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Sarah Killian The Mullets of Madness 12
12WE FOLLOW THE beat-up Grobes truck at a distance so as not to garner too much attention. Fortunately, it’s starting to get dark out, which will make it harder for them to distinguish us.After about a ten-minute drive, we find ourselves approaching the center of town and the truck turns right off of the main road into a parking lot, facilitating a large, white building. Mary Sue parks the car about a block away, and we watch as the two Clarks—easily distinguishable even in the fading twilight by the girth of one and lack of girth of the other—get out of the truck and disappear into the white building.We wait in the car for about fifteen minutes, to make sure no one else arrives, before getting out and making our way down the block to investigate closer. The parking lot looks to be about half full, so the two Clarks must have been the last of the group to arrive.As we draw closer to the white building, we begin to see a sign clearly marked at the front of the building: Bucksnor
Sarah Killian The Mullets of Madness 13
13WHEN WE ARRIVEback at The Hotel Dickson, we are eagerly greeted in the lobby by our friend from the night before, Tim the Bellman.“Welcome back Ms. Buchanan, Ms. Dieterle, is there anything I can assist you with this evening?” Tim asks, reminding me of a love-sick puppy dog. I can’t help if he’s hoping to get another of Mary Sue’s ‘tips.’“Easy there, Tim,” says an older, balding man wearing the same monkey organ-grinder uniform as Tim, stepping between Tim and ourselves. I assume from his reprimand that he’s a supervisor or something. “I gather you are our new long-term residents?” The balding man inquires of Mary Sue and myself.“Yes,” Mary Sue says in her thick, fake, southern drawl. “I’m Lindsay Buchanan, and this is my associate Nanetta Dieterle.”“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the man replies—as his eyes wander over us, I can feel him undressing us and I have to refrain from visibly shuddering with revulsion. “I am Howard, the head of Guest Services here at The Hot
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14I WAKE UPeven more tense and sore than I did yesterday. Before anything else, I call the spa and ask when is the soonest they can get me in. The girl on the phone checks her ledger, and then responds that she can squeeze me in, in about 15 minutes. I tell her I’ll be right down, then hop in the shower, and practically sprint to the spa.By pure chance, I’m able to get the same masseuse from the day before, Bill. Hey, just because I won’t allow myself to sleep with him, doesn’t mean I have to refrain from letting him rub me down in other ways ...By the end of my massage, I’ve made up my mind on a matter I’ve been toggling in my mind ever since waking up—and I’d be lying if I said hunky Bill didn’t have something to do with settling the matter. Mary Sue is going to be unbearable when I confess this decision to her, but it’s clear after two nights in a row of dreaming about Jason and Nick that I need to do something to make these dreams stop before I go insane. We
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15I CAN’T CLAIMto be surprised Mary Sue gets a response from Clark Jr. before noon. Considering that Clark Jr. is a basement-dwelling loser, he probably has spent every day since dropping out of high school having wet dreams imagining getting such an e-mail. There’s a reason I didn’t even try to place a bet on who would get first response.“wow, ur super hawt! im total down for w/e you wanna do so hit me up babe,” I read the response from Clark Jr. over Mary Sue’s shoulder.“I guess you’re gonna be heading over to his basement to jump him right now, then?” I smirk.“Geez, Nanetta, I’m not a totalwhore, you know. I’m still gonna make him work for it. That’s half the fun,” Mary Sue replies—despite the sarcasm, I sense I may have actually hurt her feelings. Worst of all, I feel guilty about it. Porcupines damnit. I hate feeling guilty.“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything. I was just teasing.”“It’s okay, hon, we’re good,” Mary Sue replies, brushing off my apology with a
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16MARY SUE PAYSme a brief visit before she heads out for her date shortly before 6:00. As she had promised, she is sporting a blue sweater and casual, but nice, jeans. She looks perfect for the role of young woman headed out for coffee with a blind date.“Good luck with your date tonight, girlfriend,” she chirps. “I’d tell ya to be careful, but I know you, so I won’t bother.”“Yeah, you too,” I say, rolling my eyes, but smiling.“Don’t jump the kid’s bones right away. Make him work for it.”“Ummm ... shouldn’t it be yougetting that advice?”“Normally, yes. But with this dipshit, I don’t think it will require much restraint on my part to make him wait ... ”“True that.”“Meet back here when we’re done and compare notes?”“Yeah, I guess.”If we were just comparing work notes about the case, I wouldn’t have any hesitation about meeting up afterward. However, I know Mary Sue well enough to know this comparison of notes is going to be more focu
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17THE DREAM, of course, continues to haunt my sleeping hours. There is, however, one significant change to the dream. Tonight, Jason’s role in the dream has been replaced by Duke. It goes without saying this change does nothing to alleviate the tension caused by my nocturnal imaginings—if anything else, when I at last wake in the morning, I am more tense than I have been so far this week.I groan, every muscle in my body straining in protest as I role over in bed, pick up the phone and make a spa appointment for half an hour from now. Take a shower, send a text message to Mary Sue letting her know I’ll be ready for breakfast in about an hour, and then head down to the spa. I’m a little disappointed to find Bill the Hunky Masseuse is not available today, but I suppose they have to give him a day off from time-to-time. His replacement this morning is a girl named Tiffany, and while she doesn’t work out all of the knots the way Bill the Hunky Masseuse would, I grudgingly admit she gets
