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“Taking Lives With .45s”

A Story

By

Max Booth III

Chapter One

Sitting on the carpet floor, leaning against a white wall, bleeding to death in a hotel room and thinking about my life. Right next to me is an air conditioner that is connected to the wall I’m leaning against. Above this air conditioner is a window, and outside this window is a mile-long stretch of police cruisers, SWAT jeeps, and news vans. All of them waiting for their lucky chance to gun down me, Xander Ramone, the most wanted man in the United States of America.

The main door of this hotel room is kind of broken down, but I barricaded it with two chairs, a round table, an entertainment center, and a small black television. It wont last long. Especially when the SWAT comes barging in. It’ll do, though.

About five feet in front of me there is a king sized bed. And on top of this bed are some naked dude and a naked lady. I guess I kind of ruined their honeymoon or something. Well, they’re my hostages now.

I’m wearing a bloodied up black and white suit. Reservoir Dogs style. I lost my fedora, though. In both of my hands I was clutching a customized golden .45. Each loaded with twenty cop killers. My babies.

I had just robbed a casino. I’m only seventeen years of age.

Heh heh, I bet you’re pretty confused right about now, aren’t you? A seventeen year old robs a casino? Sounds pretty unbelievable, huh? Yeah, well…it really happened. I robbed a casino and now I’m about to die because of it. I have like, what, twenty-five bullet holes in me. All of them leaking out thick black-redish blood. My blood. The blood that supposed to stay in my body, not leaking and soaking into the goddamn hotel carpet.

Your mind is probably full of questions, right? I suppose you probably want to know how I got here and all, huh? Wanna know my whole goddamn life story, too? Ah what the hell. Ain’t got much else to do until I die.

Ready for the roller coaster of a life time? Keep your hands outside the ride at all times. Feels like you have to vomit than go ahead and do it. Who gives a **** about the guy or girl sitting in front of you? Make sure you are buckled up. Ready? Alright, here we go. Have fun.

Chapter Two

Well…I was born March 3, 1989, in a boring ass place called Insomnia, Indiana. That’s right, in case you’ve never heard of it. There is too a town called Insomnia. But the only thing there really is to do there is to sleep. Kind of ironic, ain’t it? I remember I used to stick sharpened Number 2 pencils right next to my eyeball and twist. Ha-ha, just kidding. I’m not a lunatic or anything. Well…at least I wasn’t back then.

Anyways, my parents were Mary and Ben Ramone. My older brother’s name was Conner. We weren’t Mexicans either. Or Mexicants. I know Ramone sounds like a spic’s name--well, at least it did to me--but we weren’t. We were white. Straight up honkies. You know, like the old punk band? The Ramones? Joey, Marky, Dee Dee, Tommy, Johnny? Some say they were the first punk band ever. Ring any bells? Well, if it don’t you can get the hell out of my thoughts ‘cause I’m a punk rocker through and through and is if you don’t know who the Ramones are then you’re just another one of those stupid despicable goddamn posers that I see day in and day out. You guys disgust me.

Anyways, before I got rudely interrupted, I was born in Indiana and all that. The Corn State. The Boring State. Mary and Ben were my parents. Mom…oh God…I loved Mom. She was the greatest. But Ben…well, he was an *******. A drunken bastard that one was. He used to come home every night from the bar, drink a couple more six packs, and beat me and Mom. That son of a *****. I wanted to kill him. Slice off his head and put it on a stick. Like what Ed Gein used to say about women.

I guess I’ll start my tale of death, fun, and fame the first time I even saw a dead body. It was this one night in October. October is my favorite month by the way. Perfect weather and the month of Halloween. I was fourteen years old. It was so goddamn boring at my house so I snuck out my bedroom window and walked over to Conner’s house, (he was twenty-three at the time).

Forty-five minutes later I was at the front porch of his trailer and knocking on the front door. Conner answered within seconds. He was about five foot eleven, five foot twelve. Pretty skinny. He had spiky green hair and lots of different types of tattoos.

His facial expression alone told my he was surprised to see me by this late of an hour. “Xander? What’re you doen here?” he asked me.

“I dunno. Just bored. Wuz up?”

“Nuthin much. Just ‘bout to head out,” he said.

“Yeah? Where to?”

“Hammond.”

“Hammond? Why are ya goen out there?”

“Gotta take one of my dumb ass friends to some Walgreens to pick up some ****.”

“Oh. Ya think I can go with?” Even though Hammond was like forty-five minutes away I didn’t mind taking a car trip.

Conner thought about it for a moment or two and then said, “Yeah, sure, I guess.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Well…come on in. Zoe’s still in the shower so we have to a wait a little bit.”

Zoe was Conner’s girlfriend. They both lived in the trailer together. Out of all of Conner’s previous girlfriends I thought she was the nicest.

“Okay,” I said.

“Ya want a beer or something?” Conner asked me.

“Yeah.”

I sank into a really comfortable sofa while Conner went in the kitchen and came back with two bottles of MGD. Miller’s Genuine Draft.

“So…” Conner began, “…what’s been goen on? Haven’t seen you over here in awhile. See any good movies lately or anything?”

“Yeah. American Psycho.” As a matter of a fact I had just finished watching it on VHS before I went over to the trailer. That Patrick Bateman really cracked me up.

“Dude, isn’t that movie awesome?” Conner said.

“ **** yeah it is,” I said, taking a drink of beer.

This small talk was starting to bore me. I don’t like to be bored. Did I already mention that?

“So what else been goen on?” Conner wondered.

“Nuthin much. Oh, but umm…somebody did try to hold up that Family Dollar over there by the library. I was there. I was a hostage.” I was also an impulsive liar.

“No ****?”

“No ****, man. He was a big, tuff, hairy ************, too. Like a ape. And guess what, man. When he wasn’t looking I grabbed the .45 from his hands and shot him in the head. Brains went splashing everywhere. Looked kind of like cherry pie and lasagna.”

Man, I swear, I could have been one of those goddamn writers.

“Are you serious?” Conner asked. Man, was he dumb.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“You’re lying.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yeah you are.”

“Well…if you say so.”

Just then Zoe walked out of the bathroom dressed in a Three Days Grace tee-shirt and blue jeans. She was about five six and thin. She had long blond hair with red streaks that went a little past her shoulders.

A couple minutes later we left.

As we approached a small house Conner turned around and looked at me in the back seat. “Alright, Xander, we’re about to pick up this chick. She’s kind of a junkie. A big ole pill popper. You don’t mind if she sits by ya, right?”

“No, man, I’m cool.”

“She might be a bit…umm…loopy.”

“Its fine. I don’t care.”

“Okay. Just thought I’d warn ya.”

We stopped in front of the house and Zoe honked the horn a couple times. Then a minute later some skinny ass blonde came running out the door. Really long blonde hair. She wore a red tank top, a light brown jacket, Christmas pajama bottoms, and on her feet were some kind of weird fuzzy slippers.

She got in the car and said hello to Conner and Zoe and all that boring ‘hi, how are you doing’ ****. Then she turned her green eyes toward me and said, “Hello” in a nice enough sounding voice. She was shaking, her whole body was. Kind of like a crack head sitting next to a dumpster in a dark alley in Chicago or New York, begging for change to spare so he can go down the corner and get his next fix.

“My name is Rita. Don’t think I’ve met you before. What’s your name?” she asked.

I was about to say ‘Xander’ but then a funny idea suddenly popped into my sick little mind. “The name is Bateman. Patrick Bateman.”

“Oh, really? That’s nice.”

“So, to Hammond?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah,” Rita answered.

“You know where the Walgreens in, right?”

“Uh-uh. Pretty sure. And don’t worry, you guys will get your share for the ride.”

“Okay.”

The car started rolling. About five minutes later Rita turned to me and said, “What was your name again?”

“Patrick Bateman,” I answered.

“Oh…that’s right. Ya know, that name sound so familiar. Have we ever met?”

“Yeah. I stole your car once.”

“Oh, really. Don’t seem to remember that.”

“You can’t?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I said.

“Yeah it is.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to so for awhile and then I thought of something else from American Psycho. It would be hard to set it up, since I was a kid and all. But just maybe I could.

“So…” I said, “what do you do for a living?” I highly doubted she did anything, though.

“Huh?” Rita asked.

“I asked you what you did for a living. Your job?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m a secretary at a veterinarian’s office.”

Oh ****. I’m surprise.

“That’s cool. I like to torture small animals, so I guess I give your boss a lot of work.” That one fell straight into my lap. I had to take it.

“Yeah, thanks. What do you do?”

Oh my God it worked.

“Well, I’m into murders and executions mostly.” I almost blew it and started cracking up when her facial expression didn’t change. And hearing Zoe and Conner laughing in the front seat didn’t help anything either.

“Oh, really? My father was into stock, too.”

Perfect! Touch down! Grand ****** Slam, baby! All three of us burst into a laughing fit. We couldn’t help it.

Rita looked at us, all defenseless and all. “What? What? Why are you guys laughing at me?”

“Nothing, Rita,” Conner said. “We’re not laughing. Not at all. You’re just imagining it. Shut up.”

“Oh…sorry. I’m kind of ****** up right. I took a shot of H a couple minutes before I left the house. Speaking of goodies…” she grabbed her purse “…anybody want anything? I got some H, some X, some speed, some grass, and a half bottle of Jericho. I know you guys are getting some of the Vics for the ride and all you can anything else for free, too.”

“No thanks,” Zoe said.

“Thanks anyways,” Conner said.

“I’ll take some pot,” I said. What the hell.

“Xander, shut up,” my brother said.

“Who the hell is Xander. My name is Patrick Bateman. Or Mr. Bateman.”

“So you’ll take some weed then?” Rita asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Xander--I mean Patrick--shut up. No you will not have any drugs. Rita, no drugs for him.”

“Okay then. I guess I’ll just take some X.” Rita swallowed a small white pill that looked like a tablet of aspirin.

We had just made it in the highway when a cell phone went off in Rita’s drug infested purse. She snapped out her daze and quickly answered it.

