Wretched Little Lives: Going Down the Rabbit Hole

By Rodd Clark

The problem about secrets is that they want to get out. They are creations of the sin, and their confession only brings them life and gives them substance - no matter how dark and horrific they truly were.
Rabbit wasn’t the type to seek absolution, and yet the attractive man across the table was different, more sympathetic, and he could see that much in those pale blue eyes staring back at him. We all think we're hiding our secrets, but in reality our secrets are hiding us.
This is the story of two very different men, and how they deal with their desire and sexual attraction against the backdrop of senseless mayhem and murder. Whatever made each one tick became their individual abnormality, and always with the question lingering in the air between them like stagnated smoke...was it reasonable to care for someone as badly broken as Cole Holder? And how might it end right, when it’d been so damned wrong from the very beginning?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rodd Clark
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463514696

Book preview

Wretched Little Lives

Going down the Rabbit Hole

By

Rodd Clark

Copyright © 2020 by Rodd Clark - This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author.

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.

John Steinbeck / East of Eden

"We all do bad things - sometimes."

Cole Holder

Dedications

I dedicate this work to Grant Atherton; who kept me sane in the weirder moments and helped me to remain off the ledges. Also I wish to give special thanks to my partner Richard DeVoe, who supported my decision to write, even when there were zero monetary rewards.

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Other books by Rodd Clark: The complete Brantley Colton Mysteries; Short Ride to Hell – A Cache of Killers – No Place for the Wicked

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The complete Gabriel Church Tales; Rubble and the Wreckage – Torn and Frayed – Ash and Cinders

Copyright 2020 Rodd Clark – Printed in the USA

ASIN: B083H2ZRJK

ISBN: 9780463514696

PRINT ISBN: 9781655656781

All rights reserved. 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 permission in writing from the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, situations 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 purely coincidental.

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter-Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Introduction

I was conceived in the back seat of a black and white 68 Chevy Bel Air that was my father’s pride and joy. He loved that car more than he could ever have loved his own children. And I have to admit that once I’d lost my new model scent, I too had lost much of my original appeal. He was a miserable man, with more dreams than any strength of character - foolishly believing that he was to be guaranteed a level of success which had forever slipped through his fingers like melting sand as every wave rolled his way. I often wondered of that is where I got that awful character trait I shared with a man I despised.

Any personal strength I possessed came from my mother. She was a hard-working, intelligent creature. Her greatest flaw came in her inability to choose adequate men to call her soul mate. She is dead now, but I know how difficult it must’ve been being so much bigger, so much more adept and smarter than any of the men she came into contact with throughout her life. They drank too much, fought too frequently. They couldn’t grasp the value in small things and were destined for failure from first jump. She must’ve loved that about them, since she continually chose men of low character with little education and with a lack of abundant prospects. If she possessed that nurturing mentorship in those she slept with…she certainly hadn’t bestowed it on her own children.

I am happy to confess it was a lesson, although hard-earned, was educated over time. She became a success despite the men that she foolishly put her faith in. But the costs surely were tiny paper cuts to her belief system and any hopes she might’ve maintained about men, in general. The most tragic part of her tutelage came in the form of one girl and one boy, and everything else that came with being a single mother with babies who were too fond of eating, and a dangerous abundance of pride that prevented her from reaching to family and friends for any support. Those were tough years that fortunately for me, were memories I never knew, being too young. I can’t remember all the struggles she’d endured, though I am certain they were carved deep into her psyche and would eventually damage her son with a flash of a look from her that however unexplained by her only cast a shadow that a deeply insecure child couldn’t help but fixate on. You weren’t planned, it seemed to scream. You remind me of that weak-jawed asshole wrestling me down in the backseat of that Chevy and leaving me stranded with another mouth to feed and an anger I just can’t fully dispel.

