bjciii... my twisted stories

Okay... it's time for this one-way street to turn into a two-lane highway. I've given you a lot of salacious stories about death and destruction, feeding your overly-needy voyeuristic ideas of how revenge should play out, but I have a question for you.

It's sort of philosophical in nature, so mull it over:

Am I any more to blame for the death of someone than the knife or the gun used to do the deed?

I mean, in a sense, I'm merely a tool as well. Someone employs me to carry out a task. Therefore, if you think of me as a gun, someone pulled my trigger so I could pull another. In my mind, the person who had a problem and contacted me in the first place is actually the one who should be forced to handle any divine retribution.

To put it in another sense, here's a real-life example:

John Doe, my employer, is contracted by Jane Doe, the client, to kill her annoying ex. Jane pays John $50,000 to do the job, and then John contracts me to perform the hit for $40,000, keeping $10,000 for his trouble. So, I take that money, go do my work, and eliminate the annoying ex. The bullet that enters the head of Jack Doe, the ex, is fired from my rifle. My rifle is fired by me. I am contracted by John. John is contracted by Jane. Shouldn't Jane be the one to suffer in the eternal flames of hell?

I'm sure many of you could stretch it further and say that Jack did something to Jane to get her hot enough to hire a killer, but let's face it: it's not always that clear-cut. I believe there is a Latin phrase that goes Amantes sunt amentes (Lovers are lunatics). When you have that severe taste of affection for someone, sometimes your brain doesn't work right. I mean, when your head says one thing, but your heart literally pains you because you don't want to think logically... well, which part are you going to listen to? Kinda sucks, right?

So where does the blame lay? Do you blame Anheuser-Busch for making the beer that John Jones consumed before crashing his car and killing Polly Pureheart? Do you blame General Motors for making the car? Maybe it is all my fault, I don't know. It's not like it's keeping me up at night in any case... I was just struck with a really bad case of "Mexican Food Overload" and was caught without reading material. It's true... you do come up with some very interesting thoughts on the throne...

Honestly, I have been having a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to start this one. I mean, I've introduced myself, I've told you about the first murder I ever committed... what else is there? I mean, there's a litany of death in my past, but which ones are worthy of narratives?

Oh... I know.

I told you before that these hits aren't exactly personal. I mean, logically, every murder is personal in some way. Some chick in some movie once said "'It's not personal'?? What does that mean? It means that it's not personal to you..." That's probably very correct. When I'm pulling the trigger on some mark, or sliding my knife across their carotid artery, I am not thinking of anything beyond a paycheck. When I'm taking their life, I guarantee that they are definitely wondering who I am and, more often than not, what they did to get here. It's definitely personal to them.

Well, one of my contracts was just a little bit personal for me. I mean, I didn't lose sleep thinking about him beforehand, and I sure as shit didn't lose sleep afterwards, but I do remember a split-second of intense pleasure shooting through my veins as I saw his eyes glaze over. Oh yes... I stood there and watched him die.

I don't do that very often, but I wanted to see him realize what was happening. I needed to see that for some reason. However, I'm going off on a tangent, aren't I? You're lost because I didn't use one of those "transitions" that every one of my writing teachers taught me when I was in school.

Okay... this contract came from the normal channel (that is to say, I was buzzed by my cell phone which asked me to download a file) and, truthfully, I didn't rush to check it out. I mean, I was out on a date of sorts, enjoying a fine meal with a fine bottle of wine and a fine woman. All three things led me to be very happy "in the now," so I didn't feel the need to ruin my mood by thinking about work.

Yes, even hired killers get that lovely feeling of ennui when thinking about work. I doubt anyone loves their job 7 days a week.

In any case, a few hours later, after the meal was digesting, the wine was coursing through my bladder, and the woman lay (satisfied) on her her bed, I finally looked at the phone.

If I had known whose picture I'd be seeing, I would have opened the file a lot sooner, asked for a doggie bag, and given the bitch cab-fare.

See, a few years back, I knew someone who spoke excessively about her ex-boyfriend. Apparently the guy was a real douchebag, but, for whatever reason, the link just could not be severed. Well, I severed our link after a month or so, but that was only because I couldn't stand to hear yet another "Tommy" story. What always confused me was that this guy was a horrible boyfriend, a terrible friend, but she still talked to him. No matter... I did what I had to do and left that coupling.

So when I flipped my phone open and saw Tommy's face, I was... well... is "excited" too strong of a word here? I don't think so. I mean, I wasn't coming in my pants or anything, but I was definitely sporting a semi-chub.

I have pushed aside any "angel/devil" scenario in my line of work because people need killing. This time, however, I let myself imagine the whole "good/evil" principle on my shoulders. The bad news? Only one showed up. The good news? It was my friend in the red pajamas.

I figured that I was getting paid $50,000 for this hit, so Tommy must have been a very bad boy. Turns out, I was right. See, he decided to go to some law school, get his degree, hang a defense attorney shingle, and took a case where he managed to browbeat a rookie cop on the stand, ensuring his (very guilty) client's acquittal on a technicality. Normally, I couldn't give two shits about this, but I was curious as to see what he had been up to in the few years since I last looked into him (yes... even hired killers feel a pang of jealousy. As I said before, I haven't loved anyone in a long time, but I'm selfish: When a woman is with me, I want her with me all the way... none of this talking about exes shit).