“Hullo?” she muttered. “Yes, this is she…what?…but you told me you would…what?…yeah, well that’s pretty shitty if you ask me…this isn’t fair you know…well, because the only car I have is a shift and I don’t drive a shift I had my friends come out in the middle of the night to come and get me and stuff and they are really good friends and we’re almost here and…but you said you’d refill it!…well fine.” Rita hung up the cell phone.

“ ****** *****!” she yelled. Making all of us jump.

“What?” Zoe said. “What’s wrong?”

“That ***** whatever ya call her told me before I left she’d refill my Vics and now she just called back and said she didn’t feel comfortable doing it. What a bunch of ****, right?”

“Yeah. So where do you want me to go?”

“Go to the Walgreens in Portage, will ya? I think there’s a twenty-four hour pharmacy there, too. I’ll call them.”

Did she have all the drug stores in the state on speed dial?

Zoe made a quick U-turn and we headed toward Portage, which was a little ways past Insomnia.

Rita called the Walgreens in Portage, Indiana.

“Yeah, hullo…this is Rita Lindsay…yeah, well I have a little dilemma here, Stacy…you see, my father broke his foot last month and I’m leaving for Florida in the morning and I wont be able to refill his prescription and he cant do it since he cant walk and…well, I called the Walgreens out in Hammond and the lady there said she’d do it, but the only car I had was a shift and I cant drive a shift so I had my very best friends come out in the middle of the night to come and pick me up and we got all the way to Hammond and the lady there said she wouldn’t do it…yeah, she didn’t give me any reason at all, she was just being mean for no reason…so, my question here is there any way you could perhaps refill the prescription?…yeah, they’re Vicoden…uh huh…okay, thank you very much Stacy…okay…see ya there.”

Rita closed the phone and said, “Okay, they’re do it.”

“Alright, but I have to stop for gas first,” Zoe announced.

Zoe pulled into the next gas station and said. “I gotta go to the bathroom. Can you pump?”

“Sure,” Conner said.

I stayed in the car. Didn’t really feel like going in. A little bit after they got out of the car I heard Rita mumbling to herself. Something about Vics. Then she abruptly turned her head to me. “Hey,” she said.

So I said, “Hey.”

“Who are you?”

“Patrick Bateman.”

“You’re hot.”

“Thanks. So are you.” She was, too. For a junkie.

Then, all of a sudden, she leaped on top of me and kissed me. What the hell? This was really random. Really ******* random. I know it was just the Ecstasy taking it’s effect on her but Rita really was quite beautiful. For a junkie.

You know, I always say you have to spend every second like its your very last second on this Earth. I don’t know how these people can just lay on their lazy fat asses all day and do nothing but eat McDonald’s and watch television. I mean come on. American Idol? Hell is probably better. You have to seize the day, ya know? Seize the day? Uh, I like that. Isn’t that the name of an Avenged Sevenfold song? That was a good song. Gives a good message. Sad video, though. In case you haven’t seen it you should check it out after this roller coaster ride.

Well, anyways, I seized the day and kissed Rita back. It was my first kiss. It felt really good, too. Memorizing. We made out for a couple minutes until the back door swung opened and Conner pushed Rita off me. Conner dragged me out of the car and yelled, “What the **** are you doen?”

“The hell it look like?” I asked. I was kind of pissed off.

“It looked like a fourteen year old kid frenching a twenty-five year old woman.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like your eyes aren’t bad.”

“Xander, she’s a druggie.”

“So what, dude?”

“So what? Are you seriously asking me that question? So what? Do you realize what kind of diseases she probably has. She’s a junkie. Do ya know what kind of things junkies do for drugs, Xander?”

“Yeah, I know…but it wasn’t like we were ******* or anything. We were just kissing.”

“You can still catch stuff from ‘just kissing’. You realize how many dicks have been in her mouth? A lot. A whole ******* lot, Xander.”

“Okay! I’m sorry, Conner. Please just chill out, man.”

Conner took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I guess I was a little overdramatic. But you just have to be careful, buddy. That your first kiss?”

“Yeah.”

“How was it.”

“Good. Really good.”

“Okay, just don’t do it with her anymore.”

“Alright.”

Zoe came walking out of the gas station holding a Big Gulp. “Hey, what’s goen on?”

“Nothing. I’ll tell ya later. Come on, lets go,” Conner said.

When we got back in the car Rita was just hanging up her cell phone. “ ****!” she shouted.

There was another car waiting to use that gas pump so Zoe parked the car in front of the gas station. “What?” Conner asked.

“That Stacy lady just called me and said she didn’t feel comfortable refilling the Vics either. What the **** is goen on?” Rita wondered.

“I don’t know. What do you want me to do?” Zoe asked her.

“Just stay parked here while a call a couple more places, okay?”

“Okay.”

While she was making her calls to the drug stores of America Rita kept trying to climb back on top of me. I would have loved to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to piss of my brother anymore. So I kind of shoved her off my lap and went out the car to have a smoke. I sat on the curve and pulled out a red Zippo and a pack of Mud Creek cigarettes. I lit up a cancer stick a took a deep drag. It felt good to smoke. Started when I was eleven. I was gonna die of lung cancer by the age of twenty. Well, that is if I survive the hotel room I’m trapped in.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. It was so magnificent. So wonderful. So breathless.

I know you’re probably wondering when I’m gonna see somebody die, right? Well, I’ll get to that is a little bit. So just hold your goddamn horses.

After I finished my cigarette I got back in the car to find Rita still yapping on her cell phone.

“Damn, she’s still on the phone?” I asked. I felt kind of stupid after the words left my mouth, though. Of course she was still on the goddamn phone! Am I blind? No, so why the hell did I ask that?

“Yep,” Zoe sighed.

“What? Nobody will refill her prescription?” I asked.

“That’s what it looks like,” Conner mumbled.

Rita furiously hung up the phone and yelled, “Goddamn it ******* ****!”

“You want me just to take you home, Rita?” Zoe asked.

I noticed that inside the store some fat bald clerk was peeking out the window straight at us. Then I saw him pick up a phone and dial a number. A very short number. A three digit number. Possibly 911? You think? I seem to notice a lot of things. I should have become a detective, instead of a mass murdering psychopath.

“Hey,” I said to my brother, “we should get the hell out of here, pronto. That clerk just called the police.”

“So ******* what? What are the goddamn fuzz gonna do?” Rita snapped. I could tell she was still kind of high from the Ecstasy.

“Umm…arrest us,” I replied.

“How? They got nuthin on us.”

“Umm…correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you have a purse full of drugs? And again, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t drugs illegal. That’s why they’re called drugs, right? Otherwise they’d be called Wonderful Legal Happy Pills For the Folks and Kids.”

Rita started cracking up. “Oh yeah! God, you’re so smart. And sexy.”

She got on top of me and started kissing me again. I decided I didn’t care what my brother thought. I kissed her back. And oh my God it felt awesome. I felt so alive as the car sped away from the gas station. For some odd reason Conner didn’t stop us. I next thing I knew was that the car was parked in front of Rita’s house. We made out for a little bit more and then Rita ran out the car and into her little house. As we drove away I tried talking to my brother, but he just ignored me. Well, boo-fucking-hoo for him.

As we drove back to Insomnia we rode past that one gas station we were at a while back. Only there was something different this time. Parked in front of that gas station were five police cruisers. Black and Whites. Squad Cars. Cherry Tops. Whatever the hell you want to call them. Zoe parked the car and we watched.

All the cops were using there open car doors as shields. Each holding a black .45 that was pointing at the gas station entrance. One of the officers had a gray mega-phone to his mouth and was saying, “This is the police. We have you surrounded. There is no chance for escape. Come out slowly…unarmed and with your hands up. Repeat: This is the police. We have you surrounded. There is no chance for escape. Come out slowly and unarmed with your hands to the sky. Now.”

I heard somebody inside the gas station shout in a high screeched maniacal voice, “You’ll never take me alive, piggies!”

Then, a man wearing a gray hoodie came dashing out of the gas station holding a AK-47. But before he could even get a shot off, the police pumped his chest full of lead. The man was dead before he hit the ground.

Chapter Three

For some reason, ever since I was really little the sight of blood has been arousing. I also quite enjoyed the taste of blood. It first started one day when I was like in Kindergarten and I fell and scraped my palm. Since we didn’t have any bandages or anything, my brother told me to suck the blood away. You know, just for kicks. But I liked it. Liked it so much I would cut myself on purpose and suck on it until I became light headed. But then I started drinking other people’s blood, but I’ll get to that later on.

I guess some people would call me a wannabe vampire or something.

One time I tasted brains from one of my victims. I could tell you what it tasted like, but then you’d never eat egg-foo-yung ever again. Don’t want to put those chinks out of business now do I?

Sorry, my thoughts kind of got away from me for a minute there. That sometimes happens to me when I get really hungry. Well, anyways, back to my tale.

The next morning as I walked to school I took a quick detour to the middle of the woods. I loved the woods. Or the forest. Or whatever the hell you call it. I just love it. So remote. So alone. So free. You can do whatever you want and there’s no one to stop you. No parents. No teachers. No cops. No one at all. Just the way I like it. Alone. By myself. Just me and my thoughts.

I took in a big whiff of fresh air surrounding me and lit up a cigarette. That tasted even better.

I was wearing blue jeans, a black tee-shirt, and black and white converses (Chuck Taylor’s). I had jet-black hair that went a little past my ears, but most of the time it was in my bright blue eyes.

I went to the Fort. I had made it a couple years back. Just a giant ass hole with a couple sheets of metal, some tree branches, and leaves for a roof. Nothing really great. Inside the fort was a mattress I found in somebody’s garbage. A shelf in which I kept I stored some books and animal skulls. There was also a foot locker there. The kind they keep at the end of you bed in boot camp. I called it my Treasure Chest. Inside were some comic books, some rope, some duct tape, a couple cans of warm beer, a bottle of half empty Tequila I shoplifted at some store, a couple Playboys and a Penthouse, throwing knives, a hunting knife, and some firecrackers. God, I loved those knives. I was pretty good with them. One hundred percent accurate. Tremendous power. Razor-like sharpness in the blades.

I also had like a hundred and twenty dollars and a couple packs of Mud Creek cigarettes in the Treasure Chest.

