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I'm an aspiring horror writer with a large emphasis on crime, suspense, and action. Naturally, my writing tends to be rather violent.

Please, enjoy!

CHALLENGE 13
2. Limerick

"Dead Week"
I've been awake now for days,
Driven quite mad in the hunt for straight A's.
I think that I'm smart,
That my work stands apart,
Though its quite hard to tell in this haze.

CHALLENGE 13
4. Action Driven Oneshot
[WARNING: Violence!]
"Dead Man's Dues."
There was a small cemetery situated at the intersection of two farm roads on a square plot of land in the vast, shrubby desert half-an-hour north of Midland, Texas. The area was barely an acre in size and was bordered by a chain-link fence four feet high. The south and east sides were facing the roads, the north and west faced open desert. There was a crop of dead trees twisting into each other one-hundred-and-fifty, maybe two-hundred yards north of the cemetery. There were no mausoleums or statues, only simple graves, head-stones standing erect in the tan-colored grass and patches of hard earth or laying flat with the ground. A small white building sat squat in the north-east corner, for the groundskeeper, but there wasn't a living soul on the grounds at five forty-five in the morning.
There were two living souls just outside the graveyard, however: One man situated in the thickest cluster of branches he could shimmy himself into amongst the trees, and another man in a shored-up hole in the ground just outside the graveyard to the west, covered by a blue tarp. The man under the tarp was called Leech, but no one knew why. As far as anyone knew, he had coined it himself. Even if he didn't choose his alias, it wasn't likely he would of felt pressured to keep a nick-name he didn't want. Leech stood at close to six-foot-five and had the build of a mythical monster, unnatural muscles bulging from every spot muscles could form. Although his black jeans were baggy, his matching t-shirt was so tight it seemed painted on. They had only met forty-eight hours before that night. Each man had a radio sitting in their laps, and they were both awake, but neither spoke. Leech didn't speak because he was exhausted. The pair had arrived to set up shop around eleven the night before. The miniature trench was finished three hours after Leech sunk the shovel into the earth, and it was another hour and a half before he had it shaped to taste. Between the firm, damp earth several feet down and the soggy top soil was at least a foot of dry sand which rolled back down into the hole as quickly as he could shovel it out.
Leech lifted his left wrist up to his face, squinting at the simple silver Roman Numerals in the glistening blackness of his watch face. The segmented silver band that held it in place stretched around the massive, hairy wrist. Most juicers neglected their wrists, ending up with swollen Popeye forearms and anvil-like fists connected poorly. Leech was different, though. He didn't juice for the look, he juiced so he could reach into someone's chest and pull their ticker out like he was snatching a can off of his pantry shelf. He juiced to make sure that everyone knew the potential was there. With a rumbling sigh he leaned back. He had just enough room to sit up straight with his legs stuck out in front of him. His milky, glacier blue eyes closed, and he listened to the rain tapping away at the tarp until he drifted off into a troubled slumber.
The man in the trees didn't speak because of the deep, meditative mood he was in. There's something isolating about rain, something that drives people inside, both physically and mentally. The man in his mid-twenties turned his soft, brown eyes to the east, the clouds on the horizon beginning to glow with the rising sun. This was Kendal Crane, and only six months before that moment he was known as Lance Corporal Crane of the United States Marine Corps. Not unlike a lot of recent discharges, he appeared very plain, dressed in blue jeans and a grey t-shirt, a black ball-cap on his buzzed head. He was taller than average, a hair over six feet, but he was just about average in every other way. Due to his mixed heritage, it was even impossible to decisively nail down his ethnicity. Kendal was an excellent criminal due in large part to the fact that he was so unremarkable. A leather belt dangled down a few feet in front of his face, looped and buckled over a strong branch. A bundle sat across his lap, long and slender, wrapped in garbage bags against the damp. It was obviously a rifle, and a similar bundle sat wedged against the dirt wall at Leech's side. At a quarter 'til seven, a twinkling of light caught Kendal's attention. He squinted at the horizon for several seconds, convincing himself he was seeing something at all.
A crackling burst of static made Leech come to consciousness with a gasp. Still blind and scrabbling for the radio in his lap, he managed to smack his face into the wet tarp that was sagging in front of his face, loaded down with collected rain-water. After a disgusted yell and several swipes at his face he clicked the button on the side of his radio, sending a small burst of static back to Kendal. Immediately, he whispered.
"Two vehicles pulling in. One silver Buick, one navy SUV."
Leech frowned thoughtfully, figuring that meant, at most, thirteen people. His final estimate was ten. "Anyone in sight?" He asked, struggling to move around to his knees without bringing the water-laden tarp down onto his head.
"No.. They're parking. Still counting, gimme a second."
Leech tugged one corner of the tarp down into the hole, and gallons of water immediately flooded in, soaking the legs of his jeans. Both men scooped up their plastic-wrapped bundles at the same time. Kendal unwrapped a sleek semi-automatic rifle with a scope sitting atop. With practiced precision, not taking his eyes off the two cars parked side-by-side, his right index finger curled around the bolt on his rifle and chambered a round. A few hundred yards away, Leech was unwrapping a much older, much more abused lever-action rifle, glimmering with dew and oil. It was long and heavy, dark oiled wood and black steel. His left hand gripped the rifle's barrel, his right hand slid into the steel lever under the trigger, opening the chamber to glance at the menacing forty-four round sitting inside, shining brass casing with a dark grey, soft lead slug. With a small smirk, he yanked the lever back up, slamming the round into place. His radio buzzed with Kendal's voice.
