I needed to write something creepy, so I did. I honestly could not help it, and I'll admit it—this was some DAMN good fun! I hope it's as much to read.

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He laughed. Laughter was a good thing. Yes, a very good thing. It was good to laugh after this, the body of a woman held in his arms, painting him with scarlet blood that dripped from her back.

Sure, it had happened quickly. But all good things come precipitously, right? Yes, that's right.

He laughed again. It bubbled up from inside and burst. Nice and quickly. A good thing.

It would take too much energy to stand. It would be much better to sit here, her dark hair resting upon his arms, the smell of death rising up into his nostrils. How aphrodisiacal, he thought. How wonderful. Like the laughter. It rose again, echoing through the dark room. The laughter and the scent of death. Could any two things be better?

No, no, of course not. That would be crazy. Crazy. Laughter and death. Death and laughter. The sickly sweet smell of blood and piss and sweat and everything in-between mingling into a potent and ambient miasma. He inhaled deeply.

He was drawn to her eyes. Or, rather, her eye sockets. Now that part hadn't

happened quickly, nosiree, not today, Mr. General. That had been done after she had died, yesiree. The pair of eyeballs jiggled around inside of his pockets as his long breaths moved them. He raised his hand to move that wonderfully black hair over the empty, red caves in her face. The dim light lit them in a bad way. That was a bad thing.

A bad thing.

And bad things weren't good, nosireebob. The Boss hurt you if you did bad things. And hurting was not good, no, the smell of blood so much better, yes.

The door was opened rather noisily (how rude) and he was jerked from his thoughts.

Uh-oh.

It was the bad man. The Boss's bad helper. He didn't like him, sitting against the wall with her body, no he didn't.

"Get your stupid ass up."

Yes, he was a bad person. He didn't like him, and he didn't like him right back. But if he said anything he got hurt, 'cause saying things was a bad thing. And bad things were not good things, no, no, no. That was axiomatic. He laughed.

"You're always fucking laughing, aren't you? Well, good. It's better than hearin' ya talk. Now get your ass up."

Okay, okay, I will, he thought. I'll get up. He tried to, tried to stand with her body, but he couldn't. But he didn't want to let her onto the cold floor, no. The cold floor wasn't right for her.

"Drop the dead bitch, you dumb fuck."

Oh, mean and bad and horrible and a bastard. But he had to listen. He didn't like the knives at all, the knives were bad things that came from bad things. He stood slightly and let her roll to floor so that her eye sockets wouldn't show.

"Here." The Boss's helper tossed him something. "Put this on. You look like shit."

He held it in his hands. It was a gray shirt. Oh, goodness me, my shirt is gone, he remembered. When did that happen? Oh, well, no time to dwell. That was his motto. He slid the shirt on. It was backwards, but that didn't matter, he guessed. The white tag bobbed ever so daintily in front of his eyes.

"Come on. Follow me." The Boss's helper began to go through the door. It was a hinged door, a single batwing door. The Boss's helper walked through it and held it open for him to follow. He approached it and began to step through, but he saw the smirk on the helper's face, yes he did, but he couldn't do anything. The helper let the door fly back; it crashed into his face with a horrid crunching sound and suddenly his nose was streaming blood down into his mouth and staining his new shirt. But this blood didn't smell good, no it didn't, it smelled foul and it hurt like the devil.

"Better watch that, chief," he called laughingly.

He had stepped back, the door still swinging. He caught a glimpse of the (bad man) helper grinning that evil grin that showed off his yellow, pointy teeth. Those teeth had tasted his blood before, they had, and it had hurt even more than his nose did now. He mustn't talk, he mustn't retaliate, because last time he walked right up to (bad man) him and spat in his face and called him a dirty bastard and he had lost his left ring finger because of it and that had hurt, God did it hurt. A thousand bites and bleeds and broken noses it had hurt, it did. Oh, my.

He walked through the door, anticipating another attack but escaping one. The (bad man) helper had gone on ahead into the dimly lit—why dimly, why, dimly was so bad—hallway and he had no choice but to follow him, and so he did.

They walked for a small time, the (bad man) helper not talking and he not talking, either, even though his nose pained him terribly. He knew where they were going, oh, they always went here, they always do and nine times out of ten it was for bad things, bad things that came from bad things that came from bad things and then came from pain. An evil sadist was The Boss, so very, very bad.

The Boss's room had no door, thank God. He could walk through the rotting doorway without worry of ten pounds of mahogany or oak or cedar or sometimes steel smashing into his face.

The Boss's hall was dark green and lit very well (thank you so much, Mr. Boss-man). It was a narrow job that led to his rather large office, which the pair soon stepped into. He could see the (bad man) helper better now. He was wearing stained jeans and a white muscle shirt, what some people called a wife beater, and they were bad people too, just like the (bad man) helper and his Boss.

The office was somewhat homey. Three cushy chairs were set a foot before a sleek wooden desk that was void of anything remotely office supply-ish. On it were two very large and shiny revolvers. He knew they were loaded, yes he did, 'cause sometimes The Boss did target shooting at the walls and sometimes at he, himself, when he walked by, but The Boss was a bad shot and never hit him, which was a good thing.