My sister was the perfect one, kind and loving, a pretty curled girl with big eyes and an inbred willingness to make others happy. I hated her. I recognize that she must’ve seen so much more than I had. She probably witnessed whatever fights her parents went through to instigate divorce. She probably watched as her father drove away knowing her future was suddenly uncertain and untethered. But that didn’t make it any easier to love her. She was model compliant, that little girl who never cried for fear of being left behind. And I admit at the time that she fast became my mother, my companion, my shelter and yes…even my friend. I didn’t learn to hate her for many years. I was foolish. I remembered too easily how she held my hand when we crossed the street, how she gave me a few dollars at the five and dime to buy an insignificant toy that I never needed. She was in many ways the mother I didn’t have. I only learned to despise her after my mother passed and I was shelved unceremoniously in the back. How my pain was minimized by hers and how my own mother chose her to be the executor of her estate leaving me as a bitter aftertaste in her mouth as someone needing special attention. I didn’t make decisions on my mother’s home, her burial, her wealth, absolutely nothing, a visitor to her life because I hadn’t been there enough and because no one trusted me like they did my dutiful sister with her pretty curls and willingness to make everyone around her happy.

You’re not bitter though, right? The voices are continual, painful, deprecating. I couldn’t explain it to a therapist but I don’t consider it acrimony. I don’t consider it regret and I no longer taste the acid on my tongue at the thought of it. I’ve moved on. I think if I thought I would live a long life, that I had more years ahead than I had behind, I might retain some rancorous sibling envy. But my life ran a different trajectory. It raced in other directions like an unrefined steed. The wind whipped my hair, the sun burnt my face, the sounds of thunderous hooves were a constant reminder that none of it mattered anymore. This had to be good, right? We are all rough patches of flesh that’s been marred and disfigured and for some it creates a beauty while for others it just bears the ugly sides of our inner nature. I could never differentiate between the two. It wasn’t just my scars either, it was hers. I spent an obsessive amount of time trying to understand her, what made her, how she grew and what she’d learned in the process. I looked for the hidden edges whenever her gaze was distant, and wondered what made that look, what was the precipitance of the event that caused that particular expression. No one needed to explain to me then, that I was an unusual child, but when others looked at my mother with her iridescent green irises that appeared smaller than normal person’s, and that smile belying so much pain and depth no one had ever waded through, that she refused to show, well it made me curious to say the least.

I should blame my mother for my sickness, but it hadn’t originated with her. It came from how I observed, how I took meticulous attention defining all I saw. She was a clock for me, a mechanical thing I could break apart to try and understand. I held the pieces, as individual wheels and gears and I held them in my palm. I studied them, deliberated over them and eventually I reassembled them just as I’d found them. Even more confused after the exploration than I’d been at the onset. I wondered what it would be to be as pretty as she was, too have eyes that sparked green and flashed like any star huddled under the Hollywood sign in the hills of California. I wondered what it must to be that clever, that capable. She wasn’t me, and I learned fast that disappointment was gift I’d be giving her for years to come.

Our connection was built by our love of the written word. I think she fancied herself a writer, though after I’d accidently run across some of her writing I knew that was headed nowhere and fast. She wanted to record the life she knew, but lacked skill in how to convey the trauma and the gravity of every event. I felt sadness for her when I ran across her hidden manuscript and wondered what exactly she was trying to say to her readers. She was happy when I said I wanted to be an author, and the only advice she ever gave me was, Please don’t write an expose, I don’t think I could live through that! The only thing that said to me at the time; was how much the secrets were more important than the success anyone might find in writing about our family. Sadly our family was boring and not worthy of a biography. Which is even sadder than the initial trauma if you thought about it?

As I stated earlier she is dead now. Cancer is a bitch who steals what she can and leaves nothing in her everlasting wake. I thought about telling my story about being a killer and the first thought was how my mother would’ve rolled over in her grave at the idea. Then, I remembered she’d been cremated so who the fuck cares now? Am I right? I leave behind me memories, a few faded Kodachrome’s from a different life. I could almost nearly see my infant self, sitting atop a black and white Bel Air and smiling as the picture flashed from one of those old cube style bulbs and I wondered exactly how much life could’ve been different given a different set of suns and different clouds with new possibilities ahead and a life that seemed all but tangible in the aftermath of every choice I made. I remember sitting in the backseat before child safety seats became the law, or sleeping atop the wheel well hump and the scratchy feel of cheap carpeting that covered the hump. I remember thinking then that it was crawling back inside the womb. Without anyone ever explaining to me where I’d been conceived, I just knew it was fact. Like an instinct it hit me, like I was crawling out of my own mother’s womb just being in that gas guzzling dinosaur. It was instinct telling me that I could always find sanctuary in that old car no matter how many fears there were around me. I felt at home there, safely snuggling that scratchy fibers of the carpet and the feeling of a spinning axel under my head.