Turns out that my boy had gotten a rather prolific child-molester out of trouble. This lowlife piece of shit (yes, I despise anyone who preys on children... surprised?) systematically destroyed 10 families by manipulating the pre-teen sons into horrid acts. How did Tommy get the guy off? A clerical error. Well fuck me running... And people say that my line of work is morally objectionable!

So, in any case, these 10 families ponied up $6K apiece and called the right people (who took 10% off the top). Those people called me and I was to take care of both the piece of shit and the pedophile.

The pedophile, unfortunately, met with a horrible accident. See, he was walking through the woods, ostensibly enjoying the fresh spring air, when he miraculously found his penis nailed to a tree. Not only that, but a baseball bat fell out of said tree onto his head... 23 times. I wish I could have seen it because I would have so submitted that shit to Bob Saget and America's Funniest Home Videos.

Since that freak act of nature was already in the past, I decided to set my sights on our friend Tommy. He wasn't too hard to find as he was too busy living the high-profile life. Cars, hookers, drugs... the little fucker was living the shit out of his soon-to-be-ending life. Good for him. Life is transitory after all: have fun while you can!

Anyway, I watched him for a few days (a lot shorter recon than I am used to, but I started to get antsy), and saw his general biking route through the valley near his home. On the 4th day, I sat on a rock by the side of the road. Originally I thought maybe, if I pretended to be stranded or have a busted part on my bike, that he would stop. Of course, then I realized that he would have to be a semi-decent human being for the "good Samaritan" lure to work.

Silly me.

In any case, I was only on the rock for about 10 minutes before I heard his now-familiar puffing and rattling coming down the trail. As he got closer, I smiled, steeled myself, and yanked the steel-cable tight.

Perfect placement.

His body stopped in midair as his bike kept going along the path. I dropped the cable, which had caught him around the chest, and he collapsed to the dirt... with a satisfying crash. I got up, walked over, and placed my knee down on his chest.

"Hey buddy," I said, "quite a tumble. You okay?"

Gasping for air, he looked up at me with a gaze of pure arrogance. I would have bet $100 that his next words would be "Do you know who I am?"

"Do you know who I am, asshole?"

Shit... almost exactly right.

"As a matter of fact, I do. Why do you think I rigged the cable? Shit, boy... for a high-class defense attorney, you really are a dumb fucker."

His dirty-blonde hair was matted with sweat and hung heavy with the now-settling cloud of dust. He struggled against my knee, but I pushed it in harder and even heard the excruciating sound of a rib snapping. As he started to scream, I pulled out my knife and told him that I'd make it really hurt if he started that shit.

Good boy that he was, he stifled the scream. Too bad... I was gonna make it painful no matter what.

I dragged him over to the tree where I had secured the cable, and pulled out the shackles that I had driven into the ancient wood. Securing him tightly, I wrapped some duct tape around his mouth to shut him up.

"I'd love to apologize for how that's gonna feel when it comes off, but face facts Tommy-boy... you won't ever feel it coming off."

Perversely, that calmed him down. I think he figured I meant to talk to him, and let him go. Oops. Faulty logic, counselor!

He almost bit through the duct-tape gag as I put a bullet into his right-knee, but that lovely piece of tape held even when I snapped his other leg for fun. The worst part? He cried. I really, really hate criers. As his head rocked back from the punch, I shook my hand telling him that I really would appreciate him dying like a man.

This, of course, did nothing to stem the tide of those sweet, salty drops of fear. Honestly, at this point I was already tired of it and cut short my entire idea of how to make him suffer. It was good too, because I had another hour or two all stored up. Instead, I walked 4 paces, turned and put a bullet directly through his throat. I squatted in front of him and watched him gasp for air, all the while paying attention to the dawning realization of death reflected in his eyes. I can't really remember just how long it took for him to actually die, but I sat in rapt attention until the eyes just glossed over in that gaze of nothingness.

I think I sat there for another 5 minutes before I collected the pieces of my death kit and headed back to my rental car. Since I rented under Tommy's name and with his credit-card information, I didn't feel bad in the least when I torched it with my kit inside. I mean, really... he had enough money to cover an Audi rental, right?

Oh... there's one, last piece to this story. One last thing that made it memorable to me was that it was the first and last time I ever gave back the money I got for doing the job. I made 10 stops on the way to the airport and deposited 10 envelopes into 10 mailboxes. Each envelope contained $5,000 and a note:

In innocence, there is no strength against evil.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin
In evil, there is no protection from what is right.
--Me

Never let it be said that I don't keep my promises. I told you that I would be happy to talk about the first time I killed someone, so here I am to tell you that sordid story.

Truth be told, the first murder I ever committed was a crime of passion. I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong: I've never killed a woman. Now, the other thing that just popped into your head? That's wrong too. You can be passionate about something that you're not in love or lust with.

Look at the definition of the word "passion" for a second. It's derived from the Latin passus which is the past participle of patī meaning "to suffer." Along with the Catholic definition of the suffering Jesus went through on the cross, it also has come to be associated with "strong sexual desire; lust" and "violent anger" as well as "any powerful feeling or compelling emotion or feeling, as love and hate." So when I say that my first kill was a crime of passion, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a Lifetime story with Valerie Bertinelli, okay?

It did involve a girl though... they usually do.