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18AS WE DRIVEto Bucksnort, Mary Sue turns to me and asks, “You know you’re going to have to kill him right?”“Who? Tom Cruise? Yes, I know. It was written in the stars, that someday our paths will cross and I will have to kill him. I’m okay with this fate. In fact, I welcome it. The smug little prick deserves it.”“No, you silly ninny,” she chides, rolling her eyes. “Duke. You’re going to have to kill him at the end of this.”I know where she’s going with this, but I’m not going to make it easy for her.“No shit, Sherlock. That’s the whole reason we’re here, isn’t it?”“Yes, exactly. And if you’re starting to like him, won’t that make it harder for you to kill him?”“For the last time, I don’t like him. He is a backwoods, trailer-park hick, and the only reason I’m seeing him at all is because of the mission. When I slit his throat, it will be no different to me than the hundreds of other people I’ve killed while on assignment.”“Fine, fine. So you say. But, just hypothet
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19“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?”I ask, of no one in particular.Mary Sue, who did not just have a gun pointed at the back of her head, pulls herself together faster than I do. While I’m still processing what just happened, she’s already off the bed, across the room closing the door, and dialing Zeke on her cell phone.“Zeke, we have a problem,” she says once the door is closed. “The room service waiter just tried to kill us.”I can just imagine Zeke’s incredulous response to thatstatement.“Yeah ... Yeah ... Okay, you got it boss,” and then she hangs up. Zeke is nothing if not efficient. “He’s going to dispatch an extraction team, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. By the time the team would arrive if he sent them right away, it would be the middle of the night and they’d be way more conspicuous waltzing through the lobby at that time. In the meantime, I suggest we relocate to my room for the night and you can bunk up on the pull-out sofa in my
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Sarah Killian The Mullets of Madness 31
31I WAIT UNTILmidnight, and then make the drive out to Bucksnort, my plan fully formed, all the while praying I don’t cross the path of a speed trap and wind up in a radar-induced coma.I go to Duke’s apartment first, as his murder will be the simplest to take care of, since he lives alone. Using my trusted lock pick, I break into his apartment for the second time this week. I’m glad I was the one who bugged Duke’s apartment, because having a mental image of the apartment’s layout helps me navigate my way through it in the dark.I tiptoe down the hall to Duke’s bedroom, and enter to find him, snoring lightly on the bed. I cross the room and kneel by the bed. As I look at him sleeping so peacefully, I start to wonder if I will actually be able to go through with this.I put my knife down on the edge of the bed, and reach over to stroke his hair. Duke suddenly wakes with a start.“Jesus, Nanny!” he gasps. “You scared the shit out of me, what are you doing here?”“I’m sorry,”
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30“WHAT THE FUCK?” I scream, rushing to Mary Sue’s side, even though I already know there is nothing I can do to help her. “You said–”“I said I had explicit instructions not to kill you, Sarah,” Nick replies with a bored shrug, as if we were discussing something as mundane as the weather, not his murdering my only friend in the world. “I didn’t say anything about Mary Sue.”I raise my handgun to shoot, but Nick has already disappeared into the shadows. I spin around, searching every shadow for some sign of my foe.Suddenly, I feel Nick’s foot sharply connect with my back and I am pushed forward, my handgun clattering across the floor of the church as the wind is knocked out of me.As I try to regain my breath, Nick flips me onto my back and sits on my stomach, straddling my torso between his thighs, and further pushing what wind was left out of my struggling lungs.“I said it in Duluth, Sara, and I’ll say it again,” Nick breathes menacingly into my ear. “It’s too bad you aren’t
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29WE AGREE TOput off our surveillance of the Anderson Klan’s town hall meeting—everything will be recorded and available for us to listen to when we come back. Settling things with Nick Jin is a far higher priority. And of course we don’t leave un-armed, we each sport a handgun, and I also have my favorite knife in a scabbard tucked under the waistband of my jeans.After a fifteen minute drive to Montgomery Bell State Park, we find a campground to park the Skank Mobile, and make the remaining trek on foot, following the directions on my phone to a quaint old log cabin-style church. A plaque outside reads ‘First Cumberland Presbyterian Church.’“This must be it,” Mary Sue whispers. “This reeks of an ambush ... ”“I know, but it was just Nick that met me at Enger Tower in Duluth, so maybe it’ll just be him again ... ” I whisper back, not really sure how much I believe the words myself.“Well, either way, we might as well do what we came here to do,” Ma
