How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers

ALSO BY MAX BOOTH III

TOXICITY

THE MIND IS A RAZORBLADE

Copyright © 2015 by Max Booth III

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

Bizarro Pulp Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Bizarro Pulp Press, a JournalStone imprint

www.BizarroPulpPress.com

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-942712-47-3

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date: June 30, 2015

Cover Art: Matthew Revert

Interior Formatting: Lori Michelle

www.theauthorsalley.com

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY KIDNAP STRANGERS

“I thought I smelled dog shit. Then I realized I was just holding Max Booth III’s new book.”

—Harlan Anderson

“I thought it was pretty okay.”

—Max Booth III

“Not an actual guide. What a fucking ripoff.”

—Weird dude who drives that van

“No refunds.”

—Publisher

THIS BOOK IS FOR VESTA STOUDT.

THE UNIVERSE IS FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT.

1. PHLEGM FOR THE SOUL

All Harlan Anderson
wanted was a doughnut. A simple breakfast treat for a simple man who just wanted to relax all day and read shitty, pirated books on his eReader. Doughnuts and books were the essential elements of any paradise.

He’d gotten the eReader two years ago at a work Christmas party. A coworker had won it during the white elephant drawing and tossed it in the trash after the night was over, declaring “reading is for pussies”. Harlan had waited until everybody else went home before he dug through the wastebasket and collected it. He found it underneath a barely touched slice of chocolate cake, which he also took home.

Reading was all Harlan had in life. His friends were nonexistent and the majority of his family was either dead, in jail, or just uninterested. Books were his only real companions. Bad books, mostly. The kind of books that he didn’t even like to read but he read anyway just so he could have a reason to bitch on Facebook. Books like Sergio Placid’s
Eight Equals Zero,
or Nick Twig’s
The Trampoline Incident.
So, any BILF Publishing book, really. Books I’d Like to Fuck Publishing. Jesus Christ. What a dumb company name. No wonder their books were so terrible.

Harlan walked into the coffee shop at eight in the morning, licking his lips at the pastry images on the menu above the barista. For a man who didn’t socialize with people and spent the majority of his time at home, alone, the coffee shop was like a trip to Disneyland. He got to sit around with people that weren’t being forced to be near him due to work-related activities and eat fatty snack foods while drinking overpriced coffee. Reading at home certainly had its benefits, such as the freedom to lay around in the nude, but he often preferred to do his reading in public. Sometimes, if he was sitting next to someone who was also alone, he’d attempt to engage the person in a conversation about how much he hated whatever it was he was currently reading. Sometimes strangers would actually respond and continue the discussion. Sometimes they’d just stand up and walk away.

Today the coffee shop was playing the same Mumford & Sons song that was always on whenever he walked in the building. Sometimes the lyrics were different, but that didn’t make the song any different. The walls were littered with inspirational quotes inaccurately credited to Hendrix and Einstein. There was only one person ahead of him in line, and he was taking his sweet time to order. The guy looked like he was on meth or some shit. His eyes were all black and crazed looking. The paranoid look of someone who hadn’t slept in a decade. Words shot from his mouth like diarrhea from a flustered asshole, but not much of it was making any sense. Every few syllables, he would turn around and glare at Harlan, then turn back to the barista and attempt to finish his order. Eventually, the tweaker settled for a slice of lemon cake and fled the coffee shop.

“This city is full of degenerates,” Harlan said to the barista as he approached the counter.

“What do you want?” She stared at him, showing no hint of amusement. She could have easily said ‘What the
fuck
do you want?’ and it would have better matched her tone.

“Hello?” The barista rolled her eyes. “Do you, like, uh, want anything or not?”

“Uh, a jelly doughnut, please. And a medium coffee, if that’s okay.”

She raised her pierced eyebrow at him, probably wondering why anyone would ask if it was okay to order a coffee inside a coffee shop. He paid and took his drink and doughnut to the lounge area, planning on sitting in one of the shop’s recliner chairs and busting out his eReader. He’d illegally downloaded Sergio Placid’s
The Cumming of Christ,
and he was looking forward to learning why an English teacher would ever be stupid enough to assign the book to his students as required reading, as was the case of the teacher up in Portland—who, understandably, was no longer employed.

Except he couldn’t sit down, because all the tables in the coffee shop were currently occupied. He couldn’t believe it. Tables were filled by dickheads in tie-dyed beanies and teenage girls finding their cell phones’ G-spots. One table, a dirty, rancid old lady was just sitting there, eating her hair. Harlan stood next to her for a moment, hoping his presence would convince her to leave, but even when he cleared his throat she didn’t seem to take the hint.

