Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer #Thriller #MysterySuspense

Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer
by Jem Fox


“I have some questions for you about the geek.”

Unlike the thugs I’d been dealing with, Marcus had a fully functioning brain. He got on the same page quick. He didn’t pretend he didn’t know who I was talking about.

“How’d you find me?”

“Well, Marcus, that was fairly easy. I called the pizza places on campus and asked them if they had a customer who was a really fat guy on the young side. There were two of you, and the other guy didn’t have seven computers.”

He sputtered.

“It’s hard to go underground when you weigh 400 pounds, Marcus. That’s why they’ll have to bury you in a piano case.”

Rabbit in the Road... #Thriller #Paranormal

Rabbit in the Road

by Danika D. Potts and Oliver Campbell


He gave me a name one day, walking back from the shack. "Rabbit In The Road," he said, pinching my cheek. "You ever see a rabbit run away from headlights in the road? They don't care where they go, they’re just runnin', fast as they can." He passed me the full blackberry basket to carry. "Rabbits are real damn stupid," He said softly. "Better to know what you're runnin' into, not just what you're runnin' away from. So you're Rabbit In The Road, until you know better."
I thought maybe I was starting to.

Indie book with a movie in the works #YA #Thriller

The Pineville Heist

by Lee Chambers
(based on the award-winning screenplay co-written with Todd Gordon)


Aaron whipped through the long grass as fast as his legs would carry him. His eyes were filled with angst and adrenaline. He was still in shock. Not every day you see a dead man. Not every day you see that much money either – he glanced down at the backpack in his arms. Must – keep – running.
Aaron was nearing the edge of the dense forest. Not much further now. He slowed down, beside a huge uprooted tree, throwing down the backpack, breathless. Looking ahead, there was the clearing leading to the stream, a direct route to the school. Almost home free. He hoped that Steve and Mike were far away from here. They’d all laugh about this later. Suddenly, a branch snapped. He wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Aaron threw himself over the uprooted, felled tree and crouched behind the trunk. Suddenly, Aaron remembered the backpack, just out of reach. He periscoped his head to look over the top of the tree, but there was another loud crunch, somewhere in the impenetrable green-darkness of the forest. He ducked and cursed himself.
Another twig cracked into two pieces, beneath the force of the alligator skin boot. The figure’s right foot, almost touching the discarded backpack, as it blended evenly with the green foliage.
“I know you’re out here...” The figure pulled back the hammer with a telling click. Aaron squirmed uneasily and tried to push himself closer to the tree. Perhaps he could disappear into a hollowed out section, he thought. But, instead, there was nowhere to go. He was cornered.

2 Personalities, 2 Attitudes, 2 Goals, 2 Methods - 1 Darkness

Forgive Me, Alex 

by Lane Diamond
 
The mere sight of him pushes me to the dark edge of my mind, where sanity hangs like... like... like a balloon in a tornado!

I stand in shadow across the street, one amongst many in the crowd of curiosity-hounds gathered to watch a monster's release. As my face blazes, fists clench and teeth grind, I can easily imagine the onset of a stroke, an aneurism, a pulmonary embolism, a raging scream—

'Control yourself, Tony!'

I long to charge across the street to destroy him—no remorse—as if stepping on a cockroach. Only sheer force of will prevents my doing so.

For seventeen years, I assumed this day would never come. How could they even consider releasing this vile creature, this very personification of evil?

In 1978, Norton murdered innocent kids who'd barely tasted of life. He tortured two of them beyond the limits of rational imagination, for to imagine such deeds was to summon a devilry that we dared not face. Yet the jury held him not responsible, a victim himself to the ravages of an illness that drove him to insanity beyond our reckoning.

He thus resides forever in the darkest pit of my psyche, chained to me in perpetuity. Now only two choices remain: I must cast off those chains, or yank them tight around his neck. Yes, I must obtain satisfaction. The idiotic jury seventeen years ago, and today's flawed court system, has left little recourse. No one else seems willing to deliver him to justice.

