How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers (11 page)

“Well, why don’t you take a shower?”

“Because of Obama.”

Nick waited for more, but there was no elaboration. “What
about
Obama . . .?”

“Just . . . you know.” Jared shrugged. “Thanks a lot, Obama.”

“Thanks for
what
?”

“You know, man. You know.”

“Ugh.” Nick wiped sweat from his forehead, watching multiple people pass them on the sidewalk. Any one of them could have been a customer, and he blew his chance thanks to this asshole. “Get to the point, Jared.”

“Well, as you know, I’m an award-winning editor.”

“You have never won an award for editing in your life.”

Jared seemed offended. “Back in elementary school, I was given many gold stickers for my outstanding grammar skills.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It means I know my shit. And you should hire me.”

“We already have enough editors. I’ve told you this already. Many times.”

“Yeah, but . . . you don’t have
me
.”

“I don’t
need
you.”

Nick tried turning away from Jared and focusing on other people, but Jared circled him, not giving up just yet. “Trust me, bro, I have some editing chops. I’ve edited books for a ton of small presses, all at affordable rates.”

“Please go away.”

“My last job was editing an anthology that included a story by Lovecraft.”

Nick stared at him, unimpressed. “Okay, and?”

“What do you mean? Lovecraft, dude! Not just anyone is hired to edit The Master. Only the best of the best.”

“Considering most of his stories are public domain and any asshole can reprint them in the dumbest of anthologies, no, that isn’t impressive at all. Sorry.”

“You’re such an asshole, Nick.”

“And yet, you keep trying to get me to hire you.”

Jared sighed. “Why do you hate me so much? I’ve never done shit to you.”

“I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Fine. Fuck you then.”

Jared kicked the milk carton off the sidewalk and paperbacks flew into the street. Nick thought about leaping at him and tearing his face off, but figured it wasn’t worth it. Instead he watched him walk away, whistling. One day he’d get even with that asshole.

Nick stood on the sidewalk and watched as cars ran over the books he’d published. Pages ripped and blew away with the wind.

This plan was doomed from the get-go.

He gathered the few books that weren’t damaged and headed toward Louise and Stephen. Maybe they’d done better. He doubted it.

He made it half a block before he was interrupted by someone else. Not a customer or anyone important, but another goddamn writer. These creatures were everywhere, like cockroaches inside a discarded box of pizza. Like maggots fornicating inside a dried-up corpse.

“Hey, you’re Nick Twig, right?” the kid asked. He couldn’t have been any older than seventeen. His arms were littered with track marks. His eyes were bloodshot and his breath was strong enough to insult a skunk.

“Yeah, I’m Nick.”

“You own BILF Publishing?”

“We aren’t open for submissions right now,” Nick said, trying to maneuver around him.

The kid held up his hands, stopping him. “Wait, wait, wait. I’m not trying to send you anything. I don’t
have
anything.”

“Are you going to buy a book?” Nick asked.

“I’m kinda low on money at the moment.”

“Then fuck off.”

“Wait!” the kid said. “Why are you in such a hurry? I thought maybe we could shoot the shit.”

Nick sighed. “This isn’t the best day, man.”

The kid looked around the city, shrugging at the world. “Yo, there ain’t shit happenin’ today, just look around. Today’s a day to kick back.”

Nick laughed. “You and I have had vastly different experiences today.”

“Fuck off with what’s already happened, yo,” the kid said. “Let’s talk about right now.”

“Okay, what about right now?”

The kid led Nick over to a porch and conned him into sitting down on the stairs with him. “Listen, I’m havin’ some major writer problems, and I’m hopin’ maybe you can help.”

“I don’t know why you’d think that.”

The kid slapped his knee and grimaced. “Are you or are you not the motherfucker who wrote
The Trampoline Incident
?”

Nick wanted to act irritated and impatient, but at the mention of his book, he suddenly found himself wanting to be best friends with this kid. Someone who dug his work, who he bumped into on the street? Holy crap.

“All right,” he said, “what can I help you with?”

