(Hor/MC/Sf)Killer(T or M)

*walks in, sniffs* Ah, it's good to be back. After a long break over which I have played Pokemon Diamond and Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition and did not do my homework, I am ready to show you my latest creation.

Behold, Killer!

A story of life in a desert town that...blah blah blah, just read it and reiview. Also, I'm not sure if this is teen or mature, so vote on the poll, please.

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Part One: Discovery

PROLOGUE
December 9, 2006

Ricci walked slowly around the corner of the old church, his gun at the ready. He paused for a moment, looking at the tall steeple piercing the moon. There was a circular stained glass window at the top, and there was a flicker of light…

Ricci moved slowly, hearing the dry grass crunch under his boots. He was nearing the small steps up to the door. There was a railing, with a single shiny black crow cawing to the night. As Ricci drew closer, something, or someone, grabbed him by the shoulders.

He whipped around and pressed the barrel of his handgun to the skull of his attacker.

“Ricci, it’s me! Calm down,” Scott said, laughing. Ricci gave an angry sigh and pulled his gun away. He quickly grabbed Scott’s collar and held him against the wall.

“We are being serious, Scott,” Ricci growled. “This is a real mission, and people’s lives could be at stake. Don’t pull crap like that.”

Ricci let Scott go, a little more forcefully than intended. Scott fell to the ground.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” he asked, dusting off his uniform. Ricci sighed again. This mission seemed irrational and weird. After several murders and sightings of strange dogs, the mayor had sent the police to investigate the most likely place. Either the mayor was doing drugs or had watched too many horror movies. The dread of the unknown was sending Ricci’s emotions wild.

Ignoring Scott’s question, Ricci moved toward the double doors. As he walked up the steps, startling the crow, he noticed something odd about the doorknobs. They were shaped like snarling wolf heads. The eyes were made of rubies. Ricci grabbed one, but the door wouldn’t budge.

“Door’s locked,” Ricci said, looking at Scott. “Give me the pick.”

Scott handed the small metal object over. Even though he hid it with a smile, being at this church scared him, too.

Ricci jiggled the lock pick, wondering what was behind these doors. He saw this church every day on the way to work without a second thought. Now this church seemed like his worst nightmare. It was creepier than any church back down in the city.

Finally the door swung open with a melancholy creak. A puff of dusty air blew in Ricci’s face, as if to invite him inside. The first thing the two police noticed was that there were two candle chandeliers lit at the far end of the church. It was strange; who attended church at eight thirty at night?

“This is odd,” Scott remarked, walking in. “ This place --- whoa!”
Scott was staring, wide-eyed, at a painting up on the wall. Ricci murmured something, then noticed the painting himself.

It was a wolf, lying flat on its back. The chest cavity had been torn open. A plant of some kind was within the gap. Its tendrils had punctured most of the wolf, and buds had come out of its eyes. The eyes were still there. At the end of many of the vines, there were leeches, connected to the flesh. It was a mind-scarring sight.

“What kind of sick place is this, Ricci?” Scott said, looking around the room. The normal stained glass windows were replaced by tapestries of war, people killing wolves, wolves killing people, and a strange picture of people with half-eaten bodies and canines with most of their flesh missing.

“'…And so our kind will regain hold of the Earth and all of the fine Hosts that live upon it,’” Ricci read off the inscription at the bottom of the fabric. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t know,” Scott replied. “Well, let’s get back. It’s only some cult killing off the people of Pygmy Flats…”

Ricci left the tapestry and began to look around the church, ignoring Scott again. He walked past the pews, noting that there were armrests every so often along them. Each armrest had a little indention in it, toward where a wrist would rest. Ricci soon came to the altar. But there was no Bible, only a shiny silver saucer.

“What’s that?” Scott asked. Ricci shrugged and examined it. There was the same grotesque image of the wolf on its surface, with the chest cavity a little deeper than the rest. Something had dried in the hollow. Ricci chipped off a little piece of the stuff and tasted it.

“Blood,” he muttered, spitting on the stone floor. “It was filled with blood.”

Scott looked horrified. Suddenly something shuffled behind them. Ricci whipped around. Nothing was there. Scott returned to looking at the plate. Still spitting the blood from his mouth, Ricci held his gun at the ready. He was sure something was in the room.

