New Scary Story: Essay: Why I like living in a small town

Small town life in America is often romanticized, but there is a dark side to some rural villages, and you can read about one such town in my new story "Essay: Why I like Living in a Small Town" at That's the Spirit.

The Upgrade - New Short Scary Story

Al Donner doesn't understand why his boss is sending him to IT, but he'll soon find out, and so can you when you go to They're Only Shadows and read The Upgrade.

Ping - A New Short Scary Story

We've learned not to text and drive, but that's not the only situation where texting can be dangerous, even deadly. Read "Ping," my latest short scary story at They're Only Shadows and you'll never take texting for granted again.

My short story on Youtube

A short story of mine, "The Halloween Prank," is featured on a Youtube series called Tales of Tim. He narrates and illustrates short horror stories, and it's really nicely done. Check it out here.

Short story accepted

My story "Unlucky in Love" has been posted at a short story site. 

Check it out here!

New short story: A girl can't be too careful

Here is an excerpt from my newest short story. Read the rest at They're only Shadows.

An early December snowstorm choked downtown Minneapolis with a blinding, blustery assault, keeping would be Christmas Shoppers and Warehouse District employees inside for the afternoon. The lunchroom of Hobbs & Linderman, a large design agency in the Twin Cities, was busier than usual as employees grumbled over Lean Cuisine and stale sandwiches from the vending machines. Senior designer Alice Nolan and copywriter Conner Farmington occupied a small table in a corner of the noisy room.

            “Is that a new tat?” asked Conner.

            Alice lifted up her arm. “Yeah. It’s a butterfly with Jeffrey Dahmer’s face.”

            “Of course it is. The expiration date on this cinnamon roll is in Roman numerals.”

            Alice smiled. “Well, since you’ve eaten half of it, I hope that’s not a problem.”

            “I’ve had worse. Do you or do you not find it weird that most of the people we work with on a daily basis are total strangers? I mean, here’s an example. I interact with Janice Dempsey almost every day. Project coordinator. She’s nice, capable, good at her job, but I know exactly nothing about her. No wedding ring. Okay. Not married. A bit gamey and course at times, but not outrageous. Beyond that, nothing. Even though I converse with her probably more than anyone else in my life, I don’t know a damn thing about her.”

            “And this troubles you.”

            “I find it odd. That’s all. On a given workday, I spend more time with you than I spend with my boyfriend. Okay, more conscious time, yet I only know bits and pieces of your life, but it’s a whole lot more than I know about Janice. Do you not find that strange?”

            “I live with two cats who know me better than my parents. Go figure. You gonna eat that pickle?”

            “No.

            “The copy for Dow?”

            “Yeah?” said Alice with a twinge of dread.

            “Full of cryptic satanic references that will make fundamentalist Christians instantly evacuate their bowels when they read it.”

            “That’ll win us more work. Do you really want to know more about Janice Dempsey’s life? And if the answer is yes, why?”

            “My point is a simple one. I spend a lot of my life with a group of people I know nothing about.”

            Alice leaned in. “That can be a good thing.”

            “If you have a lot to hide, maybe.”

            “I wish. Besides, this is 2014. You can find out almost anything about anyone online.”

            “Please. That’s too much like stalking for me.”

            “Listen, you’re interested in the life of Janice Dempsey? In a half-hour of searching I bet I can find out a ton of information about her.”

            “Okay, but why?”
            “Call it a personal challenge.” Conner arched an eyebrow. “Okay. My life is so boring and empty even this sounds exciting.”

New short story: "The Pond"

Here is an excerpt from my latest short story, "The Pond."

That night at dinner, Vin’s discovery was lost in the chatter. “It’s something with three fingers.”

            “Pass the mashed potatoes,” said his father. “Animal tracks. Christ, can you believe the Cubs lost again? Five in a row. I don’t know why I care—“

            “Jim, watch the swearing, please.”

            “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” joked his father in a deep voice.

            “I wish.”

            “Mom, I want a bikini,” pleaded Alice.

            “Over my dead body. Is the pork done enough?”

            “It’s fine. A bikini?”

            “What animal has a hand like a human with only three fingers?”

            “Emily’s mom let her get one.”

            “Get what?”

            “A bikini.”

            “Well, we don’t do things simply because somebody else does them. Especially the Lamberts.”

