Trails

By M J Moore

A man who likes to seduce women, then rip away the warmth of afterglow. A woman who married for money, then killed to keep it. A monster whose crime renders a young girl catatonic. A mechanic who picks up women he sees as common, then punishes them for it. All of these people are about to discover that consequences have a way of catching up, no matter which path we might take to try to ditch them. In this not for the faint of heart collection, you will tag along each of the trails these criminals leave behind them, and see who (or what) follows.

Who's trailing you?

• Language: English
• Publisher: M J Moore
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311131584

M J Moore

I've been reading and writing horror since I was too young to do either. I could never see myself being anything other than a writer which, I guess, goes someway toward explaining the fact that at forty three years of age I'm still renting a shoe box filled with borrowed furniture but, I digress. The first horror novel I ever read was Stephen King's Pet Sematary, and King is the author I count as my biggest influence, along with Jeffrey Eugenedes and Charles Dickens. I'm as big a movie fan as I am a book worm, and my love of cinema also greatly informs my writing style. I published my first two books - the horror anthologies Trails, and Anomaly: Ten monsters of a different kind - in 2013, and a neo-noir novella (try saying that five times fast) called The Rental, the first in what I call my vengeance series, in 2015. My next book, an anthology/novel called Little Treasures (see trailer links below) will be out soon, and another neo-noir novella (just wanted to say that aloud again), the second in my vengeance series called The Son, will be out later this year. You can find the book trailers for Little Treasures here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFLswk7r7r0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmCajwrCF-c

Book preview

I remember walking home from a friend’s house one dusky summer evening in 1985, not the least bit concerned for my safety despite the rather iffy neighbourhood we lived in at the time.  As an equally brave/foolish twenty-something, I stayed on at the pub near the insurance company where I worked until closing, and consequently had to walk three blocks to the train station and travel home alone on the midnight train, which also just happened to run along one of the most notorious routes in Melbourne.  Whether it was hormones or three dollar spirits providing my courage in those days, I do not know, but nothing scared me.

Flash forward several decades, and you will discover that that magic combination of time and experience has changed me somewhat.  My teenage son has inherited my former youthful lack of reserve, and has no qualms whatsoever about walking twenty minutes in the dark to the local shop to pick up a bottle of Dr Pepper, or taking a short cut down a hidden street well out of earshot of pedestrians who have the sense to use the main road.  Want to know who is terrified whenever he leaves the house?  That would be me.  I’m the one sitting here at the kitchen table, staring at my laptop screen, pretending to work while a thousand or so horrific scenarios flash in my brain as to what could happen on the journey home from his friend’s house at six o’clock on a cold Saturday night.

Why is that, I hear you ask?  Well, besides the fact that I would sooner depart this mortal coil myself than live in a world without Griff, it all boils down to one simple word: consequence.  I know that the idiot who runs under the boom gates at the level crossing, just so he won’t miss his train runs the risk of being turned into track graffiti, and I also know that the guy who invites kids to his house to buy puppies has his name down on a very different register than the one penned by the Dog Breeders Association.  Everything we do has consequences, regardless of  our intentions, (if we even have any).  Consequences are the trails we leave behind us; who or what follows those trails depends upon which paths we chose to tread.

It’s a rather frightening thought, and I think the stories in the following pages articulate that thought pretty well.  They are dark stories, some more so than others, but like all scary tales, they are an entertainment.  Whether you read them while riding the bus to work or when you’re soaking in the tub, the pleasure of being scared was probably what motivated you to click on that rather nifty thumbnail cover picture (made by yours truly).  All I can do as an author is to take the stuff that scares the shit out of me, pass it on to you, and hope you feel your money was well spent.  So come take a walk with me down this dark, hidden path.  Don’t worry, nobody’s following you…it’s all in your mind.

Whether your passion is serial murder or competitive baking, you would do well to remember the following: there will always be someone who does it better than you.

1.

She was sitting with friends at the bar when he walked in, nursing a beer and nodding politely as they prattled on about matters that clearly didn’t interest her.  She had more going on than the hive mind of her so-called peers could even begin to digest, but she didn’t need to indulge in vulgar displays of intelligence; her eyes shone with perception.  It made her a thousand times more desirable than the vacuous dolls that surrounded her, and what he wanted more than anything at that moment was to take her by the hand and lead her to his bed, but that would be pointless.  Seducing women had never been a problem for him.  He had learned in his teens that if he dripped just the right amount of sap at just the right time, most women would drink it eagerly.  But not this woman. Stroking an already healthy ego was like masturbating beyond the point of climax – painfully futile.  He ordered a drink and sat down next to her, accidentally kicking her leg as he did so.  Brushing against it wouldn’t have garnered the necessary reaction, or made her drop her drink.

‘Sorry.’

He called a bartender over and tried to order her one of the boutique brews eighty per cent of the crowd were drinking, knowing that the one he was replacing was at least eight dollars cheaper.  She tapped his hand and took over.

‘I’ll just have a Corona, thanks.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Imported lighter fluid’s still lighter fluid.’

He smiled.  ‘If you don’t like beer, why do you drink it?’

‘I like the gradual buzz it gives you because of the low alcohol concentration.  Spirits hit you all at once and leave your body just as quickly, so you have to buy more.  Twice the price for half the joy.’

He smiled.

‘Is this where you tell me you understood the analogy I just made and say something like: I’ve always been a beer man, myself?’

‘Will you throw a drink in my face if I answer that honestly?’

‘I think I’ll save that for when I catch you sneaking out of my flat at two in the morning.’

He grinned.  ‘Which part of England are you from?’