Then he saw it: a thin trail of blood. It was an unhealthy brown color, and it led behind the row of pews. Ricci spat out the last of the blood and tiptoed around the last pew. The blood had formed a pool, like the source had stopped for a moment, then continued around the row again.

Suddenly Scott screamed.

If Ricci weren’t so scared, he would have thought it was a trick. He leapt over the pew and aimed his gun. Scott was no where to be found.

Ricci moved slowly, not wanting to be attacked himself. Along with the old blood, there was a thick trail of fresh, red blood, leading to a corner of the room. Ricci, not caring if what he was doing was safe, walked slowly over.

Soon he could hear the sounds of bones breaking. Ricci steadied his gun and edged around the pew. An unearthly growl entered the air as he neared.

“Scott…are you okay?” Ricci whispered. Then he saw his comrade. Scott’s eyes were glazed over. It was too late. A dog was hunched over him, growling and chomping up his ribs. Ricci tripped over his own foot, scuffing the floor. The dog looked up.

One of the dog’s eyes was missing, and the other was white. Its flesh was exposed in many places, including around the lips and a majority of the tail. Maggots were crawling around in the red meat, freckling the dog in moving cream dots. From the knees down, the skin was missing from its legs, showing the bone. It looked at Ricci and snarled.

Ricci fired rapidly, peppering the dog’s chest. Nothing happened, except the dog became enraged. It leapt at Ricci, snapping its jaws.

“Oh, ****!”

Ricci dashed down the rows of pews, jumping the last one and barging out the door. He rolled down the hill, to the edge of the city. The dog ceased chasing the police officer at the start of the fence. A figure walked from behind the church, chuckling.

“It was only a matter of time until they found out…” the figure muttered, “and so it begins…”

******

"Ricci" is pronounced "Richie," just so you know.
This is my ultimate story so far, so when this gets famous you can brag to everyone you read it here first!

This is awesome! I love blood and gore and creepy stuff. I can't wait to read more! Also, is kind of based off of Resident Evil? 'Cause i'm getting a pretty similar picture here.

Yeah, it's based off a mixture of all the games in one. Blame it on Resident Evil 4...

We're going to leave our good friend Ricci for a while and focus on another central character. We'll find out what happens to the cop later in the story.

******

Chapter One
December 11, 2006]

Victor Wenston turned the coffee maker on, then turned around and slid two slices of bread into the toaster. He sat down and buried his face in his hands. The radio on the table, next to his elbow, was playing Fall Out Boy’s new hit song for the third time in thirty minutes. Victor began to doze off, his head sliding down his hands.

The coffee maker dinged. Victor poured the coffee, missing the mug and spilling it over his hand.

“Damn!” he cursed, running cold water over his hand. “The one day I’m not late for work—”

He glanced at the clock.

“Damn!”

In a frenzy, Victor pulled on his jeans and clean blue shirt, then combed his light brown hair and slipped on his shoes. Grabbing his jacket and a slice of toast, Victor dashed out of his apartment and into his small, broken yellow Ford truck.

“Damn, damn, damn!” Victor whispered, pulling back the clutch. “If I’m not there, I’m fired!”

The radio was playing Fall Out Boy’s song again. In a rage, Victor punched the stereo as he pulled out of the apartment complex’s parking lot. His pine fresh air freshener hanging off his rear view mirror, having long lost its pine scent, wove around on its frayed string as Victor sped away to the Pygmy Gazette Newsprint Company.

Slowing down only when he passed by a police officer, Victor drove a steady eighty miles per hour through the city. He zoomed into the company’s parking lot, screeching to a halt in the last open space. Victor launched himself out of the truck and into the building.

He dashed through the office until he reached his cubicle. Victor’s best friend, Chuck, leaned out of his own cubicle and passed Victor a Starbucks coffee mug.

“Late again!” he laughed as Victor grabbed the coffee away. “Then again, we had a late night.”

Victor pulled his rolling chair out and flopped into it, tossing his jacket over the back.

“Yeah, at least we got the game,” he murmured. “Thanks for the coffee. How come you aren’t late?”
Chuck laughed again.

“Remember, I’ve got a girl. She keeps me on track.”
Victor rolled his eyes, then turned toward his computer. The E-mail icon was flashing. Victor clicked it and groaned. It was from his boss.

