Jack Kilborn & J. A. Konrath (23 page)

Do you want to remain a second fiddle to Jacqueline Daniels all your life?

Finish up the story. Stop acting like a jackass.

Yours truly,
Chad

* * *

Chadmeister—
Maybe you forgot who dropped this sweet project right into your lap. You think I didn’t have publishers calling me up and begging for the exclusive rights? Sure, you offered fat bank, but you also promised that I could tell my story, my way.

Now you’re suddenly all buddy-buddy with the butt sniffer, threatening to take back money that you know I already spent on massage therapy.

You want to play hardball? Fine. How do you think your bosses will feel when they hear you’ve screwed up this deal? Think you’ll get a big promotion? Or think you’ll be back in the mailroom, stuffing Xeroxed rejection letters into slush pile SASEs?

Look, I’m a reasonable guy. If you call me up in the next twenty minutes and beg my forgiveness, I’ll try my best to play nice with Mayhem.

But you also have to call up Bunny Muffin’s Personal Massage Assistants on Halsted, and tell them to send Candi over, on your dime. You’ve made me all tense.

And make sure it’s Candi with an “i”. They have a Candy with a “y” there, and I’m not into that weirdo enema stuff.

Kisses,
Harry

P.S.: On second thought, send them both.

* * *

Andrew,
Harry and I had a nice long phone conversation after I e-mailed him the ultimatum. I realize that he’s not the easiest person to get along with, but he does understand that keeping his advance money is contingent upon both of you submitting a publishable final product. So you shouldn’t have any more problems. Keep me in the loop.

Yours truly,
Chad

* * *

“Wow, those are some sharp-ass teeth!” said Harry, pointing at one of the cops.

The cops smiled. One of them pressed the button on the side of his walkie-talkie. “Just a party that got a bit loud,” he said. “We’re breaking it up right now.” He replaced the walkie-talkie on his belt.

“So…uh, when you say ‘breaking it up,’ does that mean you’re going to arrest the bad guys, or am I pretty much screwed?” I asked.

“The second one,” said the cop.

“That’s what I figured. The fangs sort of clued me in.”

“I like hamburgers,” Harry said.

The cops looked at each other, then at me. “What’s his problem?”

“He’s drugged up. And stupid. Just ignore him, unless you’re looking for somebody to kill first.”

The cops grinned. “Ignore the inspiration for
Fatal Autonomy
? Not likely. You, on the other hand, are going into the Pit.”

I did not weep at this.

But I wanted to.

“K
eeeyaaaa!”

I struck the first cop with the knife-edge of my left hand, Drunken Jeet Kun Shaolin Monkey Fu style. I connected with the bridge of his nose, and he made like a bad poker hand and folded.

Cop Number two pulled his weapon, but my instincts were honed like something really well-honed, and I grabbed his wrist and shoved the gun upward.

Mayhem was bending down near the second cop’s butt, but I am close to 100% positive he wasn’t sniffing anything. Following my heroic lead, Mayhem drove his shoulder into the second cop’s stomach, driving him backwards.

The gun went off, the bullet zinging over my head. Then Andrew made a fist and hit the cop in the jaw, and it was like watching a gigantic macho volcano unleashing its manly fury, all muscles and testosterone and heroics.

Mayhem threw a series of powerhouse Clubber Lang lefts and rights, growling like a heroic grizzly bear as he pummeled the Pire. Not once did Andrew whimper like a whiney little tattletale bitch boy, no matter what anyone says.

The cop went down, and Mayhem pried the gun from his hand and pointed it at me. I wondered if, in the frenzy of the moment, my heroic good friend had somehow forgotten who the bad guys were. I grabbed Pepe the Dancing Leprechaun and ducked.

But Andrew had retained a clear head, and he fired at the first cop, who had gotten up behind me and was now holding one of those Conan swords, the really thick ones with the blood groove and the handle made from the tail of a dragon, but not a real dragon because they aren’t real, one of those plastic dragons with reinforced graphite fibers.

Then, somehow, the whole house burst into flames.

“
Could this be supernatural vampire magic
?” I thought, searching for the dropped morphine bag.

The screams of the damned echoed from the house. Or maybe it was the screams of all those poor fuckers who were on fire.

They must have had some sort of meth lab in there, or maybe an oil refinery, because then there was this gimungous explosion, which blew Mayhem and I at least ten yards across the lawn.

Sadly, Pepe didn’t make it.

Mayhem and I slowly got to our feet, picking off the burning pieces of his poor victim neighbor Dan Foltersmith, and parts of some naked elderly old women, and a heavily pierced ear that forensics later identified as belonging to Tanya Mertz, the runaway who began this whole sordid mess.

Little Tanya had finally come home. In a very small box.

Case closed.

Paramedics came, with methadone to help me overcome my new addiction. And fire fighters. And news crews. And real cops without fangs who took our statements and offered me a key to the city because, in their words, “We always kinda knew there was something wrong with this house.”

Andrew Mayhem mumbled something about having to get home, so we shared a manly handshake.

“You done good, kid,” I told him. “I want you to have this.”

I reached into my pocket, and handed him a jar of spaghetti sauce. No mushrooms.

“Thanks, Harry. We sure had some adventure, didn’t we?”

“We sure did, Andrew. We sure as hell did.”

We embraced, and then he walked stoically away, into legend.

