Clare at Sixteen

By Don Roff

If Dexter and Faith (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) had a daughter and raised her in the land of Santa Clarita Diet....she'd be Clare Bleecker.

The small town of Pickman Flats offers a bright sunny place filled with quaint shopping and wine tasting. But underneath the town's inviting exterior lies a dark underbelly, a sinister element that lurks in the shadows.

Clare is a devoted vegan who goes to Catholic high school, is fastidious in her manner, and also, well, a serial killer. The Other Clare takes over at the most inopportune of times. She tries to keep her inner beast's lust for blood at bay, but it's hard when there are so many creeps around who help to unleash it.

What secret lies hidden beneath Pickman Flats? And who is Clare really?

If you want answers, well, there's only one way to find out - even if it kills you.

Slay Responsibly,
XOXO Clare


“A stylish, cool, ratatattat machine gun prose that blazes from all chambers -- it's like an unholy union of Heathers and Dexter. Clare Bleecker is an unforgettable, dangerous voice.” -- Tom Holland, writer-director of Fright Night and Child's Play

“Clare at Sixteen is a terrifying triumph! What Don Roff has done with this highly personal and deeply disturbing novel is deliver one of the most memorable and ultimately sympathetic serial killers since Robert Bloch conceived of Norman Bates. This bloody and brilliant book, as well as its complex main character, will haunt readers long after their final prayers of the night. BRAVO!" -- Mark Pavia, Writer/Director of Stephen King's The Night Flier

"Reminiscent of Heathers, Clare at Sixteen is a delightfully dark teen horror comedy with a dauntless and snarky heroine who serves up her own unique brand of small town justice along with some killer vegan smoothie recipes." --S.G. Browne, author of Breathers and Less Than Hero

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953539465

Don Roff

Roff grew up in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. As a teen, he worked at the local drive-in theater and made Super 8 mm movies with his neighborhood friends, writing many of the scripts. He graduated from McLoughlin Union High School in 1985. Roff joined the United States Army in 1989. He was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia in the 3rd Ranger Battalion. He was a part of "Operation Just Cause" in Rio Hato, Panama, December 20, 1989. Roff graduated from Walla Walla Community College in 1995, and The Evergreen State College in 1997. In 2000, he was The Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Semifinalist for his coming-of-age screenplay, LORD OF THE YARDS. In June 2006, Roff received the prestigious Zola Award for screenwriting from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association for his science fiction adventure script, OUTBOUND. Roff's bestselling book, ZOMBIES: A RECORD OF THE YEAR OF INFECTION is available from Chronicle Books/Simon & Schuster UK. The audiobook is available from AudioGO. The calendars are available from Universal Publishing (a division of Rizzoli International Publications). His supernatural thriller, SNOWBLIND, will soon be a major film, as will his dark comedy thriller, CLARE AT SIXTEEN. Official website: www.donvroff.com Like: http://www.facebook.com/Author.Don.Roff/ Follow: http://www.instagram.com/donroff/?hl=en Follow: http://twitter.com/DonRoff Like ZOMBIES: A RECORD OF THE YEAR OF INFECTION: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zombies-A-Record-of-the-Year-of-Infection/130102614736

Book preview

about.

1

Go fuck a collie.

That’s what I tell this tweaker dude when he rolls up in his hunk-of-shit black Mazda and asks me for directions. Obviously, Mr. Screepy doesn’t own any collies. He just keeps flapping his yellow teeth and white-spotted tongue. His crazy eyes go wide like that bug-shit crazy movie actor, Mel what’s-his-name on a bad day.

Him talking to me requires that I pull out my earbuds while I was listening to American Dream by LCD Soundsystem. That alone irritates me—it’s one of my favorite songs.

Tweaker dude says that he’s from out of town. He claims that he’s been driving around lost all afternoon looking for this winery. Yeah, I’m pretty sure this guy doesn’t need any wine. He’s already a few beers short of a six-pack.