I am willing. After all, this is what I do. It's who I am. Indeed, the devil himself made me into this hunter of monsters. What a sweet twist of fate this is, that I may still, finally, administer justice.

"In the Mouth of the Wolf" by Jamie Fredric

A violent attack on the American Forces Network facility in Sicily has left innocent people injured or killed...

No sooner had he gotten the words out, when bursts of gunfire sent the team racing for cover, drawing their weapons.  But it was nearly impossible to see human shapes in the darkness, almost impossible to tell where the Italian workers were.  All the Americans could do was return fire at muzzle flashes.

Adler was familiar with the sound of Uzis and automatic weapons.  Their .45s wouldn’t be much of a match.

“Get back!  Get back!” he shouted to his men, all of them scooting backward, trying to get behind some protection.

All Adler could hope for was that the darkness would give them the added cover they so desperately needed now.  His thoughts went to Moshenko, not knowing where he and the two Russians were, hoping they made it to safety.

Outside they heard shouting and gunfire, total pandemonium.  The workers were completely defenseless.  They were running, trying to hide, but the attackers were coming at them relentlessly.

All the ammunition, rifles, and mortars EOD recovered from the tunnel weren’t going to do them any good now.  Adler scooted closer to one of the Jeeps, reached behind the driver’s seat, and pulled out an ammo box with extra clips for the .45s.  “Taylor!  Behind that seat!  Get the extra ammo!”

From "The Penance List" by S C Cunningham

In the aftermath of one of her break-ups, her trusty girls were on hand to pick up tear-stained pieces. Their hardest job was overseeing her cell phone usage. Vetting the texts, voice messages and emails she insisted on sending to the offending male, especially after copious amounts of wine and character assassination sessions late into the night.

The girls would have to forcibly uncurl her angry digits to confiscate her phone. Not an easy task as she had the strength of an ox when under the logic-drowning influence of alcohol, but needed to avoid acute embarrassment the following ‘sober’ day.

‘gonna cut ur herpes-ridden balls off, put em in a coffee grinder, post em 2 ur tart wiv a note - dear slapper, wake up n smell the coffee.’

Not the sort of helpful message to send to an ex when trying to cultivate the cool, sophisticated, hand raised, ‘am I bothered about being dumped?’ look.

From "Saw a Rainbow" by Bryan R. Dennis

Rain in Las Vegas was like an old man trying to pee -- it took forever to start and only dribbled for a moment. Dante staggered to his doorstep late that afternoon, just as a few fat raindrops splattered around his feet. His eyes blinked at the atrophic sunlight, at the dirty gray clouds smearing the sky.

Quiet thunder rumbled far away between drops.

He went inside. The house felt empty and the air stale, silent except for a clock ticking in the living room. Paige hadn’t returned from work yet. He still had time to clean himself up and wash his clothes before she found out. Worse than explaining where he disappeared to last night, would be the additional headache of trying to explain the blood.

After stripping in the laundry room, he tossed the bloody clothes into the washing machine. Then he went into the bathroom and showered. While in the shower, he scrubbed beneath his nails and clipped them as low as possible. Afterwards, he scrubbed at them again.

He couldn’t scrub them enough.

From "What Lies Within" by Noah Murphy

Two private detectives, are trying to track a suspect behind a theft...

Orlando Dorado lived down a seemingly deserted, tall but narrow hallway. The hallway was lit dimly by flickering lights. The paint was peeling and covered with neon graffiti. The humming of machines echoed down the narrow space; smothering all other noises.

“We are going to get attacked and you are going to die,” Mordridakon said.

“Come on,” Conklin said, “this isn’t Tower Killers 4.”

They walked to the end of the hallway. Orlando’s door hung lazily open. The apartment interior was trashed.

“Orlando’s corpse has been eviscerated and will be revealed to us once we open the door all the way. You’ll be killed if you walk inside the apartment, where the killer is waiting for us.”

“I’ve solved thousands of homicides in my career and none have ever gone like that. You’ve watched too many movies.”

“I’ll wait outside just to be sure.”

“You’re acting crazy.”