Let me tell you a secret I used to do with my firecrackers. You may call me sick. And I may thank you for the compliment. Well, you see. I have this bear trap that I found in the city dump one time. I set it up next to the Fort and animals would get there legs and whatnot stuck in it. Well, whenever I caught a little kitty or raccoon I would stick one of those firecrackers up their ass and light it. Oww, huh? Good times, good times.

Well, on this faithful day as I approached the Fort I saw something had been caught in my bear trap. Something bigger than a cat or raccoon. A dog.

A German Shepherd, to be precise.

It’s left back leg and paw were crunched into the trap. The best way I can describe the trap is it reminded me of a venus fly trap.

The could see the dog’s left bone poking out of it’s leg. There was a tiny bit of blood around the dog. The dog was still alive. Whimpering and begging for help at me.

The German Shepherd only cried and stared at me with its ever so cute looking puppy eyes. I know the humane thing to do would have been to end the dog’s misery. Possibly slice its throat with my hunting knife or smash its pathetic little skull in with a huge boulder. Or another humane thing to do would have been to free its leg and carry the German Shepherd to a veterinarian . Maybe hook up with Rita again while I was at it. We’d make out for hours and hours. I’d skip school. Maybe we’d do a more than just kissing. A lot more. But she wasn’t on ecstasy anymore. She probably wouldn’t even remember me anyways. That *****.

Well, that would have been the humane thing to do. But I wasn’t humane. I wasn’t even ******* sure I was human. Maybe a monster. Some kind of demon who rose from the great depths of the one and only Hell and killed all of those pathetic humans.

That’s the kind of **** I daydream about while I’m at boring ass school. Aren’t I just the most psychopathic, sociopath, blood thirsty, maniacal lunatic?

“Don’t worry,” I assured to the dog, “everything will be alright. Just hold on for one more minute, okay? I’m gonna go get something to free you. Something to set you loose.”

I stood up and went to my Fort. Rope sounded liked a nice touch for some torturing. That and throwing knives. I grabbed the stuff and went back to the dogs. I tied one end of the rope to the dog’s tail and the other end to a high branch of a tree. I then snapped the dog’s leg off it’s body. I fixed it so the German Shepherd was hanging upside down in the middle of the air by its tail. The dog whined and snapped its feisty jaws at my throat. Good. I like it when they fight back. I always wondered how a human would fight. Surely better than a dumb measly animal? But then again, humans are animals. Just a lot more cruel hearted. More deadly. Everything is an animal when you get right down to it.

I grabbed the rabid German Shepherd by its golden hairy body and pushed it, so that it would start swinging back and forth. A moving target. I like the competition.

I walked back like twenty-five feet with my throwing knives . The German Shepherd was doing some kind of annoying high pitched squealing bark now. I threw it and smiled when the first blade plunged into the dog’s abdomen. I took in a great big ole hit of fresh air and smiled some more. I could have died from the great deal of happiness that had just rushed through my body.

I grabbed another throwing knife and whipped it as hard as I could. It smashed into the dog’s right eyeball. Bull’s-eye! Or Dog’s-eye! The dog was dead.

Dead Fred got stabbed in the Head and Red was the color of the Bloodshed. Ha! I can rhyme, too! God, aren’t I awesome? Someday I’ll go down in the history books. It’ll be Bundy, Gein, Gacy, Berkowitz, and then Xander Ramone, the scariest one of them all. I’ll be worshiped by my many cult followers. There will copycat killers of me. I would have my own tee-shirts made. A black tee-shirt with a bloodied up X on the front, but that would be enough, though. When the citizens of America see that red X that will know it is the signature of the infamous Xander Ramone. Directors will make Oscar worth movie about me. Who would be a good enough actor to play me? Make that guy who played young Hannibal Lector in Hannibal Rising? Perhaps.

I will be the ghost story passing around in the camp fires. I will be every child’s nightmare. I’m the real boogeyman, baby.

When I pulled the knives out of the dead German Shepherd’s body I liked the blades clean. I realized I was like a half hour late for school. Oh well. **** them.

I fixed my bloody bear trap before I set out. I left the dog’s corpse hanging there in the tree to rot. Good doggie. Play dead. That’s a good doggie. I’ll bring you a treat when I get back.

When I entered my History class everybody looked up from their stupid little tests and at me. The Tardy Boy. My teacher, Lynette Clark, sprung up from her desk and came marching toward me. Man, I hate that *****.

Not that I hate History or anything like that. I actually quite enjoy History. My favorite subject of them all. But the kind of history I liked they didn’t teach you in school. Well, some they did. Like Ivan the Terrible and Vlad Thepes III, you know, Dracula. The real Dracula. Vlad the ****** Impaler. Oh, and the wars. All of them. The Revolution War. The World Wars. The Civil War. I find all that **** very interesting.

But the stuff that I like that they wont teach in your schools is the really dark ****. Serial Killers. Mass Murderers. School Shootings. Arsonists. The really evil people. Like John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy. Edward Theodore Gein. I don’t know how many times I’ve got n trouble at school for reading Serial Killer books.

Well, anyways, that ***** Lynette came storming over to me. Her wig flapping back and forth. Same goes with here triple chin.

“Well, Xander, look who decided to show up,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“I assume you have a tardy slip?”

“Well, you assume wrong, Lynette. You know what my mom always says, Lynette? When you assume you make an ass out of you and me. Ya ever hear that saying before, Lynette?”

“Don’t you even dare call me by my first name. I am your teacher and elder and you will show me some respect, Xander!”

“Then don’t call me by my first name, Lynette,” I said, in a snotty sort of attitude.

“Young man, do not push me. Why are you late?”

“What do you think, Lynette?”

“Give me an explanation right this minute.”

“I was hunting, okay?”

“Hunting? Hunting what?”

“The blue whale.”

Everybody in my History class started cracking up. That only pissed Lynette off even more. Good.

“Silence!” she screamed. The class quieted down. “Now, Xander, why were you late? No smart ass explanations either.”

“Fine. I caught a golden German Shepherd in a bear trap I keep in the woods. I hung it in a tree by it’s measly little tail. Then I threw some throwing knives at it. I hit it in the kidney and eyeball. I licked the blood off the blades. And oh my gawd, Lynette, let me tell ya something! It tasted ever so good! It was so good I wanted to **** it! Does it count as necrophilia if its with an animal? Oh my gawd! Oh praise the Lord! I’ve found my way!”

Then something I never expected to happen happened; Lynette smacked me. I put my hand to my mouth and felt warm blood. Before Lynette could say something I said, “Don’t you ever touch me again or I’ll rape you with a broomstick like they did to Dahmer you stupid ****.”

Believe it or not but I got sent to the principal’s office.

“What is wrong with you, son?” Principal Hedgewood demanded. He was a short fat ole dude who always wore a big ass cowboy hat. He was the Texas type who always called you ’son’ or ’boy’.

“What you talkin’ ’bout, Principal Hedgewood?” I asked, doing a pretty good Gary Coleman impersonation.

“I think you know darn well what I’m talking about, sonny boy.”

“Yeah, maybe I do. So what? What are ya gonna do, suspend me? Well go on ahead and do it. I don’t give a ****,” I told my principal.

“Oh, you’re not suspended. Try expelled.”

“Oh woopie-doo.”

“And Mrs. Clark is pressing charges against you.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You’re going to jail, buster. And I’m glad of it, if ya wanna know the truth. Maybe something will finally set you straight.”

“Oh **** you, Hedgewood.”

Chapter Four

I was really starting to lose it. I was in the corner of the jail house cell. I had my very own cell to myself, but I was still hating it. It was so goddamn boring. I was in a jail with grown men. I could hear them in their own cages around me. Rats in their own cages. Vermin. Tyrants. Most of them drunk. I could smell their alcoholic reeking breaths from here. This place was down right disgusting. I could smell **** and even more ****. Lots of people taking shits. Lots of toilets clogging up. The goddamn odor was repulsive.

It really sucked being dragged off school premises in tight steel handcuffs by the Insomnia Police. Everybody in the hallways pointed and laughed at me. Whispers of disgust. Perhaps one day I shall kill them for it. Those bastards.

I still don’t get why they called the damn cops on me. I didn’t really do anything wrong. Well, yeah, I guess I threatened Lynette and all, but she was being a real ***** and she deserved some talking back to. Maybe if I say that to the judge tomorrow he’ll let me go. But I cant go to juvie for this, can I? Surely not. I don’t think so. This whole thing is bullshit anyways.

I didn’t expect my parents to come visit me and I was right, as always. My mother probably wanted to, but ******* Ben most likely said, “No, Mary, let the ******* little brat rot where he belongs.”

God, one day I’ll kill him.

Maybe he’ll become my first victim when I’m the world’s most famous serial killer. Just maybe.

I was going mad with boredom. So…I decided to have a little bit of fun. As Alex DeLarge said, ‘time for some of the ole ultra-violence!’

“Help! Oh my gawd somebody please help me! Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I was running into the cement walls. Jumping into them. Head butting them.

Finally, a fat black guard rushed up to my cell. “Hey, boy. Calm down, now. What’s wrong?”

“He’s killing me! Says he’ll eat my soul! He’s ripping my insides apart!”

The guard opened the cell door and rushed toward me.

“Who? Who are you talking about?” he asked.

I stopped in my tracks and smiled. “Stupid pig,” I muttered.

Then I took my right foot and kicked the guard’s front knee cap with all my might. It snapped in half instantly. As he fell to his back I leaped on top of him and started pounding my fists into his fat ass face. All the while I was screaming like a savaged beast.

It was my war cry, I guess.

I heard the other inmates shouting and begging for me to set them free. Yeah, like I’d ever help those degenerate scumbags. **** them.

A couple seconds later another cop knocked me out with a billy club.

My parents never came to pick me up after I was released, so they wouldn’t let me go until somebody came and got me. I got a hold of my brother and he picked me up. I got in the shotgun seat when he finally showed up and we drove off.

“Thanks man,” I said.

“No problem,” Conner said.

“Hey, man, you gotta cigarette?” I asked him.

“Yeah, here.”

“Thanks.” I lit it up and said, “Where’s Zoe?”

“At home,” Conner answered. “So, what’d you get sentenced, you little jail bird?”