            “What’s wrong with the Lamberts?”

            Vin gave up and put his half eaten dinner in the sink. It was Wednesday, so he was supposed to be cleaning his room, but he was soon lost in the Encyclopedia Britannica looking at animal tracks with background music from his sister’s room courtesy of the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown.” Nothing matched the prints he saw in the mud earlier. Tink. Tink. Vin went to the window and peered out. Derek stood in the yard looking up. “I got a surprise,” he said, wearing a clownish grin.

            Derek had on a jacket on a very warm, muggy evening. He looked around Vin’s bedroom suspiciously.

            “What’s wrong with you?” asked Vin.

            The boy slid a magazine out from under his jacket and held it up triumphantly. “Playboy. July, 1961.”

            Vin grabbed it out of his friend’s hand. “What? Are you kidding me?”

            “It’s the real deal, my friend. The best thing is that my dad will never ask me where it is because then he’d have to explain why he has it in the first place.”

            “You are good. Very, very good.”

            The boys spent the next half hour ogling the voluptuous women of July, until Vin’s mother knocked on the door. “Bath time.”

            “Derek’s here, can’t I do it in a half hour?”

            “Okay. A half hour.”

             “Look at those tits,” said a dreamy Derek.

            “There’s no animal that makes prints like the ones by the pond.”

            Derek looked at Vin as if he was speaking a foreign language. “What?”

            “The prints by the pond. It’s not an animal.”

            “So?”

            “So what made the prints?”

            Perturbed that Vin was off topic, Derek closed the magazine. “How the heck should I know?”

            “What if it’s a monster? Huh?”

            Derek rubbed his nose nervously. “A monster? Monsters are in the movies. There aren’t any real monsters. Are you crazy?”

            “Then explain the prints.”
            “The prints. The prints. I bring you the latest issue of Playboy, and you’re worried about some prints in the mud. You can be pretty strange sometimes.” Derek put the magazine back under his coat and walked to the door. “See you later, Vin.”

Check out the rest of the story at They're Only Shadows.

Shooting the Messenger: New short story

Just posted a new short story at They're Only Shadows. Here is an excerpt:

A banner scrolled along the bottom of the large flat screen TV: “Breaking News: Five dead, six wounded at Keller High School after shooting rampage.”

            “False flag operation.” Andrew Copper looked from the television screen to the man joining him at his table for lunch, Glenn Sumner. Close cropped haircut, neck tats, tight black pants an inch too short, Glenn would probably be picked out of a crowd as a conspiracy fan based on nothing more than his aura. He pulled a sandwich and bag of chips out of his bag and nodded toward the TV. “They pull this kind of shit all the time.”

            “Who’s they?” asked Andrew, a sinewy, handsome, introverted man in his late twenties. He ate a spoonful of chili as he waited for Glenn to stop chewing.

            “The government. Who else? Pushing through stricter gun control is on their agenda, so they stage these mass shootings to sway public opinion. Same type of thing with 9/11, except that was about oil.”

            “But they’re carrying out bodies and—“

            “Paid stooges are carrying out something in a body bag. Probably somebody’s dirty laundry.”

            “You’re saying the people I’m watching here with blood on them and the sobbing parents are all actors? Glenn, you’ve got to move out of your parent’s basement.”

            Wearing a confident smirk, Glenn picked up his iPhone, tapped it several times and then turned the screen triumphantly toward Andrew, who leaned in.

            “What am I looking at here?” asked Andrew.

            “Your government at work. See that woman there? This was taken a year ago at the Akron Elementary School shooting. Now, here’s the same woman at the Boston Marathon. Oh, and what do you know? Here she is at Sandy Hook.”

            “Looks similar, but—“

            “Same thing with this guy. Here he is, a grieving parent at the Iowa State Fair shooting and, viola, here he is dressed as a paramedic in Boston. These are only two of dozens of photos that have been taken of the same people showing up at multiple tragedies all across the country.”

            “That’s just a little too much for me to swallow.”

            “The truth can do that to a person. Take 9/11­—"
            Andrew stood up abruptly. “Almost forgot. I’ve got a conference call at 1:00 so I have to blast. Sorry.”

A Revolutionary Act - Short story

Here is a brief excerpt from my newest short story, A Revolutionary Act.

