July 29, 2001
We’re going through two and three rolls of film a day at Owens’. I develop film for less than six bucks an hour for six to eight hours, then I go to his house and do it for free for a couple more. The upside is that I am already halfway through Binder Number Six.
Stock tip: Buy as many shares of Vaseline as you can.
July 30, 2001
Owens is pissing me off.
Remember what I said about my goals? That’s plural. Katy was at least the second reason I got involved in all of this. It’s been my plan to bring her to Owens’ from the beginning—or better yet, to have Owens bring her there himself. He’s got a great track record, six for six all told. Katy has everything but a COME THROUGH MY WINDOW, ABDUCT ME AND RAPE ME sign on her house. It’d be nothing for him to do it.
But he won’t.
“It’s not the right time,” he said.
“What are you waiting for, a full moon?” I shouted.
“It’s just not the right time,” he said again.
So I got to thinking. It’d be nothing for him to creep through Katy’s window and take her. It wouldn’t be anything for me, either, would it? This time we’ll be collaborating on a chemistry project—I’ll administer the chloroform, she’ll succumb. Then I’ll bring her back to Owens’.
Owens won’t object, because Owens won’t be around anymore. I’ll get the hang of this kidnapping thing, and I won’t need him. I can have ALL the women to myself, with no more of those disgusted looks when I do as I please with Jenny. At least not from him, anyway.
No more sloppy seconds, and I get the van AND the house. You couldn’t ask for a better divorce.
July 31, 2001
I’ve never kept a journal before either. I guess you’ve heard about me, but we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Carl Owens. I picked up this nifty little journal from Alex.
You’ve probably figured out that I still have my harem.
I noticed that Alex didn’t care to leave out the truth whenever it suited him. I DID recognize him when he first showed up on my doorstep—from the papers. He was Jenny MacColl’s brother (and I do mean past tense). He forgot to mention that, didn’t he? He sure didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be ashamed of anything, but I guess you never really know some people. For example, I didn’t know that he wanted to kill me and take over my congregation. Personally I was just getting sick of him, and I thought I’d take my chances with finding all the evidence he had against me. He was dead to the world whenever he got going with Jenny . . . only this time he stayed that way.
His mother isn’t exactly my type, but it’ll be good to have some meat on stand-by when they get done with Hilary Stiglitz. I think I’ll hold onto this for awhile. Mrs. MacColl might be interested in reading it.
It just so happens that I have some empty shackles between Aurora Fenech and Jenny. I guess the time is right for Katy Hindley. Elvin Avenue, wasn’t it?
I.
Gabriel saw the dead man on his way home from the video store.
He’d been thinking about the shift at Movie Heaven as he drove. Carrie and Renee had both been there, the teen pregnancies waiting to happen. And what were they wearing on a sizzling August day? As little as the law allowed. Gabriel spent the five and a half hours playing pocket pool. The clock couldn’t pass slowly enough to suit him on days like this. He fully expected them to show up in Barely Legal any day now.
A stack of porno movies clattered on the passenger seat. He was allowed to bring them home, but he’d waited for Renee to take someone to the tanning bed and Carrie to restock some new releases before he’d made his move. If he had any chance of going out with either of them—and the past three months had provided precious little hope of that—it wouldn’t help his cause if they knew he was going home with Lesbian Airline Stewardesses, Carol’s Arse, Dildo Delirium, and that perennial customer favorite, Gaping Anus.
It all made for a bitter obsession. Working with the hot little sirens transported him through a time wrap right back into high school, as if there were a worm hole at the check-out counter of Movie Heaven. It hadn’t been long ago at all, so his memories of countless young things in skin-tight skirts, halter tops, blouses tied at the mid-riff, shorts barely longer than their underwear, and open-toed sandals were vivid. He couldn’t talk to them then; his tongue became like the knots in their blouses.
Who the hell am I kidding? he thought. I can’t talk to them now either!
What ingenious things had he said to Carrie and Renee today? “Hi.” “I’m going on break.” “Could you hand me that?” “Well, see you tomorrow.”
Yeah, a real mystery that he hadn’t scored with either one of them or—as he always daydreamed—both of them yet. The irony was that he wasn’t a bad looking guy at all. Kind face, cobalt eyes, fair hair—the typical angel blueprint. Did Carrie and Renee sense some kind of ugliness inside him? Sometimes it seemed like they must; them and all the beautiful ones he saw at work. He’d be happy just to get a sniff of even the middle tier women who frequented the tanning beds virtually every day that ended with a Y. Well, he could think of a thing or two he’d like to do at their Y’s. They looked like they knew he was thinking this when he confirmed their tanning appointments . . . an uneasy disgust in their eyes with a tilt of the chin, like he had snot hanging from his nose. Even when he wasn’t thinking anything untoward, he felt their derision. They sensed a strangeness, as if he had a pheromone that sent them all scattering instead of attracting a single one of them.
And there was indeed something Carrie and Renee wouldn’t like if they knew about it: the Taste of Death movies. He was even more cautious about taking those home than the pornos. They might think he was pathetic if they knew about the pornos, but if they knew about Taste of Death, they’d think he was psychotic.
It was the Taste of Death series Gabriel was thinking about when he saw the dead man. He was standing on the corner of 37th and Garren, and to look at him you wouldn’t know he’d had his head blown off on Taste of Death 5: Into the Grave.
These weren’t simply movies where a group of horny teenagers were slain with phallic implements. Like Traces of Death, Faces of Death, Death Scenes, Executions, and their brothers in the mondo video line, they were known as “shockumentaries.” They provided the audience with various clips of real deaths caught on tape—accidents, murders, and animal attacks featured most prominently. Offended people erroneously called them “snuff movies,” which differed in that a snuff victim was brought before the camera for the express purpose of being murdered. According to Channel Two News reporter Geisha Hammond (and the lips on that sizzling hot piece . . . Gabriel figured he’d blow the back of her head out approximately 1.5 seconds after she put those lush lips on his ramrod) in a story about “Mr. Drill Bit” Earl Newman just a few months ago, there was no evidence to support the claim that snuff movies existed anyway. Shockumentaries merely collected random atrocities where a camera just happened to grab the money shot.