“I am crazy. I have the certificate to prove it.”

Conklin grumbled, now understanding why Alfonso often had trouble with him. “Alright, wait here.”

Mordridakon leaned against a wall as Conklin walked inside.

A few seconds later, Conklin screamed as a sword pierced his stomach, lingering for a moment before cutting him in half.

From "Hoodoo Money" by Sharon Cupp Pennington

He panned his camera left. Many of the burial chambers were large and ostentatious, with friezes sculpted into their deep sides and elaborate statuary embellishing their rooftops. The relentless sun bleached their white marble doors and half-dead grass breached the stone paths leading up to them.

They reminded him of poorly kept yards and poorly kept lives — of long kept secrets at risk of being unraveled.

He tracked the camera forward, where the crypts appeared as shrunken, windowless replicas of local banks and civic buildings, the Garden District’s grand mansions. Others resembled the gallant Bastille, surrounded by garish cast iron grillwork, rust staining their concrete foundations. Still others, low rent efficiencies and walk-ups of handmade brick, crumbling with age, corners jutted out as if to snag the attention of the next passerby.

Panning the camera right, he zoomed in until Simone Dubois’ grave and the two women filled the viewfinder. Killing the arrogant journalist, Dalrymple, had been easy, even pleasurable. But he had never killed a woman.

The prospect of doing so left him both excited and nauseous.

From "Unfamiliar Country" by T S Sharp

Boyd is forced to think on his feet...

The farmer was like a children’s book depiction of a farmer. He was short and stout, in his late fifties and wore green wellington boots with dark corduroy trousers tucked into them. He had a beer belly beneath a moth eaten jumper and wore a battered Barbour jacket. His face was broad and weather beaten, his cheeks red and healthy looking. Wiry snow white hair escaped from beneath his flat cap which looked like it was permanently attached to his head.

“You find everything OK?” The farmer asked. His accent was broad Welsh, friendly but loud.

“Yeah, fine. Got here yesterday, just settling in really.”

“Just you, is it?”

“Yeah, just me. Need to relax for a bit.”

“I see. What brings you out to the valleys?”

The farmer’s questions were friendly enough, but Boyd was finding the sudden intrusion slightly unsettling. He had to think on his feet to answer the man’s questions.

“Just to relax for a few days, somewhere quiet. I’ve been signed off work with stress for a couple of weeks, so I thought I’d get myself sorted in the countryside for a few days.”

From "Pandora's Succession" by Russell Brooks

CIA operative, Ridley Fox, has just been captured by operatives working for The Arms of Ares weapons consortium. Being driven by his captors, he thinks about what will most likely be done to him...

The October Man didn’t answer. Fox hoped he could stir up his temper. It appeared to distract him. But the one thing that Fox knew that Ares operatives excelled in were their torture techniques—using medieval or ancient methods as a signature. He recalled uncovering one of their victims in the past. The shirtless man had been strapped to a table with a cage on top of his stomach. Fox still had memories of the foul smell in the room before he had seen the large hole in the victim’s stomach—with a rat gnawing away inside. Apparently the cage that housed the rat had been heated, freaking out the rodent so that it had burrowed its way through the man’s stomach and intestines in order to escape.

The only thing that Fox imagined that could be worse, was a sadistic torturer that maintained the suffering as long as possible, not allowing his victim to die.

From "The Devil of Light" by Gae-Lynn Woods

IN THE DANK, DENSE undergrowth near the river’s edge, where the foamy eddies swirl and the fetid mud and mosquitoes suck, a pair of dark eyes blinked at the scene unfolding by firelight. Their bluish whites and the reflection from their liquid surface were the only indication that human life was present. She was clad in black, and with the inky darkness of her skin had only to close her eyes to disappear. The acrid stench of urine was strong where the ghost had sprayed into the woods, a glistering stream arcing golden into the velvety night. Heart fluttering at her breast and eyes unfocused, she found the form in the clearing, an indistinct sliver woven into the fire’s kaleidoscopic glow; a devil made of light. A whining scream rose and her bleary eyes experienced a moment of clarity at the sound. He was familiar to her clouded brain, this upside down Jesus. The mournful call of a whippoorwill sliced through the horrible calm as the whine faded. Her thoughts and vision blurred and she uttered a silent, jumbled prayer begging mercy for the Christ-man suffering in her forest. Hiding beneath the next shrill shriek, she inched her stealthy retreat.