He’d never been thrown out of a bar before. Asked to leave more than once, escorted to the sidewalk a time or two, but never physically tossed out the door. He had been punched in the face many times in his life and was once again reminded of what an unpleasant experience it was as he sat on the damp cement and held his coat sleeve to his nose. Feeling sufficiently debased, he struggled to his feet under the icy glare of a bouncer wearing a shirt shrink-wrapped around his bulky, chaotically tattooed body, standing under the bar canopy making sure the little piece of the planet he was hired to protect was not violated again by the most toxic reporter, ex-reporter, in the Chicago area, Joel Happling. Staggering down the street through the cool evening mist and cacophony of car horns, Joel kept a swollen eye out for a cab.
          A bag of frozen peas with an expiration date in Roman numerals lay draped over his battered face. The bleeding had stopped, but his head throbbed and he was waiting impatiently for the five ibuprofen to finally kick in. He lifted the peas long enough to check for new calls, but saw they were all from the strange area codes where only debt collectors lived. He stopped for a moment, his gaze lingering on his background photo of the snow-tipped Elkhorn Mountains in Montana, and he sighed longingly before gently laying the bag back down. He’d been fired that day from the Chicago Tribune for insubordination, and was admittedly grumpy when he entered O’Grady’s Tavern at three in the afternoon. Who should come in a few hours later but Thomas Castle, the Commissioner of Transportation who was under indictment for taking kickbacks as a result of Joel’s three-part series? Words were exchanged, punches flew, and he now lay in his bed unemployed, bruised and bloodied and probably facing a civil suit for assault. Before dozing off, he called his sister and left a message.

Read the entire story at They're Only Shadows.

Dark Soul - A short story

 

“I was paralyzed. It was as if I’d been duct taped to the mattress. All I could do was tilt my head up. I watched the shadow…thing, came out of the closet. It was a black, vapory figure like a man covered in smoke. I’m not religious, but it made me think of a dark spirit or soul, if that makes any sense. It didn’t actually walk, but glided, not like some cartoon ghost, but like…smoke or fog, rolling over the floor. It came close to me, then backed up, as if it was harassing me. And it held something in one hand, silvery, a knife, and then it showed it to me, like I was supposed to understand something.”

            “Tim, relax. You’ve got yourself tied up into a knot.”

            “Sorry.”

            “No. Don’t be sorry. Remember we talked about that? It’s okay to say what you’re feeling. You should never apologize for that.”

            “I have a hard time with that.”

            A soft dusky glow filled Dr. Gwen Sebastian’s office as she and Tim Hathaway discussed his dream. “It sounds very much like sleep paralysis,” she said.

            “Sleep paralysis?”

            “It’s a condition that some people experience while falling asleep or waking up. It’s a dream state, but one that is more intense than your normal nightmare and often mistaken for an actual event. There are some researchers who think alien abduction stories are related to sleep paralysis. But anyway, the condition seems to produce very similar experiences. Incapacitating fear, a threatening shadow figure. Sometimes it’s a person who sits on your chest and restricts your breathing so you feel like you are suffocating. It’s been recorded for centuries.”

            Tim leaned forward. “Really?”

            “Does that make you feel better?”

            “I guess it does. I mean, it seemed so real. You know? To learn that it’s an actual condition…yeah, that does make me feel better.”

            “Let me ask you something. Have you suffered any kind of emotional trauma recently? Sometimes this will trigger sleep paralysis.”

            “I’m in the middle of a very ugly divorce. We were only married three years, but it went downhill fast. Three year’s time and now we hate each other. All we do is argue. I’m having a difficult time handling the anger.” Tan, darkly handsome with a runner’s body, the twenty-five year old architect absently rubbed the back of his neck.

            “Okay. Let’s talk about that at our next session.”

             The traffic was heavy leaving Edina at 4:30. Tim wasn’t happy to see Elizabeth’s number show up on his phone.

            “Yeah,” he exhaled.

            “I’ve been asking you for a week to bring over the Buddha statue and my sister’s painting.”

            “The Buddha statue is a big deal. Did you convert recently?”

            “Why do you have to be such an asshole, Tim? It’s a simple request and we live ten minutes apart.”

“Saturday. I will bring everything over Saturday morning.”

Elizabeth disconnected and Tim dropped his phone onto the passenger’s seat as if it was burning his hand. “Fucking bitch,” he whispered.

