IGX

THRILLER

Zagreb, Croatia. A sudden explosion split the night. Fred didn’t look back. He and his sexually attractive girlfriend, Lilly, sped away in red 1969 Ford Mustang. Little did they know that the Pueblo Cartel had joined forces with the Russian Mob to wipe out Fred’s mother, Sally, who sheltered abused horses on her farm in Kansas. A gunshot shattered the night. Explosive debris fell everywhere. No one was going to get out of this alive. But Fred had a plan.
“Here goes nothing,” he said.
Fred grabbed a spare grenade launcher he’d bought at a garage sale. He fired. Seven cars behind them erupted off the pavement in torrents of blood.
“That’ll teach ‘em,” he muttered.
Lilly was unmoved.
“The hell was that all about,” she said.
Fred looked back at the bloody street. “Salsa and borsht,” he quipped unamusingly.
**************************
Arturo Gomez glared at Constantine Ergorov. “You must take Fred seriously,” he said. “I once saw him cripple seven men with a plastic cocktail spoon in a salad bar. Cripple them.”
“Don’t say cripple,” Constantine replied.
******************************************
Meanwhile, in the Madre de Dios jungle of Peru, a naive young doctor extracted a thorn from the infected paw of a towering reptilian creature who was moaning piteously.
“Dinosaurs are such sissies,” the doctor said.
And that was when the Blackhawk helicopter began its strafing run. The doctor wondered if he’d ever get the ancient serum back to Fresno, California, where his beloved sister lay dying, tragically, of a lack of dinosaur serum.
*********************************
Dale Saptz was ugly and did not look like the most prolific serial killer of the 21st Century. His face was gaunt, but part of it seemed caved in, like a cake that hadn’t completely risen. Dale hated the phrase, “half baked.” He killed people who said, “half baked.” He killed them because the phrase made him angry.
All the others he killed for fun. He killed men and he killed women, but his greatest joy came from killing transexuals. Man to woman. Woman to man. It made no difference to Dale.
“Make up your mind,” he always said before he pulled the trigger.
*********************************
Ritz Palace Penthouse Suite, Sofia,Bulgaria.
Lilly’s face was flushed. Her nostrils flared.
Fred glanced toward the bed.
Nearby, a rocket was pulled erect onto its launch pad. A field of fragrant wildflowers burst into bloom. A speeding train plunged into a tunnel. A geyser spouted.
“Was it good for you too,” Fred asked.
Lilly jabbed the Heckler and Kock Smart Gun into his face.
“I guess not,” Fred muttered.
Lilly’s eyes filled with tears. “Arturo Gomez says ‘Adios’,” she murmured.
The sky burst into flame overhead. An immense fireworks display had commenced. It was New Year’s Eve in Bulgaria.
Lilly pulled the trigger. And pulled. And pulled again.
Fred held up several crushed pieces of Lilly’s shattered Smart Phone.
“That’s the trouble with Smart Guns,” he said, as he flipped open his Titanium Tactical Razor. Its blade glittered with the color of the fireworks outside. Fred knew what he had to do, and he wept.
“Constantine Ergorov says, ‘Dos Vidanya’,” he sobbed, badly mis-spelling the Russian word.
Suddenly Dale Saptz burst into the room looking for transexuals.
Lilly pointed at Fred. Fred pointed at Lilly.
At that moment, an unearthly ear-piercing shriek just outside the window dropped them all to their knees. A winged pterodactyl the size of a school bus soared through the bombs bursting in air, directed in flight by a naive young doctor using sign language that he’d learned from his recovering sister in Fresno.
Dale Saptz, who had an irrational fear of giant prehistoric flying reptiles, leapt to his death, falling 74 stories through a star shower of glittering fireworks.
Fred glanced at Lilly. Lilly glanced at Fred. They both turned toward the bed.
***************

Sally stood in the barn and nuzzled a formerly abused horse as she contemplated the concentric rings of bodies circling her simple cabin in Kansas.
“Good fertilizer,” she said of the dead and dying remnants of the Pueblo Cartel and the Russian Mob. None of them had known that Sally was once the deadliest agent in the government’s Ultra-Secret Sub-Nuclear Tactical Assassination Strike Force.
Constantine Ergorov and Arturo Gomez sat at her feet, duct taped back to back, their eyes wide with astonished fear, their mouths sealed with tape.
“Either of you guys ever abused a horse,” she asked.
They shook their heads vehemently and grunted negative sounding grunts.
“And you never will,” Sally said as she turned to get her tools.
A giant pterodactyl cut a precise arc through the sky, swooped low in salute and then disappeared into the final crimson rays of the setting sun.