“This sucks…Oh…Yes!”

Chuck rapped on the cubicle wall.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I have a chance to redeem myself. I just have to go write an article about some murder, and if I do a good job, I can keep my job,” Victor said, spinning his chair around. “Now I won’t get fired!”

Victor noticed the time of the appointment, liking how he still had two hours until he had to go.

“Game of Battleship?” Victor asked, tapping on the wall. Chuck grunted in reply.

=+=

Victor walked into the retirement home, looking for the person called Molly McGolly. As Victor looked at his appointment list and around the reception room, a very fat woman waddled up to him. She was wearing a cream floral-patterned dress and blue tights. Her black hair was up in a bun. A nametag was pinned to her chest.

“You the reporter?” she asked. Victor nodded.

“I am going to assume you are Mrs. McGolly,” he said, pulling out a pocket memo pad. The woman seemed unpleasant, making Victor uncomfortable.

“For a reporter, you don’t look like much,” Mrs. McGolly said, referring to his light frame. “You’re no Fry.”

Feeling self-conscious, Victor said, “Fry is a television police officer, not a real reporter, and I believe one of your residents was murdered last night.”
Mrs. McGolly nodded and walked toward a giant wall covered in photographs.

"These are all the people who died peacefully in this home,” she droned, like she had done this before. “This is the only person who didn’t.”

She pointed to a picture framed in red. It was a very old woman, looking happy about winning at Bingo.

“Do you really need a wall covered in the photographs of dead persons?” Victor asked, scribbling on his memo pad.

“I don’t know, I just work here.” This woman was hard to be around. Victor sighed slightly and wrote Stupid employee.

“Were there any distinguishing marks about the murder?” he asked.
Mrs. McGolly nodded.

“Her ribcage was torn out,” she said. “There was blood all over her face.”
Victor suppressed a gag.

Victor questioned Mrs. McGolly for another half-hour, until the sun passed over the roof and toward the horizon. By this time the fat woman was nodding off, a thin strand of mucus hanging from her nose. Victor poked her again.

“Well, I must be going,” Victor said, going to shake her hand, then drawing back after she wiped her nose. “It was nice meeting you.”

Victor walked out the door, making soft gagging noises. His truck was waiting in the street; the retirement home was so poor, they had no parking lot. Victor pulled open the door and hopped in. As he started the engine, his cell phone began to ring.

“Hola,” Victor said, fastening his seat belt.

“Vic! Chuck called. He said you have Twilight Princess,” a female voice said from the other line. “Jon was so eager to play.”

“Sammy?” Victor said, stunned. “Wha—how did you get my number? Where are you?”

“Hey, Vic, I’m your sister. I know all,” Sammy said with a laugh. “No, I just moved to Pygmy Flats. Rancho Medieval, near the theater.”

Victor began to move in the general direction of home.

“Well, It’s nice you moved away from Japan for a while,” he said. “So, how’s everything? How’s Ken?”

Sammy went silent, then said, “He’s the reason I came back. He got a call from the Army, saying he had to go to Iraq. There he kinda…”

“Bit the dust?” Victor said, stopping at a red light. “Punched his last ticket?”

“Jon is taking it rather well, and I told him we would see Uncle Vic very soon,” Sammy almost choked on her words.

“Maybe we could go to the cinema or something on my next day off,” Victor said, feeling sorry for his six-year-old nephew. “I’m having trouble at work, so I can’t take Jon to work with me, like I used to.”

Sammy giggled a bit. “Well, see you in a couple days.”

They exchanged good-byes as the light turned green.

Victor could hardly believe his sister Samantha had moved to Pygmy Flats. She had gone to Japan as a foreign exchange student, then loved it and went back, after marring a handsome man by the name of Ken Turner. They had a son together, named Jonathan. Sammy rarely visited Victor because of money constraints, and vice versa because Victor didn’t know any Japanese. When she did, Victor often took Jon to work with him. They were happy, as far as siblings went.

Victor plugged in his mp3 player and turned it on. The radio was playing Fall Out Boy’s song again, so he had to drown it out somehow instead of turning it off. As he nodded his head to the beat, Victor glanced at the memo pad tossed on the seat beside him and sighed. Tonight would be a night of typing up a paper instead of playing five hours of his brand new GameCube Zelda.

