“Yeah.” Ronald wipes his sweaty palms on his slacks and wonders if he should shake Lester’s hand. “Listen, I want to thank you again for taking the time to do this interview. It really helps me a lot with my writing.”
“Have you ever written anything besides newspaper articles?”
“I wrote a book called Welcome, but it hasn’t done very well at all.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I’m not sure. I thought I did everything right.”
“What’s the book about?”
“It’s about a group of hikers who become lost in the woods and stumble upon a shack in which a family of murderers lives. The hikers are killed one by one.”
“Sounds good enough,” says Lester.
“I don’t think I got the killing right. I’ve never killed anyone so I have no idea what I’m doing. That’s actually why I wanted to do this interview. To learn about what it’s like to kill someone.”
Lester smiles and shakes his head. “You can’t learn how to kill like that. If you want to know what it’s like to kill someone, you have to do it yourself. Getting your hands dirty is the only way.”
The guard pulls Lester’s arm. “That’s it. Let’s go,” the guard says.
Lester obeys, leaving Ronald to gather his tape recorder and video camera, along with his notebook.
Back in his hotel room, Ronald sits on the bed with his notebook on his lap. He flips through the pages, reading passages and lines from Lester Wine’s story. It’s a fantastic tale, for sure. The man murdered dozens of women over almost a decade before he got caught. Ronald is intrigued by this man more now than when he arrived in Potosi.
Turning to a blank page in the notebook, Ronald absentmindedly writes his name. Ronald Dwayne Huffman.
He thinks about Lester strangling the hookers, squeezing the life from them as he stares them in the eye. He writes Lester’s name. Lester “Red” Wine.
Then he hears Lester’s voice telling him that the only way to know what it’s like to kill someone is to do it himself.
He writes Ronald Dwayne “Red” Wine.
Wondering what it must feel like to take someone’s life, he crosses out the letters of his first name, all but the R.
He wonders if he has it in him to do what Lester did as he scribbles across all the letters of his middle name except the first, leaving only the D.
After making Red and Wine all one word, he imagines himself dumping a body in the river and rewrites the name that now remains on the page of the notebook.
R. D. Redwine.
THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-NOVELS-
22918
Pushed
The Day Bob Greeley Died
Before the Harvest
Held
RAGE
The Good Neighbor
Annie’s Revenge
-NOVELLAS-
The Cabin on Calhoun Ridge
Shiners
Night Falls
-SHORT STORIES-
Transference
The Kindness of Strangers
The Hunger
His Ashes
-COLLECTIONS-
Once Upon a Rhyme
Twisted
-MINUTES TO DEATH SERIES-
The Loneliest Road
Close to Home
The Last Resort
Shock Rock
The French Quarter
-ANTHOLOGIES-
Carnage: After the End Volume 1
Legends of Urban Horror: A Friend of a Friend Told Me
-ESSAYS-
Everybody Wants to Write a Book
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kimberly A. Bettes was born in Missouri on Thanksgiving Day, 1977. Kimberly is the author of several novels and short stories. She lives with her husband and son in the beautiful Ozark Mountains of southeast Missouri, where she terrorizes residents of a small town with her twisted tales. It’s there she likes to study serial killers and knit. Serial killers who knit are her favorites.
Connect with Kimberly Online:
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HELD is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Copyright © 2011 Kimberly A. Bettes
CASE PUBLISHING
Cover Design by Kimberly A. Bettes
PUSHED is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2014 Kimberly A. Bettes
CASE PUBLISHING
Cover Design by Kimberly A. Bettes
22918 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2014 Kimberly A. Bettes
CASE PUBLISHING
Cover Design by Kimberly A. Bettes