“Well, since I’m a minor I only got probation. And I have to go to therapy every Saturday.”

“Therapy?”

“Yep.”

“What da ****? Mom and Dad cant afford no ****** therapy.”

“Pretty sure its free.”

“Oh. What you need therapy for, anyways?”

“I dunno. I guess some people think I’m a psycho or something.”

“Yeah, you are pretty ****** crazy sometimes, bro.”

“Thank you.”

Conner dropped me off at my house.

“Time to face the music, bro,” he said.

“Yep…guess so,” I muttered.

When I went in the house I saw Ben sitting on the sofa with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. He was a tall guy, very muscular. Bald head and a thick black mustache. Any guy with just a mustache is bound to be an *******, you know. He always wore blue coveralls. Goddamn ****** hillbilly.

“Hey there, criminal,” Ben said.

“Hey,” I said. I was searching the around the house with my blue eagle like eyes for my Mother but couldn’t find her. “Where’s Mom?”

“None of your damn business, boy.”

“Alright then. I’m going to my room.”

“Like hell you are. Get over here right now.”

I reluctantly sat down next to Ben on the sofa. God, he smelt worst than all of those inmates combined together. He reeked of filth and liquor.

“What?” I asked.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Don’t you know better than to go to the pen? You know I went there before, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s either beat the **** out of the toughest ************ there on your first day in, or become someone’s *****. And you look like a little ***** so I’ll bet you’ll be the *****. Or can you fight? Huh, can you?”

I ignored him. Well, at least I tried to.

“C’mon, boy, you fight?” Ben grabbed a hold of my neck and started shaking my head. Then he punched me in my nose. Blood began to gush out. I got pissed, so I elbowed Ben in the mouth and ran out the door.

At first I couldn’t think of where to go but then I remembered the Fort. Maybe I had caught another stray dog? Or possible a deer? Oh wouldn’t that be just great! But, boy, was I wrong.

When I arrived at the Fort discovered something way bigger than a goddamn German Shepherd. A Hunter. That’s right, folks, a goddamn Hunter. A human being! He was alive, too! A big ole lumber jack kind of dude wearing all camouflage clothes. He had a giant ass Paul Bunion type of beard. Laying next to him was a camouflage colored rifle with a scope connected to the top.

“Hey there!” I said aloud.

The Hunter snapped out of his sleep and looked at me. There were tears in his eyes. What a poor, pathetic little man.

“Oh thank God! Man, I hope this isn’t another dream! Please help me, stranger! My leg is stuck in this god forsaken trap. I’ve been out here for over a day! I’m so hungry and thirsty. Please, it hurts so bad!”

“What were you doen all the way out here?” I asked him.

“What the hell it look like? I was hunting! Now help me!”

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it.

“What?” the Hunter cried. “What’s so goddamn funny?”

“Well, you’re a hunter, right? And you don’t know how to set yourself loose from a simple contraption such as the bear trap? It’s in every hunter’s handbook. I mean, c’mon, man.”

“I don’t hunt bear! Now help me!”

“Fine, fine. Sorry, its just pretty funny.”

I bent down and set him free. I had to dig my fingers into his bloody deformed leg to do it, though. He screamed in agonizing pain.

“Cool it, man. Stop being such a baby,” I laughed.

“I’d like to see your leg stuck in one of those goddamn things. Now, you gotta help me get the hell outta here. Whoever set that trap is one sick son of a *****. I mean, just look at what he did to that ****** dog!”

The Hunter pointed at the German Shepherd hanging from the tree. Still dead. Still hanging. Still rotting.

“You think this person is sick?” I asked the Hunter.

“Yeah, a real ****** psycho. Now, we gotta get outta here. Right now!”

I picked up the rifle and admired it. “This is a really cool gun. Brilliant, man. Can I have it?”

“What? No. Give it to me.”

“Fine. Then I’ll keep it. What are ya gonna do about it?”

“Well, I’m a grown up and you’re a snotty little kid for one thing,” the Hunter said.

“Yeah? Well, I’m also the sick son of a ***** psycho who set the bear trap and killed that poor doggie. Now, you wanna play a game or what?”

“Huh? What are you talkin about? You did this? Yeah ******* right! This is unreal. This is just another one of those dreams. Any minute I’ll just wake up!”

I pointed the rifle at the Hunter. “This is no dream, bub.” Man, I felt like such a redneck saying ‘bub’.

“What do you want from me?”

“Look at your pathetic self. You pissed your pants!”

“What do you want from me!”

God, this power felt so good.

“I wanna play a game.” Now I felt like I was Jigsaw. You know, from the Saw films.

“What game? What ******* game?!?!”

“Its called Hunter vs. Hunter,” I said. “I give you this gun here and you hunt me. And I hunt you. Okay?”

The Hunter stared at me with his tear filed eyes. “Fine. Whatever.” He got on his good foot. You know, the one that wasn’t deformed.

“Alright then. Lets the games begin!”

I tossed the rifle over the Hunter’s head. As soon as he turned around I dived into the hidden door of my underground Fort. As silent as a mouse I got my hunting knife out of my Treasure Chest. I snuck back up to the door and watched the Hunter. He was limping around in circles, looking for me. Good. He hadn’t spotted me, yet.

“Where are ya? Huh? Where the **** didja go? Where are you, ya little freak? Where’d you disappear to?”

Stupid! What a moron! The first rule in hunting is to not make a sound. Idiot!

I couldn’t believe it, though. I had a chance for my very first human kill. I had waited all my life for this very moment. This was it! My big moment. My time to shine.

It was time to start a legend.

I waited till the Hunter was standing right next to me. Then I took my giant hunting knife and slit his arteries tendon. The Hunter squealed in surprise and then fell to the dirt floor. I climbed out of the Fort and jumped on the Hunter’s back. I grabbed his hair and yanked his head up. I whispered into his ear;

“How does it feel, Hunter? How does it feel to be on the other side? To be the one unarmed? To be the without a fighting chance. Are you in pain, Hunter? Have you given up all hope yet? Have you accepted that you’re gonna die? Have you prayed and made good with whatever pathetic god you worship? Have you been a good little hunter? Have you washed away you sins? Are you ready to die, Hunter? I sure hope you are because I’m sure as hell ready to kill. You should be happy, though. You’re gonna be famous! Isn’t that what every American imbecile wants in life? To be famous? Well, congratulations, Hunter. You’re famous. You’re the Great Xander Ramone’s very first victim!”

I slit his worthless throat and watched the blood pour out like a waterfall. I carved a great big giant X into his forehead. It would be my signature for now on.

A legend was born.

Chapter Five

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

“Why aren’t you saying anything to me, Xander? You know I hate it when you’re silent like this. I’m going to have to report you to Judge Claymore if you don’t start talking,” Dr. Gilmore said to me.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked. I was sitting across from him in some kind of really comfortable red leather arm chair. Dr. Gilmore was a short fat man with gray hair glasses. Looked like a goddamn Harvard professor or something.

“Well,” Dr. Gilmore began, “you start school again on Monday. How do you feel about that?”

“How do you think I feel, doc?”

“That’s what I’m asking you, Xander.”

“Is it?”

“Is what, what?” Dr. Gilmore asked.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No I don’t. What?”

“What are you asking me, doc?”

“I’m asking you what you said.”

“Oh, I think you know, doc.”

“No I don’t! Tell me!”

I burst out laughing. Man, this dude was an idiot. Too easy. That’s how all our sessions have been like for the past eight months. I don’t think we’ve made any progress yet. That ******* dolt.

I’ve been quite busy while you went on that little piss break, in case you haven’t noticed. It had been eight months since my first victim. Now my body count is a total of thirty-five. Thirty-five! Isn’t that great? Thirty-five kills in eight months, and I have a whole lot left to kill, too.

I’m only fifteen, you know.

The newspaper headlines have gave me a nickname already. I like it a lot. They call me the Midwest Maniac. That name is so cool, huh? I think it is.

My trademark is the X carved into my victims’ foreheads. Can you guess what the X stands for? Well if you’re too stupid to figure it out, it stands for Xander. Pretty simple when you think about it, huh? Makes you feel like a ****** idiot, right?

All of my victims have been slaughtered with a blade. I had wasted all the bullets for the Hunter’s rifle trying to shoot soup cans and beer bottles.

You know, target practice.

Well, tonight was another night for the now infamous Midwest Maniac to rest his hunger. It was time to make somebody a star!

I hid in the shadows by a bar called Leroy’s. I was wearing all black, that included a ski mask pulled across my face and black gloves. Cant leave any finger prints, now can I? Don’t want to get caught. Well, not yet, at least. I grasped the murderous hunting knife in my right hand, hidden behind my back. I didn’t want some kind of light to reflect off the damn blade, now did I?

Didn’t want to give away my presence. Not yet.

Finally the front doors of Leroy’s burst wide open. A muscular man--probably a bouncer or something--dragged out some woman by her long blonde hair and tossed her on the cement parking lot.

“This time you stay out! I don’t want no ******* whores in my bar! Nobody wants to buy your **** anyways! Now just stay the **** out!” the bouncer screamed. The prostitute just laid on the ground, crying her eyes out. Soon the bouncer went back into the bar. A few minutes later the ***** stumbled to her high heels and began walking forward.

I bum rushed her and drove the hunting knife into her spine.

I then twisted the blade inside her body.

Sure she screamed. But nobody did anything. Everybody who lived in this particular part of Kentucky were used to the drunks around Leroy’s. And they certainly didn’t give a rat’s ass about some ******* *****.

After she fell I slit her throat and the let the blood drain. Then I carved that most beautiful of beautiful X in the *****’s forehead.

God, it felt so good!

After I licked the blood off the blade I got on the bus. After all, it was a long ways back to Insomnia, Indiana.

Chapter Six

The next day I started school again. I wont bore you with all the stupid ass details, though. School was school. A ******* waste of time for me. The whole week dragged on. All of it so ******* boring. Boring, boring, boring. Hey, kid, what you learning? Nothing! Its all too boring!

Well, anyways, one night me and my mom were watching Reno 911 on television when Ben came stumbling in from the bar. Drunker than usual. The first thing he did was go to the kitchen and grab a beer out of the fridge.