Let’s face it; the question is now obvious and seemingly impossible to ignore, So when did you first lose your mind, when did you choose to go sufficiently crazy and decide to make your first kill a memory? That’s too complicated to answer briefly, and carries more weight than one might imagine. Killing isn’t sport; at least it wasn’t for me. There is more to it than such simple questions. And I feel driven to explain now; in terms that anyone might comprehend, no matter how much they hated me for the answers.

Chapter One

He wore low-slung Levi 505’s which barely covered that delicious spot between navel and bush. His hip bones were exposed enticingly and if you took a second to stare…and who wouldn’t have? You might have noticed the edges of ink from a tattoo brandishing a particular area above the bone. Looking more closely I saw the handle of a gun and surmised he had a pistol inked on skin to appear like a holstered gun. I decided in that moment to call him the gunslinger. I’d seen many weapons inked on hips but this one wasn’t all that spectacular as a work of art. It appeared blurry, aged and I decided it was likely a prison tat, or at the very least done by someone too high, or too inexperienced to operate a rotary or pen. Inked boys were always the hottest and I’d been drawn to that type of rebel my whole life. Let me add though, that I myself possess no ink and bear no holes where studs or rings once resided. I am practically virginal and unchaste by such worldly modes of fashion. This is rather ironic when you stopped to consider what became of me.

What I couldn’t see then was the gunslinger’s other tats. He had a row of Chinese characters on two vertical columns that stretched the ribcage. I don’t read or write Chinese and never thought to ask its meaning. It felt like too much an intrusion, though I didn’t understand why. Another aspect which separated him from other kids his age was his cockiness. Young people have an unsuppressed confidence that I never quite grasped. The gift of being young and beautiful I supposed. Or just the knowledge than most of your detractors were already headed not so slowly towards the door and out of your life forever. That bemused smirk as evidenced in their expression which clearly inferred, just don’t worry about it ole timer, you’d gonna be dead long before me.

Things were different when I grew up. Kids had a certain nervousness that came from knowing any minute their dad might just smack them across the head if they misbehaved. We didn’t have political correctness and kids didn’t run amok like today. The gunslinger possessed that nervy confidence which some are born too, and for most of us it gets chipped away over time – peeling paint that curls and fragments with each passing season. Yet it’s not whittled away by rain and sun; it’s flaked off because of every suitor in your life who’d ever spurned your affections, and every employer that passed you over for that well-earned raise, or every tiny slight that dutifully followed you home like another hungry stray that saw your weakness as a thing it could exploit. Like just another shithead animal lover falling for your doe-eyed innocence and pitiable state.

The gunslinger still possessed those qualities. Ones I’d so easily lost over numerous years. Traits I truly admired in others, but solely because they seemed so far from any possibility in my own life. He was cocksure and his emerald irises flashed a come hither and then cum hard expression.

"He was beautiful by anyone’s standards. And I knew the first second that he first noticed me, and grinned that smug expression of untested youth, that I would have to kill him very soon", hence the motivations for all my future crimes and the sordid tale of what was to become of me. "Who the hell had done such damage on this pitiful soul, you might surely wonder? What prompted him to kill in the first place, and how mad can one individual sound while trying their best to appear as lucid and healthy as any other saner person in their vicinity?

All good questions, I might add. As I mentioned, I do not murder for sport. There aren’t any Trophy kills where I slip pleasantly back to in my mind, recalling them again in those sweet, dark, private moments when my fingers find my swollen shaft and I can reminisce about those exertions like a satisfying long, wet kiss goodnight. Homicides shouldn’t be turn-ons. If they are you have bigger problems than just finding a good therapist willing to charge you on a sliding income scale. As a murderer I can say these things about others. I can assess accordingly because of my own insights. And my judgements are founded in every action I do. I am bad code, poorly installed, a faulty computer for sure…but there is no one better to evaluate the sanity of like-minded individuals than someone like myself. As the crazy one, no one’s better to show you just how nuts the others are.