As usual, the brief conversation with his soon-to-be ex-wife gurgled up like stomach acid throughout the evening. He’d never met anyone who could make him as mad as Elizabeth. She managed to find something buried deep in his subconscious that no one else had ever found, and push it and push it until he was raging with anger. It drove him to therapy. Even though they had been separated for six months, she was still an unwanted part of his life and the resentment flared like a severe allergic reaction every time they spoke. He poured a scotch around nine and watched part of an old Soprano’s episode before deciding sleep was the best way to forget.

The moment his eyes opened, the dark soul was hovering over him like a demonic surgeon examining a patient. There was a flash of silver and Tim watched a knife rise into the air, somehow attached to a dark appendage. Every muscle in his body clenched in terror as the knife came falling toward his abdomen, but it stopped at the last instant, and the smoke man seemed amused. Tim struggled, but was again unable to move at all. He’d never felt so helpless. The ephemeral being finally drifted away from the bed and dissolved through the door. Seconds, minutes, hours passed, still Tim could not move. His body shuddered when the shadow appeared again, only to return and become one with the darkness. Tim finally regained control of his muscles and ran to the bathroom, flipping on lights as he went, making it just in time to vomit in the toilet. 

            The first call from the office the next morning was to his therapist, begging for pills that would knock him out for the night. Not sleeping wasn’t an option. Tim’s partner in the firm, Grace Andersen, a tall, pale Nordic beauty who was the creative book end to his business skills, set a cup of coffee on his desk.

            “You look like you need this,” she said, sliding into a nearby chair and crossing her long legs. “More nightmares or did you take my advice and ask Xena the Warrior Princess across the hall out?”

            “Unfortunately it was nightmares. My therapist tells me it’s sleep paralysis. They’re dreams, but hyper real dreams where your body is paralyzed. Happened again last night.”

            “Ick. Sorry. Are you up for the presentation this morning or should we reschedule?”

            “No, I’ll be fine. Thanks for the coffee.”

            Grace got up. “I’ll bet Xena could scare off your worst nightmare.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Tim, smiling for the first time that day.

            The presentation went well although Grace did most of the heavy lifting. Feeling drained by the middle of the afternoon, Tim left early, picked up his sleeping pills from Target and headed home. The only fortunate result of the ongoing disputes with Elizabeth was that she moved in with her boyfriend shortly after the two split up and didn’t want the house. On the down side, the high mortgage payment for a Tudor cottage just a block from Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis was a shock to the pocketbook. Shoes off, coat on the floor, Tim took up residence on the couch in the living room with his laptop and a beer. Redditt, Boing Boing, Salon, American Architect, he clicked through his bookmarks finally stopping on one that caught his interest. The Star Tribune headline read, “Plymouth Couple Goes Missing.” The couple’s last name drew his attention. Lundgaard. It took him a moment of mental searching, but he remembered that Elizabeth’s boyfriend’s last name was Lundgaard. He scrolled down below the fold and there was a photo of Paul Lundgaard being interviewed. He called Elizabeth.

            “Is it Paul’s parents?” he asked.

            “Yes. He went over to see them this morning and they were just gone. Disappeared. The car’s there, their clothes are all there. The coffee pot was still warm.”

            “But—“

            “That’s all I know.”

            “I’m really sorry.”

            The strain was evident in her voice. “Thank you.”

            He stood next to the bed later than night, staring at the small white pill in his palm, silently enjoining it to work. He finally tossed it in his mouth and washed it down with water. Head on his pillow, reality melted away.

            He awoke to see silvery blades of moonlight stabbing into the room between the closed blinds. Panic shivered through him as he realized he couldn’t move. The pill had not worked. There was movement to his right and then the dark soul appeared above him, holding the knife over his face, mocking him, gaining strength from his fear. His throat grew tight. Tim tried to close his eyes, but couldn’t. It’s control clearly established, the smoky image slowly dissipated.

The alarm went off at 6:30. Groggy, sludge running through his veins, Tim pulled himself out of bed, lumbered to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. On his way to the shower, he glanced at himself in the large mirror over the sink and came to a stop. Looking closer, there were several red blotches and smears on his face. It was blood. He inspected himself, his nose, but found no injury to account for it. The pillow was also smeared with red streaks. Visions of his dream returned and the knife floating over his face, and the realization was terrifying. Was he still dreaming? He was starting to question reality.