He then walked straight up to me and said, “You’re in my seat, boy.” He then grabbed me by my shirt collar and tossed me off the couch. I made a little girlish scream and I tumbled to the carpet.

“Ow, you bastard. That hurt,” I said, and immediately put my hand to my mouth. Had I really just said that? Was it possible that I was growing a better backbone against Ben, the drunken *******?

“What the **** you say to me?” Ben said, getting up from the couch.

“Umm…uh…uh…umm…” I mumbled. Man, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not one thing except for umm and uh. Come on, damn it! Get braver! You’re the goddamn Midwest Maniac and you cant stand up to your ogre of a father? What the **** is wrong with me?

Am I insane? Well, of course I am. Just read the goddamn newspapers. I’m already a legend. They already consider me to be one of the greats. They say I’m loonier than the looniest. I’m ******* crazy, is what they say. And if you’re wondering who ‘they’ are, the only answer I can give you is ‘they’. Isn’t that good enough?

“Well, boy, you gonna answer me? What didja say?” Ben asked me, again.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Benny. I didn’t know you had a hearing impairment problem. Please, let me tell you again. I said, ‘ow, you bastard. That hurt’.”

Man, that felt good!

Ben swung at me and succeeded in pounding his fist into my beautiful, monstrous face.

Suddenly, my mom jumped up from a chair and grabbed Ben’s left shoulder. “Enough!” she screamed. “I have had it! You leave him alone right this minute--”

Ben pushed her off him and Mom went flying in mid air. Her head landed on the corner of the coffee table. There was no mistaking the sound I heard then. The sound I heard on so many movies, and even on some of my very own victims. The sound was undeniable. The sound of a neck snapping.

I knew Mom was dead as soon as she collided with the coffee table, so when Ben went over to check on her I ran to my bedroom. Since all of my knives were still at my Fort, I grabbed the ole Louisville Slugger in my bedroom and came storming back into the living room. Which was now a crime scene, by the way,

“You killed her,” I whispered.

Ben jumped up and stared at me. He eyed the baseball bat in my hands.

“Look here, son,” he said, “I didn’t ******* kill anyone, okay? She fell, alright? That’s what you’ll tell the cops, too, okay? Remember, she fell.”

“You killed her,” I repeated. “The only human being on this whole goddamn Earth that I actually ever loved and you went and killed her, you ******* bastard. You killed her!”

“Yeah, ya know what? Who gives a ****? So what if I killed her? What’re you gonna do about it? Huh, you little *****? You cant even ******* fight! You’re nothing but a goddamn accident. A waste of sperm. And your dear mother? The one that you hold so ******* grand? Yeah, well, she was a ****.”

I swung the Louisville Slugger and broke his knee cap. Then I broke his nose. He passed out.

I duct taped him to the floor. Including his mouth. Used the whole roll of it.

When Ben woke up he tried to squirm, but he was bound way too tight. What can I say, I was good at what I did. I was an artist.

“Hello, Ben,” I said. I was standing above his head, staring into his cowardly eyes. “How you feeling, daddy-o? You hurting? Well don’t worry about that. You’ll be in much more pain in just a tad. You know how you used to beat me and Mom? Well, I’m finally gonna get our revenge. You’ve heard of the serial killer called the Midwest Maniac, correct? Well, of course you do. Who the hell in the Midwest hasn’t? Well, guess what, Benny-o-boy? I’m him. A little young, right? Too much of a *****, right? But I’m him! The infamous Midwest Maniac! I guessed you’ve raised me right, huh? You good for nothing bastard. I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer and die, you *******. Ready? Its gonna hurt. Okay, here we go!”

At my next therapist session I brought a book bag with me, which was a little unusual for me. Dr. Gilmore kept asking me what was inside the bag, but I wouldn’t answer him.

Man, it was too much fun ******* with your therapist. You should definitely try it sometime. Just make up random disturbing **** until you seriously start to freak them out. I see dead people. My neighbor’s dog is telling me to kill. My pets’ heads keep falling off. Ha, ha…jolly good fun if I don’t say so myself.

“Xander, please tell me what’s in your book bag,” Dr. Gilmore said.

“A human head,” I replied.

“Tell me the truth right now!”

“Why do you assume I’m not telling the truth right now? You know what my mom used to say about assuming? When you assume you make an ass out of you and me. You ever hear that saying before?”

“Tell me what’s in the bag, Xander.”

“How ‘bout if I just show you, doc?”

I unzipped the book bag and pulled out Ben’s severed head. There was a giant hole on the top of his head. I tossed the head on the table.

Before Dr. Gilmore could reach his hand to the phone I threw a knife at his throat.

As he bled to death I said to him, “Well, Ben, Dr. Gilmore. Dr. Gilmore, Ben. My pop. Nice for you guys to have finally met. And by the way, in case you’re wondering why there’s a hole in his head its because I ate his brains. Cooked them up with a skillet.

“Looks like all this therapy is really working, huh?”

I carved a X into his head. The Midwest Maniac was on the run. At last, huh?

And just for the hell of it I wrote in the good doctor’s blood the following message:

BULLETS FOR BRAINS

X

Chapter Seven

What’s small, yellow, and hates to be tortured?

The Asian boy in the trunk of my car.

Just kidding. I don’t really have an Asian boy in the trunk of my car. Just joking with you boy-o. Only a little bit of humor.

Well, after about a year I’m back in good ole Insomnia. You’re probably thinking wont I be recognized? Wont people see me and remember this face from America’s Most Wanted? Hopefully they don’t. I have a little bit of a disguise going on right now. I dyed my black hair blonde. Kind of like Pony Boy in The Outsiders. I’m wearing the typical teenager clothes that they wear now a days. The red dragon Hawaiian like tee-shirt. The blue jeans that go halfway pass your ass and with the holes at the knees. In reality, I really hate that type of crap, but I have to blend in with the crowd. Cant cause any attention to myself.

I’m also have on some black sunglasses which I’m actually quite fond of.

Sunglasses, though, they always remind me of those sheep celebrities. They spend all their pitiful lives trying to be number one. Trying to rise to the top. To be a rock star. To be a porn star. To be a movie star. People selling their bodies. Basically, a goddamn prostitute.

So, they spend their whole life trying to be famous and then when they finally reach this worthless task they hide their shameful faces with huge black sunglasses.

I just don’t see the point in all that. Isn’t that what they wanted in the first place?

I’ll get off this stupid debate and get back to being in Insomnia now.

I was back in town and inside my brother’s house. He wasn’t home yet. The back door was unlocked so I just made myself home. I figured the FBI or whatever was watching my brother, but its been like a year since they found out The Midwest Maniac’s identity. They probably backed off now.

Right?

Man, I haven’t seen Conner in like a year and a half. Its been awhile, that’s for sure.

I was sitting on some sofa, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette when Conner and Zoe walked through the front door. He was carrying grocery bags and she was holding my six month old niece, Lilly.

They both jumped and their hearts nearly leaped out of their chests when they saw me. Conner dropped the bags and grabbed a hammer that was laying on some dresser. “Hey, man,” he said. “What the **** are ya doen in here? I’ll beat the **** outta you, man.”

“You’d beat the **** outta your own brother? And I thought I knew you,” I said, and smiled.

“Xander?” Conner mumbled.

“In the flesh.”

“Wh--what are you doen here?”

“Came to see my baby niece.”

“Holy ****. Xander,” Zoe said.

“Holy **** to you, too. So, how is everybody?”

“Zoe, go to your room. Right now.”

Without a word Zoe took Lilly to their bedroom.

Conner approached me. I thought he was going to give me a hug or something, but instead he threw me off of the sofa. Making my cigarette and beer go flying against the wall.

“Hey, man, what the ****? You made me spill my beer!”

Conner grabbed me the shirt collar and punched me in the nose a couple times. What the hell was his problem? He was my brother. Why was he hitting me?

“ ****** stop it, man. Stop!”

“Just tell me why, Xander! Why the **** didja have to kill Mom? What the **** is a matter with you, huh? Just tell me!”

“Kill Ma? What? I didn’t kill her, Conner. Dad did. So I killed Dad.”

Conner stopped pounding on me and stared into my eyes. “What?”

“Mom and Dad were fighting, and he pushed her into the coffee table. He broke her neck, Conner. So I killed him. I chopped off his piece of **** head, too.”

“The newspapers said differently.”

“Since when the hell do you believe this corrupt media?”

Conner let me go and sat down on the couch. I sat down next to him, with blood smearing down my face.

“I’ve missed you, bro,” I told him.

“I did, too, man,” Conner said.

“Do you mind if I see Lily? If I hold her?”

“No, I’ll go get her.”

Conner went into the bedroom and I heard yelling. Stuff like ’I don’t want that freak holding my child’ and ’why don’t we just call the police?’

When Conner came back in the living room without Lily or Zoe he opened his mouth to say something but I said something before he could. “Don’t even bother. I heard her.”

I could feel tears starting to swell up in my eyeballs. What the hell? Zoe was basically a sister to me. Why was she acting like this? I love her. I thought she did, too. We used to get along so well.

I just wanted to see my damn niece.

“You want another beer?” he asked me.

“Got anything harder?”

“Umm…yeah, I got some Jackie Dee.”

“I’ll have some of that.”

“Alright.”

Conner brought over two shot glasses and a big bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He filled both glasses up to the brim and we cheered it up and took the shot and made that damn whisky shot that everybody always makes.

But that wasn’t enough.

I took the bottle and sucked on the top. Drinking about five shots worth of whisky. I slammed the bottle on the coffee table and belched a mighty loud one.

“Can you do me a favor, Xander?” Conner asked, abruptly.

“What?”

“Please stop killing people.”

“Why?”

“You’re killing innocent people, Xander. I’d understand if they were child molesters or something, but they’re not.”

“How do you know they aren’t? What makes you get to say who’s innocent and who’s guilty, huh? Nobody is innocent, Conner. Everybody has their sins. This world is full of filth. Vermin. People who jack off on the covers of porno movies in the adult section of Family Dollar. People who take little kids in hopes of candy and bikes and take them to a basement and make a puppet out of them. Junkies who suck dick for their next spoon full of meth. Babies getting shot down by drive bys. Niggers killing niggers for six ******* dollars. This world is ****, Conner. It’s full of many kinds of creatures of the night. I’m just cleaning house.”