The kid cleared his throat. “Okay, well, I’m trying to write a short story for this circuspunk anthology, right? And I’m afraid there aren’t enough clowns in it. Plus, most of it doesn’t even take place at a circus or carnival. Just, like, one scene. Man, I suck at this. I don’t know what to do.”

“First off,” Nick said, “what the hell is
circuspunk?
”

The kid rolled his eyes. “Circuspunk is a genre for bizarro horror stories that involve circuses and clowns, stuff like that.”

“So, horror stories that happen to take place at a circus?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, King of Redundancy.”

“That’s not a genre. That’s just a setting.”

“Nah, man, it’s totally a genre. You bizarro people made it up.”

“Just because someone says something is a genre, that doesn’t mean it’s a genre.”

“And just because someone says something isn’t a genre, that doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

“Look,” Nick said, “in the beginning of Stephen King’s
The Dead Zone,
there is a pivotal scene taking place at a carnival. Does that make the book circuspunk?”

“Well, no, that’s just horror.”

Nick nodded. “Right, even if the entire book took place at the carnival, it still wouldn’t be circuspunk. It’s just horror, okay? Horror is an actual emotion, and circuspunk is . . . I don’t even know, that’s how much this conversation has hurt my brain so far. But even then, who cares? I could argue that
The Dead Zone
was also a political thriller—but why? Do you think when King started writing the book, he was stressing over genre boundaries? Or do you think he was more concerned about writing the best book he had in him?”

“I guess he was more focused on story and character than meeting clown quotas.”

“What I’m saying is, these genre rules don’t matter. They’re pointless. Circuspunk is just horror fiction. Bizarro is just weird fiction. These things already exist, right? I’m going to tell you a bunch of other genres, and you let me know if any of them actually mean a thing: heartcore, paranormal, wetware, retro futurism, SpyFi, slipstream, xenofiction, planetary romance, splatterpunk, slapstick, splatstick, cyberpunk, biopunk, nanopunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, decopunk, atompunk, stonepunk, clockpunk, nowpunk, elfpunk, mythpunk, dreampunk, awakepunk, paulyshorepunk, funkpunk, drunkpunk, spunkpunk—”

“Okay, okay! I get it! Jesus Christ.”

“Yes, even christpunk.”

“Now you’re just making these up.”

“Possibly.”

“Jerk.”

“Definitely.” Nick leaned back against the steps, closing his eyes. The sun burned against his eyelids. “But don’t you get what I’m saying? You heard all those genres. They all have their own distinctions. Try limiting your story to one of them and it’s going to kill you. Blend them all together if you want to. Shove them into a blender and make a delicious smoothie. Don’t take it too seriously, do not let it slow you down. Genre will just get in your way. People create these arbitrary rules for writers and none of them mean a thing.”

“Nothing means anything. Time is a flat circle,” the kid said, staring at him blankly.

Nick groaned. “Ugh, those fuckin’
True Detective
quotes.”

“We are all genres created by society.”

“Okay, stop being weird.” Nick stood up, hands on his hips. “I am going to tell you something right here and now that I want you to hold close to your little heart.”

“What’s that?”

“Fuck genre.”

The kid laughed. “Is that something like fuckpunk?”

“Goddammit, shut up. I’m trying to say something here.”

“All right, all right. Shutting up.”

“Genre exists to limit writers, okay? You gotta break these walls down. Don’t let stereotypes and fictional guidelines silence your originality. Too many writers kill their inner desires to write whatever they want in fear of upsetting potential readers because you didn’t follow the exact guidelines of your usual genre. These fears want you to die. Chuck them into a fire and be done with them. There are no rules here. Your main characters do not have to end up together happily ever after in your romance story. The scientist does not have to be mad in your science fiction series. Your male protagonist does not have to ruin your female protagonist’s face with cum in your latest erotica. Everybody does not have to die in your horror novel. In fact, nobody has to die. There are no rules in fiction. There is only you and the story. Write from your heart and keep the words true, and forget about everything else.”

The kid seemed impressed. “Wow. That was actually pretty good.”

Nick stood up and performed a little bow. “Thank you, thank you very much.”

“But here’s something I still don’t understand,” the kid said.

“What?”