            Slipping into the Saturday morning routine was slight relief. Coffee and a bagel for breakfast. After that, he pulled his laptop up onto the bed and began surfing. Almost reluctantly, he clicked on the Star Tribune site. His phone rang. It was Elizabeth and she was hysterical.

            “Oh God, Tim. Please, I need you to come over.”

            “What’s going—?“

            “Paul… he’s gone.”

            Fifteen minutes later Tim turned the corner and saw several police cruisers parked in front of the Spanish style home. He parked as close as he could and approached the house. After getting past a uniformed officer, he finally found Elizabeth in the kitchen, sobbing and frightened. She threw her arms around him and clung like a vine.

            “I can’t believe this is happening,” she cried.

            He offered a comforting touch without being affectionate. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

            Realizing her emotions were clouding her reflexive resentment, she pulled away and sat on a stool, draping her body on the counter, sobbing as she tried to talk. “He went for his morning run, just like every day, but….” She started crying again.

            From Elizabeth and a sympathetic detective, he learned that when Paul didn’t return from his run this morning, Elizabeth walked his usual route and found blood spatters on the trail and his water bottle along a wooded path near Lake Minnetonka. The man, however, had vanished. The police were not optimistic about his fate.

An hour later, a sedated Elizabeth sleeping, Tim walked past the ambulance and police cruisers toward his car, contemplating the impossible, that there was some kind of link between his dream of the dark soul and the disappearance of Paul and his parents. It was a ridiculous notion, and one he tried to brush aside, but like a stubborn gnat, it wouldn’t let him alone. That night he took two pills before bed.

Awake, paralyzed and furious, he struggled harder than he ever had to break the binding paralysis, but it was no use. The dark soul floated at the foot of the bed, bringing the knife blade down in arching, cutting motions as if he was demonstrating something. It had no discernable face, but he knew it was taunting him, and that something very bad was about to happen. When the entity finally left, he focused every electrical impulse, every synapse, every iota of energy in him toward breaking his invisible bondage. It was in his mind, he kept telling himself. There were no real ropes tying him down, no duct tape, no glue. Then, he felt the change happen. Energy started flowing through his body like an electrical current. In a moment he was able to swing an arm, then the other, then he realized his body was free from the frozen state that had held him captive. He sat on the edge of the bed examining his hands and arms, not entirely sure he was awake, yet amazed at how good it felt to be free.

There was a thud downstairs. The dark soul? At that moment, he turned the spigot and let his anger pore out and fill his body in preparation for interacting with the being that had tormented him night after night. He reached under the bed and grabbed his metal burglar bat. The rubber handle felt good, and he rapped the business end into his palm several times. It sounded good, too, that wet slap of solid material meeting flesh he’d heard so many times in fights as a kid. Fist meeting face. He hadn’t enjoyed the acrid taste of blood in his mouth for a very long time. Another vague noise. He turned toward the door with a sense of anticipation. Now that he could move, it was time to fight back and end the nightmare.

Down the stairs he crept, carefully placing his bare feet on the edges of the steps to avoid creaking. He moved cautiously through the dark rooms on the main floor, bat poised in striking position. As he neared the threshold to the kitchen, he caught a dark blur in his peripheral vision, near the door to the basement. Of course, he thought, lure me into your darkness. Before heading down, he went to the kitchen and found the flashlight under the sink. Filled more with anticipation than fear, he opened the basement door and started down. With each step he ran the light beam around the room like a nervous security guard. At the bottom, darkness enveloped him He swung the thin white beam around, cutting through the black until it reached the far end of the basement where it illuminated glimpses of a hellish human diorama.

Four battered and beaten bodies sat slumped in lawn chairs. His flashlight panned from one pale and bloodied face to another. Paul Lundgaard, Jerry and Sharon Lundgaard, and now, Elizabeth Hathaway were positioned in a semi circle together, resembling tired campers around the evening fire. On the floor in the middle of the grisly audience was a small stone Buddha. Oily black blood pooled below their feet. The close air reeked of human waste and decomposition.

