The Creeps World: Close Encounters Of The Serial Killer Kind

What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas

Chapter Two: Vegas Life

What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas

I moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in early 2005 to start my life over with my oldest son, help my mom out and get on my own feet after leaving Colorado in a hurry.

I had no idea, in retrospect, why I chose to be so stupid and live in a place where buried bodies in developing communities were dismissed and just picked up by the coroner in bags "whenever they could get there." Due to the number of remains, bits, and pieces constantly "found" from the "old days." Ignored.

Houses built on the remains of others (incredibly unsettling death) in some cultures are highly frowned upon, and for a good reason. Not in Vegas' they make their own rules. Mafia debris wasn't their issue.

It is a place full of sin and terrible people, hence "Sin City" being the nickname it's so proud to boast. Why I moved there with a young son was beyond me. I had high expectations for still being naive as well as experienced.

I'm not saying that there is not any good there. I am saying that that city is a beacon for broken, destitute, lonely souls who have nothing left to lose, nothing to fight for, and whose morals have long faded away into self-destruction and devastation. No one actually takes any of that seriously, though. I mean debauchery for a weekend; what can that hurt anyone?! Right?

There have been great things and amazing names I don't have permission to use that have come from Las Vegas. That is to be explained by one of my favorite Buddhist sayings, 'through the murkiest water, may the most beautiful Lotus bloom."

The bright flashing lights somehow elude you into thinking it's like a type of heaven that goes "ka-ching, ka-ching" a lot, and it's not. The payouts are 'bait.' They know you will put them back in the machines. So noisy that the city has a way of drowning out the most beautiful voices, dulling the stars and the brightest souls. It was a terrible decision now that I think back on that move.

My mom was there on a quiet side of town, so a safe place to start over dominated any thought of all of that evil, and I went anyway. But, of course, I thought I was the cream and would rise to the top of that crop. I picked a hell of a field to grow in, that was for sure.

Shortly after I got there, I met a guy who worked graveyard shifts and was so hard to spend time with, but he was funny and captivating; I loved being around him at the time anyway.

So, to spend more time with "Jose," I started going with him on his night shifts as a security guard all around Vegas'. We went to all kinds of job sites, shopping centers, parking lots, festival sites, raceways, events, newly constructed neighborhoods with no tenants or laid cement, medical center drive-by checks, and even quick ten-minute presence stops in apartment complexes; a majority of the time we were alone in the truck because "watching" was his job, not so much securing.

I learned about Las Vegas, the streets, and my way of very quickly doing this with him, and I saw a lot of things, mainly that life wasn't as kind to everyone as it had been to me, and I had had it pretty hard then too. So that was saying something. So he started working this motel gig on the shady side of town off of Boulder Hwy.

Basically, (short story): He got caught having me with him, and they gave him the crap shaft' shift in the ghetto. And there I was again, so we didn't learn our lesson.

This motel was the daily/weekly pay scale type motel set in a five-story castle-themed building from a defunct fairytale land for crackheads, thieves, and such. It even had these cheeky castle turrets built onto the side of the building corners with plywood and had a "castle-like" faux stone paint to make it look more like a genuine castle.