The Murderpreneur

By S. Markem

Is there something missing from your life?

Do you hate your job?
Have you been passed over for promotion?
Perhaps your boss is an idiot?
(I can sense you nodding)

You may feel like a loser. Face facts, you probably are a loser. Eighty percent of drivers think they’re above average. Internet fact.

But there is a magic ingredient available to all us losers, and it can change everything.

The Murderpreneur is a tale of the absurdities that real life is made from.

It’s a guide to success, a cautionary tale for incompetent managers and a rags-to-riches biography.

Derek Luckman has had enough, and today, something is going to change.

“Too many men in business, that was the real problem, Derek thought. It stank of testosterone and B.O. and was filled with overgrown infants, and it was dull and it was geeky. Geeks are people women don’t want to sleep with.
There were seventy people in Derek’s department. There were only two women.
The Jacks kept them out, that’s why, the misogynistic bastards. It’s a f****** conspiracy. Jacks love other Jacks, and they keep it that way. Of course, they let a few women through: the ones they want to bang, or the ones who are really Jacks, like them. Jills. Jack and Jills; and it’s all a f****** conspiracy.”

Violence, humour, romance, blackmail, more violence, occasional paranoia and daytime telly. This story has it all.

Looking to escape the horrors of everyday life? Wrong book, sorry.

Looking for a sinister, absurd and funny page-turner? Well then, look no further. This is a rollercoaster of a novel, albeit quite a short ride, that will have you thinking differently next time you go to the office.

But whatever you do, please, don’t get caught!

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. Markem
• Release date: Nov 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463855133

S. Markem

S. Markem is a writer, programmer, professional procrastinator and author of the new humorous fantasy series, The Wizard Of Trope.After a long time in the trenches as a technologist, Markem has spent the last few years crafting a collection of novels, each with a wry, affectionate and occasionally dark sense of humour. His most recent works take place in The Sinking World fantasy setting, but he’s also authored Wage Slaves: Pat Parker’s Fairytales From The Workplace, and the dark comedy, The Murderpreneur.Markem lives in the southwest of England, and is a lover of walking dogs, drinking beer and taking naps (usually in that order). He has a pathological fear of commas, as every reader or writer should.

Book preview

THE

MURDERPRENEUR

S. Markem

For my parents,

Michael and Pat.

And my friends,

Julia, Melissa, Sarah.

Couldn’t have done it without you.

Bathos: noun. A failed attempt at sublimity.

CHAPTER ONE

Murder

DEREK LUCKMAN STARED at the dead body that sat, slumped over the table.

A white, featureless, plastic-coated table.

The kind you find in any meeting room in any office in the world. Featureless, except for a small grey hole through which cables protruded.

The type of cables that needed little adaptors that no one ever had.

A featureless table in a featureless meeting room; white walls treated with a wipe-clean coating so that you could draw on them.

This was the room where intelligent ideas came to die. It is also where adults gathered to draw pictures and stick-up little pieces of coloured paper (usually yellow). Everyone had to contribute at least one bit of sticky paper. This is called brainstorming. Brainstorming is how money is made. Bits of sticky paper.

There was an upturned box of dry-wipe markers; white pens that came in red and blue and black inks. Half of them run-out. Amongst the dry-wipes, one or two permanent markers.

The walls were covered with diagrams which were themselves drawn on top of older diagrams that had not been fully erased.

Permanent markers, thought Derek.

Around the table was a set of equally featureless white chairs. The charm of a motorway service station. Uncomfortable chairs with no wheels and no cushions. They made your bum sweaty.

There was a fabric-covered, red cube-chair, about three feet wide. A ‘cool’ chair, because this was a ‘cool’ company, and all ‘cool’ companies have impractical, amusing furniture. This is a fact.

No one ever sat on it. It caused your lower back to ache, and was so low you felt like a twonk.

Blood dripped onto the ‘cool’ chair. The blood came from the body.

‘That’s ruined then,’ said Derek.

He looked at the staple gun in his hand. There was blood on that too.

Why was there a staple gun in the room?