Paralyzed once again, Tim inhaled the horror before him with each gasp, unable to speak, let alone scream. The shrill cry of approaching sirens grew louder and swirled around him like a slowly contracting spider’s web. It was then that he felt a stickiness between his fingers and turned the flashlight on himself. His hands, clothes and the end of the bat were covered in a thick red coating of still drying blood. Looking behind him, the light followed a trail of glistening red footprints to the spot where he now stood. The dark soul had returned.

If you liked this story, please check out other stories I've written at They're Only Shadows.

           

           

Karen - A short story

I've posted a new short story titled "Karen" at They're Only Shadows." Here's a brief excerpt:

Hauling a full laundry basket as she passed the closed door to the guest room, Karen paused, argued with herself briefly, then set down the basket and cracked open the door. The blinds were pulled down, the bed was unmade and clothes lay in several piles. She inhaled noxious cigarette fumes as she opened the door wider and stepped across the threshold, immediately feeling in need of a shower. She glanced around and was about to leave when her eye landed on what looked like a leather-bound journal resting near the edge of the dresser. Picking it up and flipping through the pages, she stopped on a page and began reading.

Alicia

May 23, 2012

Long, straight dark brown hair. Pretty, but wore too much eye makeup. Twenty-one according to ID. Lonely and unfulfilled like all the rest. Had to do it at her apartment, which I never like, but there was no other choice. She was still fun.

She turned to another entry.

Megan

August 5, 2012

Shoulder length sandy blond. Petite with nice breasts. Swore too much and had a tattoo of an old boyfriend’s name. Thought I wanted to hear her boring life story. A screamer.

A car door slammed shut somewhere outside. Heart fluttering, Karen put the diary back where it was and stepped out of the room closing the door quietly behind her. She could hear the men walking through the kitchen, and they all met at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, guys,” said Karen, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “Have a good time?”

She caught them exchanging a subtle glance. Ian smiled. “Yeah, it was fine.” They both had their hands in their coat pockets.

“You’ve got a nice downtown,” added Mike. “Clean and safe looking.”

Karen wasn’t sure how to take that comment, so she just smiled and made her way around the men and back to the laundry room. Ian and Mike went upstairs and into the spare bedroom.

Later that evening, as she and Ian lay in bed reading, Karen set down her iPad. “Ian, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“No. I went into the spare bedroom to see if I needed to pick up or throw anything out and I…I came across Mike’s journal. I know it’s uncool to check out someone’s diary, but well, I did it anyway.”

Ian looked at her. “You were messing around in his private stuff?”

“It’s our house and it was just the journal. That’s all. But Ian, it had page after page of women’s names, their physical descriptions and then, ick, stuff about the sex they had. But I got the feeling…I don’t know, there was something else going on there.”

“What are you talking about? So the guy has a little brown book. What does that prove?”

“But he didn’t have phone numbers or addresses or emails. Not even last names. That would have been more normal. These seemed more like…conquests. You know?”

“No.”

“They sound more like things than people.”

New short story - The Things Money Can't Buy

Posted a new short story at They're Only Shadows titled "The Things Money Can't Buy." Here's an excerpt:

“I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.” That said, he drew out a long kitchen knife from his belt and advanced toward the woman. Having ample time to prepare, Suzanne cocked her right leg and then swung it forward with all the power she could tap into. The top of her foot landed squarely on Kevin’s testicles and he crumpled to the sidewalk like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Standing over the moaning man, she kicked the knife into a patch of ivy, then quickly surveyed the neighborhood for any prying eyes. Satisfied she hadn’t been seen, she grabbed Kevin by his collar and dragged him down the driveway into the garage, out of sight of her neighbors.

            The blinding pain began to subside, and Kevin looked around the garage through his tears. His eyes landed on Suzanne’s running shoes. He twisted his aching body to a sitting position and could now see that she was holding a hammer and angry as hell. “Sorry,” he said.

            “Sorry?” she yelled, then immediately brought the decibel level of her voice down. “You are the worst fucking assassin on the entire planet.”

            “I never killed anyone before.”

            “That’s obvious. My five-year old daughter could have done a better job than you. I cannot believe Jason would hire a bum off the streets to murder me and not a professional.”

            “We did discuss that—“

            “Shut up. I should call the cops right this minute, but…”

            “But what?” he asked hopefully. 

            “You’re mine now. I own you. Say it.”

            “What?”

            “Say I own you.”

            “I…you own me.”

“Good. Now I want you to kill Jason. I’ll pay you $60,000.”