“Excuse me,” he finally said, and tapped her shoulder. “
Excuse me.
”

The lady slowly lifted her head and smiled a toothless smile, then spit a glob of green phlegm in his face. Harlan screamed and fled the coffee shop, wiping his face off with the collar of his
Big Bang Theory
T-shirt. Gagging, he realized he’d dropped both his coffee and his doughnut inside the shop. Most of the coffee was on his shoes, burning his feet. He screamed a number of obscenities into the sky and flipped off God with his middle finger.

God responded with laughter.

No, not God. Just some guy standing behind him.

Harlan turned around. It was the tweaker who’d ordered the lemon pound cake. He pointed at Harlan. “Yo, didn’t nobody ever tell you not to mess around with Crazy Rita? She’s crazy, you know.”

“No.” He gagged again. “Nobody’s ever told me.”

The tweaker nodded furiously, still laughing. He reminded Harlan of the lunatic hitchhiker from
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
“Yeah, dude, lady owns this city. The mayor gave her a key. You know, one of them huge keys they give heroes and shit? Yeah. One of those. So she’s allowed to go wherever she wants, eating hair and spitting in faces. It’s like, her right as an American, you know?”

Harlan rubbed his shoe against the curb, cleaning some of the coffee off. “I have to go home.”

He tried walking away, but the tweaker jumped in front of him and held out his hands. “Wait, wait, wait. I just . . . I just got one question to ask you, real fast. Cool?”

Harlan shrugged, irritated. “What?”

“Is your name . . . Harlan?” The tweaker leaned forward, raising his eyebrow. “Is your name . . . Harlan Anderson?”

“Uh.” Harlan stepped back, balancing on the edge of the curb. “Do I know you?”

The tweaker gave Harlan an apologetic look. “Yeah, dude, I think you do.”

Then he tackled Harlan into the street.

His eReader flew out of his hands and soared through the sky.
The Cumming of Christ
would have to wait for another day.

2. THE SURREALITY OF REALITY

At one point
, Nick was positive the vomit on his face had been wet. Now, though, upon waking in the middle of who-fuckin’-knows-o’clock, the vomit was dry and pasted to his skin. But at least the odor had remained. And it provoked him to rush to the toilet and puke all over again. Afterward, he wetted a washcloth and cleaned his face off a little, then swished some mouthwash around his gums, savoring the burning sensation.

Maybe his brain had been replaced with one of those little cymbal monkeys and the little bastard was going nuts. Any other explanation for the current throbbing in his skull would be an understatement. He had no idea how much he drank last night, but clearly he had reached some sort of personal achievement.

Nick glanced down in the toilet and grimaced. Only about one third of the vomit had made it inside the bowl, and that was being generous. This was his apartment. He didn’t have to clean up his own sick. That’s why others stayed the night, so he could blame the mess on someone else and make them wipe it up. He whipped out his dick and pissed in the sink, watching his reflection in the mirror. His face could have been the toilet’s ugly cousin.

There was a shit-ton of work he had intended on getting accomplished today, but he knew, going by the way he was currently feeling, he wouldn’t do a thing all day. Maybe he’d just hang out and play some X-Box. Fuck it.

Sometimes he pretended like he was going to slack off all day and not get anything done. But he never did. He’d joke around on Facebook about being a bum who spent his time jacking-off and watching reruns of
Veronica Mars,
but that was only because nobody wanted to hear about him spending ten straight hours staring at a Microsoft Word document. People could relate to laziness.You start talking about business, and napping sounds a little too appetizing.

Instead of playing X-Box, he’d take care of a few errands, come home, and immediately get to work. There was editing to finish. There was writing to start. Books didn’t write themselves. Every second he didn’t spend progressing his publishing company and his own writing career was a second he might as well have spent in the grave.

There came a point when you were drowning in so many different projects with their own specific deadlines that reality as you understood it faded away. The projects piled up one after another, kind of like dishes gathering in a sink, a few at a time so you didn’t really notice, but suddenly you were being swallowed by that great avalanche known as the Eternal Hustle.

The background of your workplace area chipped away like flecks of old paint. Nothing mattered besides the work. Food was forgotten, sometimes purposely forgotten due to lack of funds. Conversations were abandoned midsentence. Sleep was cashed in for extra hours on the clock. The world around you became insane. People started arguing about
True Detective
plagiarizing Ligotti when it was obviously just a case of influence and homage, but every time you considered weighing in your own opinion, you forgot what everybody was arguing about and you found yourself back in front of another goddamn project, because you just finished one workload and now another was nagging for attention.