"Eight total, four from each car. We're lucky, Andreas is the only one without a coat on, he's in white. One of them has a briefcase. Get ready, I think they're actually going to go out to the grave before they hand it off." Kendal had the barrel of his rifle sitting in the sling he had made with the belt, and the cross-hairs he peered through didn't waiver one bit.
Andreas was a District Attorney from Houston. There had been a police raid the previous morning, and many of the people who died were good friends of Leech and Kendal. Luckily, they found the right people to talk to. Right before Leech stabbed him to death in the man's driveway, another attorney had told the pair that Andreas was paid to get the warrant. He also told them that Andreas suddenly took some time off on the same day to visit his father's grave, something he hadn't done in almost a decade.
Standing, Leech slid the barrel of his rifle into the chain link fence for support, hunching over and resting his elbows on the ground. He stuck his arm out and gave a thumbs-up. Measured against his thumb, Leech estimated his targets were about fifty yards off when they stopped at a single grave. He raised the radio to his face, speaking quietly, knowing in the back of his head that he would have to yell and wave his arms to be spotted. "Everything ready?" Try as he might, he couldn't spot Kendal in the trees. He knew that he was staring right at him, but there was not a single thing out of the ordinary.
After surveying where they stood and their surroundings, Kendal replied. "Yeah. You'll take the first shot and get over the fence. They'll probably take cover on my side of the head stones. Should be short work."
Leech laid his cheek against the rifle butt and squinted his left eye shut, mouth twisting into a hideous grin while he lined up the nearest man's back with the post in his front sight. He took a small breath, held it, and a second later the rifle roared and lifted in his hands. The explosion made his ears ring and his head spin for a moment, but immediately he tossed the rifle over the fence and began climbing out of his hole.
With his rifle secured in the sling, lining up shot after shot was a simple affair for Kendal. The recoil would rock him back in his cross-legged position, elbows propped on his knees, and when he threw his shoulder back into the butt stock, the cross hairs would be exactly where he left them. After Leech sent the first man flying face-first into the mud, Kendal dropped two almost immediately. The first man he had been watching for nearly a whole minute. When the first shot rang out in the damp morning air, the man took a leaping step back with a bright red dot suddenly appearing on his chest, sending a cloud of fibers from his blazer into the air. He was already stumbling backwards when the second two shots hit his chest. Kendal didn't watch him fall, already sighting in the next figure. Even though everyone else was running for cover, this man simply stood there gawking at the trees with a look of fearful confusion. His posture went stiff as a board, a bullet passing through his heart as well as his spine. It took his knees several seconds to buckle, and in that time the man continued to stare at the trees with a gaping mouth and wide eyes. Kendal felt a chill run down his spine, summoning a stone into his throat. Finally, his legs began to twist, and his dead eyes began to look elsewhere. By the time Kendal got around to taking his eyes off of the chilling sight and scan the row of head-stones, everyone was huddled behind cover. The cross-hairs darted back to the middle headstone. He could see the top of a white-haired head. His mouth spread into a toothy grin, remembering Andreas' thick black hair-piece. He pulled the trigger, and when he lowered his eye back down to the lens a half-second later, there was a a white hair-piece laying in the mud, blood mixing with the water and spreading from the grave.
The chain-link fence rattled and shook when Leech heaved his three-hundred and forty pounds over, landing with bent knees to snatch up his rifle. At first he jogged, exhaling through his teeth with each stomp of his feet. He saw the second man get shot down, then the third. Even though he was only forty yards away from them now, no one was looking his way. Raising the rifle to shoulder height he slowed his pace to a steady walk, keeping his eyes up from the sights for the moment. He counted four left alive, three dead in the grass, one slouched against the tombstones, apparently picked off from his cover. There was another crack of Kendal's rifle, and one of the men rolled forward and curled up dead, scalped by the shot. Whoops, three left, Leech thought with a sociopathic smirk. At thirty yards, one of the men finally noticed the hulking behemoth heading their way. He was a fat middle-aged man with a bald head, a bushy mustache, and an intensely red face. Their eyes met, and the man lifted the thirty-eight revolver from his lap where he had been clutching it, both pudgy hands wrapped around the gun until the cylinder and barrel barely protruded from the tight bundle of fingers and white knuckles. Sticking the revolver out in front of himself with two rigidly straight arms, the gun trembled horribly. Leech dropped to one knee, slamming the butt of his rifle into his shoulder and raising the sights in front of his face. His target fired once, twice, thrice, then Leech fired once. The bullet sent a cloud of dust out from behind him where it tore a chunk in the stone. He slammed back into the grave marker with such force that his arms flew out to his sides and his jacket was yanked open, sending four big shiny black buttons into the mud. The last two survivors now gawked at Leech, frozen in panic. He lowered the rifle to his waist and spread his grin again, showing perfectly fitted bright white teeth. "You Andreas?" He yelled.