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28THE NEXT TWO DAYS, pass in pretty much the same fashion. I wake up tense after a night of incessant nightmares and find the parking lot of the hotel plagued with flashing red and blue lights (Thursday morning’s victim was Kirk Arce, a 45 year-old male killed in room 329, and Friday’s was Sandra Campbell, a 36 year-old female killed in room 710). I get my daily massage from Bill the Masseuse. Mary Sue and I spend the day listening to surveillance tapes. In the evenings, Mary Sue visits Clark Jr. (who still can’t find the ‘magic button’) and unsuccessfully tries to get information out of him, while I meet up with Duke and have equal success getting information out of him, followed by admittedly great sex which still leaves me wanting to slice him open with a knife. Duke leaves, Mary Sue gets back to the hotel and we compare useless notes, I go to bed and the nonsense starts all over again.Saturday morning starts much the same, except I wake up knowing this madness is almost over. W
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27WE STOP OURinvestigations late in the afternoon when I get a call from Duke letting me know he’s on his way. Knowing that I need to work on getting information out of him, I suggest we meet at the coffee shop on the corner and he agrees (though I’m sure he wouldn’t protest if I asked him to come straight to my room again ... )Half an hour later, I’m sitting at our usual table in the coffee shop, and my fucking traitorous heart skips a couple beats when Duke walks in the door.We hug, kiss each other on the cheek, and order our coffees. Duke talks about a beat-up old Chevy he’s working on at the shop which is probably on its last legs. I make up a story about how the ‘lawyer I’m working for’ is a total ass who is constantly trying to get in my pants. Basic small talk—stuff I usually hate engaging in, but for some reason I don’t mind it so much with Duke (partly because I don’t actually have to be honest with him about my side of things).“So, do you have any pl
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26BY THIS POINT,you should be able to see where this is going. Once again, last night’s activities did nothing to free me of my cursed nocturnal visions. On the plus side, the dreams did not get more horrific this time, like they did after Saturday night. It’s a small blessing, but I’ll take it.On the bright side, when I look out the window I see the parking it is once again lit up by cop cars, so it seems Nick is back on schedule. Yay, for that ...I send Zeke a text, asking for more information about the newest kill and then head down to the spa for my daily spa appointment. Apparently Bill’s gotten more comfortable with me over the last week, ‘cause he goes a bit further south on my backrub than he has so far. I don’t raise any objections, though, because there’s plenty of tension in that area, too. I briefly consider suddenly flipping over and seeing just how willing Bill is to risk losing his job (seeing as Duke isn’t doing the trick to get rid of my fucking
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25AFTER ALMOST ANentire week of sleeping through never-ending sex nightmares, I’ve more or less gotten used to waking up with every muscle in my body knotted and barely even register the tension coursing through every limb. I pull myself out of bed and cross to the window to look outside, fully expecting to see another caravan of Red and Blue cars clogging up the hotel parking lot. But, aside from the normal cars of the guests and staff of the hotel, the lot is empty. Not even one cop car in sight.You’d think that would ease my concerns, but instead it heightens them. After consistently killing someone each night for the last three nights (four if you count Craig the Waiter—which I’m still not entirely convinced we should be), why would Nick—or whichever of his minions is currently stalking The Hotel Dickson—suddenly take a break? I try to tell myself maybe it’s just the body hasn’t been found yet, but I can’t believe it would be that easy.By this point, the spa receptionis
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24WE GET BACKto the hotel as twilight is settling in and return to my room to start breaking down Nick’s latest string of killings. Seeing as I’m the one who discovered the code in Duluth, Mary Sue lets me take point on this exercise. We start off with my recapping how I stumbled upon Nick’s code in the first place.“I didn’t just luck out and happen upon it right away,” I begin. “I’d been going through the case files for several hours. I was starting to lose it, so I decided to go to square one and just list out each victim, like this.”It takes me a minute to recall every name, but one thing I’ve always been proud of is my memory. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I have an eidetic memory, but pretty close to that. It’s one of the reasons I hold grudges for so long.Anyway, I eventually get it all written out, and then underline the first letter of each name on the list.Susan BakerAdam JacksonRaven ArronsonAmaranda CosackHenry PollsKyle AndrewsIan BondLavanna
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23MUCH TO MY utter disappointment and annoyance, the dreams do not abate that night. There is, however, one more tiny change to the narrative of the cycle. Previously, at the part where Jason/Duke turned into Nick, it was kind of a seamless change; one second it was Jason or Duke making love to me, and then it was Nick. I thought thatwas disturbing enough. Now, as Duke and I are going at it, I take a knife, plunge it into his back. Then, without losing a beat to the thumping of our passions, Duke reaches behind himself and begins pulling his skin away from the hole I just made in his back. He pulls and pulls, and his skin stretches, until he’s peeled it all off, revealing Nick underneath.Look, as you’ve undoubtedly figured out by now, I ain’t exactly a squeamish girl. I’ve watched my share of grotesque horror movies, and more often than not they just make me laugh or want to work as a consultant for Hollywood horror writers. However, that is some seriouslyfucked-up shit
