Dead to Writes (April Almighty #1) Read online

  Dead to Writes

  Tim Miller

  Tim Miller

  Dead to Writes

  © 2014, Tim Miller

  San Antonio, TX

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover model: Meghan Chadeayne

  Cover Photo and design provided by Katelyn Elizabeth Oliver

  A Special Thank You

  I wanted to take a moment to thank all of my readers, friends, fans and supporters for everything this past year. “Hell, Texas” was originally released in January, 2014 and was welcomed to one of the best openings I have ever had as a writer. Up until then, my books had found their way into a few readers hands here and there, but “Hell, Texas” was a game changer.

  So I wanted to thank each and every one of you for your support. First and foremost I want to thank Heather and Mike at thehorrnation.net without whom much of my success so far wouldn’t be possible. There are many others whom I would like to thank, but I fear leaving anyone out. I will do my best to list those who have helped me. If I leave anyone out, I apologize in advance as there are so many. Thank you to the following:

  First, my beautiful and amazing wife Lori who is my biggest cheerleader and handles all my mood swings without divorcing me.

  My beta readers who have read several titles for me:

  Laura Barcenas

  Nicola Dee Van As

  Jennifer Mills-Sparkman

  Special thanks and shout out to Meghan Chadeayne for not only being one of the most talented models and actresses ever, but for being a good friend and so supportive. Seriously folks, Google this lady.

  Thank you to Katelyn Elizabeth Oliver for being an amazing photographer and bringing Meghan and this book to life in only the way she can.

  Thank you Angela Pratt for being the best editor ever.

  Thank you to M Jet for also being that special kind of crazy, always having my back and putting hexes on those who wish evil upon me.

  I also want to thank Cynthia Aline and Ramiro Avendano for believing in me and being there to support me through thick and thin.

  Special thank you to Sarah Karges for showing me her 30 Days Self Love project, listening to me whine while teaching me how to value myself.

  I hope I’m not leaving anyone out. If so, please let me know and I can easily update this. Thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart. It is because of each and every one of you I am now able to do what I love.

  Your friend,

  Tim

  Chapter 1

  Marty sat at his laptop typing away. He only had a few thousand words to go before he’d be finished with his first horror novel. It was called “Tunnel of Doom,” about a group of kids who venture down an abandoned train tunnel only to find out its haunted. They end up trapped and fighting for their lives! Just thinking about it got him so excited.

  He had no doubts this would be a best seller. It had to be. Not one to toot his own horn, Marty McDougal was a literary genius. Not only was he a genius, but he was the Harbinger of Horror. He made that up himself. It was brilliant. Soon the world would know that brilliance and he’d earn riches beyond anything he could imagine.

  “Marty! Did you take the trash out yet?” his mom screamed from downstairs. Goddammit. Didn’t she know he was working?

  “Not yet Ma! I’m busy!”

  “I don’t give no shit! Put yer stupid computer away and finish yer chores!” she screamed.

  “But Ma!”

  “You heard me!”

  Fuck! So close to finishing. He closed the laptop and walked downstairs. He hated how his Ma talked to him. He just turned twenty-seven; he wasn’t a kid anymore. He sure as hell shouldn’t be running around doing stupid chores being yelled at by his mama.

  He got down stairs and headed to the kitchen where he began bagging up the trash.

  “You ain’t no writer Marty,” his Ma said. “You’re just poor white trash like the rest of us.”

  “But we don’t have to be. This book will make us rich. Then we can hire people to do shit like this for us. They could take out our trash, cook our meals.”

  “Somethin’ wrong with my cookin’? Why do you treat your poor Ma this way?

  “Cause he thinks he’s better than we are,” his brother Cletus said from the doorway. He was holding his GoPro camera, filming them as he always filmed everything.

  “No I don’t, Mr. Filmmaker,” Marty said. “I just know what I’m good at. I ain’t good at stuff like daddy was. I can’t fix cars or fix anything.”

  “That’s fer damn sure,” Ma said.

  Cletus walked toward Marty pointing the camera at him.

  “So tell me Mr. Famous Writer, how does it feel to be so well known?” Cletus said, towering over Marty. Marty stood around five foot nine. Cletus was six foot five inches easily.

  “Get that stupid thing outta my face, Clete.”

  “Or what?” Cletus said.

  “Will you two knock it the fuck off? I’m too old to listen to you dipshits cackling at each other. Marty, take out the trash! Cletus go pick up the living room!”

  “Yes Ma,” they said in unison as they went to work. Marty pulled out the trash bag, tied it off and headed out the front door.

  He walked out the back of the house to the trash barrel and dumped the bag inside. It was almost full, so it would be time to burn it all real soon. His thoughts were interrupted by something banging. It was coming from the shed. He walked to the shed and stepped inside. The naked girl was hanging from the hook still, but swinging around and kicking the wall. As soon as she saw him she stopped and tried to scream, but it only came out as muffled grunts due to the duct tape over her mouth.