“Who appointed you to do this? Who made you Mr. Killer? What gives you the right to slaughter these people?” Conner asked me.

I drank another quarter of the Jack Daniel’s bottle and looked at my brother. My skin was already feeling hot. Sweating profusely. Eyes bloodshot.

I asked my brother this question;

“If I don’t do it, who will?”

Chapter Eight

In the United Kingdom the term ’pissed’ means to be drunk. To be hammered. English people talk a lot more differently than us Americans, if you haven’t noticed. People always say how they talk weird and stuff. How they have accents. Well, let me tell you a little something, they don’t have any damn accents. Us Americans do. Us greedy Americans are really suppose to talk like those strange English men. We’re the lazy ones with all this slang.

Well, anyways, I was really pissed. I was ******* drunk out of my mind.

I left Conner’s house and began stumbling down the streets of Insomnia. Everything blurry. My head so light. I’m surprised I didn’t walk in front of traffic or anything. That would suck. Serial Killer Midwest Maniac Was Killed Today Due To Being Run Over By An Automobile.

Wouldn’t that just down right suck?

I always wondered how I would want to die when the time finally came. I think about the most painful way to go. I would think burning alive would be very excruciating. Or being eaten alive. One body part at a time. Munch, munch, munch, munch. Yum, yum, yum. Very good, may I have seconds?

I would like to go out in some style. A giant gun battle. Bullets whizzing by your face in all slow motion like.

Or maybe like Thelma and Louise. Drive my goddamn car into the Grand Canyon. I wonder what they thought the last few seconds before they hit the bottom.

I don’t know exactly how I would want to die. I’d want it to surprise me.

Well, I guess I now do know how I’m going to die. In a goddamn hotel room with two naked hostages and every cop in the country surrounding me.

I stumbled into some random building on accident. I walked up to the front desk.

The lady standing there had short blonde hair and green eyes. She was pretty attractive.

“Umm…can I help you sir?”

“The sheep goes moo,” I said.

“What?”

“The goddamn Pringles. They were just here a minute ago. Where the hell are they?”

“Sir, I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Where are my Easter Eggs? Huh? I painted them orange and red and blue. Spent all day doen it. Where the **** are they?”

“I…umm…do I know you? You look very familiar,” the lady said.

“Do you know Sam? He’s telling me to kill people.”

“No, really, you do.”

Oh, ****. She recognized my face. I knew this disguise wasn’t good enough. ****, I would have to kill her. I was getting to unbutton my shirt, reach into my harness like holster, and pull out one of my customized golden .45s, when I thought I actually recognized her face.

“Where da hell am I?” I asked her.

“You are at a veterinarian’s office.”

Holy ****. No ******* way.

“Rita?”

“Yeah, that’s me. But who are you?”

“Remember me? I’m Xan--Patrick Bateman.”

How did she know who I was, though? My own brother couldn’t even recognize me and the only time this lady had ever seen me was when she was ****** up on Ecstasy. And that was a couple years back, too

I could tell that Rita was no junkie anymore. She was clean. She was very pretty.

“I cant remember that name but your face is so familiar,” Rita spoke aloud.

Then I saw her glance to her left at a poster and her jaw dropped. The picture was of the Midwest Maniac’s face. My face.

Of course Rita didn’t remember me. She was really high at the time. But she did remember me off of a Wanted Poster.

I leaped over the desk and tackled her to the ground. I put my hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream. My shirt was ripped open due to me tearing at it when I pulled out a .45. I sunk the muzzle in Rita’s temple.

“You don’t remember me, Rita o dear? Well, I remember you, you little ******* junkie. I remember making out with you before. A couple years back, in the back of Zoe Anchrodge’s car? Refresh your memory? Huh, you little stoned *****? You’re gonna die today, Rita Lindsay. I hope you know that. By the way, my name isn’t Patrick Bateman, you stupid *****. Its Xander Ramone. Aka the Midwest Maniac.”

I pulled the trigger and a thing called death occurred.

Let me the story of how I got my two golden .45s.

It was about ten months back.

I was exiting a gas station when some dude in a red bandana approached me. He was a Mexican named something I cant pronounce. He was wearing a white tank top and blue jean shorts. Had some tattoos on his arms that looked so stupid. ‘Ey, vato, he said to me. I said what? What do you want? He looked around and then asked me if I wanted to get high. Said he could hook me up big time, yo. I asked what he had and he said you just name it, ese. Just ******* name it and I got it. I asked him what did he have exactly. He told me some heroin, some cocaine, some expensive ass Jericho, so weed, some speed, some meth, some dust, some ecstasy. He also said he could hook me up with some ass if I wanted it. I asked how much. He told me oral was ten and ******* was thirty. I asked was she hot? He said yeah, vato, the finest of the finest. I asked what color was she? He said he had a white chick and a Mexican chick and a black chick. I asked him how fine was the white chick. ******* smoking, he said. I said, ****, what don’t you have. He said he didn’t have Playstation 3, but he wanted one. I said, okay, whatever, I’ll take the white chick. He asked what I wanted. I said I was paying thirty. He said okay then, homes, just follow me.

About five minutes later we got to his ‘crib’. A run down bungalow. He invited me inside and he said just to wait a minute. He came back with a skinny white girl with long brunette hair. Blue eyelash makeup and bright red lipstick. Maybe fifteen at the most. She was wearing a white tee-shirt and blue Daisy Duke type of shorts. I’ve never done it before and I wanted it to be done with. But when I saw the woeful look on her face I knew I just couldn’t go through with it. Wasn’t no way I could. She looked like she didn’t want to be there. And then I saw her ankle. There was a round red mark around it. Like something used to be wrapped around it. Possible a chain? What the ****? Were these girls slaves? I’ve heard about the sex slave business before but I kind of always thought it was fake. Just fictional. Some urban legend parents tell their daughters so they don’t go down to parties and clubs dressed like some skank.

I said to the Mexican I changed my mind about the girl. How about if I just get some Jericho instead? He said are you sure, vato? I said yeah, man. He said it was really pricy. I said I don’t care. I have lots of money. He said alright then. Just let me go lock this ***** back up. I said okay, man.

I said down on some foldable beach chair that was sitting in the living room and waited for him to get back. When he did he asked how much did I want.

Pocket sized bottle I said. It was the cheapest kind after all. He said alright man that’s a hundred and seventy bucks. Before I brought the money out of my pocket I motioned to his front trousers. I could see two golden handles of guns sticking out. I asked him what those were for. He pulled them both out and said they were for killing, vato. I asked for killing who? He told me for killing the little puta who tries to cheat me, that’s who.

And then before the Mexican could even process a thought I jumped in mid air and kicked the guns out of his hands. I grabbed them and pulled back the hammer. I pointed it at him and asked if this was the way he wanted to die.

He was too stunned to speak, though.

So I said I hope it was and shot him two times in the skull.

I found lots and lots of ammo around the bungalow. I found a key and went down to the basement and set the sex slaves free. They wanted to go with me but I said if they did that they would end up dying. I gave them each a hundred bucks and told them to go home to their families.

Before I left I carved a X into the Mexican’s forehead. I stole all the drugs and sold them. I made some pretty good money. Some good dead presidents.

Chapter Nine

As I stumbled out of Rita’s veterinarian’s office the sunlight attacked my eyes and made me squint. Even with the sunglasses the bright orange circle in the sky was still really bright. I wonder if its true that if you stare at it too long you will go blind. That’s what my grandpa always says, at least.

Some old lady with a white afro that was walking her poodle approached me and screamed.

Before I go any further let me ask a question. A question that has been asked since the Egyptian days and still has not been answered. Why does every old lady in the world have a goddamn afro? I just don’t get it. Do they think its cool and hip or something? Do they think it makes them look younger? Maybe its like a old lady’s curse or something. Like if they shave it off it’ll just grow back within seconds. Kind of like that Kristine Dunts in that Interview With a Vampire movie. No matter how times she would cut it off, it’ll just like reappear with seconds. Some kind of curse.

I don’t know. I guess no one will ever really get the true answer on the issue of old ladies and their stupid afros.

Well, anyways, this old lady with her gray afro and little poodle dog took one look at me and started screaming like she was the fat lady in an opera. At first I was a little dazed and confused on why she was screaming, but then I realized that was shirt was ripped open and I had my two golden .45s in my hands.

Before she could say cry anything else I shot her in the heart and then punted the yapping poodle into oncoming traffic. Blood splattered on my face. Cool. Now I’m hungry. Ha, ha, ha.

I ran behind Rita’s veterinarian’s office and pointed the .45s at some short guy getting out of a Ford Explorer. I told him to give me his goddamn car keys and when he did I pistol whipped him to the ground and stuffed the muzzle into his mouth. I thanked him for the ride but apologized that I didn’t have time to put a X into his head. Then I pulled the trigger of the .45 and the back of his mouth shot out onto the concrete.

I got in the Ford Explorer and sped away. I could already hear sirens in the distance.

At first I didn’t know where to go. Couldn’t think of any place at all. But then I remembered my Fort. I drove the Ford into some swamp and walked the long walk to the Fort. My drunkenness was starting to drift away.

I wondered if anybody has every discovered my Fort. Were cops and FBI agents watching it. Keep a surveillance on it.

Was I just walking straight into some trap set out for me? A trap just like the bear trap I have? I wonder if I ever caught anything else. What if I caught another Hunter a year back and now he’s nothing but a fleshless skeleton with his jaw bone wide open in shock?

The Fort was just how I left it some years ago. The bear trap was sprung close but nothing was in it. Damn.

I found my half empty bottle of Tequila in my Treasure Chest and a smile formed across my face. Just what I needed. I began drinking it while I started reading my favorite book in the world; the Catcher in the Rye.

A lot of the psychopaths in the world love this book. I love this book, but I cant understand how it would make you kill. Well, I guess it kind of pissed me off at humans even more after I finished the book. Holden was right, they’re all just a bunch of goddamn phonies. Just a bunch of fakers.