I was in high-school and dating this great girl. She had beautiful dark hair and alabaster skin, the most soulful eyes, and was so loving. I think I must have gravitated towards her because she just seemed so... lost. We got together and had what was the first and last purely chaste relationship of my entire life. I looked out for her like a brother, but we knew there was more to it than that. She meant the entire world to me, which as most will tell you, is a daunting feeling. I can honestly tell you that when she killed herself, any semblance of caring I had inside me vanished from me forever.

I just jumped ahead of myself, didn't I? Sorry. I haven't talked about Carrie in a long time and I don't like how it makes me feel. Lemme suck it up for a few more minutes and I'll go on.

We were together for about a year when, seemingly out of the blue, she slit her wrists after school one day. Her father actually delivered the news to me at my parents' house and I can't even remember what he said. Shit... I can't even remember what he looked like anymore. I do know that he shoved an envelope in my hand and stumbled back to his car.

I'll never forget the envelope.

It had my name in it in Carrie's deliberate cursive and my throat went instantly dry. The only thing I could think of was that I had something in my hand that she had left for me before killing herself. The imagination was in overdrive and I was terrified of what I was about to read.

I would have laid money on the fact that I did something wrong and this was her rebuking me for making her take her life. I couldn't have handled that. I knew that then, and I know that still to this day. If, when I opened that envelope, and I read anything that sounded even remotely like "It was your fault," then a lot of people would still be alive and I would be dead. I would be dead because I would have followed Carrie.

I can't live with guilt. Maybe that's why I'm so good at what I do.

But I digress...

I barely remember getting to the couch, but I remember every interminable second it took to open the envelope. I swore I smelled her perfume as I did, and I remember things going blurry. The tears I cried right then were the last ones I ever shed.

Unfolding the letter carefully and wiping my eyes on my sleeve, I began to read it.

I won't write it here because, frankly, it's none of your fucking business what the exact words my girlfriend wrote to me in that letter were. What you should know, however, is that my tears dried up and I felt a burning rage begin to smolder in my stomach. I had gotten angry before that and I've been angry since then, but that was the first time that I knew that someone should be very afraid of me.

Carrie had been raped. Worse yet, she found out that she was pregnant and knew her parents wouldn't have dealt with either piece of news well. She actually told me that she knew her attacker and even named him right there.

I couldn't think straight.

The sensory overload of losing the girl I loved because of someone's impulse control and anger management problem, it was too much. I remember trashing my room and breaking anything I could get my hands on. I remember collapsing on the floor, exhausted, and coming up with bare-boned ideas of what needed to happen.

To this day, that first kill was the fastest I ever went from planning to execution. I prefer to be thorough and anal about things, but Carrie's killer (and make no mistake about it... while she did the cutting, he gave her the blade) needed to be killed.

Until then, I never believed in guns. As far as I was aware, my dad had a gun for a long time, but I found it when I was 5, my mom freaked, and my dad got rid of it the next day. No... no ballistics in the house while I was growing up.

I preferred knives.

They were shiny, clean, and beautiful. I had a rather large hunting knife tied to the headboard of my bed (which, of course, was now in shambles), so I grabbed that and stuck the sheath in the small of my back before storming out of the house.

Night had fallen (as it was autumn, it was pretty early), but I knew where Tom Rutes hung out. The guy was nothing if not a total douchebag. He liked the baseball field behind the school because the dugouts were literally "dug out" of the ground. There wasn't a fence behind them, so there was no way to see in. When I got to the school, I wasn't surprised to see him sitting there, beer cans littered here and there at his feet.

He smiled drunkenly and offered me a beer, but I pulled out the knife and didn't return the smile.

Allow me to break the narrative for a second. Remember when I first started this whole thing, I told you that I stood over my first dead body with a smoking gun in my hand? I didn't bring it, so I'm sure the real sleuths in this bunch will figure out how it came into play.

Tom jumped up, a sight that still impresses me to this day as I swore he was too drunk to stand, and whipped out a pistol from the small of his back. He pointed it at me, but I knew he couldn't have hit me if he tried. The speed from which he got into position proved to be the only coordinated thing he did because his next move was to step back, crack the back of his leg on the bench, and go flying ass-over-head onto the ground.

If I had any humor in me, I might have laughed, but instead a calm came over me, and I took two long steps over to where his right hand was on the wooden bench, trying to prop himself up.

I plunged my knife through the back of his hand, pinning it to the bench keeping him just out of reach of the tossed gun.

The scream he let out was loud enough that, for a split-second, I thought he might have alerted people, but like I said earlier... I was lucky.

I picked up the gun and walked back to his folded up body. His shoulders were hitching as he sobbed for forgiveness. I pistol-whipped him.

You have no idea what you need to be forgiven for.

He just kept blubbering how sorry he was for whatever he had done to me.

I hit him again... and again.

I screamed at him that he had absolutely no idea what he had done, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

Ignorance is never an excuse.

I told him to look up at me, but he refused. I walked closer and pressed the barrel of the gun to the back of his head, and he whined like a beaten puppy. I told him to look, but he still didn't do it. That's when I reached over and ripped the knife from his hand.

He wailed like the dead and flopped on his back. He had no choice but to look at me now.

I stood above him, in a perfect position for him to have nutted me if he had the brains, but he finally met my eyes.

That's when I pulled the trigger.

I emptied only 2 shots into his head: right between the eyes.