  “I thought I told you earlier to stop makin’ all that racket,” Marty said. “If Ma hears you banging around out here, she won’t be as nice as me.”

  He looked her up and down. The girl was short, but her body was firm and toned. Marty figured she was into yoga or crossfit. She had a nice tan and firm, full boobies. He walked over and felt her breasts.

  “Damn girl. These are some nice old boobies. They barely move when I squeeze ‘em,” he said as she tried to struggle against him, but was helpless. “Stop wiggling around now. I got some time before dinner.”

  He stepped back and undid his pants, dropping them around his ankles. He walked up to her, grabbing her by the thighs and pulling them up around his waist. It took him no time at all to get hard. She struggled and let out a muffled scream as he stuck his dick inside her and began thrusting. The girl continued to scream as he repeatedly fucked her.

  “Oh yeah. You like that dontcha?” he asked. “It’s ok, you don’t have to say nothin’. I can tell yer lovin’ it.” Marty slammed his pecker in and out of her a few more times, marveling at how nice and soft her pussy was. He’d banged lots of girls back in the shed, but none were ever as soft and tight as this one. He’d have to see if they could keep this one around a little longer. Though Ma had no idea he dipped his pecker in their catch.

  After another thrust, he blew his load deep inside the girl. She squealed again, strugglin
g against him as he grunted, making sure every drop went inside her. He stepped back, and bent down to pull up his pants. Though he didn’t get back far enough and she kicked him square in the nose, knocking him flat on his back. Blood gushed from his nose as his vision blurred and eyes watered. He sat up, holding his nose. The blow stunned him good, but it only took him a minute or so to gather himself.

  “You little bitch! As nice as I been to you and you kick me in the face?” He stood and grabbed an axe handle lying on a nearby bench. “You see this? You want me to fuck you with it?” he screamed. She shook her head frantically as he waved it inches from her face. “You sure? You were pretty sure you wanted to kick me a minute ago! I think a lesson is in order. When someone shows you hospitality, you don’t kick them in the face!” He stepped forward, lowered the axe handle and pulled her legs apart.

  Chapter 2

  April Kennedy sat in class, ignoring her professor while working on her story. Everyone had their laptops out and were supposed to be taking notes. The class was American Literature During the Industrial Revolution. Yes, it was just as boring as it sounded. It was required though, so April endured. Though instead of taking notes on her laptop, she was working on her novel. A novel she hoped would catapult her out of college hell and onto the best sellers list.

  Trouble was, it was taking forever. She was a junior in college at the University of Texas, and she started on the book her junior year of high school. She’d taken many breaks and even started all over while halfway through a few times. To her high school English teacher’s chagrin, she was writing horror. Mrs. Abercrombie insisted she must write something literary.

  “Horror? You can’t write horror. You’re a girl for one. No one will take you seriously. Besides, horror is a dead genre. No one is reading it anymore and publishers don’t want it. Write a nice, contemporary literary piece. Or young adult and dystopian stories are really hot right now. You should do that,” Mrs. Abercrombie had said.

  Problem was, April hated all that shit. She couldn’t even read a literary book, let alone write one. The ones she’d tried to read were pretentious drivel written by people who thought they were smarter than everyone else. Who gives a shit?

  She loved horror. Ever since she was a kid she was into it. Her mom thought something was wrong with her. She even took April to a child psychologist once after her teacher showed her April’s drawings of a bear tearing a man’s head off. April was proud of that drawing. It was one of her best ones, especially the gushing blood and the crazed look on the decapitated man’s face. It wasn’t “about” anyone. The principal took it as some sort of threat. It wasn’t; it was just something cool.

  The shrink found nothing abnormal with her. She would be up late at night watching every horror film on Netflix she could find. If there was stuff she couldn’t find, she’d find it on Torrent. Yes that was stealing and not her first preference, but some stuff was just too hard to find. By her senior year of high school, she didn’t even like mainstream horror anymore. She had people in her class that thought the “Scream” movies were scary. Please. She got sent home from school one day for wearing her “Cannibal Holocaust” shirt to school that had a picture of a woman being impaled.

  So there she sat pounding away at her horror novel. The thing that endlessly plagued her in trying to write it was that nothing scared her anymore. How could she scare others when nothing even bothered her? She tried to avoid excessive gore and focus on psychological scares. Though in a novel, it’s much more difficult to provide a “jump” scare like in a movie. As she went along, there ended up being more and more gore.

  The story idea was simple and she hoped unique enough to attract a publisher and readers. The concept was about a girl who got bit by a snake, and then baby snakes start growing inside her and coming out of her body in all sorts of places. She hated snakes, so the idea was freaky enough to her. None of her friends said they heard of such a story before, so she truly felt like she was onto something.

  College was her parent’s idea. They insisted she go, even though she felt it was a waste. All the time she spent screwing around with classes, homework and exams she could have finished her book by now. Her mom didn’t take her writing seriously. No one did really. They thought it was a cute hobby, but nothing she’d ever make a living from.

