Cheap Thrills (6 Thrilling reads) (62 page)

Twenty-Four

“I didn’t do it! I told you. I want my lawyer,” says Andy as he starts to get agitated.

“Fine, you want your lawyer. That’s what you’re going to get!’ says the sheriff. He storms up to his feet and makes his way to the door. He turns around and looks at Andy. “You know you’re going down for life for this, right?”

Andy shakes his head. “I didn’t do shit, so I ain’t going down for anything,” he says.

The sheriff laughs. “Maybe… Maybe not… Either way, your time will come, Andy.” With that, the sheriff walks out of the interrogation room and leaves Andy by himself.

Shutting the door behind him, the sheriff breaths in deep and then exhales. “What a day,” he says to himself. “Spiders. Fucking spiders!” he chuckles. He makes his way down the hallway and into the main office. The sound of commotion and busy people hits his eardrums immediately. It’s a stark contrast to the sound of the interrogation room. He looks alarmed as he realizes something is going on. “James, what’s happening?” he asks, looking at his right-hand man as he comes off the phone.

“They caught the spider guy,” the man says with a smile on his face.

“I know — I’m interrogating him,” says the sheriff.

The man shakes his head and puts a steady hand on the shoulder of the wide sheriff. “Wrong perp. The guy in the interrogation room is innocent. Dayton came through at the hospital and gave his account of what happened.”

The sheriff’s face goes red, half anger, and half embarrassment. “Who did it?”

The man smiles at the reeling sheriff. “It’s a good one, sheriff. You ain’t going to believe it when you hear it.’

Twenty-Five

Forty-Five Minutes Later

“Pull over. This is the sheriff’s department. Pull your vehicle over now!” screams the officer’s voice over the megaphone. The police cruiser revs its engine as it hurtles around the corner. The dirt and dust kicks off its wheels as the driver puts the car in fourth. The pickup truck he is chasing in front turns violently into a left, followed by a right. It jumps off the road and onto the pavement. It hits an interstate sign. The officer in the car radios in. “Stick, stick, stick!” he says as he tries to keep control of the hurtling police cruiser. “Quickly, he’s making for the highway. He gets on there, we may lose him.”

After a few minutes of cat and mouse, the chase continues into an intersection, leading to the interstate. He can see the officer in the distance. The officer from afar takes aim at the pickup truck with a shotgun. A few seconds later, the shotgun goes off. The sun bounces off the back of the pickup truck, nearly blinding the officer. Seconds later, the truck has flipped on its side. The wheels pop and burst as the gravel under the truck sprays in all directions. The windshield of the police cruiser gets peppered with dust and dirt. The officer in the car pushes hard on the brakes. The cruiser spins and finally comes to a stop, boxing the toppled-over pickup truck. He grabs for his shotgun and cocks it. He shoulder barges his own door and quickly gets out of his car. He whistles for the other officer in the distance. The man okays him with a thumbs-up. Both men approach the steaming pickup truck. The sound of the engine clicking and simmering is unnerving as both men take aim at the glass panel overlooking the driver’s seat.

“Put your hands up and exit the vehicle!” the officer shouts. “We will shoot if we see any movement that we deem hostile.” There is no response from the passenger in the toppled-over pickup.

“Shoot the windows. Drag his ass out,” says the officer as he takes aim and blasts the windows. Seconds later they are pulling a man out from the wreck and slipping cuffs onto him.

“Officer, what have I done wrong?” The man smirks.

“Evading capture on a warrant,” says the officer.

“Sue me,” says the brash man.

“And attempted murder.”

The man’s smirk quickly changes into a worried look.

Twenty-Six

“You are free to go,” says the sheriff, slightly red-faced as he un-cuffs Andy.

“Really? You found out I was innocent?” says Andy as he tries to suppress his urge to give the sheriff of the county a piece of his mind.

“We made a mistake. We are sorry. You have our deepest apologies.”

Andy’s lawyer smiles. “You’ll be hearing from my office regarding the false imprisonment of my client.”

The sheriff gives the dirty-looking lawyer a smile. “Feel free to take a card from the desk with all my details on it,” the sheriff says in a stern manor.

Andy laughs a little at the to and fro between the lawyer and the sheriff. “So what happened? You caught someone?” asks Andy, feeling curious as to why all the charges had been dropped.

“Dayton came through. He recovered well enough to answer some questions and pinned the assault on someone else.”

“Someone else? Who?”

“A man named Graham Richards.”

Andy goes white with terror. “Graham Richards? Richards Realty?”