Needs more kettlebell?

I can't wait to never ever read that.

Will there be a chapter about refusing vaccinations for the horses because it causes autism?

Dale Saptz was ugly and did not look like the most prolific serial killer of the 21st Century. His face was gaunt, but part of it seemed caved in, like a cake that hadn’t completely risen. Dale hated the phrase, “half baked.” He killed people who said, “half baked.” He killed them because the phrase made him angry.All the others he killed for fun. He killed men and he killed women, but his greatest joy came from killing transexuals. Man to woman. Woman to man. It made no difference to Dale.

“Make up your mind,” he always said before he pulled the trigger.

I read Tim's book on John Wayne Gacy. It was damn good reading. Let me see if I can help here.


Dale Saptz looked ugly, nothing like you'd expect of the most prolific serial killer of the 21st century. Most visualize a serial killer as a kind of angry furry character, a savage or primitive. A caveman devoid of grooming or civilization. Grunting, stinking, eating raw meat, and killing as casually as they breathed or ate. We excuse the serial killer when we liken them to a primitive. We forgive them the sin of casual killing because we ourselves believe that murder is a sin. Primitives are innocents who cannot understand sin.

Dale lacked a caveman visage. He was well groomed. He bathed. He spoke quietly. Dale's gaunt face had a portion that was caved in. The depression in his head brought to mind a half risen cake, ruined symmetry or something not quite done. Half baked.

One did not feel evil from Dale. Aside the imperfection of his face Dale was a most ordinary looking person. He was not tall or short. He was a bit slender but not emaciated. Dale was a most ordinary person. Dale often did things half assed. Good enough for his employer.

Unfortunately for his victims, killing was not something that Dale did half assed. Dale was always annoyed when he shaved into the "the dent". He did not like to think about the dent. The dent made him angry as it had amused the legions of children who called him "Dent Head" in various playgrounds as they grew up.

Dale learned to shut up the critics. He beat them. Later, after their taunts settled into his mind like a cancer, he sought sterner and more permanent measures. Dale rankled at the phrase "Half Baked". The phrase brought him to murder. He killed persons who said it. He killed them for the simple offense of offending him. He considered the term "Half Baked" to be a capital offense, a phrase that spoken in his presence only death would expiate.

Other victims perished from Dale's needs for "fun". He enjoyed killing men and women. He enjoyed the sense of power from the transformation of vitality into the inert. Dale enjoyed watching the waning struggle for life, to watch it extinguish, to see the eyes go from searching and pleading to dull, like the eyes of a dead fish. Dale once watched a video of Richard Kuklinski describe killing, he too wanted his victims to carry his visage into eternity.

Dale adored killing transexuals going in either direction. The idea of transitioning one's gender sickened Dale in his quiet places, where his stunted and corrupt thoughts meandered like maggots consuming rotten flesh. The thought of a surgeon's knife "twisting" flesh for reasons of internal feelings was like tossing bleach onto a decaying body riven with maggots, the maggots gasped and died, as did the harmony of Dale's corrupt thoughts.

Dale never imagined having the depression in his head corrected through surgery. The dent was part of him, as the penis or vagina was part of a Cis person's body. The surgeon can change the body. Hormones can change the body. Nothing could change Dale. He did not seek help. He sought to help. Dale was doing God's work as he saw it.

A "tranny" mocked God. He made us as He made us. To change what God had wrought was to mock Him. Dale would not allow such mockery. Dale enjoyed taunting a "tranny" before he killed them. "Are you a man or a woman?", he'd sneering say while taking up slack on the trigger. He enjoyed doing it slowly, watching the terror grow on their faces as he racheted up the tension on the firearm, feeling his grip tighten, the sight slightly quiver, the slack on the trigger vanishing.