You can see the whole thing next summer, in the new Fatal Autonomy movie,
Bloodsucker Nightmare: Harry McGlade vs. The Vampires
, directed by Uwe Boll, coming direct to DVD. It will have exclusive uncut bonus footage, including eight minutes of commentary by me, and the alternate “pants-wetting ending” which Andrew assures me was just spilled water.

They never found Vlad. And I’m man enough to admit that his undersized wee-wee sometimes haunts my dreams. Was he really a nosferatu, an undead immortal ghoul who will forever walk the earth, feasting on the living? Or was he just a fat guy with a small Johnson?

Just to be safe, keep your doors and windows locked at night, and always carry a clove of garlic in your pants.

And if you’re alone in your room, at night, alone, reading this tale of horror, and you hear something moving around in your bedroom closet…

RUN LIKE HELL! IT’S VLAD! HE’S GOING TO KILL YOU! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!

—Harrison Harold McGlade, Chicago IL.

H
arry McGlade has a nicer car and legions of deluded fans, but I have one thing that he doesn’t: the final word.

Since he was whacked out on morphine at the time, I’m going to excuse the fact that his final contribution to this tale of misery and woe was 97.3% inaccurate. But you already knew that.

Let’s back up to the fanged cops. I’m not in the habit of attacking officers of the law, even when they’re clearly part of the nefarious scheme. However, Harry let out a cry of “Turnip power!” and threw a punch, leaving me no choice but to fight or get shot.

I will say this for Harry, he did get in one doozy of a punch. I think it even broke the cop’s jaw. The other cop, however, got in a good punch of his own, knocking McGlade against the wall. He slid to the floor.

“I think I just wet somebody else’s pants,” he said.

I took out the other cop. That part Harry got right. But my victory glow only lasted slightly longer than Harry McGlade’s average sexual encounter, because I immediately spun around to find myself once again staring at Vlad and his goddamn shotgun. Tanya stood next to him.

“If you say I’m going in The Pit again, I swear I’m gonna lose it,” I said.

Vlad shook his head. “No Pit for you this time.”

“Quick shotgun death?”

Vlad nodded.

“Shit.”

“I just grew a toe on my hand,” said Harry, holding his hand in front of his face. “I’m not sure if it’s a third or fourth toe. They both look a lot alike.”

Vlad stared at him.

“It’s winking at me with its toenail. Does anybody else think that’s strange? ‘Cause I don’t. I’m naming him Toejam McSmelly. He’s an Aries.”

“I’m not so sure he’s The One anymore,” said Tanya.

“Wooooooooooooo,” said Harry. “That’s a funny word. Woooooooooooo. It sounds funny when I say it. One time I ate a whole bag of sunflower seeds without chewing, and they came out looking exactly the same. That was a pretty wild night. Woooooooooo.”

Vlad pointed the shotgun at Harry and prodded him with the barrel. “What the hell is your problem?”

“I can fit my whole fist in my mouth. See?”

Harry crammed four fingers into his mouth, bit down on them, and began to scream in his throat.

“They gave
this
guy his own TV show?” Tanya asked.

Vlad looked crestfallen. “There must have been a huge amount of creative license. The Harry McGlade I’m looking at…hell, he didn’t even perform well at the orgy in his honor. Screw
Fatal Autonomy
.”

“That’s right, screw
Fatal Autonomy
,” Tanya said.

“Screw
Fatal Autonomy
to hell and back!” I said.

“Screw
Fatal Autonomy
,” said a bunch of voices that I hadn’t even realized were within earshot.

Harry pulled his hand out of his mouth and made some smacking sounds.

“I can taste my own tongue,” he said.

“I’m just going to put him out of his misery,” said Vlad, pressing the shotgun against Harry’s forehead.

“No, no! Don’t make him a martyr!” I said. “Just leave him there to wallow in his lameness. Me too. Don’t make me a martyr, either.”

“You’re right.” He popped out his fangs and tossed them onto the floor. “Harry McGlade is not worthy to battle the Pires. Come, flock! We must depart before the real police arrive. There will be no sacrifice this day. We will seek…Daniel Baldwin! Away with us!”

Vlad and the Pires filed out of the house, got into a minivan, and drove away.

“Well,” I said.

Harry smiled. “Woooooooooooooo.”

So, the house did not burn down. There was no explosion. The Pires did not all perish, though a few days later the Beverly Hills police force caught most of them. Harry did not magically pull out a jar of spaghetti sauce. My version of the events is not as dramatic, I’ll admit, but that’s the way it happened.

Harry McGlade’s stupidity saved his life.

And mine.

For that, I will be forever in his debt.

I spent the rest of the evening being questioned by the police. And so ended my adventure.

– The End –

* * *

Andrew,
Just finished reading the manuscript. Did I really say all that shit? Wow. That was some good morphine. I’ll have to get the recipe.

I know that Chad said to let you finish it up and not make any suggestions, but c’mon, what fun is it to end the story with you being questioned by the police? Look, we faced death together, and all I’m asking is that you forget about logic for a few paragraphs and give this thing a snappy ending. Maybe some Nazi’s bust in, and we kick their asses, and then get drunk. Make them girl Nazis, with big cans. Or we could just go with what I originally wrote. Uwe Boll said it was brilliant.

At the very least, let’s exchange some sort of macho camaraderie
Lethal Weapon
banter. Maybe you’re so grateful I saved your life that you hug me.

It might also be funny if your fly was open, and you zipped up real fast and got your nuts caught in your zipper. I know that didn’t happen, but
man
, that would be sweet!