-toe in spider-webs. Rolling onto her side, she began to cry.
No library books could stop it.
No trips to the playground could distract her from it.
No mix-tapes could shut out her thoughts.
She was no longer afraid of any creature the earth could produce, apart from one – men – and she no longer wanted to live in place with such creatures.
The crocodiles and the snakes and the spiders and the scorpions worked as one and Frankie felt herself being pulled away from the world in her cocoon. Out of the trailer and into the woods and off to the wild nothing beyond.
She didn’t know where they were dragging her. Frankie knew there was no place good to go to on this Earth.
Maybe they’ll take me below it, she thought, where my mom is.
Maybe down there is better.
The End.
THE LAST VICTIM
SEAN PORTER
Chapter One
In all the world, I am the best at what I do.
Maybe some people don’t consider what I do all that important. I’m not a doctor. I’ve never discovered the cure for any life-threatening diseases. I’m never going to write the great American novel. My name will most likely never be found in the footnotes of a history book.
What I do, is find people.
At this particular moment, I’m finding a man hiding in this out of town motel off County Road Seven. Just eight rooms out here and the guy I’m looking for is in number three. Been there for a week, dodging the police.
My business cards read Private Investigator. My business license for the state says that I’m a self-employed investigations specialist. People who hire me call me a problem solver.
I find people. I’ve dedicated my life to finding the bad people who don’t want to be found. Like Martin Cassuk here in room three.
Very few people actually know my name. I get references from friends of friends who know me as Arthur, and Arthur’s as good a name as any. It’s a name that blends in and doesn’t stand out. Like me. Light brown hair that’s not long or short. A physique that’s trim but not bulky with muscles. I’m average height, average looks, average everything. The only thing about me that stands out is the striking blue color of my eyes, but most of the times when someone gets close enough to get a good look at them, it’s when it’s too late to get away.
I’ve been hired by the police, on occasion, but they pay their checks to an Arthur Murray with a bank account that isn’t actually attached to anything except that name. If you aren’t sure who Arthur Murray is, look him up. The irony of it goes over most people’s heads. I laugh whenever I cash my checks.
Mostly, private individuals hire me. I choose my jobs very carefully. I’m not ever going to work a job that requires me to kidnap an innocent person. Never going to commit a felony or a Federal offense—not without a good reason. If your child is missing, call me and I can find them. If your ex skipped town rather than pay child support, I can find them. If a person has five outstanding warrants for assault and attempted murder and they think they can hide in a third-rate motel off County Road Seven, then I’m the guy who’s going to find him.
Not just find him. Take him into custody, and bring him to justice.
Because I’m the best there is at what I do.
The guy working the front counter for the motel is more than agreeable to take the couple hundred bucks I give him to go away for an hour. There’s a few other guests in the motel, but so long as none of them poke their heads out to see what the problem is, then they’ll be fine. I only need a few minutes.
Room three had the blinds drawn. For most people who are hiding out, it’s a way for them to hide from the world. What people tend to forget is that if I can’t see in, they can’t see out either. Which means I get to stroll up to the door of Martin’s motel room without him even knowing.
A shape charge is a small amount of C4 tucked into a half-circle of either metal or ceramic which directs the blast force forward. Put one of those on or near the handle of a locked door and it will pretty much make splinters of the whole locking mechanism. It will also make a loud enough noise to draw the attention of anyone within a half-mile radius.
The easiest way to get through a locked door is to simply put all of your weight on the back foot and then kick straight forward with your other, smashing your heel into the door right by the door handle. It makes a little bit of a racket, but nowhere near as much as a small controlled explosion.
As the door banged open against the inside wall I burst in fast and furious. I’ve learned from any number of mistakes that going in politely and asking someone to just give up only gets you hurt. Badly.
Martin is sitting on one of the beds watching a game show on the tiny television set when I came crashing down on him. There are any number of military-style fighting techniques that can subdue a man in under a minute. I prefer a sort of blitzkrieg attack. Unload everything before the other person has a chance to even realize they’re in trouble.