Dale was always pleased when the firearm discharged just as he completed the phrase "Make up your mind!". He enjoyed the perfection of the moment, the symmetry between the start and finish of the kill. Nothing half baked here, no sir. If he managed to strike the "tranny" off to the side, causing part of the head to blast away, this completed the scene for Dale. Now the "tranny" shared something in common with Dale, a ruined symmetry of the face and the expiation of the sin of being half completed, of mocking God, of being "half baked".

Arturo Gomez glared at Constantine Ergorov. “You must take Fred seriously,” he said. “I once saw him cripple seven men with a plastic cocktail spoon in a salad bar. Cripple them.”
“Don’t say cripple,” Constantine replied.



Arturo Gomez-Vitali glared at Constantine Vasilievich Egorov. The man was so married to his visions of Spetznaz and the Mighty Russian Culture versus the decadent soft and consumerist imperialist west that he had definite blind spots. He discounted all opposition, considered most Westerners to be soft and lazy, good only to consume expensive goods that they did not really earn.

Fred was one of "them" therefore he was soft and weak.

Arturo knew better. He'd seen Fred in action. He knew about Fred's training. He knew about Fred's many missions. He'd seen the Salad Bar video. He'd watch Fred expertly dispatch these people with just a cocktail spoon. Neck and head injuries. None of them walked normally again. Clever use of the spoon on nerve points, the hard floor, the salad bar table and the wall did the work of breaking things.

Constantine Vasilievich was so complacent and smug. How he ever got to the point he got to in the Organs was beyond Arturo's understanding. Arturo wondered if Constantine's Mommy had been the fuck toy of some Party bigshot. Constantine, the bastard offspring, was given preferential treatment, promoted beyond his abilities? One wondered.

Arturo had seen this bullshit in Cuba while he was in training as a much younger man. People learned to gloss over such tokens. The decadent West had their tokens too, rich parasites who contributed nothing but owned so much of everything. So many of them were customers today.

The world was full of tokens, full of fools and sometimes fools. One sat before him. Arturo gathered his wits.

Arturo had shown Constantine the video. The man murmured "Hollywood", had gone onto some prattle about illusions and special effects. Arturo's people, people whom he trusted, vouched for the video.

Trust was the key ingredient in this business. How much to trust, how to verify that trust, and ultimately how much to trust oneself.

This was his contact, Arturo concluded. Until such time that someone saw through this clown's front Arturo would have to make the best of things. He elected for the direct approach, hoping to at least get Constantine Vasilievich to get him extra resources.

“You must take Fred seriously,” he said. “I once saw him cripple seven men with a plastic cocktail spoon in a salad bar. Cripple them.”

Constantine Vasilievich nodded absently. This foolish tale again? Arturo's people had lived in the shadow of the Americans for generations. If you said the word "American Army" they shit their pants. Americans had dominated that part of the world so much that it was a small wonder that the whole hemisphere did not speak English.

Constantine decided to break Arturo's direction so that he could talk reason with him. This Fred person was a Hollywood super hero confected to terrorize the people whom America wished to dominate. For a moment Constantine wondered if Political Correctness had spread into Arturo's world?

"Don't say cripple", Constantine replied. He said it with a blend of sternness and humor. Don't waste my time and don't kid me.

Arturo's shock reassured Constantine that he had struck a nerve. Perhaps now they could discuss business?

"This foolishness is going to get us into trouble", Arturo thought sadly and with growing anger. Doubtless Constantine figured that any problem could be solved with a squad of former Spetznaz. Yes, maybe in areas where Russian was spoken and ethnic Russians lived.

In their areas of operation Spetznaz would stand out like a woman dressed in a bikini would stand out in a Convent. Big, Slavic looking, pale and with their stone cold faces? Nobody could fail to see them from hundreds of yards away.

Cuban Special Forces? Yes, that could be done, but did Constantine Vasilievich have enough juice to arrange it? Arturo had his doubts.

Good stuff Gene. Of course, it won't work for my purposes. I'm trying to write the cheesiest thriller possible and your efforts are way too well written to even consider.

Why don't you write about profound loneliness and despair?

Great idea. Are you available for interviews?