The sound was absolutely deafening, but what got me was that I actually saw him die. It wasn't a perceived death where I guessed that's where he was going, but it was actually seeing the life drain from his eyes in a moment.

I must have stood there for a few minutes, wrestling with the idea that I wasn't remorseful, but I snapped back into reality when I realized that, regardless of his screams, someone would have definitely heard the shots.

I took the gun, my knife, and did my best to drag all of my footprints out of the dirt on the dugout floor as I left. When I got to the grass, I turned around, half-expecting him to be sitting there again, but he was dead.

Not coming back.

When I got home, I wrapped up the gun in the clothes that I had worn, put them in a plastic bag along with my knife, and buried them in the backyard under the deck. If I was a suspect, I would have been caught, but everyone knew Tom was a world-class asshole and there were so many people of interest, the list really never got touched. Besides... only 3 people knew what he had done to link me to him: two of them were now dead.

When I moved out of my parents' house, I retrieved that package from under the deck and I keep it in a rather morbid shrine. I like to remember that, once, I was a feeling human being. Now everything I affect seems like a disguise. It seems like I try too hard to be normal, but I was normal... once. A long time ago... even if it was only 5 years.

Was it everything you hoped for? Did I blow the surprise for you? I promised, so I delivered. There have been many more over the past 5 years, but that was the one that lives in my memory most of all. I can remember the smell of the beer, the tracks in the basepaths, and the sound of that double-tap echoing off the walls in the dugout.

Then again, I'm guessing everyone remembers every little detail about the time they lost their virginity, right?

I knew I should have felt something the first time I killed someone, but I didn't. I felt no immediate regret or remorse... not even sadness. I was standing there, a pistol in my hand, and a dead body at my feet, but I didn't feel like anything was out of the ordinary.

I don't think it would have made me feel any different if I had walked to the corner and bought a morning paper.

Maybe that's what was so odd about the whole thing: it seemed patently routine.

Of course that was 5 long years ago and I've been at countless scenes like that since then.

Okay... that's a bit of a lie. I may not have any moral compunction against murder, but I am human. More than that, I'm an American, damnit! I know exactly how many men I've killed, where I killed them, and how I killed them. I'm not dumb enough to keep a log of it, but I think it's only fair that I make mental pictures of each life I've ended.

Before you ask, I don't look at my jobs in terms of "good" or "bad" men. To me, there is no such thing. Good, bad, indifferent... it's just a way that people interpret things. There's no moral absolute in my world - just the job. I mean, let's face it, somebody had to do something pretty interesting to get someone angry enough to hire a killer to go after them! Granted... those reasons are not always intelligent, logical reasons. Sometimes some asshole with enough money to blow gets pissed off because someone beat them at the club tennis tournament. Who am I to argue the anger of people? I get paid either way.

In any case, I look at my job as nothing more than the human aspect of natural selection, only I make a living at it.

It's actually a pretty good living at that.

Sure, growing up Catholic and still practicing (well... sort of) makes for a very interesting dichotomy. I can't really deny that I'm breaking the 5th commandment every time I work, but I seem to be okay with it. Maybe it's because, according to my faith, I'm going to hell when I forget that I'm not supposed to eat a hot dog on a Friday during Lent. But priests who molest little boys are okay.

Yeah. I'm the hypocrite.

Sorry... tangent. I got a little wound up there. Sorry. But where to go from here? There's always the beginning, but what exactly is the beginning?

Would you like me to tell you about how I tortured small animals for hours when I was 6?

I can't tell you that. It didn't happen. I love animals... well. I love dogs. I've never killed a cat, but I don't think I'd pause over the trigger if Fluffy walked across my path.

Would you like to learn how my father used to beat me or my mother used to molest me?

Can't do that either... I have a great set of parents. Married for 36 years and never wavered in their love for each other or their children.

Honestly, I don't fit the stereotype of a mass murderer or serial killer. I think that's because you can't really put me in that category. I mean "mass murderer" is usually defined as someone who goes out and kills people brutally and indiscriminately. I actually am pretty humane... unless they really piss me off. If that's the case, I might make them feel something first.

No, I usually tap them between the eyes, use a fast acting poison, or a short knife stroke to their spine. There's no "kneecapping" or unnecessary torture involved in my kills. I'm a businessman, I'm not a sociopath.

Okay... maybe I can be considered a sociopath, but I leave that for the court-appointed shrinks to discover.

I'm also not a serial killer in the strictest sense. Sure, my kills are singular murders that occur, but they don't feature ritualistic taking of souvenirs or sex-related compulsions. I kill because I'm paid: pure and simple.

Is that enough rationalizing? Do you get a picture of who I am? I'm the guy sitting next to you at the bar. I'm the guy joking around with his friends (yes, I have friends... another reason why I'm not a serial killer) and his girlfriend about everyday, mundane things. I'm the guy who visits his grandmother once a week and talks to his parents almost everyday.

In other words, I'm frighteningly normal.

Maybe that's why people don't suspect. As a matter of fact, no one in my life knows what I do. I basically take "business trips," recon my mark, end their life, and I'm home on the redeye. Bada-bing, bada-bang, bada-boom...

Maybe next time we'll get into my first one... but I'm frankly a little spent from trying to make believe I'm normal. I know I'm not... I strive to be, but I know I'm really not.