Kendal had his cross-hairs hovering just above the graves, breathing deeply through his nose, keeping his heart-rate down. Andreas broke cover first, springing up and taking off at a dead sprint. The cross-hairs twitched up and his finger jumped to the trigger, following Andreas as he ran. When he reached the end of his cover, Kendal fired for the legs. The shot was just in front of target, sending up a cloud of dust and mud. Andreas leapt away from the shot, stumbling for balance. In that moment, Kendal held his breath and fired a second time, blowing out his victim's left knee. Even from where he sat, he heard Andreas' shrieking, high-pitched wails of agony. The roar of Leech's rifle made him take his sight off the man wallowing miserably in the mud, spanning back just in time to see another man go back-pedaling from a shot to the gut. He aimed in at the man's back and fired. Coincidentally, he pulled the trigger only a fraction of a second before Leech fired a second shot of his own at the doomed man. The two powerful rifle rounds hit him simultaneously and he spun, twisting entirely around at the waist, wheeling over the tomb stone he previously hid behind. He landed in a twisted heap of limbs. Kendal let out a whooping laugh, looking through his scope at Leech, who gave him a grin and a thumbs-up. Still grinning, Kendal panned back to Andreas, curled up on his back and flailing about. A moment later, Leech walked up and stomped his boot down onto Andreas' ruined knee. Again, he could hear the screams. The interrogation was beginning. No, this is wrong. His mind suddenly flashed. The numbers weren't right. Quickly, he moved his cross hairs over everyone he could see, replaying everything in his mind. Leech shot him once, the cross-hairs settled on the man face down in the mud. Then I shot him three times, him once. His vision swept over the two men in the mud. Scalped one behind the graves, then Leech blasted one behind the graves. His vision darted to Andreas, screaming for mercy as Leech ground his heel into the shattered knee-cap, shouting his questions above the man's pleads. Then I wounded Andres, then we both blasted that guy over the grave. He lifted his eye from the lens, snatching his radio up from where it sat between his crossed legs to shout. "Leech! One of them ain't dead, we only shot seven! Leech, you hear me?"
Leech's radio yelled at no one from the wet grass beside his hole where he had left it. Instead of hearing this message, Leech was busy trying to scream over the shrill cries of a man suffering worse than he ever had before. Even though he had asked the same simple question over and over, he still hadn't opened a clear line of communication. He took his boot off of the Andreas' wound and stuck it in his neck, pressing his head down into the mud and jabbed the barrel of the rifle hard into his temple, making him screw his eyes shut with a ragged gasp of breath. At last, his mindless howling stopped. Leech repeated himself again, this time at a conversational level. "Andreas, who paid you? Is he here?"
After several loud gulps of air, Andreas sputtered rain water from his mouth and answered, not opening his eyes. "Yes! Yes, you killed him! You shot him dead!"
Realizing the futility of his efforts, Kendal dropped the radio back into his lap and hunched back down over his rifle, breathing accelerated by anxiety. He scanned over the dead again, frantically, finding nothing. He took his eye from the scope and scanned around in all directions. No one had escaped. "Dammit.. Dammit.." He chanted like a mantra under his breath, yanking the rifle up to his face, watching Leech, convinced he'd see him riddled with bullets at any moment. Something caught his eye in the bottom of his scope, maybe ten feet behind Leech, just at the end of the graves. There was a man slumped over on the ground at the far end of the aisle the last five had jumped behind. His left arm and head were exposed, but no one had shot him. As he was realizing this, the man sat up, suddenly hidden behind the graves again. His breath caught in his throat, cross-hairs shaking now that he had the rifle yanked up to his shoulder, the weight now in his hands instead of the sling. A moment later he saw an arm stick out from behind the grave, pointing a pistol at Leech's giant target of a back. Without a conscious thought, Kendal pulled the trigger.
Leech stood straight when he heard Kendal's rifle go off again followed immediately by a scream only several paces behind him. He whipped around, twisting his boot in Andreas' throat. He saw a man fall from behind a head-stone, clutching at his wrist. Then Kendal's rifle reported a second time, slamming s bullet into his side, killing him. A second later, a third, unnecessary shot was fired, and the dead man's head cocked violently, rolling the warm cadaver onto its side. Leech grinned and knelt over Andreas, left hand grabbing a fistful of shirt to yank him up. "Him? That was the guy who paid you, who we killed?"
Up in the trees, Kendal had slung his rifle across his back and was climbing down the branches at a leisurely pace, speaking to himself. "Who's the best in the whole goddamn world? Goddamn right I am. The best, son, no second place. Numero-Motherlovin'-Uno right here."
Andreas stared at the dead body. His only chance left, and he had been shot apart. He began shaking and hyperventilating, clawing at Leech's hands without ever looking away from the dead b*****d who had wrapped him up in all this.
His reaction was all Leech needed to see. Besides, Kendal saw who was carrying the briefcase. Still, he wanted it from the horse's mouth. With a serene smile, Leech sat the rifle's butt in the mud, holding it with his right hand, finger on the trigger, angled up at the side of Andreas' head. His voice was quiet, almost soothing. "He paid you to get that warrant?" Andreas still didn't take his eyes off of the corpse behind Leech.
"Yes, yes, that son of a b***h, he got me into this, I had nothing to do with it.." His giant, desperate eyes locked onto Leech's face. "I'm telling you, I was just being used!"