The walls, also dark green, were dotted with bullet holes—big ones, most damn near an inch across. Those two revolvers used big, big caliber bullets, oh, God yes. A door was behind the desk, set into the wall poorly, an inch of darkness visible above its top.

"Sit down and wait for The Boss," said the helper. He took a seat in the leftmost chair, which let out a sigh as his bulk slammed into it. He took the chair to the right, farthest away from the (bad man) helper. The Boss would come soon, right through that door behind the desk, 'cause he never came from anywhere else and maybe he even lived behind that door.

Sure enough, the door creaked open, a squeaky sound that made him want to scratch his teeth (oh and sometimes they did that, too, oh yes they dug into his teeth with sharp things they said were dental tools but were not he knew they weren't because they were too rusty, far too rusty and smelled of dirt and blood and not the clean smell of mint and toothpaste and latex gloves and they hurt, too, yes they did hurt). Through the opening stepped The Boss.

He was a very, very tall man, maybe six-four, and he always wore the exact same black long-sleeved shirt and black slacks with a red rose sewn onto the outside of the left pocket. He was lean but possessed great strength (and it had hurt him before, he knew it was there to hurt him).

The Boss sat down into the swivel chair that rested behind the desk and looked into the (bad man) helper's eyes. "Well, did he do it, or what?"

"Yeah, he did it," the helper answered.

He just sat there and looked at The Boss and occasionally the twin revolvers.

"Clean?"

"Yeah, right. Look at him."

The Boss turned to look at him just like (bad man) helper said, and oh were his eyes scary. Black, soulless tunnels that bore into him like drill bits. They ran over the bloodstains on his arms and legs and face, then returned back to the helper.

"Well, it's not like I expected something different."

God, those revolvers were shiny, weren't they?

"She was the last, right?" The helper was grinning that evil grin again, which was a very bad thing.

"There's no one else in this sect." The Boss was grinning, too, and boy that wasn't good at all.

"Guess we're done." The helper's gaze immediately turned to him. "We're done."

Yes, the revolvers were quite shiny. Perhaps beautiful, but not as good as death.

"I've got the coin right here." The Boss held up a quarter.

"I got heads, Boss. This hapless son'bitch gonna be mine, he is."

Revolvers were death, were they not? They could cause death, they could cause that wonderful smell.

"We'll see 'bout that. Here, you do the flippin'. My thumb's a bit jerky."

The (bad man) helper took the coin from The Boss, but he only saw this peripherally. His eyes were focused on those lovely guns, but his mind ran, too.

What are they betting on, he thought. But he knew. Oh, he knew, indeed. They were done, which meant he was done, which meant he was going to be killed, maybe shot, and they were going to see who did it, weren't they? The coin was going to flip and determine whose hands his blood would be on.

The quarter was resting on the helper's cocked thumb, George Washington's blank face staring at the ceiling. He looked at it one, then he was back to the guns, which lacked a safety function. They were also automatic. How very fortunate.

Who said he had to die?

They should die.

They should make that wonderful smell.

Yes, they would. Both of them. Then the smell would be wondrous.

As the coin was flicked upward into the air, he sprang from his chair and dove for the guns with outstretched hands, eyes dancing in the light.

As The Boss screamed, "Motherfuck!" and the coin landed on the floor, his hands wrapped around both of the iron handles and he had pushed back from the desk and was standing behind his chair. The Boss and the (bad man) helper were standing, but they were standing still.

Yes, who held the cards now?

"Put 'em down, assfa—"

Two shots caught the helper in the throat, throwing him backward and sending him crashing into the desk. The guns were very loud in this enclosed space, the discarded casings registering in no one's ears.

The Boss tried to dive under his desk, but he wasn't faster than a speeding bullet, no he wasn't. A shot tore off the top of his skull and splattered it against the wall like an adhesive toupee. As he reeled back, three more slugs were implanted into his face, warping it into a mass of red and white.

His breathing was normal. White smoke rose from the guns' barrels lazily, the scent of it not good but not bad, either. They were hot. He let them fall to the ground.

The smell of death was undetectable. That bastard helper had broken his nose and he couldn't smell. Oh, how cruel it was.

"Dirty bastard!" He yelled gleefully. "Dirty bastard, bastard, dirty bastard son-of-a-bitch!"

Ha! They couldn't hurt him now! He could yell and scream and call them bad names and they couldn't do a thing!

He was smiling, still tasting his own blood. Yelling at them would have to wait. He had to go back to the room with her inside of it. Oh, yes, perhaps he could smell it there, so powerful had it become. He turned and walked through the doorway and down the hall, back into the room.

Just walking into it made his heart leap; he couldn't smell the death so much as sense it, it wrapping around him like thin arms and tickling him lightly. She lay on the floor, facedown, just as he had left her. Her dark hair sure did look pretty.

He walked over to her and knelt. He could see the big slice running down her back now, from the back of her neck all the way to the small of her back. It tore her res dress, too. Her spinal column could be seen, but big meat hooks would tear all the way through, wouldn't they? Nice and quickly, too. He rolled her over so she stared at the ceiling through her hair.

He breathed deep the haze of death and smiled.

He had won this time.