“Work’s more important than games…” he muttered, turning onto Hippo Avenue, the street to the Cactus Thorn Apartments. “Too bad. I’m so close to the second dungeon…Gotta keep my job somehow…”

He continued this stream of mutters all the way to the apartment. He pulled up, let the truck putter to a stop, and then leaned his head against the steering wheel. Life was tough. Having just graduated from college, age twenty-two, he did work part-time for the Pygmy Gazette. Now he worked full time, and hated it. His aspiring dream was to be a cop, but an unfortunate accident brought him back to the paper. Now he had a widowed sister that just moved into town and was on the brink of being fired from work.

Victor thought of his lost dream as he grabbed the memo pad and entered the tall, red brick building. Inside smelled of cigarette smoke and burnt TV dinners. The receptionist grunted a greeting as he passed. Not another soul seemed to be about in the stuffy apartment building. Victor felt alone as he stepped into the small room where he lived, which was not unusual. The humid evening air hung around him like a blanket.

“Why do I live in crap?” Victor said suddenly, throwing the memo pad at the wall. “Arg…I guess this is what ‘life’ is.”

He turned to a stuffed, yellow toy duck on his futon.

“Gary,” he said to the duck. “ Life sucks. It’s time I kicked Life’s ass. I’m going to write that report, then I’m going to quit.”

The duck sat on the futon, staring at Victor with cute black felt eyes. It said nothing. Feeling like he decided something that evening, Victor sat in front of his typewriter, smirking.

He typed the first few words of his report and turned on his mp3. Tonight would be a good night.

******

Ooh...mysterious...
This story is still in progress, so if you have any ideas, for a new chapter or to help with an existing one, that would be great.

Sorry about the delay. I can't blame it on anything except sheer laziness.

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Chapter Two
December 12, 2006

“Why are you late today?” Chuck asked. Victor slid into his chair, holding his head. He had a horrible headache, and his friend talking wasn’t much help.

“Went to a bar last night…” he said, pulling his chair closer to his desk and laying his head down. “Had a couple beers. Watched the game.”

“Did Sammy call you?”
Victor nodded. “ I’m quitting today, after I turn in my article on the murder.”

Chuck stared at him.

“You can’t do that! You know what you need?”

Victor looked at Chuck, knowing what was coming.

“You need a girlfriend!”

Victor gave a half-sigh, half-moan. Not this conversation again.

“No, I mean it!” Chuck crossed his hairy arms. “Someone who likes to play games, like you, but can keep you in order! Like Shannon!”

Victor managed to sit up. He had drunk more than “ a couple beers” last night.

“No, I need to get away from Pygmy Flats,” he said with a groan. His head was splitting. “I need to get somewhere bigger. Like Vegas.”

Chuck slammed a hand on Victor’s back, causing him to reel.

“Why? To get drunk again? To loose all your money?” he said. “Places like that only exploit you. I’m taking you to the arcade today.”

Victor groaned his reply.

“There’s this cute redhead who hangs around the Shoot ‘Em Up 3 booth. Date her.”

Before Victor could reply, his computer began to beep. He had an E-mail. Dragging himself to a sitting position, he opened the letter and scanned it.

“Gotta go to the boss’s office,” Victor said, standing up. “Probably going to fire me.”

He walked past the rows of cubicles to the hall at the end. Doors lined the hall, the one at the end looming higher than the rest. It was through this that Victor entered.

“Mr. Wenston. Late again,” a fat, bald man said from behind an oak desk. The man’s head seemed waxy, as did the few blond strands of hair on his head. He was wearing a gray shirt and black suspenders. He had a mustache: a thin, yellow one. A name plaque on the desk read, “Mr. Farlen.”

“Hello, Mr. Farlen,” Victor said, sitting in a plastic chair before the bald man. Mr. Farlen stared at him.

“Think this is funny?” he said, almost yelling. He slapped several typed articles on the desk. “You give me reports on video games, you’re late almost every day, and now, to top it off, you come in with a hangover? I hope you have a satisfactory article to give me today, Wenston.”

Victor reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

“Got what you wanted. I hope it suits your fancy. The woman at the home wasn’t very pleasant,” he said, tossing the paper on the desk. The other papers flew to the edge of the table. Mr. Farlen snatched up the note and whipped it open, beginning to read. His eyes whizzed over the paper so fast they turned to blurs.