It had been lying there, on the table. Why would anyone bring a staple gun to a room with plastic-coated walls? There was a water-pistol on the window ledge. He didn’t know why that was there either. Another ‘cool’ thing in the office. He said:

‘Management wank.’

He put down the staple gun.

During the frenzy his jacket had been torn. It was a cheap jacket that looked like a school uniform, and it was half of a matching suit from Marks & Spencer. He got it in the sale. Derek never wore the trousers. Derek preferred jeans. His jeans didn’t fit him well; they sagged around the backside.

He wore the same pair of jeans every day.

He continued to stare at the body. It sat on one of the white chairs and was slumped over the table, its tongue sticking out.

How did I manage to do that? Derek thought. There was a single staple embedded in the dead man’s forehead.

The body was in its mid-thirties, dead, but quite handsome if you set aside the blood, the staple, the bruising and the crack in the back of its skull.

This was not the body of just any man; it was the body of the manager-man. The body went by the name of Jack. Derek didn’t like Jack.

‘This is bad,’ said Derek.

He began to wipe his hand on his jeans, and then remembered it was the only clean pair he had, and so he wiped it on his jacket. He didn’t like the jacket. Why did he wear a jacket? He didn’t like jackets, period.

Anxiety crept in.

How would he explain it? He was going to get into a lot of trouble. He already had a lot on his plate, and this was the last thing he needed.

‘He won’t want to see the sales figures now,’ Derek mumbled.

That was a good thing. They had caused him a lot of stress, and as a result he hadn’t been sleeping well.

He looked at the clock; it was nearly twenty past. Good, he thought. People only check meeting rooms just before and after the hour; usually after. He still had some time.

The blood ran across the table and into the cable-hole. Did blood conduct electricity? He took a step back.

Then he remembered that the power block in the floor didn’t work and so he relaxed. The presentation screen didn’t work either. That annoyed Derek. It had meant giving his presentation on his laptop, and that had meant sitting next to Jack. Why didn’t things in meeting rooms work? They were always broken. Everyone was always in meetings, and everything was always broken? Stupid.

He would explain it as a fight. Really, it was a fight. A protracted mental battle. Jack was a bastard; he was dismissive and hurtful and inconsiderate and a complete narcissist; he was a modern manager. Today had simply been the last straw.

Derek thought, if Jack died in a fist-fight then he wouldn’t be sitting down. It’s hard to fight sitting down. Derek had never been in a fight but he’d seen enough movies to know you didn’t fight sitting down. He bit his lip. He scratched his moustache.

He kicked Jack’s chair, hard enough so that it fell over. Jack’s body thumped on the floor. That looked more convincing.

But what about himself? He should be injured; he should at least have a black eye, or something.

He sat down in the chair next to Jack, avoiding the pool of blood, and then Derek head-butted the table.

Was that hard enough? How on earth could he know? Who deliberately injures themselves? He looked in the lifeless, matt-black laptop screen. Too dark. Could he feel a bruise? No. He head-butted the table again, harder. This time it hurt and he said:

‘Ow! Fuck.’

Derek regretted not wearing a regular shirt. There were no buttons he could pull off to make himself look ‘roughed-up’.

He pulled at the neck of his t-shirt. It didn’t tear. He pulled harder. Nothing. He said:

‘Shit.’

He saw a small pair of scissors in the pen-pot on the windowsill. At any other time there would be no scissors. Scissors were always in short supply. The only thing in shorter supply than scissors were meeting rooms, and ironically he now had both.

Using the scissors he cut the neck of his t-shirt ever-so-slightly. He pulled at it again. There was a reassuring tear.

He sat back down and drummed his fingers on the table.

He got up and he tipped the table on its side. His laptop hit the floor and the screen broke. He hated his laptop. It wasn’t a Mac; it was cheap. He wasn’t important enough for a Mac. Managers had Macs.

He thought about the scissors again. He put them in Jack’s hand. That looked good. Jack attacked him with the scissors. Scissors are sharp. He had to defend himself.

Would they know how many times he hit Jack? It was probably