Okay... I actually was proactive in keeping this one for history because I signed the bottom AND put the exact date on it: December 21, 1995. That means, folks, this story was written 11 years and 2 days ago AND I was only 20 years old when I did it. I have no idea just why I'm so damned dark and twisted, but I am now and was then. I honestly have no clue where the idea for a Santa Claus rapist came from, but it came... and boy did it hide in my head for a while. I mean, who the hell wants to see Santa become a vile creature? In any case, I did it.

Again, this is faithfully reproduced from the original text with only minor spacing changes since that day I typed this while manning the phones in Facilities Management in JP Morgan all those years ago. I have left all overly cumbersome sentence structure AND punctuation errors the exact same as they were back then to show you how I've actually matured in my writing. Scary huh?

Merry Christmas (or something like it)...

---

Pamela sat in the back of the squad car hugging her knees, rocking slowly, and crying softly. The police officers looked on in quiet sympathy as their hats held the falling snow. One of the crowd trying to make sense of this tragedy was Detective Theresa Tauder. She and her partner had arrived on the scene just after the first radio car had arrived and for the past twenty minutes she had taken in all the details with a discerning eye. The flecks of white began to grow on her auburn hair until she ran a gloved hand over the snowy cap. What a poor start to Christmas Eve.

"Pamela?" Tauder asked the pitiful creature in the back seat. When the girl didn't answer she began to speak anyway.

"I am Detective Tauder and this is my partner, Detective Maxtin" she said indicating to the only other female detective on the scene. "We'd like to help you get this man, but you'll have to help us. OK? What we need is a description of the man and anything else that seems particularly important..."

"It was him..." Pamela spoke, interrupting Tauder.

"Him who?" she asked while turning to see if anyone was lurking in the police quarantine.

"Santa Claus."

Maxtin appeared both shocked and amused at this revelation, while Tauder seemed to be choosing her words very carefully.

"By Santa Claus you mean..." Maxtin led.

"The hair, the beard, the rosy cheeks, the belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly... the whole bit." she said.

Tauder began to say something than thought better of it. She looked at her partner who quickly turned to hide the smirk that suddenly appeared on her face.

Pamela continued.

"I was sitting on the sofa watching the TV specials and I hear something from behind me. So I turn around and right in front of the fireplace was... him. He asked me if I was a good girl this year and when I didn't answer he just grinned. He walked over to me and..."

She burst into tears.

Poor girl. Tauder thought, everything always taught her that Santa Claus was a kind old man and now some psycho in a Santa suit rapes her and she'll be spending the next twenty years in therapy.

Maxtin and Tauder began to walk away when Pamela screamed out.

"He know; when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for your own sake!"

---

The two detectives rode back to the precinct in relative silence. The radio sang sweet carols and that mellowed the mood a bit. The sobriety of the night was later broken by another detective placing a greeting card depicting Santa on Tauder's desk with the caption "Have you seen this man?" on the bottom. Maxtin began laughing at this and Tauder could not help but chuckle. Gathering their things, the two female detectives left the building.

Upon arriving at their condominium, the ladies exited the warmth of the car and were blasted with cold winter air and flecks of snow began melting onto their faces. Detectives Terri Maxtin and Theresa Tauder changed out of their daily clothes and re-entered the living room in their pajamas. They giggled like schoolgirls and began to throw presents at one another.

Two hours later, while Terri Maxtin was fast asleep on the couch and Theresa Tauder was fiddling with her new VCR, there was a noise upstairs. Theresa looked at her roommate and when it appeared that it didn't faze Terri in the slightest, Theresa grabbed her police issue and trotted carefully up the stairs. She reached the first landing and flicked on the light in the TV room. She gasped.

In front of the fireplace stood a man. He was about six feet tall and weighed in excess of 300 ponds. He had a thick whit beard and a mustache of the same. His thick, wavy, white hair was hidden underneath a red hat laced with white and a white ball was perched precariously on the top of the cap. He was dressed from the ankles up in the same red material laced with white fur. He had a thick black belt and his boots obviously had been shined recently. His cheeks were indeed rosy and he carried a heavy red sack over his shoulder.

"Ho, ho, ho." he said with no laughter in his eyes. "You're roommate is now sleeping, and I see that you're awake. I know that you've been bad, not good, I'm sorry for your sake."

Theresa, having forgotten about her gun, stared at this creature, mouth agape. When she managed to speak, all she could say was: "Santa?"

"Ho, ho, ho Theresa."

I am hallucinating, she thought, this is stress manifesting itself and I am in need of some serious mental help.

"Sit down Theresa. I would like to clear a few things up. I am an elf. Old... yes, jolly ...no. I live in the South Pole and I visit those who don't do what my brother recognizes as good, so I get my list, and I check it twice, but I only visit who's naughty, not nice. My name is Sartin Claus and you've been a bad girl. You were entrusted with a job to uphold the law and preserve the public trust. You took that job lightly. Hopefully my little visit will help you get on my brother's good list next year. As for this year... well, let me put it this way, you better not cry `cause Sartin Clause has a bad temper."

He began to walk towards her and she was frozen in fear.


Detective Terri Maxtin left the Depleyside Home for the Mentally Insane and wondered aloud how much longer Theresa would have to suffer. It was one year ago tonight that she suffered her breakdown. She claimed that she was raped by "Sartin Claus" and even though she appeared battered, the doctors reported no signs of sexual assault. The psychiatrists reasoned that she had done this herself to "alleviate the burdens that she had subconsciously harbored over her lackadaisical attitude towards her job."