He tells me he’s a nice guy, that I have the wrong idea about him, and that he’ll give me some money for my troubles. He fishes out a wadded-up twenty from his grimy gray sweatpants and slaps it down with a fat hand on the dash. Does he think I’m some kind of stripper who’s going to give him a lap dance here on Canal Street?

All the flags are waving red.

And then something crosses over in me.

A metallic taste in my mouth. My head starts to throb. My stomach tightens up.

So, just like you’re told never to get into a stranger’s car, I climb into the Mazda. If you’re a tweaker who pulls up next to a lonely, sixteen-year-old Catholic school girl walking home, then you’d better reconsider.

Why?

Because you don’t really know who’s climbing into the car with you.

You never do.

2

Ten minutes later, poor Mr. Screepy is dead.

3

Confession time.

Forgive me, oh father who art in heaven, for I have sinned…a lot. My name is Clare Marie Bleecker and I’m a serial killer.

Confession, they say, is good for the soul.

If you’re a heartless killer without a conscience, you may not even have a soul, let alone a soul that’s redeemable. But here it goes, my deepest, darkest secrets.

Now, before you start thinking, Oh gross, she probably started when she was young. She probably tortured small animals like goldfish and hamsters and neighborhood cats. And then she probably worked up to killing people—

Absolute bullshit.

I don’t kill animals.

Never have. Never will.

Love them to death. I love animals more than most people. I’m a poster girl for PETA. Let’s face it, animals simply do what they do. They don’t buzz a radio frequency of annoying static like most people. Once, this dog came out of his yard and bit me. That happened when I was seven. Did I judge the dog? No. Our neighbors’ dog, Loyal, was a big monster German shepherd. Biggest dog I’d ever seen, and that’s not because I was seven and only four-foot-two.

No, Loyal was a huge dog of Cujo proportions.

He bit me as I was walking up to the house to sell some Firefly Cookies. You’ve seen us, the Firefly Girls of America. We bang on your door or stop you at a shopping mall and ask if you want to buy Coconut Crunchers or Raspberry Creamers. Yuck, I hated all that crap. I’m not really into sugary sweets, but I had to peddle my wares for the Firefly cause.

Yeah, I know, I’m sixteen-years-old, don’t eat sugar, and I kill people.

Everyone has their problems.

It’s not like I went on this huge I-hate-animals serial murderer tirade before I started doing what I do. Loyal’s owner executed the German shepherd for what he did. He took the dog to the vet and they gave him a lethal injection. It’s like it was a penitentiary death sentence.

Ted Bundy, a famous serial killer, received a death sentence. Except he got fried in a Florida penal electric chair. Like Loyal, he also bit a female and left teeth marks that later indicted him. We live in a weird world.

I don’t blame Loyal the German shepherd. He thought I was some weird random stranger in a red, blue, and yellow Firefly outfit. I’d probably lose my shit, too.

I was madder at the owner for having the dog put down than the sixteen stitches I had to get on my right arm where Loyal bit me.

Sixteen stitches.

One for every year of my life up to now.

Weird.

4

You’re probably wondering what happened to Mr. Screepy, right?

Like I said before, confession time. Helps keep my thoughts straight. At least that’s what my therapist once said.

And I have lots of thoughts.

Too damn many.

Well, it went down kind of like this. I climbed into his shitty black Mazda that smelled like mildew and bad intentions. Mr. Screepy then starts asking me all these questions that have nothing to do with wineries. Where do I live? How old am I? What do I like to do for fun? Do I like tacos?

Mr. Screepy sports a bulging belly and wears a t-shirt that reads I BRING NOTHING TO THE TABLE. A couple of blue blobs stain his hairy forearms that may have been tattoos about thirty years ago. Peg the guy at about forty-eight.

Now, I didn’t climb into the Mazda to kill him, let’s get that straight. I didn’t plan to climb into the car at all. As I said, those red flags made something cross over inside me. Following the flashes of red, there’s the weird metallic taste on my tongue, the head pain, and the stomach cramp. It’s only later, after the fact, that I found him dead.