But back to the gunslinger, he was just pretty enough that I had to weigh the act of disposing of him longer than most. But in the end it was that shit-eating grin that sealed the man’s fate. I am a much smaller man than I believe I really am. I have a vision in my head of a much more imposing figure than I actually appear. It’s kind of like hearing your voice on a recording played back and realizing for the first time, Do I actually fuckin’ sound like that…shit man! Gunslinger was a far bigger opponent than I’d had in years. If it were down to single-handed combat I would’ve had my teeth, and my ass, handed back to me in a paper bag for traveling. But I was smart enough to know it’s more about the hunt than the killing. Predator and prey are rarely matched in unarmed competition. You stalk, you observe, you search for weakness, and then and only then, did you strike. Hunters are pussies, firing rifles from deer blinds built high in the treetops. It’s effective, but its bad sport. And as I said, homicide is not sport for me.

The gunslinger was all bravado, too straight, and had that edge of a cigarette smoking white- supremacist. He was clearly too much talk, far too into guns and vaginas, tats and canned beer. That idea alone brought blood surging into my cock and made my nuts twitter with anticipation. It was enough to bring me pause. But it was ultimately not enough to save the young man’s life. Strange, as I think back on it now, how qualities that could make someone so inappropriate in proper mixed company would be the very trait that stirs my stew. I suppose I had a weakness for convicts and jail boys. Rough trade may one day prove to my undoing, but until then I could beat my meat with prison fantasies and strong dominate boys playing in the background.

I figured my best bet was guns. I’d get close and share a couple of Buds with gunslinger and then I’d let it slip about my arsenal at home. I knew enough about weapons to give the ruse some validity, because even faggots liked guns. Who wouldn’t want a toy that erupts in your hand and has the power to take down another man with a single pull of the trigger? We are all victims of countless bully’s after all, and the weight of a Glock or Sig Sauer with its polished steel like chrome? It’s a simple fact, guns are just fucking sexy. As I said, I don’t have tats myself and worried that my white-bread appearance may prevent me from getting close to gunslinger. I am however, smarter than he and decided I had sufficient skills to outmaneuver him.

I’d followed him for three days, always with a precaution of never being seen. I watched him go from home to work and back again. I watched him drive out on a Saturday night and parked far enough away that I could observe him with his friends. I felt like Dian Fossey watching the mountain gorillas from the cover of banyan leaf foliage. It made me feel more intelligent than my quarry, and I recognized then it was far more impressive thrill hunting than the actual resolution of death. When that realization hit me, I wondered if I’d been wrong all along, that maybe it was a sport for me, that maybe the hunt was even grander than the act. But long before I could fall into that cataclysm and remembered what it had to be like to take the gunslinger’s life. To watch his eyes as the last glimmer left as his face fell backward in that glorious act of capitulation. It was then I saw that the ends do actually justify the means, and that even if I enjoyed the pursuit, it wasn’t about that. If it was I’d have joined a safari hunt in Zimbabwe and be done with it. That and I knew that big and powerful men who lacked hefty enough equipment beneath their jeans who needed to feel that sensation more than I ever needed.

I purchased a scandalous bumper sticker at one of those shops that specialized in giving tattoos and marketing to the white-power groups and aficionados. I applied it directly to the windscreen of my car, knowing I’d have to be scrapping if off after the deed was done, since it was clearly a thing witnesses would too easily remember, when and if they ever spoke to police. The sticker said "White, Pure Forever and Proud to Serve." It was just the type of flashing neon I thought they could relate too. It was militant, proud and forceful. The implication for soft rebellion was just an undertone, it was verifiably screaming to the heaven. To me, it was a tell-tale indicator that suggested, ‘no please, kick my ass, then key my car and call me names as I pass by’. But I reminded myself it was temporary, and my beliefs weren’t in question when the objective was trapping a neo-Nazi for illicit ends.

I parked close enough that the rabble of partiers could see my sticker. It was a white-doe’s flickering tail sent to entice, and it worked far faster than I could’ve ever imagined. I was sipping from a can of beer, sitting in an empty parking lot on a Saturday evening. I had music blasting from my stereo and a cigarette dangling between my lips. They were gob-smacking stupid; they approached my vehicle without even assuming I was the authorities, or even Homeland Security targeting another unnamed group for scrutiny. I should’ve pitied them their ignorance, but I just sat back in half-lidded eyelids and a look of disgust for waking up in a world not of my choosing. I looked angry and unbeknownst to them my cock was stirring to life under my Levi’s – God, how I loved the hunt.

Before long one of the militant types approached and tapped his can against the glass, I made an awkward