Terri shuddered from the cold. It was Christmas Eve and she was determined to enjoy herself She had left work early, simply dropping some cases and leaving them until after the holiday. It wasn't as if they expected her to do work over the holiday! She felt she deserved a break from the pitiful masses. As she started up her car, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band were singing "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town."

Sartin Claus my ass!!

I wrote this story in October of 1995 (holy shit... 11 years ago tomorrow!) to post on a newsgroup I used to frequent a lot: alt.horror.creative. You see, newsgroups used to be the places you went to talk about topics with people of like minds. I actually don't know if any still exist, but in the early days of the internet, they were all the rage. The only problem was if you stumbled across a binaries newsgroup, you would have to encode about a dozen messages into one file for a picture or a sound clip. Movies? Hah! We're talking dial-up here people! You make me laugh until milk squirts out of my nose.

Anyway, I was just over 20 when I wrote this and, according to my intro note to the group those 11 years ago, this was a "rush job" to get it done for Halloween. So please remember that this was a story of a newbie and NOT a polished job of someone who's written a lot more since then. Okay? Now that I'm done transcribing it, I have to say that it was a huge struggle not to change anything. I mean, I clarified some things and corrected some long-ago typos, but the story remains intact from over a decade ago. Enjoy...

---

He spun around and fired wildly.

Nothing moved.

"Oh shit..." he moaned. Nothing moving would ordinarily be good news, but in this case it meant absolutely nothing.

A shuffle came from his right.

He wheeled around and pulled the trigger until the clip was empty. Laughing maniacally, he ran headlong into the darkness. He held his arms open wide, as if to embrace the danger he had been running from.

There was a sickening snap as his head came rolling back from where it came.
Julie jumped as Brent jumped from behind the library stacks wearing a skull mask. He took off the mask, smiling like The Cheshire Cat.

"Happy Halloween," he said with an unreal grin.

Smiling, she hit him playfully in the arm.

"Bastard! You scared the hell out of me!"

He pulled her to him and kissed her quickly. As she reluctantly pulled away, she looked at her boyfriend as if for the first time. He stood close to 6'6" and was all muscle. She ran her fingers through his dirty blonde hair and he pulled back.

"Hey! It took me a while to get my hair that way!"

He was so vain.

The two walked out of the library into the chilled evening air, and she shuddered instinctively. Pulling her coat tight, she nudged close to Brent, and felt warmer. He was speaking about some stupid party he was going to, but she didn't listen.

The moon looks gorgeous tonight, she thought. Tonight's the night, she reminded herself.

Happy with everything, she walked across campus to her dorm with Brent in tow. he was such a child sometimes, but there was a certain dangerousness beneath his boyish exterior that she found so alluring.

"I'll pick you up at eleven?" he half-asked, half-stated.

"I'll have to meet you. I have a prior commitment."

His eyes narrowed. "With who?" he asked in a low voice.

"My sister, you jealous twink! Now get the hell outta here before I change my mind altogether!"

She grabbed his coat and kissed him hard, then pushed back playfully. He walked away dazed and she walked inside.
"FUCK YOU!!!"

Diana slammed the phone down with such force that it split the cradle down the middle.

"Everything alright?" Julie asked her roommate, sister, and twin.

Diana looked over with such a vicious gaze that Julie was almost frightened, but then her sister's expression softened and she smiled.

"Man problems," she said. "Looks like I'll have to wait for another week. You're a lucky bitch."

Maybe tonight we'll both get lucky, Julie thought.
Brent let the water run down his back and thought of the night ahead: Beer, music, and Julie. He began to laugh. Another virgin! He had consumed more virgins than a Hawaiian volcano. He felt clean. He felt ready. He felt it was time to begin.
The party began inauspiciously, but soon developed into a mix of demons, cinematic personalities, and sports heroes drinking, dancing, and making out. Brent, dressed as a vampire, had seen more than one Judge Ito and he laughed his ass off when he saw his friend Rondell with a Don King wig and a sign reading "OJ: The Juiced Juice." It was eleven-fifteen and he looked towards the door for the fifth time in the last three minutes.

She walked in and he gasped.

Julie was dressed as a veil dancer and it looked like she had lost many too many of her veils before the party.

He walked over and grabbed her close.

"I want to suck your... well, I'll let you pick the spot," he said with a horrible accent.

She only smiled and gestured upstairs.

Ohyeahohyeahohyeahohyeahohyeah, he kept thinking.

When he got upstairs, he was so excited that he barely noticed the witch behind him.
He woke up in a dimly lit room. His arms were tied behind him and he felt cold and wet. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw he was naked. He eard someone approaching and found himself getting an erection.

"Julie, you kinky girl! I thought you were a virg..."

The words died on his lips as Diana walked on one side of him and Julie appeared ten seconds later on the other side.

"Diana is my sister. Do you remember her?"

"OH!! Yeah! You want a three-way huh?"

Diana laughed. "You could say that," she said. "But... " she glanced down noticing his hard-on for the first time. "Isn't that cute? You're aroused!"

She bent down to his groin and opened her mouth wide.

OhyeahohyeahohyeahohyeahohyeahohshitohshitohSHIT!!! OH SHIT!!!