Victor sat with one leg over the other, a small smile on his face. It didn’t matter what this jerk thought of the article, by the time he was done, Victor would have packed his stuff and gone on his way to Las Vegas.

“Wenston, this is actually good,” Mr. Farlen said after a moment. It took Victor a moment to register what he said through his headache.

“I did what?” he asked, sitting straight.

“You did good,” Mr. Farlen repeated. “The paper is actually on topic, has good grammar, and fluent sentences. I’m going to publish this.”
He stuck it into a folder on his desk, then gestured for Victor to leave. Feeling like he was forgetting something, he walked back to his cubicle.

“So?” Chuck asked, leaning back.

“Take me to that arcade later,” Victor said slowly. “ Okay?”

Chuck smiled and nodded, pulling back into his cubicle.

=+=

The arcade was on the end of Fifth Street and Roadrunner Lane, overlooking a large expanse of desert. A sign reading “Gamer’s Choice: Arcade and Gallery” was over the double door entrance.

Victor pushed the door open, holding it a second longer so Chuck could pass through. Inside was all flashing lights and 8-bit sounds. Arcade consoles, from Frogger to Asteroid, lined every wall. Another double door lead to the gallery and shop.

“Shooting games are this way.” Chuck was pointing toward a line of games such as W.W.II: Final Battle and Gun Crazy. Mildly interested in a girl who loved gaming as much as he did, Victor followed.

The woman in question was aiming a blue plastic gun at the screen, laughing when she got a hit. She was wearing a tight fitting black T-shirt with the Dance Dance Revolution logo on it and equally tight fitting jeans. As she turned around to grab fifty cents off the table behind her, she noticed Victor.

“Hey, you a Nintendo gamer?” she asked, walking over. Victor nodded, thinking she must’ve seen his green Zelda shirt and assumed who he was.

His stomach felt like it had imploded as the girl walked closer. Victor seemed to see her in slow-motion; her curly red hair bouncing on her shoulders, her thin hips moving in perfect rhythm.

Chuck stood a little back, a small smile on his face. Being three years older than his twenty-two year old friend, he knew the look of being hypnotized by a cute girl a mile away.

“Never seen anyone like you here before,” the girl said, holding out her hand. “I’m Veronica Aniston, age twenty, Starbucks Coffee clerk.”

“Victor Wenston, twenty-two, reporter,” Victor said, in some kind of daze. Veronica’s hand seemed soft as silk in his own. Even though her hand was dampened with sweat, it still made his feel dirty.

“You’re that guy who writes for the Pygmy Gazette, aren’t you?” Veronica asked.

“The guy who only covers video games?”

“And one murder,” Victor said, feeling like it was said too fast.

Veronica smiled and pointed toward the Shoot ‘Em Up 3 game.

“Team round? Those zombies are hell.”

Victor nodded and pulled out a red plastic gun.

“Let’s go.”

=+=

Victor came home in a wildly happy mood. He grabbed his stuffed yellow duck off his futon and whirled it around.

“Veronica is awesome!” he cried, letting go of the duck. It soared through the air and landed, face first, onto a pile of dirty laundry.

“She is the first girl I’ve met who plays games!” Victor fell onto the futon. “I-I think I like her.”

He looked around his apartment. It was a one room, one bathroom living space. A section of the main room was tiled, showing that it was a kitchen. All his dirty clothes, and his duck, were piled in one corner, next to the television and GameCube.

Victor, having calmed down considerably, got up and popped a microwavable macaroni and cheese dinner into the microwave. The intense giddiness of meeting someone special was gone, leaving him in a dirty apartment, talking to his duck. Having no reports to write today, that meant a long night of Zelda.

Sitting down in front of the television with his macaroni, she popped back into his head. Victor couldn’t stop thinking about her.

“Maybe I do like her…” he murmured, then laughed. “Haven’t felt this way since seventh grade.”

He went to bed about twelve o’clock, the strawberry-haired Veronica dancing in his mind.

******

Bet you're all happy I got that one up. Don't worry, this stuff only continues for a few more chapters then...gore! Not really, but there's more action.

we've been hacked twice so you might have to repost some..