Without dropping the serene smile, Leech pulled the trigger, a fine mist of blood spattering his face. He let the spasming body fall to the ground and he stood, turning his face up to the rain, closing his eyes. All he could smell was gun powder, all he could hear was a high-frequency ringing in his ears, but the rain was cold and pure. "They're all dead." He mumbled to the rain. "They're all dead, I held up my end." After that he sighed, wiping water and blood from his face, leaving runny pink smears across his skin. His eyes snapped open at the sound of running steps in the mud behind him. He spun around in time to see the dead man coming at him, but not quick enough to raise his rifle. Instead of defending himself in that vital moment, Leech found himself too shocked to react, eyes glued to the fist-sized hole in the corpse's chest, cloth pulled into the wound. For a split-second, Leech could see the ground behind the man through his chest. In a huge scything swing, the corpse of the fat mustached man laid his revolver across the side of Leech's head. In the mud, trying to reel away from the blow twisted Leech's feet out from under him and he landed on one knee, rifle flying from his hands. With blood pouring from his split cheek, Leech snapped his head back up just in time to catch a second pistol-whipping, this time from the other direction, the corpse letting loose a terrible yell as he swung his entire body around in a vicious back-handed swing. The impact sent Leech's huge frame into the mud on his back. His jaw throbbed, for a moment he was convinced it was broken. The distant click of the revolver's hammer snapping back made Leech come to reality. In a flash he slapped his hand up to his left arm-pit, yanking free the forty-five pistol he had concealed in a shoulder holster, thumb automatically clicking the safety off as he drew. Time seemed to freeze as the two men pointed guns at each other, Leech from the ground pointing up, the dead man standing pointing down. When the dead man spoke, it was in a voice Leech had not heard in eight years. It was a dead man's voice, but not this dead man's voice. It was the voice of an old Cajun who had died on the Metro with a slit throat on Leech's twenty-first birthday.
"You ain't held up nothin', boy, not by a long shot. You been owin' an awful long time, now, and you ain't no where near holdin' up your end of any damn thing." While he spoke, the corpse shambled closer to Leech, soon standing over him, the revolver never leaving Leech's face.
As the specter drew closer, Leech begin to sputter, opening and closing his mouth, muttering one or two syllables at a time but not managing to start a coherent thought. When the corpse stood over Leech's chest, he fell back onto his elbows, pistol falling into the mud. "Parker.. Parker, I.. I'm sorry, Parker, I didn't.. I didn't kill you! I didn't mean for nothing to happen! You know I didn't!" His voice cracked, he was begging and pleading, throat clenching. He fell silent when Parker's voice continued.
"You could've got me my dues any time you liked, but you jus' ain't got what it takes, do ya? You gone and left me unpaid for so long, Randy, what you owe, no longer can it by paid in one life. It is time to pay me my dues, you an' Vicky both."
Leech surged forward on both elbows. "Vicky.."
The corpse shoved his arm out, barrel of the revolver digging into Leech's forehead, right between his eyes. "Ah'll be seein' you in Hell, boy."
A shot rang out in the grave-yard, sending the birds back into the air from where they had landed only moments before, still jumpy from the first hail of gun shots. Leech's chest heaved up and down, letting out quick panting gasps, eyes opened to bright saucers of blue. Kendal's shot carried the corpse's head away, sending the body gracelessly onto its side. Leech didn't budge, on the verge of hyperventilating, until Kendal's hand smacked smartly into his cheek.
"You awake, man? What the Hell was that?" Even though he reached down to Leech, his partner rolled over onto his hands and knees with a groan, slowly standing on shaky legs.
"I'm fine.. Jesus Christ, I'm fine.." Leech took a moment to get his lies straight. "He was in shock. Already dead, just didn't know it yet. Wasn't thinking straight.." Leech bent over at the waist with another small groan, picking his pistol up out of the mud to holster it. "He got the drop on me, swinging like crazy. He had two shots left, but like I said, in shock, not thinking straight.. Thanks."
"No problem." Kendal said absently, digging through Andreas' pockets until he fished out a key-chain. "Let's get outta here. Andreas was driving the Buick."
Half a minute later the Buick was cruising out the gates, and the graveyard was silent once again, just as they had found it: Filled with the dead.

CHALLENGE 13
9. Oneshot Series
"Stairs From The Water." pt2
Donald Walters was an awfully big man to be driving a 1992 Honda Civic, but that's exactly what he was doing. The car had grown on him, actually. The seat had squashed in over the years in a certain way that fit perfectly to Don's back, so that anyone sitting in it but him would be incredibly uncomfortable. It wasn't that the deformity in the seat made it any more comfortable for Don, he just smiled every time he remembered that he was the only person who could drive it without getting a terrible back-ache. Not that people were lining up to get behind the wheel of Don's ride. Every hard surface felt slick and gritty, combining years of cigarette ashes, humidity that drifted from the open windows (no air-conditioning), and oils from Don's skin and sweat. His hands sweat terribly most days. Some college kid was on the radio, rattling on at a subliminal volume. Don hadn't touched the dial in days, but under the seat was an old shoe-box filled with cassettes. The majority of his cassettes had been recorded by Cassie, and he always put one on when she was in the car. His heavy, leather-skinned mitts sat on the wheel at the ten-and-two, the tight skin on the underside of his wrists resting on the semi-sticky vinyl of the steering-wheel, hands half-way curled into claws.
