How to Be Cliche (A Novel)

(27) Lovely Neighbors Across the Street

:)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Click.

                  I turned off the television and stared blankly at my open investigation notebook.

                  "Where to even begin," I whispered to myself.

                   There had definitely been another killing, but it wasn't singular. It was plural. Very plural. Ten people had been absolutely slaughtered at Crave the night before. All vampires. Some of them beheaded, others stabbed viciously and carved into so deeply that their identities were currently unknown.

                  I could have stopped him.

                  I gripped the sides of my skull and willed the television images to leave my thoughts. The body bags. The caution tape. The pale, drunken expressions of stumbling party goers taking in the brutal murders. Some of them laughed they were so wasted, others were sobbing on the ground and couldn't get back up. A hand-carved smiley face stake was left in each and every vampire. The reporters said that the club was so dark and the murders were so discrete and quick that people hadn't discovered the dead bodies for a good thirty minutes.

                  What I really couldn't get out of my head was the note that had apparently been stuffed down one of the victims throats.

                  Too late.

                  :)

                  It was all my fault. That message had to be directed towards me. If I had just shut my mouth to Gary, if I had just kept what I had known about Smiley from him, I would have been able to go to Crave and intercept his massacre. He wouldn't have prevented me from going. I would have...

                  I dove for a garbage can and puked my guts out. This town was sick. This was all so sick. Back home, the most tragic thing that had ever occurred was the local McDonalds running out of honey mustard. Now every television channel, every online article, and every newspaper had Smiley's bright yellow and black mask on it with a growing list of dead bodies. I felt helpless. Pepper Ballard, Master of Kicking Ass, was entirely stumped on what to do next. Call the police on Gary? No. That had to be exactly what he wanted because he had never told me not to. But why? Why would a serial killer not threaten someone's life who found out about their evil doings?

                   Most importantly, why had Smiley coincidently killed a girl that resembled me the day after we had first met, yet Gary never murdered me when he saw me a handful of hours later?

                  I wrote down a few questions in my Investigation Notebook.

·         Are there two different Smiley's?

·         Are they Gary and Ronny?

·         How do I stop them?

·         Why the hell haven't they killed me?

                  I stuffed my notebook under my mattress and held my head in my hands.

                  I was done playing the hero. I had failed Orange Gate County and failed myself. I had let Smiley continue to get away with the murders when I could have done something to stop him. Pepper Ballard, Kicker of Ass, was officially no more.