From "Fatal Exchange" by Russell Blake

Tess Gideon, iconoclastic female NY bike messenger, is being hunted by a rogue nation's hit team as well as a serial killer who is stalking the bike messenger girls...

Police cars blocked the alley on East 123rd Street. The NYPD had seen it all, but this was a strange one even by their standards. Female, mid-twenties, Hispanic, cause of death unknown, stuffed into a dumpster behind a Cuban Restaurant. She’d been there at least one night, possibly two. It wasn’t pretty—the rats had gotten to her.

They’d run prints and were waiting for a preliminary ID, but who knew how long that could take? Her eyes had been cut out, she’d been scalped, and her breasts were gone—cut off, crudely but efficiently. Sex crime? No indication of rape. Trying to make a routine murder look weird? Anything was possible.

The forensics team was carefully swabbing her fingers, going over the scene, as the detective in charge spoke with their director, Amy Silva.

“What do you make of it? Psycho? Boyfriend trying to fake a crazy? Or a girlfriend?” Detective Ron Stanford had been with Homicide for nine years, and in that time had seen enough death for a whole career. He enjoyed catching the bad guys, but hated the bodies.

Especially the girls. And really, really especially in summer, when it got hot and decomposition was almost instantaneous.

From "Shadow House" by Stuart Land

PJ McAvoy was downright evil. It ran in his blood and grew stronger with every hacking chain-smoking breath. I’d bet if you could see inside his veins, those corpulent white blood cells would be attacking each other out of pure spite. But throughout his long life, no ailment hampered him. Fit and tough, he looked like a carpenter long before he became one; tall, lean to the point of gaunt, with gnarled fingers and calloused hands. He must have been born that way, because no one recalled ever having seen him work for a living. His hollowed cheeks and protruding brow over eyes as black as nightmare shadows caused people to glance away. Anyone he chose would be touched in some way by this malevolence; a good mood turned spontaneously foul, or a confident soul doubted their will to live. If provoked, this dark purpose could work its way deep inside, gnawing at all the decent fiber of their being until it assimilated, turned putrid and they coughed up black blood, choking on rancid thoughts of disease and carnage heretofore alien to their pure and simple minds. He did these things for fun.

From "Original Blood" by Stuart Land

My scream choked off as if frozen in the air along with the white puffs of my breath. Terror forced my ice skates out across the frozen pond, blood pounding in my ears with each thrust of my legs. When I chanced a glance back, he was impossibly gone from the wide-open ice. The Washington Monument, sleek and barren of emotion, loomed ominously above the trees in the distant grey dusk. Despair engulfed me as I jerked my eyes forward, flooding my mind with prayers that went immediately unanswered: his horrid, insipid gaze was just inches from my face.

He glided backwards on the ice as fast as I skated forward, though he wore no skates and his body showed no motion. His voice entered my mind: I’m going to taste you, Zondra. I tried desperately to stop, but slid into his outstretched arms and legs that wrapped about me like a lover, drawing me to him. I arched away, pushing against his chest as he bent toward my neck, mouth opening horridly wide as slender fangs seemed to materialize with a sound as soft as a breath.

From "Crucifying Angel" by P.I. Barrington

Payce Halligan nearly repeats the action that killed her former partner and fiance'...

Gavin walked out into the hall, a towel around his waist.  He reached down and pulled the dangling gun from her hand.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"What am I doing?"  She half-screamed.  "What are you doing?  I almost killed you — I al-most killed you!"  Payce peeled herself off the wall and gave vent to her fear-crazed anger.  "You stupid, stupid man — what are you doing in my shower?"

"I thought this was the guest shower," Gavin answered simply.  "I didn't think you'd appreciate my using your master bath."