It was only eleven on this mid-May morning in 2005, and already it was ninety-two degrees. He rolled down Washington Avenue at a casual thirty miles per hour, letting people zip and dive between lanes around him. He'd only been cut off once this morning, by a champagne colored Cavalier, and he smiled a small, satisfied smile when the girl ended up right next to him at the next red light. Between a used car dealership and a squatted dark brick building advertising breakfast tacos he took a right onto Jackson Hill, slipping his hands down to grip the wheel with his calloused, sweating hands, bracing against the dips and cracks in the ancient, neglected asphalt. He had thought, back in 2000 when they had begun popping up, that the sudden out-break of town houses would bring an improvement to the streets. In the end, he concluded that the only thing they had been good for had been clogging the streets with trucks and construction. Two blocks down he coasted his car onto the side of the road, in front of a new wooden fence that stretched across a cluster of new homes that stood the entire block.
Don kicked open the door and slung his left arm onto the roof, slipping out of the car with a grunt. He stood at about six-feet two-inches tall, wearing an awfully light yellow polo shirt loosely tucked into khakis. Don was a very conservative looking man. His hair was thin and brown, streaked with gray and pulling back into a widow's peak, combed to the side. His jaw-line was strong, his shoulders wide and angled sharp. The dark hair on his arms was thick and laid flat on his skin as if combed. He pulled up the seat of his pants and walked across the street towards a small white house with a black iron fence that cornered the block. Behind the small house, the rusted aluminum roof of a small warehouse still caught the harsh morning sun.
The door swung open without a knock when Don entered the house, sticking his head and shoulders inside to glance around with a stretched, put-up smile. "Hey, fellas." His voice boomed in the small room, and three heads turned to face him.
"Hey there, Donnie. Good to see ya." This voice was older and cheery, coming from a short, round Hispanic man with dark reddish skin and a thick head of greased-back black hair. He wore a baggy Hawaiian shirt, a mess of light greens and yellows and blues and reds over an even baggier pair of forest green Paco jeans. He stepped across the room and extended his hand. Don grinned, showing his pearly white dentures and thrust his hand out, catching and gripping with his right, his left slapping down on the top of the man's forearm. The same shake that had passed between them almost without fail every time they had met over the last fourteen years.
"Good to see you too, Mario." After that Don's eyes narrowed and skimmed the smoky room. The room was white with a brown carpet, a half-dozen folding chairs scattered around, a gang of filing cabinets in the corner, and an old cluttered desk in the back of the room by the door.
The other two men in the room where at or on the desk. At the desk, sitting in a high-backed office chair was a red-faced white man of about middle-age. He had deep lines around his eyes, a bushy mustache and a balding head. He wore a plain white t-shirt and blue jeans. He chuckled, waving Don and Mario over with both of his pudgy hands. The window unit had the place frigidly cold, and made conversation less than convenient. "I call you up sayin' we got important things to deal with and you turn it into a social outing! Get over here."
Don chuckled, swinging a chair around with the toe of his boot and took a seat facing the desk. He hadn't even laid eyes on the young man who sat on the corner of the desk for more than a split-second. He didn't like the looks of him. He was young, for one, Don had a rule against trusting young people. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, maybe younger. He had a young, round face with big blue eyes and a five-o'clock shadow, messy brown hair hanging at the back of his head in a sloppy pony-tail. He wore a navy undershirt and black parachute-pants, cut off to hang just at the ankles of his big black steel-toe work boots. He had a pleasant, social smile on his face. He looked like a bruiser, probably a door-man at a night club. He had a beer-gut, but swollen tree-limb like arms and thick muscles at his neck and shoulders. The young man had one foot flat on the ground, the other was swinging idol a few inches off the ground, hands clasped one-atop-the-other on his lap. He seemed content to only glance between the men who spoke at the time.
Don slapped his palms down on the table with a grin. "Alright Reasonable, what is the deal?"
"Well Don, the deal is this.. You remember that holy-roller fella, Osmond?" Robert laid his arms on the desk, the pads of his thumbs rubbing at the scratched wooden surface. Robert had busy hands, and he had to be doing something with them every moment he wasn't using them to motion wildly around about whatever it was he was saying. Ol' Reasonable Robert had a busy mouth, too. Don simply nodded once, hands balled into fists and resting on his knees. Don was the opposite of Robert. He didn't move a single part of himself unless it was to do something.
"Yeah, Osmond Taylor, borrowed thirty G's about nine months ago to put a church together. Been busy getting his followers some expensive hookers. Blowin' a lot of it on dope, too, from what I remember." Don's voice was passive but alert. His eyes didn't leave Robert's face, but Robert seemed to dart his eyes every which way but at Don.
"You guessed-'er-Chester. Now word comes on down that grapevine that good-ol' Father Taylor wants to go and perform himself a little human sacrifice tonight. If that nut goes and gets himself caught, I don't want his zany none-sense leading back to me." At the end of that, Robert's beady eyes landed fully on Don. All of Reasonable's restlessness seemed to settle at once, and Don squinted back at him, lifting his chin. Lives were at stake here, Don realized immediately, so his smile faded completely into a look of cold concentration.
"Sounds to me like we're talking serious business."
Hearing that, Robert let out with a yelping laugh, an exaggerated, clown-like grin on his face. "You have a gift for understatement, my friend." Don nodded once, then lifted his eyes to the young man who still sat on the corner of the desk, still kicking his cumbersome, booted foot back and forth.
"So what the Hell is the kid doing here?" The young man laughed once, indignant, rolling his eyes at the other side of the room. Robert raised a hand to shush him.