This guy is twice my size, and he’s not a really nice person, but I have him down on the floor and bleeding from his mouth and nose in short order. With my knee in his back, I fold his one arm around behind him and start to hook my handcuffs in place.
“Don’t feel bad,” I tell him. “I’ve taken down tougher guys than—”
He bucked like a damned bull and threw me off his back, tumbling me to the floor and putting me into an ankle lock. “You ain’t never dealt with somebody as tough as me.”
Holding someone’s ankle backward is painful, but it only really holds someone pinned down in those stupid fake wrestling shows. All I needed to do was scissor kick my legs and the steel toes of the boot on my free foot are breaking Martin’s jaw. It doesn’t matter how much you want to fight someone, once your jaw gets broken the pain keeps you from doing anything except gurgling hysterically and trying to hold your face together.
After that, it was a simple matter to handcuff Martin and lead him out to my waiting car. He was a lot more humble as I put him in the back seat. The doors lock from the inside but I doubt I’ll have to worry about this man trying to jump out of my car and get away. He’s barely staying conscious now as it is.
Smiling, I slammed my door shut and started the engine. “Try not to bleed too much on my upholstery,” I tell him. “And don’t worry about your jaw. The prison you’re going to has great doctors.”
In the rearview mirror, I can see Martin slumping against the seat. He’s already passed out.
Chapter Two
So you’ve got to be wondering what type of person goes into people-finding as a profession. The money’s good but that’s only part of it. I know a lot of the people in this profession. Most of them—of us, I should say—have one thing in common. Somewhere in our pasts, something went horribly wrong.
For me, it was my sister.
When I was eighteen years old, Cindy was already twenty-one. Every night I see the moment when my sister was murdered in my dreams. I wasn’t there, and there’s no way I could know the gruesome details that get packed into my dreams, but I see it just the same. Her body being slashed, her blood running down her perfect skin, and a man’s dark shadow standing over her and laughing with glee. It keeps the raw em
otions fresh and hurting.
Cindy was so smart and so pretty. She had the world wrapped around her fingers. Everything came easy to her. Anything she wanted she got, through effort and hard work. I loved my sister.
Then she took up with a man who ruined her life.
Kirk Danes was wrong for Cindy right from the start. A slick man who liked to wear button-up shirts under a leather jacket. No job. No future. Yet my sister fell head over heels for him. I tried to warn her. I tried to tell her he was trouble. She wouldn’t listen to me or anyone else.
The night he murdered her was supposed to be the night of my prom. I never went to that dance. I’ve never been to any dance since.
Cindy’s body was never found. Just her blood spilled across her bed and her torn dress laying next to it. Kirk Danes was never found, either. The man who killed my sister was gone.
I’ve spent my entire life since then looking for him. I’m twenty-eight now. That’s a lot of years to carry a grudge.
The skills I’ve learned looking for this man are what developed into my current career. It’s what made me so good at finding people and bringing them to justice in whatever form that might take. There’s no place on Earth that anyone can hide from me. I’ve never once taken on a job and failed to find the mark.
That doesn’t make up for the fact that I can’t find Kirk Danes. I’ve turned over every rock I can think of but he’s just nowhere to be found. There’s no trace of the man. At least, not yet.
My apartment isn’t big. It’s enough for me and myself. The kitchen is part of the dining room and the living room is spacious and lined with bookshelves and the bathroom is just as large as the one bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s mine. It’s where I live, and it’s where I prepare for my jobs. I sit here on the couch like this and spread out my folders and study up on my target.
Kirk’s folders are pretty thick. I know where he grew up, where he was living, every single place that he ever worked. I know his friends and known associates and his only two living relatives. I knew where he did his banking—twenty dollars and thirteen cents in savings—and who he owed money to. I even found the other women he murdered across the United States and Canada. Seven in all, including my sister. She was just one more in a long string of bodies for Kirk Danes, serial killer.