You see, I have this condition, which I’ve dubbed psycholepsy. I sort of lose my shit, metaphorically speaking, when I’m extremely stressed out. Then certain chemicals in my brain mix into a killer cocktail—literally. And then—boom—someone is most likely dead. It’s almost like a bullshit meter. I know when someone isn’t being real with me. When Mr. Screepy laid that twenty dollars down, that dark voice within me knew something wrong was happening. Most people would have walked away, but when I’m confronted with a situation, I don’t walk away. Someone often ends up hurt. Or well, dead.

Long story short, I don’t remember actually doing the deed.

Think of narcoleptics who fall asleep when they don’t want to. The same thing kind of happens to me. Except when it does, somebody often dies. That’s when the Other Clare takes over. The clinical name of it is DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder. It was once called MPD, Multiple Personality Disorder, but I’m so much more, and less, than a couple of acronyms. Psycholepsy is much cleverer and more interesting, don’t you think?

When my psycholepsy condition first occurred, it confused me. I’d thought maybe somebody had taken my unconscious form and dragged it next to a dead body. It first happened after I killed this awful mail carrier about a year ago. I woke up and found him strangled under Lowell Street Bridge.

The last thing I remembered was that he wanted to deliver his package into my mail slot. No thanks—returned to sender with a vengeance.

Same kind of thing happened here. Again.

Only Mr. Screepy has a knife sticking out of his chest.

I must’ve gone for a heart shot. Impressive, considering it’s a slim chance to impale someone’s heart with the ribcage guarding it.

But, bullseye, it’s in there, all the way up to the hilt.

Mr. Screepy has this slack-jawed, surprised expression on his dead face.

Guess you shouldn’t really carry knives around in your car if you don’t want people to use them on you, right?

The one I stabbed him with looks like a cool fighting knife with a five-inch blade or so.

I also find a taser. What a naughty boy you are, Mr. Screepy…or were.

Pulling the knife out of his chest and wiping the blade on his shirt, I slip both weapons into my backpack next to my KJV bible. And I take the twenty dollar bill. Why leave good money lying around where someone can steal it?

I leave the bobblehead Darth Vader on the dash. It’s sun-faded and has a nick out of the right side of his helmet.

We’ll call the knife and taser parting gifts for today’s game show.

5

Finding a greasy rag on the back seat, I wipe down the car of any traces that I was ever there. Finger prints, any possibly stray hairs…then, I stuff the rag in my pack for later disposal, climb out of the car, and leave it at the end of Canal Street. It’s a dead-end in a sketchy part of town.

The black Mazda sits close to another car. It’s parked next to a banana Popsicle yellow station wagon that probably looked better back in 1987.

After escaping Canal Street, I pop my buds back into my ears. I crank up my Spotify playlist that’s now playing MGMT’s Time to Pretend.

Time to pretend is right. Time to pretend that nothing happened. Time to pretend that nobody just got killed. Time to pretend that I’m an innocent, small-town girl. Pretending to be something I’m not is pretty much my modus operandi.

Without a second glance back at Mr. Screepy or his Mazda, I turn the corner and head toward home.

Well, home as it is for me now.

6

I live in Pickman Flats, Washington. Population 19,667. Well, minus one for Mr. Screepy. When I was thirteen, my parents died. Ever since then, I’ve called this trendy little Eastern Washington tourist town home. I live with my grandparents.

People visit from all over to buy expensive wines. The downtown caters to the tourists with bread and wine emporiums, French bistros, and trendy gift shops.

Pickman Flats is a small town, but it tries to be so much more, so much bigger.

Maybe we’re all that way.

Here’s another curious fact about me. I’m also a Gemini (if you’re into astrology. I was born May twenty-first. It’s the same birthday as rapper The Notorious B.I.G., Mr. T, and serial killer Jeffery Dahmer). The latter murdered seventeen men, dismembering their corpses and even eating some of them too. Yeah, disgusting. Gemini seems to be the zodiac sign that has many serial killers, maybe the most. No, I won’t go into how many there are, just trust me, there are a lot with that particular sign. Does it have to do with Gemini being the twin, having two distinctive sides, the yin and the yang? Hmm, I don’t know, guess it depends on if you believe in astrology or coincidence. Also, for all of you Harry Potter lovers—I’m a Gryffindor but also pretty close to a Slytherin. How’s that for a two-faced Gemini?