“That’s the guy. He’s a real-estate agent. We got an instant confession from him.”

Andy still looks bemused. “But why? Why did he do it?”

“He was trying to drive the price down of your house. He wanted to buy it for himself and sell it for a stupid profit in a few years’ time after it all died down.”

“What died down?”

“The spider infestation he planted in the house. The deaths that would have resulted from them.”

“Deaths? You mean he wanted us to die?”

“Correct. He managed to pay off the fumigators to spray some hormones on your clothes. Literally all the spiders in the house would be attracted to you, and in turn, you would most likely be bit.”

Andy just stands there, completely stunned. “Is Dayton okay?”

The sheriff smiles. “As good as ever. Makes a change — usually he’s in one of my cells! Innocent this time, I guess. Take care, Andy.”

“What about the spiders. Are they gone?”

“We’re having to put you up in a hotel for a couple of days. We have crime lab people working the scene, and after that, some fumigators will come in and get rid of your problem. A week’s time, you’ll be back home.”

Andy shakes his head. “A whole week. For fuck’s sake.”

“Five-star hotel in the city. My treat.”

Andy immediately feels better. “Well, I suppose a week isn’t that bad!”

Twenty-Seven

Two Weeks Later

“I guess it’s goodbye,” Andy says as he looks out of his car window. He can see the moving guys putting the last of his furniture into the back of the van. His cell phone goes off. “Hello? Hey, babes, yeah, I’ll be down your mom’s and dad’s in a few hours. Just about to leave. Okay, Melisa…I love you, too. Bye.” He hangs up the phone. “Living in a mansion won’t be too bad…even if it is in close proximity to the in-laws,” he says to himself. He keys the ignition. He reverses out of his drive, noticing the “FOR SALE” sign in the foreground. He shifts back into first and drives down the steep embankment of the hilly road.

Ten minutes pass. He turns the radio on. He starts singing along to the song. He has an itch on his neck. He scratches it. It’s a hot summer’s day, and the brown and yellow leaves of the forest glisten in the sun. He can see the road wind up and down the crevices of the mountainside. He feels the itch on his neck once more. He casually swats at it and scratches. He decides to look in the mirror. He pops his head a little and feels a sharp sting. He catches a glimpse of his sweaty face. He then sees his neck. On it, a black widow rests on his right side. His face goes white. He tries to keep control of the car. The spider raises itself on its hind legs and strikes. The car veers to the right and goes off the cliff. It rolls a few dozen times and comes to a stop. A branch made its way into the windshield, penetrating Andy’s skull. His brain matter hangs off the wood sticking out of his head.

The spider survives. It climbs up his face and onto the branch, scattering off it and into the summery forest where his car lies undiscovered, forever. 

Luis Samways

A Killer Short

One

Seth and the “Gang”

So the night began. Well, I say “began,” but it was more of a happening than a “began.” Hell, I’d even go as far as saying that the night didn’t begin as much as it just happened. As usual, we had a plan.

“Tonight, gentlemen, we get wasted. We snort coke. We fuck women. We do what we always do,” Seth would tell us during his usual pep talk. The pep talk hadn’t quite happened yet because I was running late. I was at home as usual, playing video games. I like gaming, and I won’t hear anyone tell me any different. Plus, from what I have just told you, you would probably envision me and my pals as some Jack the lads. We are more “Jack the don’ts,” as in,
“Don’t you feel bad you’re still a virgin?”
Yes, I do. Damn right I do. But hey, what are you going to do? Bitch and moan about the fact that no girl wants to sleep with you? No, that’s not how I roll. I don’t socialise very well. I hate big crowds and dislike confrontation. It’s just nonsensical that someone would pick a fight with anyone…
but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Now, let’s talk more about Seth’s pep talks. You see, I may be a “
Jack the don’t
” and so are most of my friends in our tight group, but Seth isn’t. This guy can party for the world, not just any given country but a flat-out jig to the planet’s rotation. He’s a heavy hitter. He likes women, and women like him. That’s all there is to it. He goes into a club, and we watch him accumulate a wad of girls’ phone numbers. It’s quite impressive, if you ask me. But that’s beside the point. Seth may be a good-looking all-out ladies’ man, but we — the
“gang,”
as he likes to put it — are not good-looking guys who are brilliant with the females. I wouldn’t say we are bad-looking gentlemen, but women don’t flock to us in clubs. We haven’t got the Seth whitened teeth. We don’t have the Seth charm, nor do we have the Seth charisma. Now, you’re probably thinking that I’m being too hard on myself. I probably am, but the truth is that Seth always reminds me and our “gang” of how much we need him to score with chicks.