"This boy's name is Jeff, and he's been workin' with me since he was eleven years old, waxing my boat and cleanin' my yard. He's a good kid, I can vouch for him personally." That seemed to satisfy both Jeff and Don, who turned his intimidating mug away from the bruiser back to Robert. Don's contented face lied, however.
"I still don't see one good reason why he's sittin' there like a potted plant." That got a muffled laugh from Mario, leaning his back against the wall by the door. Robert raised a hand and opened his mouth, but Jeff spoke for himself before Robert could.
"I'm the one that brought in this information. Besides, I brought you the tools." Jeff leaned back, pulling open one of the drawers on the desk to plunge his hand in, coming back out with a pistol, a silencer attached to the end of the barrel. He sat it down on the desk in front of Don. Don stared down at the gun, then looked back up at Robert suspiciously. Jeff chuckled, looking away in frustration.
"Hey, old man, how is that old gun of yours? That Model28, you know, the three-fifty-seven, blued steel, five-inch barrel, rubber grips.. I got that for ya, you know that? Carried it myself for years." Reasonable smacked Jeff's arm, looking like he might have hurt his hand.
"Shut up, would ya boy?" After an exchange of looks Jeff went back to kicking his boot, and Robert turned back to Don. "The kid has also been my one-man hardware store for the last eight years, so lighten up, will ya?" Don scowled for another moment but eventually quirked the corner of his lip up in a smirk, picking up the gun to examine it. Jeff chimed back in, voice quieter and less caustic this time.
"It's an old Soviet gun. The PB-6P9. Fires the nine-by-eighteen Makarov, which there are eight of in the magazine. None chambered." Don's hands glided over the face of the smooth, dark steel. It was a strange gun, the silencer seemed built into the end of pistol. The barrel bloated out into a much wider cylinder near the end, making it perfectly flush with the silencer. He pinched the rear of the gun and pulled the slide back nearly all the way, stopping just short of chambering a round. He saw that the barrel stuck straight into the chamber like a small pipe that the bullets slid neatly into. He could see partially into the magazine well, and the bullets themselves were plain full-metal-jackets, but the bullet as well as the casing glimmered like brand new copper. They resembled short .45 rounds, fat and stubby. Jeff continued after Don had a second to familiarize himself with the pistol, letting the slide slip back down into place. Even though the gun functioned with slick ease, he could tell it had seen many previous owners. "The safety doubles as a decocking lever, and the magazine release is a little sensitive, just so you know." Don grunted with one slow nod, snatching a few loose pages of newspaper off the desk to wrap around the gun.
"You said this murder isn't going to take place until tonight, right?" Don asked, making civil eye-contact with Jeff for the first time. Jeff nodded once in return. Don sat the tightly wrapped pistol down on the desk with a heavy thud. "I know where his church is, but do you have a clue where he lives?" Jeff nodded a second time.
"Yeah, has a town-house up in Spring, maybe forty minutes from here."

CHALLENGE 13
9. Oneshot Series
"Stairs From The Water." pt4
Don pulled off of I-45 North at the Cypresswood exit, scowling disapprovingly at the wall of cramped, spindly pine trees only twenty feet or so from the lane he was driving in. They made him a little claustrophobic. He'd left Robert's roughly half an hour before, after getting directions from that kid Jeff. Don hadn't liked him, still didn't in truth, but that kid had sounded smart enough. He wasn't worried about getting the wrong house, the very thought of which filled him with anxiety.
Johnny Cash was coming from the speakers. Cassie had made him several J.C. cassettes. This particular one was his Wrath-of-God mix, the one he put on when he had to keep down the pre-murder jitters by getting good and self-righteous. His voice muttered quietly, but then again so did J.C.'s; Don never listened to his music any louder than conversational volumes. "You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time, but one of these days God'll cut ya down."
He spotted the first stop light ahead; he was going to take a right on the first street after the third light.
Don eventually parked on the opposite side of Osmond's block and walked around the corners from there. His shirt tail was untucked, concealing the grip of his silenced pistol. If he bent over or twisted at all the gun would print through his pants clearly. He also had an old pair of black cotton work gloves balled up in his pocket. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but Don didn't notice. He was busy squinting under the brutal early-afternoon sun, scoping out Osmond's home. Ol' Ozzy has himself a pretty hip pad. Don mused to himself. He made a note of the red Beatle parked on the street in front of the house, even though there was an ungated driveway beside the house. He assumed that meant there was more than one person home, which meant Osmond was almost certainly home. The only thing that made Don uncomfortable about the situation was the harsh glare on every window that faced him. Each window could of been filled with faces for all he know. Or rifles. His mind reasoned.
Still, he felt good, he felt down-right righteous. Johnny Cash was still on loop in his mind. The words rang out clearly in his thoughts, and he prayed that when he sent that Devil-worshiping scumbag to Hell, Mr. Cash would smile down from heaven. Don didn't notice that his step had a sudden spring to it, and his stride had grown longer, carrying him down the sidewalk in a much bigger hurry than he had intended. He sang at a volume that he had not reached since he had quit drinking: barely louder than his conversational voice. "Go tell that long-tongued liar, go'n'tell that midnight rider, tell the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter, tell'em that God's gonna cut'em down."
For the first time that day, he looked around himself and realized what a beautiful day the Lord had provided.