She pulled away leaving a bloody mass where his pride had once been. he looked at her, still screaming, and saw her swallow his lost body part.

"Mmm-mmm, good!" Diana said, licking her lips.

She began to light a few red candles and, through his tears, he saw her pull out a wicked looking knife. She seemed to be levitating, but he couldn't be sure. She also pulled out a 9mm and laid it next to his body.

"For sport," she said with a wink.

Julie bent down to his head, began to untie his arms, and spoke softly into his ear:

"Happy Halloween."

He ran into the darkness with the gun in hand and, as he turned to fire, both girls took on a monstrous shape that seemed to be a cross between a giant bat, a huge wolf, and a human. They began to fly towards him. He ran hard. He ran fast. They were faster.

He spun around and fired wildly.

I went out to dinner tonight with two very lovely women and I made a joke about how I don't like to dust as I'm afraid of what might grab me. One of those lovely women, Erin, made a joke about it and it got me thinking...

---

I walked through my life with little more than a backwards glance at the noises in the dark. I firmly believed in the whole "see it, touch it, smell it, taste it" philosophy and thought everyone else was full of crazy-talk when they gave the "Maloik," or touched the roof of their car when they went through a yellow light. Logically, that stuff makes no sense! How can any rational being look at a graveyard as they pass on the road and hold their breath? It's just stupid.

Or so I thought...

Oddly enough, most stories like this start out "The day began like any other day." This one won't, because it wasn't like any other day. First, I ended up oversleeping for the first time ever. Apparently a lightning storm blew through my neighborhood while I slept and blew a transformer on my block which, in turn, sent enough juice through various sockets that my alarm clock took an electrical shit on my nightstand. I finally opened my eyes about 90 minutes late and saw my front awning hanging askew from the window out front due to the severe winds.You may, at this point, be asking yourself how I could have slept through this stormageddon. I will, also at this point, answer you by saying: If I could sleep through an international flight with Godsmack's first major release blaring through my headphones, a little wind won't wake my ass anytime soon. So I look around and see the fried alarm clock, the dangling awning through the mini-blinds, and I reach for my wristwatch which was unaffected by the previous night's fun.

Oh fuck me running... I had managed to not only sleep late, but I was currently supposed to be administering my mid-term to a classroom full of not-so-eager college students. Looks like I was going to have to kiss some major ass and give a lot of extra points for this one.

As I resigned myself to being late, I ambled to the shower and saw something skitter under the claw-foot tub. I knew I was still a little groggy because I heard no clattering on the tile floor, so I chalked it up to that wierd shit you have in your eyes when you wake up. An uneventful shower later (cold, I might add... hot-water heater must have bit the shit too), and I was putting on my best school suit to impress, frighten, and soothe.

Seriously... dressing for a class is more important than dressing for a date. A date has 2 possible outcomes when you reach my age: You either go home alone, or you don't. When you're dressing for a class, you've got 20 or so people of varying ages and disciplines hanging, or pretending to hang, on your every word. Those people need to believe that that person in front of the class, prattling on endlessly about the importance of semi-colons and in-text citations, is in complete charge of the room. There really can be no question to that or anarchy breaks loose and all of a sudden you are no longer the teacher, but the target. Even if it's just an air of power, it's still perceived as such. Seeing as how my class would no doubt be pissed off that they showed up on time and I didn't, I had to look my best or I'd be eaten alive.

However, before any of that fashion sense would be put to the test, lateness be damned! I needed coffee. I cinched up my best red tie, pulled the dark three-button jacket tight against my bulging waistline, and I was off to my kitchen, smoothing the sides of my slowly graying hair against my temples as I hit the stairs.

Since the power was still out in the house (probably the neighborhood), I made the walk in a silence only punctuated by the groaning of the carpeted stairs under my frame. By habit, I opened the window from the front room to my porch to let in some fresh, post-stormy air. Mmm-mmm... smells good!

Here is where we go from reality to unreality folks... keep up because I literally had to re-read this about 2 dozen times before I was sure I got it all down. To be fair, I think I re-read it over and over because I still didn't believe it until I finally managed to look down at the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around my left hand.

Okay... time to continue. Sorry... it's all still new to me, this world... YOUR world of illogic and craziness.

So I make the same trek from the stairs to the kitchen that I make every morning and I grab a pre-measured package of premium roast beans from the freezer. As I empty the package into my battery-powered coffee-grinder (let's hear it for AAA Energizers people!), one of the precious beans drops from my hand, bounces off the badly-in-need-of-a-scrubbing kitchen tile, and rolls under that space under the fridge.

Wonderful. I know that a single bean doesn't really mean the difference between consciousness and sleep, but still... that's some expensive coffee I like. Ain't no jumpers in this house!

Going against every logical action I've done thus far, I get down on my hands and knees, on my kitchen floor, to find a single coffee bean under the refrigerator. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have even bothered washing it off and using it; most likely I would have just tossed it, but it was the sheer principle of the matter damnit!

I took off that decorative vent under the door to see if I could spot that little bastard, but I quickly forgot about that solitary coffee bean which I'm pretty sure is still sitting on that dirty kitchen tile as I type this. No, el bean de solo disappeared from my short-term memory as I saw what could only be described as a topiary of dust puffs under the fridge blocked all view of anything else.