It’s not that he sticks his fingers out and says stuff like, “Smell that, boys? That’s the smell of a man getting pussy.”…Okay, maybe he does. But he’s a good guy. In comparison he leads the same style of life that all of us live in our group. We go to the same college, and we live in the same suburban shithole. The similarities end there, I’m afraid. Since we started college, the guy has changed. He fell into the mid-popular range while we dwindled in the lower leagues when it came to school popularity contests. I don’t know how he became so popular so fast while we remained so unworthy. Nothing new on our side, though. He was there at one point with us, in the same shitty twilight zone, experiencing the same lack of appreciation or pur
e
acknowledgement of our existence. You know how the system works. Be an asshole, and your fellow students cheer you as you walk down the corridor on the way to home-mech; be academic and have aspirations of moving out of your hick neighbourhood, and you get slammed into the lockers and made to look like a victim. I know that system, and I appreciate my place in it. Seth, however, did not. That’s why he brought a baseball bat to school and gave the resident school asshole a new face. That’s why he is where he is now. With that incident he managed to grow some confidence along with his newfound balls. Yeah, that’s Seth all right…push him and he pushes back. Still, though, the guy can party!

Two

Me, Myself & the Mirror

Confidence is something I personally lack. As you can probably tell, I have a certain disdain for over-the-top arrogance. Seth aside, I hate the popular people. They are popular for all the wrong reasons. If you ask me, we so-called nerds are the true gatekeepers of the universe. While most of these jocks and sluts will go on welfare for the rest of their lives while they rear children like cattle at a dairy farm, we nerds move on to bigger things, super-hot models and fast cars, well-paying jobs and self-respect — well, that’s what Seth tells me.

Enough about him for the time being. Let’s talk about me. My name is Toby French. Yep, that’s right; my parents are condescending assholes. It’s not that I don’t like my name, it’s just that’s it’s so, you know…meh. Anyway, you can imagine the sort of nicknames I get at school. “Toby the Turtle” is one of them, maybe because I have a slow pace about the way I walk. Well, that’s what I like to think. But I know it’s probably some juvenile way to go about calling me slow, as in retarded, even though I get straight A’s all year round and never flunk a class. But in high school that sort of success means you
are
“retarded.” I should have known that the most successful people in the world drank from beer bongs and had sex with multiple brain-dead cheerleaders. Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to stick to my 185 IQ and “retarded” grades.

My real friends (Seth included) call me “
Frenchy.
” It’s nice, I suppose, but nothing that flatters the pants off me. I would rather be called Toby, seeing that’s my name, funnily enough. Moving on, I’m a pretty sarcastic and easygoing fella. I enjoy my video games, as previously stated, and really enjoy my math. I don’t know what it is about math that makes me hard, but I tend to sway to the point that maybe it’s because math is problem-solving and my life is chock block full of problems. I also like drinking. I mean, what self-respecting under-twenty-one-year-old American doesn’t? Plus, when the parties flow, the beer usually does the same. Not to mention all the hot girls. I guess the only bad thing about these parties is most of the company. You get the jocks being assholes and the women admiring the assholes for some ungodly reason. Don’t get me wrong — I, too, would behave like a menacing alpha-male jock if I had the ability to, but the truth is I’m five foot eight on a good day and a buck ten on a fat day. So you can imagine the six-foot-five guys weighing in at a muscle-y two hundred and twenty being more of a babe magnet than me, who in fairness is more of a punch magnet. Not that I get blasted in the face or anything, but the jocks do like to give me a dead arm once in a while. Not too often, just a few times a day. They like to approach me and say things like,“Frenchy, good to see you, buddy. Oh, by the way, I appreciate you doing my essay for me. Sick website, man!” Then
bam
, the inevitable punch in the shoulder. Oh, how that makes me feel like “
one of them.
”

The website they are referring to is the one I set up myself: willdoyourhomeworkforyou.net. It’s a little venture I thought of all by myself. People go on there and fill out a form, attach a Word document, and send me $10 to complete it. It’s usually pretty easy; I mean, most of them send me math and English work. Some of them on the odd occasion make it hard on me and send me essays on football so they can pass their scholarship. I get Seth to help me out with those. We split it five bucks a piece on those occasions. I tend to make about $500 a week. It’s a good little earner. No Saturday job for me, just all the Cheetos I want and an everlasting cash pile for my video games. Not to mention that it’s made me less of a punching bag and locker-dwelling nerd, and more of their homework friend, which in point gets me and the boys into all of their parties. Yay for me!