“There’s a part in my story where one of the characters eats a packet of circus peanuts. Do you think that would be enough reference to fit the guidelines?”

“Oh, goddammit.”

26. RISE & FALL OF THE BURGER QUEEN

Billy stood on
the trailer porch for a good ten minutes, pounding on the door and shouting for the bartender to open up. The sound of his pounding was fierce and desperate, but inside, the trailer was quiet and empty. Except of course it wasn’t empty. The bartender had locked himself in and he refused to have anything else to do with the situation. Billy didn’t really blame him. After seeing the contents of the duffel bag, Billy didn’t want anything to do with the situation, either.

But whether he wanted to be involved or not, he was, and now he had to deal with it. A part of him just wanted to take off running, leaving the car with its duffel bag of decapitated heads behind. But eventually the police would discover the car, and they’d come knocking on the bartender’s trailer. Only this time, Seb would have no choice but to answer. The bartender would surely give up Billy in a heartbeat. It wasn’t like they were friends or anything. They’d just smoked together a couple of times and painted a house. He’d done that with dozens of people.

So he got back in the stolen car and drove away. He didn’t know where he was going. Certainly not back to Nick’s place. The thought of facing the lunatic he’d kidnapped terrified him. Sure, his sister was still there with the guy, and maybe he should have gone back to rescue her before it was too late, but fuck, he was so tired, he couldn’t. At least that’s what he told himself. And it was partially true. He hadn’t slept in over a day, or a week, or a year, he couldn’t remember, thanks to the crank horse he’d been riding. He wasn’t in any state for a rescue mission.

He gave some serious thought to at least calling Eliza and warning her that she was dealing with some kind of whackjob serial killer, but he just knew she would bitch him out as soon as she answered the phone, and he really wasn’t in the mood to be bitched out, especially by his sister, the goddess of all bitching. Besides, Stephen and Louise were with her now. He’d watched them take the hostages inside from the roof. They had the situation under control.

What Billy needed was more crank. With the bartender out of the picture now, he opted to score from his usual source: a Burger King cashier named Samantha who also happened to be a writer, because everybody was a fucking writer.

He met up with her in the Burger King parking lot during her lunch break. She was usually holding, considering the restaurant was her primary selling point. People who ate at Burger King tended to love drugs, especially crank. Maybe there was a connection. The good thing about Samantha was, since she was a writer, she always gave Billy generous discounts on the off chance that he might convince Nick to publish her. She also wrote positive five-star reviews on Amazon for BILF titles. Billy always assured her he’d talk to him, but he never did.

Samantha slid into the passenger seat of the stolen car, smiling. “Nice ride, man.”

“Thanks,” Billy said.

“Where’d ya get it?”

“From some serial killer guy.”

“Wicked.”

“Oh yeah.” He paused, waiting for her to cough up the goods, but she just sat there, staring at him. “So, are you holding or what?”

“This car smells.”

“Does it?” He sniffed and detected a rancid odor that he previously hadn’t noticed. “So it does.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Probably the stuff in the trunk. Or maybe I pissed myself. Who knows?”

“What’s in the trunk?”

Billy laughed nervously. “Just . . . stuff. Hey, listen, are we gonna do this or what? I gotta get back to Nick’s place soon and discuss books we’re going to publish.”

Her eyes lit up. “Has he read
Burger Queen
?”

Billy looked away, trying to act coy. “Maybe . . .”

“Well shit, why didn’t you say so?” She opened her purse and whipped out a pipe. “You can just smoke with me, no charge. Cool?”

“Whatever. Let’s just get it going.”

They smoked for a few and joked about random shit. He asked her if she had to get back to work, and she found his question to be the funniest goddamn thing.

“Work is for assholes!” she shouted, pounding her fists against the dashboard. She kept commenting on the smell and asking if they could go smoke someplace else.

“Like where?”

“I don’t know, maybe my house.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him, giving him huge “fuck-me” signals, and it was all Billy needed. They drove away from Burger King and she directed him to her house. Except she didn’t really seem to know where she was going. She kept guiding him around in a circle in the same suburban neighborhood, focusing on each house number. Then she’d forget what she was doing until Billy slapped her on the shoulder and asked where she lived.