‘Chelsea.’

‘Great football team.’

She raised her beer in mock toast.  ‘You said football instead of soccer; well done.  English ex-girlfriend?’

He shook his head.

‘BBC subscription?’

Another no.

‘Saw Bend It Like Beckham fifty times?’

He laughed.

‘Figures.  Keira Knightly’s done almost as much for the game worldwide as Beckham.  Do you play?’

‘I’m more of an armchair footballer.’

She took another swig of beer.  ‘I wasn’t asking about football.’

He grinned.

‘So it isn’t all observation, then.’

He cocked an eyebrow, took a long, deliberate swig of beer.

‘Good.’

‘What brought you to the States?’

‘Oh dear.’

‘What?’

‘We were engaging in some lovely banter just then and you went and spoiled it by trying to interview me.’

‘I’m curious; would we be having this conversation if I hadn’t made you spill your drink?’

‘You mean, would you be just as likely to end up fucking me had you dispensed with the trickery, adhered to age old bar room tradition and chatted me up instead of wasting a perfectly adequate beer?’

‘Yes.’

She took a swig.  ‘Yes.’

The cab ride back to her flat was silent, but far from awkward.  As far as conquests went, she would have been too much for most men to take on.  The epitome of feminine sophistication, she could say the most jaw-dropping things without a hint of vulgarity.  She was sharp, assured, and completely unfettered by traditional notions of what was expected of her.

It made what he intended to do to her later all the more exciting.

2.

He had laid waste to the bodies and minds of dozens of women in his twenty year career.  Slight or plump, short or tall, beautiful or homely; the physical allure of the women was of as little importance as their names.  Sex alone did nothing for him.  Not that he didn’t pleasure them.  He gladly took their breasts into his mouth, tasted them, and gave them release in as many different ways and as many times as they asked him to, his dormant sex awakened by the knowledge that this was just the preamble to the final act.  He wanted them happy, relaxed, depleted when he finally came for them.  That was when the real intercourse began.  Arousal was watching their expressions change as he wrenched away the warmth of afterglow.  Foreplay was listening to them beg for their lives as he methodically prepared his tools in front of them.  Thrust was inflicting pain, then taking it away, then inflicting it again, his muscles contracting and relaxing in time with theirs as they struggled beneath him.  The duration of this stage varied, dependent upon the stamina of his partner.  Some women could hold on for hours; particularly the ones with families to go home to.  One of them even pretended to be enjoying the experience, thinking it would turn him on.  It had the opposite effect, and when it became apparent that picking up where he left off was going to be quite impossible, he yanked her back by the hair and slit her throat without so much as a grunt of impatience.

Climax was a lottery.  As with sex, his basic physiology guaranteed he always got to where he was headed, but the difference between his sex life and his work life was in the details.  Every woman was the same when he was fucking them.  Their reactions were so derivative of one another, it was almost as though they were parodying themselves, and he had to fight to keep himself from laughing out loud.  Dying was what separated them.  It was when they realised that not only were they about to die, but that they were going to die like this that true terror set in.  It was only in terror that they were authentic, and only then did they really interest him.  A bombastic woman he met at a pub turned silent at the sight of her own blood pooling at her feet.  A quiet, simple woman he befriended at the library had the presence of mind to scream her name, address and phone number repeatedly in the hour it took her to die, and he found her ridiculous faith in the gallantry of her fellow man so divine, he could barely hold himself back until she finally went.

His last client, (that was what he called them), was a sixty-four year old who had actually picked him up.  He wasn’t strictly into caricatures, but when he walked into the over twenty-eight’s bar that night, he did have a certain kind of woman in mind, and just when he was about to give up, she found him.  She was taught, a little too lean around the legs and buttocks, and had long auburn hair that was too lustrous to be true.  As was her personality.  He listened patiently for two hours as she regaled him with tails of her misspent youth in Europe while playing footsie with him under the table.

‘Did you backpack?’

She waved the suggestion off with wide-eyed disdain.

‘Oh God, no!  Only hippies and deadbeats backpacked, darling.  My father treated my best girlfriend and I to the trip after I graduated.  I think he was hoping I’d find out that the world was a big, scary place so that I’d run home, marry a nice boy, and be taken care of by his family’s money for the rest of my life.  Little did he know I was fearless.’  She drained the contents of her wine glass.

‘Some of the things I got up to would curl your toes.’

‘I bet.’

‘And you’d win.  Shelley and I met two lovely Italian men at a bar, and they took us to a party at their villa.  Well, Shelley was positively convinced that Marco, the real looker of the two, liked her.  I proved her wrong.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I sat on his lap when she left the room to get a drink, and we’d already gone by the time she came back.  I took him back to the hotel room and, well, let’s just say that Shelley found herself sleeping in the hallway that night.  She called her father and begged him to wire her the fare home the next day; all tears.  Poor thing never could stand competition.’  She flagged a waitress down and ordered another drink, the memory of humiliating her so-called best friend not dampening her spirits in the slightest.

He feigned amusement.  ‘Did she ever speak to you again?’

She shrugged her shoulders.  ‘No, but it was no great loss.  She was no fun.  And she never could handle the fact that I was prettier and more popular.  You know, you remind me of a lovely guy I met in France.  Gorgeous thing, he was.  Tall, athletic,’ she laughed wistfully, ‘found out just how sporty he was when we went parking out by the Seine.  That was an hour and a half I’ll never forget…neither will he, I suspect.’

‘So you were a wild one, huh?’

The waitress brought over her drink, which she took and slammed down in one deft movement.  She put the glass back on the table and