Where the Monsters Live

By Duncan Ralston

"An absolutely brutal novella that had me squirming in my chair." - Hunter Shea, author of We Are Always Watching

How far would you go for revenge?

When a six-year-old girl is abused and left for dead by a pedophile known only as the "Rabbit Man" due to the claw marks left on her body, police follow every lead but reach only dead ends.

Hungry for justice, her grieving father abandons wife and child on a harrowing journey deep undercover into Miami's sex offender colony under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. His purpose is simple: to find the "Rabbit Man" among them, and put him in the ground.

Months later, with no one to trust and the pedophiles he lives among growing suspicious of his actions, he learns nothing is simple where the monsters live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing
• Release date: Aug 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386467618

Duncan Ralston

Duncan Ralston nació en Toronto y pasó su adolescencia en el pequeño pueblo de Canadá. Como "adulto", Duncan vive con su pareja y su perro en Toronto, donde trabaja en televisión y escribe ficción oscura sobre cosas que lo perturban. Además de sus historias retorcidas, historias cortas que se encuentran en las colecciones GRISTLE & BONE y Vídeos del Terror

Book preview

WHERE THE

MONSTERS

LIVE

a novella

Duncan Ralston

An absolutely brutal novella that had me squirming in my chair.

- Hunter Shea, author of We Are Always Watching

__________________________

This story 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, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this eBook 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 written permission from the author.

SHADOW WORK PUBLISHING

Copyright © 2016 by Duncan Ralston

All rights reserved.

Where the Monsters Live first published in

What Goes Around (KnightWatch Press), © 2016

Also by Duncan Ralston

Gristle & Bone (collection)

Salvage (novel)

Wildfire (novella)

Woom (novella)

The Method (novel)

Video Nasties (collection)

Ebenezer (novella)

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WHERE THE

MONSTERS

LIVE

IT WAS RAINING the day I brought my daughter's CD player back to the sex offenders under the bridge, and everyone was in a crummy mood.

Miami's typically balmy weather is a blessing to those of us living on the street--at least until the rainy season, those summer months when you've got to get a roof over your head that isn't just a doorway alcove or the underside of a bridge or you'll be soaked to the skin in seconds. The day I'd decided to go back home for the first time in months it had already been raining three days, and most of us were sure the sun would never come out again.

By then I'd narrowed my search for the Rabbit Man down to three suspects: Tony Walker, Alejandro Gonzalez, and Orville Popcorn Perry, the convicted pedophiles I'd been living among for the last three months. Not everyone in Bookville had committed the sort of vile crimes these men had. Some were rapists, others were molesters, but most had been forced to register for petty sexual assaults, hadn't even spent a day in jail but had gotten stranded in this godforsaken place anyhow. Forced out of their homes, into the shadows, and under the bridge.

Statutory cases, groping, sodomy. Some drunk guy caught pissing in public near a schoolyard. You could almost laugh at a creep who's exposed himself to old ladies, so long as one of them wasn't your grandmother or your great-aunt. It's sick, sure, but it doesn't physically hurt anyone.

Regardless of the severity of their individual crimes, lobbyist Ron Book's ordinance forced these men and women to live 2,500 feet away from any school, park, or bus stop. Short of violating parole or removing their ankle monitor and skipping town, the Tuttle Causeway and the Everglades became the only places left for a sex offender to live within the Miami metropolitan area.

Ron Book's folly had pushed them underground and off the grid. Instead of making Miami safer, he'd made the city a thousand times more dangerous.

Walker, Gonzalez, and Popcorn Perry--these monsters had done hard time.

Gonzalez liked little girls. Popcorn preferred boys, but he'd gotten arrested for trying to diddle one of the girls on his school bus route. He told us she had a short haircut and had yet to hit puberty, so it was easy enough to imagine her as a boy despite not having the parts. From my understanding, Walker was a pinch hitter.

None of these men had ever killed anyone as far as I knew, but together they'd strangled the souls of at least half a dozen children. What had sent me rushing home that morning was that Gonzalez had told a story the night before about the rabbit he'd had as a boy, reminiscing about how soft its fur had been. I could easily imagine it reminding him of the silken hair of his victims.

To ingratiate myself to them early on, I'd told a lie about how I'd done two years in Alamosa County for assaulting my niece. Popcorn and Walker had wanted details, so I fed them details: said I'd been grooming her for years before I actually got up the courage to go through with it. That I'd babysat for my brother and his wife--in truth, I have no siblings, only in-laws--for months just working up the nerve to touch her.

With my theater background, I've played everything from Hamlet's oedipal interests to Titus's cannibalism, but the part of pedophile was by far the most loathsome--particularly in light of why I was there. Popcorn had wanted to know about her underwear, if it had decals, which I took to mean