"My master bath—" She stopped, suddenly realizing the situation.  She backed away from him, intensely aware of his nearness.  "Just… just get dressed," she mumbled, walking past him back down the hall.  She stopped after three steps and turned back to him.  "And give me that!"  She snatched the gun from his hand.  Then she stomped away toward her bedroom, ignoring his laughter at her back.

From "The Gamblers" by Martin Stanley

Dave woke with a groan. He tried to touch his face, which was in excruciating pain, but realised that he couldn’t. His hands were bound to a radiator in the corner of the room with handcuffs. He attempted to stand up, but his legs had been bound with rope. Despite several attempts at wriggling his legs, the ropes that bound him were too tight and movement was impossible. He looked around.

Dark curtains had been drawn, reducing the room to shadows. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light he realised he was in the living room. The place smelled of old takeaways and strong booze. Dave tried to wriggle his legs again, realised he couldn’t and then opened his mouth to scream.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

From "Ferris' Bluff" by Fred Limberg

The roller coaster ride through the heart of the Ouachita Mountains on the two-lane twisty goddamn no-shoulder snake of a road was scenic as all hell—but it had been a brutal frightening thing.

Regiments of towering deep-green pines slashed through with scarred gray-white granite wounds and mystical fog shrouded mountainsides demanded his attention. Dark shadowed valley views beckoned. The vista was like a siren’s song—beautiful and haunting, a soul-soothing panorama, primordial…and damn near deadly.

He barely survived the life-or-death battle between the lure of the bewitching scenery and the sudden switchbacks and cliff-side curves. A shaggy big-eared deer played chicken with him. That was exciting—in an adrenaline spiked, holy-shit, gravel slinging kind of way. A mommy hauling ass in a mini-van full of kids, hell-bent for somewhere, wasn’t scared a bit by the cliffs or the deer or anything, it seemed. She laid on the horn, yelling at him to pull over and get the hell out of the way.

Where? Off the damn mountain side?

And then, as if God flipped the scenery switch, the land and his heart rate leveled out. The mini-van mommy gave him the finger when she sped past.

From "Savage Nights" by W.D. Gagliani

In a flashback, Rich Brant remembers the tension he and his squad felt before entering a Viet Cong tunnel complex back in the CuChi province of Vietnam...

No one is more covered in sweat than he, and he feels the sheen on his skin soak his clothing all over again. He sets down the black rifle and pack and strips off his web belt. From the pack's loose flap he withdraws a Colt .38 snub-nose revolver and checks the cylinder.

Sweat droplets gather on his chin and dribble in a line to his chest, where the olive drab fabric has turned black. His hand shakes as he methodically inserts six fat cartridges into the Smith's cylinder. The brass slips between his damp fingers but he gently seats each round in its nacelle and snaps the cylinder shut. Full. Six rounds.

"Loot," drawls Sarge. "Let me lob a couple grenades in there. We got plenty."

"You know that's not good enough, Sarge. Grenades don't do shit in Charlie's tunnels. There's only one way to flush 'im, and that's this old fashioned way. Keep an eye out for other exits, and don't shoot my fuckin' head off if I come squirtin' back."

"Kay. Smitty, Digger, fan out and watch for moving bushes."

Sarge pulls back the bolt of his M-16 and lets it snap quietly forward. The others follow suit.

From "kiDNApped" by Rick Chesler

KIDNAPPED  HELP ME W Archer 0601Wailua R KIDNAPPED HELP ME W Archer 0601Wailua R KIDNAPPED …

It would run for several pages. He’d just copied the same strand over and over and inserted it into the genome, Kristen realized. It gave her the chills.

Help me, help me, help me...being churned out by a population of living organisms as if they were factory workers producing goods on an assembly line.

An entire population with a message.

Her father’s single-celled couriers.

It occurred to Kristen that one hundred—possibly even one thousand—years from now, the population of bacteria in the waters of Oahu would likely still carry this message.

Tara huddled closer to the computer screen. She wondered what she was getting into as she looked down again at the message’s opening: HELP ME!