CHALLENGE 13
9. Oneshot Series
"Stairs From The Water." pt6

“You need another one?” Mario yelled with his head inside the refrigerator. In the other room Robert slurped down the last of his beer, setting the can down beside a pile of empty cans on his desk at least a half-dozen thick. “Yeah!”
Mario took a seat by the desk in one of the many folding chairs, kicking his tennis shoes up onto a second folding chair. He left one beer in his lap, setting the second one on the corner of the desk for Robert. “You gonna shuffle those cards, man?”
At first Robert only sneered, snatching his beer up. “Why? Haven't stolen enough of my money yet? I don't pay you enough, so ya gotta rob me blind at every opportunity?” He cracked open the can and took a long drink, setting it down on a manilla folder.
“You know, you don't hear me crying all about it when I lose half a week's pay in one afternoon. You know, I don't hear you complainin' when that happens neither.” Mario grinned at Robert, tilting his can towards him for emphasis.
Robert didn't even lift his gaze from his freshly opened can, setting it on his considerable gut. “Dominoes, that's a game worth playin'. Cards ain't nothin' but luck, only skills you can get playin' poker is how to count cards.” He took another slurp from his can, ignoring the white suds that clung to his mustache. Mario's eyes immediately zeroed in on Robert's mustache, and he managed to hold in a laugh by grinning, lifting his own drink to his mouth. Robert noticed and raised an eyebrow. “What you laughin' at?”
Mario threw his feet off the chair, setting his beer down on the corner of the desk. “Oh, nothin' man. Say, where those dominoes you talked about? I haven't played dominoes in years, but I know it like the back of my hand.” He focused on looking away from Robert's secondary mustache.
With a belch, Robert wiped the back of his pudgy hand across his mouth. “I dunno, tell you the truth. They're around.” He seemed restless, rocking back and forth slowly in seat, baggy eyes staring off into nothing, some invisible spot on the opposite wall.
Mario raises an eyebrow, watching him closely for several moments before speaking. “What's on your mind, man? Something bringing you down?” He took his eyes off Robert long enough to light a cigarette.
The spark of the lighter made Robert's half-drunken eyes lift from the wall and refocus on Mario. After a distant look of confusion, Robert seemed to shake the cob-webs from his mind and snatched a cigarette of his own from the desk in front of him. “Oh, it ain't nothin' really. Just ponderin'... I mean, Mario, when we set out on this endeavor close to, what, twenty years ago now, did we ever envision ourselves doin' business with Devil-Worshipers? How in the Hell does that come to pass?” He shook his head again, temporarily letting his eyes wonder back to that invisible, far-away spot on the wall. “How did that one slip by me?”
A thoughtful look crossed over Mario's face and he slipped down in his chair a small bit, throwing his feet back onto the chair beside him. “Well I don't know... He seemed like an alright guy to me too.”
For some reason Robert found that hilarious, and after about ten seconds his laughter had Mario in stitches as well. They calmed down around the same time, and Robert killed his beer with several consecutive gulps, dropping the can into the graveyard. “Don probably won't be back for another half-hour or so. Why don't ya head down to the Jack in the Crack, pick up a couple burgers for when he gets here.”
“I'd tell you to go to it your own damn self, but you wouldn't make it to the corner.” Mario said this with a grin, raising from his chair with the slowest and most melodramatic sigh possible. He swatted a beer can out of the air that Robert had flung at him.
“Every body wants to give me grief today. You, Don, that boy Jeff, this lunatic, every last man I have run into today has given me nothin' but grief.” His voice might have been serious, but the look on his face was one of unmistakable mirth.
Mario leaned over and scooped all the empty cans from the desk onto Robert's lap. “What goes around comes around, cabrone.” The moment he had finished his one-liner, Mario was ducking a hail of cans while he rushed for the door, laughing in reply to Robert's barrage of aluminum and curses.
He was pulling up to the stop sign on the corner when a navy blue town car came veering around the corner at close to thirty miles an hour. Once his deer-in-the-headlights moment passed, Mario laid on the horn, staring at the offending vehicle in his rear-view.
About half-a-block further down, he glanced back up into the rear-view mirror, and slammed on the breaks. He watched for another moment to confirm that he was actually seeing a young man with a machete get out of the blue car that had almost run Mario down. He watched just long enough to see the man bolt inside Robert's front door, then he slapped the gear-stick into reverse, tires squealing through the neighborhood.
Over the course of the ride from Richard's home to Robert's office, Osmond had done a lot of talking. Most of it had been relatively meaningless; spiritual discussions on the impermanence of all things, speculations on reincarnation, basically anything at all he could think up to keep Richard's mind busy. The one thing Osmond had made sure to clarify was that Alice had been murdered by a fat white man with a bald head a thick white mustache. Aside from that, he was working diligently to make sure Richard knew as little about the situation as possible.
Richard was rocking back and forth, heart racing a mile-a-minute from adrenaline and amphetamines. His left hand drummed its fingers back and forth on the dashboard, right hand clutching the machete in his lap. Osmond nearly ran another car off the road as they made their final turn, but Richard didn't even seem to notice. He was opening his door before they even came to a stop. “You'll be out here, right? When I get back?”
The car made one last surge as the front tire wedged up against the curb, and Osmond put it into park before meeting Richard's eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it and simply nodded several times, thumbing hard at his nose. His upper lip was pink with a drop of blood that had rolled down out of his nostril.