  As she finished typing the last sentence of a chapter, the professor dismissed the class. She gathered her things and headed out of the lecture hall.

  “Hey skank,” a voice said from behind her. It was her friend Stacy.

  “What up slut?” April said. They had pet names for each other.

  “Just got out of my pre-law class,” Stacy said.

  “Yuck. Though mine wasn’t any better. Wish I could graduate already, or finish my book.”

  “How close are you to finishing?”

  “A little over halfway I think. Then I have to edit it, revise it and so on,” April explained.

  “Well hurry up already. You’ve been working on that since kindergarten.”

  “Whatever, bitch. You done for the day?”

  “Yep. Was gonna stop on the way home and get an organic ice cream cone.”

  “What? Are you fucking serious? What the hell is organic ice cream?”

  “You know, it’s like all natural, organic. Supposed to be healthier.”

  Fucking only in Austin, Texas. One wouldn’t peg Texas as a place for hippies, but that was Austin, hippies or hipsters or both. They invented things like organic ice cream, organic coffee, and even organic spring water whatever the hell that was. They often made up certain things or rejected things so as not to be “mainstream.”

  April grew up in San Antonio, which at times felt like another planet compared to Austin. Austin was fun, lots of things to do. But sometimes she just wanted to order a plain coffee without it having to be a vegan soy latte and not get hateful stares. Last time she ordered a plain latte, the clerk glared at her as if she’d just murdered a baby in public. Like calm down folks, it’s just milk for fuck’s sake.

  As they walked her phone chirped with an email alert. She opened it up and saw her daily email list from Crashbooks in her inbox. Crashbooks had fast become the number one ebook retailer in the country. There in new releases was a title called “Tunnel of Doom” by M.C. McDougal. That looked interesting. It was only a few dollars, so with a single click, it had loaded onto her tablet. At least now she had some reading material for the evening.

  Chapter 3

  Herbert read through his ebook copy of “Tunnel of Doom.” He wasn’t sure why he was trying to finish it. It was horrible. If the plot were just predictable that wouldn’t be so bad. This was downright silly. The writer obviously fancied himself some kind of master of horror, but his writing was way over the top dramatic. In writing, especially horror, there was such a thing as trying too hard and this guy had done it. M.C. McDougal whoever that was. The bio was mostly bullshit.

  “M.C. McDougal was born in the darkest reaches of the shadows. Where no one dares to go, M.C. has been. He has dedicated his life to instilling his nightmares upon the masses…blah blah blah.”

  Herbert’s theory in horror was, “If you have to tell me how scary you are, then you’re probably not.” And that held true. This showed up in his Crashbooks email list which is the only reason he bought it. He’d post a review for it on his blog, “HorrorUpYourAss.com” It would give his readers a good chuckle. Just as he was about to finish, his girlfriend Lydia stepped in the room.

  “You still reading that piece of shit?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Almost done.”

  “Why even finish if it sucks?”

  “I don’t know. This fleeting hope it will get better, plus I’m curious enough to see how it ends.”

  “Or you’re just a glutton for punishment,” she said, laughing.

  “That too.” He closed his tablet cover and tossed it onto the desk. “What are you up to?”

  “I have to run to the store to pick up a fe
w things. Did you need anything?”

  “I could use some more Redbull,” He said.

  “That shit is gonna make your heart explode if you keep drinking so many.”

  “Yeah, but it also keeps my dick hard, you don’t mind that do you?” he said as she stepped back out, flipping him the bird as she did so.

  “Classy,” he yelled to her, but all he could hear was her laughing as she left.

  He turned to his desk and flipped open his laptop. As he pulled up the browser, he went to the Crashbooks page for “Tunnel of Doom.” The book had only been out for a day or two and it already had some reviews. There were only three or four. One was a five star, the rest were one stars. Herbert was about to add another. He pushed up his glasses and began typing.

  His rule of thumb when leaving a bad review was to at least go into detail. Some of the reviews just said “This book sucks!” That isn’t very helpful to a potential reader. So he made it a point to go through and explain what he liked or didn’t like and why. This was a big reason why his blog was getting more and more traffic.

  He pounded out a review; it came out much longer than he’d expected. He went through and cleaned it up, which was good he did as he found a few typos in the process. Nothing pissed him off more than reading a review of a book which reads something like “This book has horrible grammer.” Crashbooks shouldn’t even publish these, but they do.

  He hit “submit” and his review was off to the Crashbooks queue and would likely be published in the next fifteen or twenty minutes. In the meantime, he copied and pasted the review to post on his blog. Though for the blog version, he’d expand it and add some of his own colorful phrases to liven it up a bit. As he typed away on the blog, he got an email from Crashbooks that the review was now live.

  He clicked onto it just to admire seeing his review live on the Crashbooks site. He’d written dozens of them, but it always felt cool to see a new one go live. After admiring it and re-reading it a few times, he went back to the blog. The final result was a few more paragraphs longer than the Crashbooks version, but that was typical. Gave readers a reason to visit the site instead of just reading it on Crashbooks.