The pages of the Catcher in the Rye were really damp and the smell of the mold was giving me a headache. I finished the rest of the bottle of Tequila and broke it against my Treasure Chest,

Where the **** did Zoe have the nerve to tell me I’m not aloud to see my goddamn niece? She was my family, too, you know. I just wanted to cradle her in my arms is all. Just rock her a little bit. I came all the way back to Insomnia just to see Lily in the first place.

As my pissed thoughts streamed through my mind I felt the tip of a needle inject into my jugular. Impossible. Nobody can sneak up on me like that. My eyelids felt heavy and I passed out.

Memories of my childhood strolled by for a walk. It said hi and went on by. I awoke and I realized I was ties up with rope to some chair. I opened up my eyes and saw a girl that was about my age standing in front of me. She had long pink hair that went all the way down to her ass. She was tall and had a good body. She had bright blue eyes, just like mine. She was wearing a pink tank top and pink jeans.

Standing behind her were two guys about my age, too. One was short and very muscular. He had a crew cut and was wearing a gray tee-shirt and jeans.

The other guy was tall and scrawny. Short brown hair and glasses.

“Hello, Xander,” the girl said. “We’ve been watching you for quite some time now. Watching your every move. Watching you kill random people and that lady in the vet’s office. Watching for a couple months now.”

“Who the **** are you?” I asked.

“Well, Xander, you can call me Kandy Kane. With two ks instead of cs.”

“Well…Kandy Kane with two ks instead of cs, what do you want? You want to turn me in for the reward? Fine, go ahead and do it. You wanna kill me? Fine, I don’t give a ****, go ahead and do it. I’m sick of this life anyways. Come on, girl, put a gun to my head and pull the damn trigger already. Come on!”

Kandy Kane grabbed one of my customized golden .45s and stabbed the muzzle into my cheek. “What, you mean like this? You really want me to end your life? Okay if I use your own gun? The gun that you took from some Mexican drug dealing pimp you killed? Huh? How would you like to die right this very second? How would you like the tale of the Midwest Maniac to be over so quickly, just like that? This isn’t even enough material for a novel. Maybe a short film at best. Don’t you want this story to go on? Don’t you want to die with some honor? Huh?”

I looked into her eyes and said, “Girl, I’m beginning to like you.”

She smiled and said, “Good, because I don’t wanna turn you in or kill you.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I have a proposition for you, Xander.”

“What? What kind of proposition?”

“Well, you see, Xander, I’m starting a gang. Not a gang like those goddamn Crips and Bloods either. Just think of it like the Barrow’s Gang. Or John Dillinger. I’m bringing back a old western gang. I’ve been looking for the perfect people to join. I recruited Jep because of his smarts. I got the Raging Bull there because of his muscles. And I want you to be the final piece of this gang because of your psychoness. I know you wont hesitate to take a human life. And that’s just what I need for this gang. By the way, I’ve decided to call it the Outlaws. Kind of plain but it sounds good. Well, what do you say, Xander Samuel Ramone, wanna join?”

Remember what I said about seizing the day?

“Yeah, what the hell.”

Jep was a nerdy ass son of a *****, let me tell you. Jep was short for Jeopardy, in case you didn’t get it. He was always asking you some stupid trivia question that no one except maybe Bill goddamn Gates knew the answer of. And riddles, too. Oh my God they could get annoying.

The Raging Bull barely ever said a word. He was the quiet type. Always listening and never talking. But he was a strong ************, though. He could probably lift a car. I’m not exaggerating or anything, too.

Kandy Kane was really hot. She kind of thought just like me, too. Sick of all this stupid human behavior. Sick of all these worthless technology coming out. Making you wanna puke. She was just like me. Which made me like her even more.

They said I had to have a nickname. They said none of us should have our birth names. Our old lives were long dead and rotting a sewer system somewhere down the road.

Alex was Jep. Donnie was the Raging Bull. Sheri was Kandy Kane. Xander was the Maniac.

We lived in this old abandoned Coca Cola factory just outside Insomnia. One night as me and Jep were sitting around, drinking warm cans of Coke, and the Raging Bull was doing sit ups and Kandy Kane was asleep Jep asked me a riddle.

“What comes alive, grows, dyes, represents, falls, and does it all over again?”

“Dude, how the **** should I know?” I asked him.

“It’s a easy riddle, Maniac. Just think about it.”

“Whatever,” I said.

I was thinking about the past couple weeks. Was it actually possible that I’ve found people that don’t consider me a freak of nature? People that want to be my friends? Well, I guess I didn’t find anybody. The Outlaws found me.

“How do you do that?” Jep asked me.

I was dancing a quarter along my knuckles. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Lots and lots of practice, Jeppy boy,” I told him. And it was, too. I started practicing ever since I read those Dark Tower books. You know, how that gunslinger Roland does it to hypnotize people? I always wondered if I could hypnotize anybody. Brainwash somebody. Be like Charles Manson. That’d be cool. Cool beans, man.

“Man, I wish I knew how to do that,” Jep said.

I flicked the quarter at Jep and said, “Just practice. And when you’re done with that, practice some more. You know what you do when you’re done with that, right?”

“Practice so more?”

“Bingo.”

Just then I saw Kandy Kane making her way down the metal steps.

“Hey, boys,” she said. “What do you all say we get started with planning of our first bank heist?”

We all said alright and sat down at some poker like table.

“So, what bank are we robbing,” I asked.

“Patterson Bank,” Jep said.

“What state is that in?” I asked.

“Indiana.”

“Oh. Never heard of it.”

“Lets get our jobs appointed, shall we?” Kandy Kane said.

“Alright,” I said.

“Jep,” Kandy Kane began, “you are the brains of this operation basically. You control the street lights. The alarms. The whole shebang. You will also be the getaway driver. I already know you are an excellent driver. I’ve seen you take your driver’s ED test at your high school.”

“What will I be driving?” Jep asked.

“A black van that I stole a couple days ago. Its parked outside. I’m surprise you haven’t seen it.”

“Haven’t been outside in awhile,” Jep explained.

“Okay, then,” Kandy Kane said, and turned to me. “Maniac, you will be crowd control. Anyone gets out of hand, you kill them. Anyone tries to be a hero, you pump some lead into their head. Got it?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Good,” said Kandy Kane, “I will be the one that handles the manager. I walk in there, shoot him in the knee cap, and then make him open the vault.” She turned to the Raging Bull. “Bull, you will be holding two duffle bags. When the manager opens up the vault you fill both of the bags to the top and head back to the van. Me and Maniac will follow. It shouldn’t take more than seven minutes.”

Kandy Kane turned back to Jep and said, “Jep, make sure the alarms are off.”

“What about the cameras?” Jep asked.

“No, the cameras stay on. I want them to see us.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Now, I say we all wear black and white suits. And black fedoras. What do you all say?”

“Fine with me, baby,” I said, and winked.

“Yeah, sure,” Jep said.

The Raging Bull shook his head ‘yeah’.

“Fine then. Tomorrow we start some history,” Kandy Kane said.

I walked over to a Coke machine and I surprise to see the Raging Bull following.

I didn’t expect him to say anything, since we had never had a conversation before, but I was wrong.

“It’s no use, man,” The Bull said.

“What’s no use?” I asked.

“Flirting with her. No ****** use.”

“Flirting with who?”

“Ya know who I’m talkin about. Kandy.”

“I wasn’t flirting with her.”

“Yeah you were, man.”

Okay, so maybe I was. But she was hot, man.

“Okay,” I said, “what if I am? So what?”

“I’ve been trying to hit that **** for forever. She ain’t putting out. I think she’s a dyke or something.”

“That so?”

“Yep.”

The Raging Bull walked away.

I was sleeping on some rundown mattress in some old office. Dreaming about the first time I ever killed a man. About the Hunter who got his leg caught in a bear trap. I relive every moment of it over and over. I remember every single detail. The camouflage rifle. Me digging my anxious fingers into his flesh and opening the bear trap. Him pissing his pants and screaming like a little girl.

Its then that I wake up to find Kandy Kane sitting on my stomach. Looking into my eyes.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Good dreams?”

“You could say that.”

“You ready for tomorrow then?”

“Yep.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“You know it.”

We stare at each other’s eyes for a while and then Kandy Kane said, “You know, I didn’t just pick you to be on my gang because of your craziness.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I like you. I’ve been watching you and I find you irresistible.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Its then that she takes off her pink tank top and pink jeans.

The next day the black van pulled up in front of the Patterson Bank.

We were wearing black and white suits and red ties and black fedoras. I had my two customized golden .45s. Jep had a black .45. The Raging Bull had a silver Desert Eagle .50. Kandy Kane had a riot gut full of shells that’ll tear your insides apart with one blow.

Before we got out I kissed Kandy on the mouth. She looked into my eyes and her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Me, Kandy Kane, and the Raging Bull slide the back door open and hop out. We ran in with our guns in the air.

Their was probably about twenty civilians waiting in line and ten bank tellers. A security guard sat in a foldable metallic chair by the front entrance. As we walked in I shot him in the back of the head. Kandy looked at me and said she wanted to have her way with me right that minute.

Everybody in the Patterson Bank screamed in horror.

I raised my .45s in the air and said to everyone to just relax and shut the hell up. This was a robbery. We don’t want to hurt you but if you **** with us I wont hesitate to paint the carpet with your brains. That quieted them up.

Kandy Kane and the Raging Bull quickly found the manager, a fat bald guy.

Kandy told the Bull to shoot the manager in the knee and he did as he was told. The manager shouted in pain but Kandy smashed the barrel of her shotgun into his face.

She told him to shut the hell up or it’ll be the other knee. Now open the goddamn vault. Now.

The manager did as he was told and the Raging Bull quickly filled up the two duffle bags. He ran back to the van, but Kandy didn’t follow. So, I didn’t follow either.

Kandy Kane jumped on front of a desk and began saying that you have just been robbed by the Outlaws. This is only the beginning. This is only a firecracker in an atom bomb. We will be notorious. You are all famous. Remember our faces. We are the Outlaws.

Then she blew the manager’s face off with the shotgun.

It was a quick robbery.

We got away before the police were even aware that the Patterson Band had just been held up.

A sweet victory.

Chapter Ten

Bad news.