Now my first thought was What the hell is all this shit and how did I get THIS much dust under here? That thought was definitely replaced with Why does it look like they are moving for my next one.

Here, the one part of my brain would have said Easy there pal. It's just the ceiling fan. These things are dust after all; there is no weight to them, so even the slightest breeze is gonna make 'em dance. Unfortunately that cool, hard logic that I was so fond of echoed in really quick with The power is out slick. No air conditioning and damn sure no ceiling fan. The porch window is two rooms away, and the kitchen windows are closed up tighter than a nun's knees. Those things are moving on their own. The sane thing would have been to move back and take a second thought while the other path was to say The hell with those crazy thoughts and sweep my hand under there to clear out the menagerie of what my grandmother always referred to as "dust bunnies."

Let me stop here. All you men will understand immediately which path I decided to take while you women will probably wonder why I did what I did. Let's just say it has to do with an innate sense of machismo. See, this sense of masculinity basically makes me, and every man for that matter, do things we know we shouldn't. We do it because we are men, damnit, and therefore shouldn't be afraid of anything. This is that sense that, even though we're just as grossed out by that damned spider you ladies call for us to kill, we have to do it because we refuse... refuse... to look anything less than fearless. Yes ladies, even if you're not around, we still act this stupid. I hope that answers one of those unanswerable questions for you, but I have digressed long enough.

So, with no further ado, I shoved my left arm deep under the fridge and swept outward intending to "free" the dust bunnies from their dark abode. Well... the path to hell is paved with good intentions right? As soon as my arm went in, I felt this absolutely excrutiating pain all over; it felt like I had plunged my arm into a bucket of needles actually.

At this point, all pretense abandoned, I quickly yanked my arm back and was shocked at what I saw.

Those dust bunnies were clinging to my arm and shaking violently as if they were in a feeding frenzy! I shook my arm, but those little bastards hung fast. I tried to beat them off with my other hand, but one just jumped over and gripped my pinkie between its... I don't know what. They were fucking dust for Christ's sake! How can dust have teeth? How can dust even be cognizant of the world around it? How can dust be attaching itself to me and causing this much pain?!?

I started swinging my arm against the wall, but that only succeeded in causing the in-wall ironing board to fall out and crack me on the head... hard. I don't quite recommend a sharp blow to the head to get you thinking straight, but as I momentarily was concentrating on my now bleeding head, I realized that dust and water were definitely not friends. I stumbled over to the sink, twisted the hot water tap so hard that it snapped off in my hand, and grabbed the sprayer. Cackling wildly and quickly losing vision due to the streaming blood into my eyes, I started soaking my left arm with the nozzle.

It worked. Almost immediately the pain was lessening as the dust bunnies were melting away on my arm. One actually dropped off and "ran" back towards the fridge before I sprayed it down like Bonnie & Clyde at a bank job.

I screamed at my victory and, for whatever reason, I yelled "I ONLY WANTED THAT FUCKING COFFEE BEAN YOU ASSHOLES!!" at the darkened space.

I think, had my morning's craziness ended there, I probably would have recovered to sanity eventually. I would have chalked all this up to some loose tacks under the fridge that tore me up and I was imagining the rest. Yeah... had the morning craziness ended there.

After I screamed at the fridge, I stopped for whatever reason. The rushing water was still hitting the sink with hurricane force and I was clutching the spray-nozzle like a Colt ready to take on John Q. Law. It was at this point that my break with reality occurred.

Slowly, that single coffee bean rolled out from under the refrigerator and came to rest about a foot from my foot. It was saying to me "Peace offering. You don't hurt us, we don't hurt you. Take your coffee bean and we'll call it even."

At some point I must have slid to the floor and sat, but I can't tell you when it was. I vaguely remember the power coming back on, because the fridge eventually powered up and I heard the compressor spin alive. That, by the way, scared the shit out of me...

I remember walking to my bar in the dining room, careful to stay as far away from the underside of it as possible, and uncorked my bottle of Bushmills 1608 Reserve Whiskey which my good friend Bernadette had brought to me from Northern Ireland the previous summer. I don't know how long it took me to finish it, but as I sit here, it's still empty... on its side about 3 feet from my computer.

I saw a few more of those dust bunnied peek their heads out from under my desk, from under my bar, and from under my buffet. They seemed to be watching to make sure I wasn't going to flood the house or something. I mean... it wasn't just dust anymore was it? It was something else entirely.

So here I sit... 48 hours after that initial attack. I had to take a few personal days at work citing a personal issue, and I haven't slept since then. There's an uneasy truce in the house and I'm not sure how long it will last. I mean, they've proven they can hurt me, but if I sleep, they're quiet enough to climb in my bed and choke me while I'm laying there... right?

I mean, you're the expert on this... I'm new to this place. I never understood this crap before, but here I am mired in it! My life was logic and evidence. Your world was the one with the weird rules and the crazy theories. My days were filled with commas, nouns, and verbs while yours were filled with imps, gargoyles, and ghosts.

The only thought running through my head is from that movie my parents had me watch as a kid: The Wizard of Oz. I never really liked it, but I thought maybe I had to like it because I was a kid, so I pretended for them. Now, almost 25 years later, one of the lines that The Cowardly Lion spoke kept reverberating in my head:

"I do belive in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do believe in spooks!"

God help me. I really do think I believe in spooks now.