Richard only stared at Osmond until he seemed to flinch and stop nodding. “Of course, Richard, of course I'll be here, I wouldn't abandon you.” Osmond was terrified that Richard would just keep staring, with that machete in his hand, until it drive him insane. He had helped Richard finish off that half-ounce, and he was feeling like a tornado trapped in a four-door sedan. All at once, Richard slipped out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He felt lost for a moment. Everything seemed muted and far away, all the sounds seemed to be coming through a wall. The warm afternoon sun almost blinded him, and everything it shone on made Richard squint and turn his head towards the ground.
He jogged across the street and the yard, leaping up onto the porch without bothering with the steps. Without a moment's hesitation he threw open the door and stepped inside. The frigid cold air and stale smoke hit him like a wall of bricks, but much more important than that was the fat white man with a bald head and a white mustache sitting with a beer in his hand behind a desk.
They locked eyes for a split second before Richard turned, reaching behind him to slam the door and snap the lock shut. He was already half way through his first bounding step before he turned back around; the man had yanked open a desk drawer and was reaching inside. There was not a shred of doubt in Richard's mind, defeat simply wasn't possible. He felt every fiber of muscle exploding with boundless energy, he was virtually flying across the room. He would be upon that sorry murdering b*****d before he could even open his mouth to scream.
The speed in Richard's system didn't augment his athletic performance as much as he imagined, and Robert knew exactly where his Beretta was resting in the top drawer. It was second nature to him, thumbing off the safety as he raised the gun and stuck his arm out, straight as an arrow. The room was filled with the sound of gunshots, ear-splitting cracks one after another, Robert's heavy hand yanking on the trigger as quickly as he could.
Even if the speed pumping through Richard's veins didn't make him any faster, it did grant him the berserker rage he needed to sprint right through a storm of bullets. He let out a roar of his own to match the noise of Robert's pistol, the tip of his machete scraping a crooked line in the ceiling tiles above him as he charged. Robert managed to squeeze off eight shots before the machete came down on his arm, severing the limb just beneath the elbow. He was dead by the third swing, and by the thirtieth there was hardly enough left to call it a dead body at all.
Mario swung his arm over the passenger seat, turning half way around in his seat to look behind him, swerving quite a bit as he floored the gas back through the intersection he had just passed through in the right direction. As he was pulling up to the curb, Osmond was peeling away from it. Mario swung his car around in reverse, back tires rolling up over the curb and onto the sidewalk in front of the office. He yanked off his seat belt and flipped open the middle console, grabbing up a compact black polymer pistol. His sweaty hand slapped down atop the slide and pulled it back, holding it open for a half-second before he let the slide fall back with a resounding crack. With that he pulled himself out of the car and ran for the front door.
The door didn't open when he threw himself against it, turning the knob simultaneously. He was so sure it would that he almost fell over from the unexpected recoil. There was a moment, realizing that he left his keys back in the car, that he simply stood dumbstruck on the porch. Both of his eyes went wide, remembering the spare key that Don had slipped under the welcome matte, upset at having lost his so many times. Mario bent over and flipped over the matte, seeing the key immediately. Before he could scrape it up off the porch, however, a burst of splinters hit the back of his neck, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot coming from the other side of the door. Instinctively, Mario dropped his gun and fell over on his side, curling up tight as four more bullets tore their way through the door not even a yard above his head.
He laid there, curled up and praying to the Lord, for a half-minute after the last gunshot went off. Slowly, not even remembering his pistol, he began to sit up. In front of Mario's face was a splintery bullet hole in the door, and trying to mute the sound of his ragged, gulping breath, Mario pressed his eye to the door for a look inside. Instantly he identified the man in the crimson shirt and black jeans with his back to the door in front of Robert's desk as the man he had seen running inside with the machete. He couldn't see what he was doing, it looked like maybe he was rifling through the items on Robert's desk. Mario saw no sign of Robert, and his heart began to fill with the weight of fearful certainty.
With shaking fingers he picked up the key, and now searched around frantically for his pistol. Finding it on the ground behind him, he sat up to his knees and slid the key into the lock, pressing the muzzle of his pistol against the door frame. The door creaked as it slowly opened, but Mario couldn't hear it, his ears still ringing with the high-frequency tone of recent gunshots. The first thing he noticed was that Richard's clothes were soaked, frayed fabric puffing out from the numerous gunshots which exited his back before exiting the front door. Blood was running down over the sides of his boots, pooling on the floor around both feet. His skin looked corpse-like, ghostly white and clammy.
Mario still couldn't tell what was going on until Richard moved to one end of the desk, exposing Robert's decapitated head sitting on the corner of the desk, the machete sunk into the scalp like a chopping-block. A moment later Richard turned, dropping two armfuls of meat. There was no way Mario could identify exactly what Richard was heaping onto the floor, all he saw was the blood. Suddenly Richard's head snapped over to the light coming in through the cracked doorway, and he met eyes with Mario. With a clumsy, lurching step Richard went for his machete, grabbing it off the desk with Robert's head still clinging to the blade. When he turned to stagger towards Mario, Mario already had both hands on his pistol, and was starring down the sights. He fired once, a small black hole appearing just above Richard's left eye, and a spray of red and black appeared on the wall above Robert's desk. With an anticlimactic thud, Richard hit the ground dead.
The police found Mario on his knees in the kitchen, retching into the sink with the water running over the back of his head.