Conner was arrested the other day.

Why?

Well, for helping me.

What did he help me with?

I don’t ******* know.

But the feds picked him up and said he helped in my second escape from Insomnia, Indiana. Now today he was being transported to the court house. He would go to prison. Bullshit, huh?

Well, we weren’t gonna let that happen.

As the prisoner transportation van was heading toward a red light the light turned green. So did every other light in the town.

Cars went crashing into each other. Flames appearing. Fire balls shooting across the way. People screaming.

The prisoner transportation van rolling across the road.

You know, in the movies, stunt men get paid fifteen hundred dollars every time they flip a car.

If this was a movie, that prisoner transportation van would have earned a couple thousand dollars. We Outlaws ran up to the van and blew off the back door. Conner and two guards were laying there.

I shot both guards in the head and helped Conner to his feet.

“Xander? Holy ****, man. What da hell happened?”

“We’re helping you. Just relax now, bro,” I said.

“O--okay. My arm is broken, Xander. It hurts.”

“Yeah, I know, just get in the van.”

We got in the black van and sped away into the twilight.

Conner woke up later that night in the Coca Cola factory. His arm was in a sling. Kandy had fixed it up for him. My girl.

He walked out of some abandoned office and into the main room of the factory. Us Outlaws were sitting there at a table, planning another bank robbery.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” I said.

“Hey,” Conner said. “What’s goen on?”

“Planning a bank robbery,” I replied.

“What? Another one? Jesus Christ, Xander, when are you going to stop?”

I took a drag of my cigarette, blew the smoke into the air, and said, “When I’m dead.”

Since Conner was wanted by the FBI now, he couldn’t see his family anymore. It took him a couple weeks to cope with that. It wasn’t nothing a couple hundred Jack and Cokes couldn’t handle, though.

He blamed me for all this misery. I accepted his blame. I didn’t mind. I don’t have a heart, so why would I? He said thanks to me he would never ever get to see his wife or daughter again. I told him I was dearly sorry for his losses, but this game we’re playing was called Life. And in this game you lose. You always lose. No one ever wins. The most you can do is have a little fun until you get the Go Straight To Hell Without Two Hundred Dollars Card.

He told me to get him some more Jack. So I did. Over the months he turned into a stinking alcoholic. When he wasn’t drinking he was passed out on the hard concrete floor. Snoring like some kind of troll or something. He hated me. I didn’t care. Let him hate me. Let him hate my goddamn guts.

Over the months us Outlaws became as notorious as Al ‘Scarface’ Capone. As John Dillinger or David Berkowitz. The Son of Sam.

We were it, baby. We the bee’s knees. We were on the headlines of the newspapers. The topic of conversation everywhere. The security camera footage of our bang robberies were the number one played video on YouTube.

We already had our own attire sold everywhere. Black tee-shirts that said The Outlaws. Hoodies that had each of our prominent faces painted on the front. Hats that had our names printed on it.

Rock and punk bands naming songs after us. A rap group called The Outlawz soon formed.

We were stronger than the government itself.

We were the new leaders of America.

We were a goddamn god.

We were the Outlaws.

One day we blew up a Wal-Mart.

Then the newspapers started calling us terrorists.

But our fans didn’t buy that ****.

They knew what we were all about. We were making a statement. Wal-Mart is one of the most visited stores in the world. And for what? For possessions. For stuff. Goddamn animals. We’re all consumers. We cant live without buying DVDs or a new Game Boy.

Imagine if there was no internet for a day. Everybody would go mad. You know how many people log onto the internet each and every day? More than half the world. Instead of doing something useful like solving world hunger or something, people are downloading illegal child pornography. Imagine if no one could get on it for twenty four straight hours. No porn. No music downloading. No illegal bootleg movies. No porn. No YouTube. No porn. No Yahoo. No MySpace. No porn. No checking on the internet on why there is no internet. There would be riots.

Remember the 1992 Rodney King riots? That would be pure child’s play compared to what would happen.

Now imagine if there was no internet for a week. For a month. For a year. For forever. It would be chaos. It would like going back to the stone ages for some people.

Oh, wouldn’t it just be sweet?

That’s the kind of stuff that I daydream about now. About ending the world. About causing an apocalypse. I love the thought, but I know four people could never do anything mad like that. Not unless we raised an army. An army of monsters.

We’d march to the Washington D.C. and straight on to the White House. Take everybody out. Wipe out a nation of consumerist sheep from outer space.

Oh, wouldn’t it just be sweet?

Just think about it.

Think about all the possibilities.

They’re endless.

Lets start a revolution, shall we?

It’s on my seventeenth birthday that I found my brother dead in the abandoned office of the abandoned Coca Cola factory. Both wrists were slashed to ribbons. Skin pale as a ghost. Eyes wide open. Staring off in some other reality. Empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand.

Tears ran down my cheek.

Was it possible that our faithful monstrosity of a narrator had a heart after all?

Just maybe.

Suicide. My brother committed suicide because of me. I drove my own flesh and blood to kill himself. I’m nothing but a low life piece of ****, huh?

I am. Just go ahead and say it. I wont be mad. Go ahead. I’m nothing but a loser. Trash.

We bury his body behind the Coca Cola factory.

I said a few words about Conner. I broke down crying again. Kandy made it all better, though.

Chapter Eleven

We were getting tired of the same old routine. Wake up, plan a heist, rob a bank, kill somebody. It was all getting a little too boring.

That was when Kandy Kane came up with a new idea.

Me and Jep and the Raging Bull were sitting at the table one day, playing some poker and smoking some cigarettes and drinking some beers. Kandy Kane walked down those metallic stairs and sat on my lap and gave me a little kiss.

She then said, “Alright boys, it’s time to move on to something new and better. Something that pays a lot more.”

“What?” Jep asked.

“The Iverson Hotel and Casino,” Kandy announced.

“A hotel?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“But no one has every in the history of man successfully robbed a casino and got away with it,” Jep stated.

“That’s why we’re gonna be the first,” Kandy smiled.

“You must be out of your ******* mind, Kandy,” Jep said.

“Oh, I escaped that boring ole thing a long time ago.” My words coming out of Kandy Kane’s mouth.

“Do you have a plan or something?” the Raging Bull asked.

“Yep,” Kandy Kane said, “Jep is, of course, the getaway driver. You will also be disarming the alarms and cameras.”

“What about being watched?” Jep asked. “I thought you liked that kind of ****.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love to be watched.” She winked at me. “But we cant have the security seeing us and alarming the whole state.”

“But wont they notice?”

“Yeah, but by the time they do the alarms will be set off. And Maniac will also be up there before they can do anything too drastic. Maniac, you kill them all. We cant take any chances.”

“No problem,” I said.

“Any little **** with a uniform or gun you kill him.”

“No problem,” I said, again.

“Good,” Kandy Kane said. “This robbery will be a little different than our others.”

“Besides that it’s a goddamn casino instead of a bank?” Jep asked.

“Yeah. We wont be entering any vaults or anything.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“A little something they call a counting room. They’re counting at least two hundred million at a time. That’s a lot of ****** money, right? Way more than we’ve ever got before on a heist.”

“You can say that again,” I mumbled.

“Me and the Bull make our way through any guards on the way and into the counting room with three duffle bags. That’s about how much we could probably carry on one trip. As the Bull is filling up the bags I’ll be taking care of the money counters. After he’s done with the money we meet back up with you, Maniac, and head out the front door, where you, Jep, will be parked.”

“And how do you suppose we get rid of the cops that’ll be chasing us?” Jep asked.

“That, Jep, is the best part.”

Kandy walked in the back room and came back with a weapon. A rocket propel grenade launcher. A RPG.

“This, my friends, is a rocket launcher. I have a **** load more of them in the back room. As the piggies chase us we pop open the back door of our van and blow their asses to smithereens, okay?” Kandy Kane said.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“What the **** doesn’t?” the Raging Bull muttered.

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

Instead of saying anything the Raging Bull gave me the bird.

The middle finger.

So I gave him the bird back and said, “Well, **** you, too.”

I have another question for whoever’s listening.

Who invented the middle finger?

Who pissed off somebody so much that they stuck up their middle finger and said ha, now what? You know what that means? Huh? That means **** you, buddy. Oh, yeah. I went that far. I invented something awesome just to prove how ******* pissed off I am at you. What you gonna do now?

And then the other guy probably stuck up his middle toe or something and said that’s what I’m ******* gonna do.

But not that many people can stick up their middle toe, so it didn’t stick.

I don’t know.

That’s my theory, at least.

Chapter Twelve

A week later was the day of the casino robbery. Could we actually be the first ones in history to succeed? Was it possible? Just maybe.

That morning as we got dressed into our black and white suits Kandy came into my room. She was already dressed.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, babe,” I said.

“You ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“That’s good. I’m kind of scared, though,” Kandy muttered.

“Scared? You? That’s a first. It’s okay, baby, nothing will go wrong. I’ll protect you.”

“Xander…”

It was the first time she called me Xander since I woke up tied to a chair some years ago.

“What? What is it?” I was worried now.

“Xander…I’m pregnant.”

“What? How--how do you know?”

“Well, I’ve been late for like three weeks now and last night I snuck out and got one of those home pregnancy test thingies. You know, the sticks you have to pee on? Well, it came up positive.”

My whole world was spinning around in five hundred miles and hour circles. Could this actually be possible? The one thing I never figured I would ever hear just shot into my ears.

I was going to be a father.

Stay calm, folks. The rollercoaster is speeding off the railing. It’s perfectly nature. Just stay calm.

“Umm…umm…it’s mine, right?”

“Of course it is. What do you think of me, some kind of ******* ****?”

“No. No, no. I was just--I’m just a little light headed all of a sudden.”

“It’s okay.”

“What do you want to do about this?”

“Well, I wanna keep it. You don’t have a problem with that, do ya?”

“No, no. Of course not. I’m happy. I’m gonna be a daddy. Is it a boy or a girl?”

“How the **** should I know? You don’t find out for a couple of months and you have to go to a doctor for that.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You still wanna go through with this casino business?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay. You wanna tell the guys or wait until we’re done with the robbery?”

“I think it would be better to just wa