Yeah, I’m not here to self-analyze, I’m simply confessing the facts as I know them and as they happened.

Trigger warning: if corruption, chaos, and death will set you off, I’d stop reading now. It only gets worse.

7

I’m making that funny quinoa for dinner tonight, Grams Arleen says. Putting it in place of the rice and adding that veggie protein you like instead of hamburger. She sighs. Don’t know how you can eat that slop.

Grams Arleen likes to talk about dinner. Pretty sure it’s what gives her the most joy. She cooks for Gramps Ellis and I every night. Her verbal microaggressions toward my plant-based lifestyle like, don’t know how you can eat that slop, never fails to entertain me. It’s just who she is, and I accept her for it. No offense taken.

With regards to eating, I’m a vegetarian, or even the more pain-in-the-ass version of that, vegan, which means I don’t do any animal products. Some vegans like to call their lifestyle plant-based instead as there seems to be a social stigma against the word vegan. But guess what, I’m hashtag Vegan as Fuck. My Grams is used to making pot roast and potatoes or steak and eggs. I’m grateful she tries, even though I’ve noticed she doesn’t like doing it much. I’ve offered to help her out in the kitchen, but she refuses. Though she does like me to hang out in the kitchen and have us talk about our days.

It’s only four o’clock and dinner is never until six, but Grams starts early. As I said, it gives her something to do and she enjoys it.

What kind of trouble’d you get into today, sweetie?

Grams always asks that question. She knows I don’t get into trouble.

As an honor student at DeFeo Catholic High School who’s also pretty active with the social committees, as well as a thespian, I keep my nose pretty clean. That’s an expression Gramps Ellis likes to use, keep your nose clean. He’s probably working in his workshop out back. He vanishes there often.

Also, I must admit that even though these pages are my confession, I’m not super religious or anything. I’m actually semi-agnostic—I’m not really sure where my beliefs lie currently. But my grandparents thought it’d be a good idea for me to go to DeFeo since my mom wanted me to go there (yeah, that really worked out for her; more on that later).

Nothing too exciting, I say, the usual response. The usual fiendish plans and schemes of a frustrated girl in a small town.

Everyone has a dark side, Grams says absently as she dumps the veggie crumbles into a boiling pot.

Some more than others, I say as I steal an organic, locally grown Honeycrisp apple out of the fruit bowl and stalk upstairs to my room.

I’d love to tell her about how this creepy guy tried to pick me up as I was walking home from school, something he’s likely tried with other girls, and how he died. But it’s probably a bad idea. It might spoil Grams’ dinner plans.

8

After dinner, I hit the homework. It doesn’t take me that long since most of it is pretty easy, boring. In fact, I’ve made quite a sum of money writing papers and helping some of the more academically challenged students get passing grades at DeFeo.

Out of my backpack, along with my copy of The Hate U Give for English class, Bible, my calculus book, and the greasy rag, I pull out Mr. Screepy’s taser and knife. The rag I wiped the car down with will be burned. I Google the knife and find it’s a CRKT 4.5-inch Otanashi noh Ken folding blade. Nice. These aren’t cheap.

Great parting gift today, Mr. Screepy, thanks for inviting me to play the game.

My hope chest once belonged to my mother. In fact, this used to be her room growing up. She’s dead now and it doesn’t bother me at all that I’m occupying her former childhood space.

The hope chest has a false bottom under all the spare bedsheets. The Otanashi noh Ken and taser goes into the special hidden drawer. There’s also a tie clip from the mailman in there too and a few other assorted items.

Then I lock it back up.

Once I read where serial killers often keep mementos from their victims. Researching SKs is kind of a hobby. Every girl needs a hobby, right? Guess I’m no exception to keeping mementos, though I’m not really sentimental about it. It seems like the right thing to do. After all, it’s not like I’m going out, stalking people, and then killing them.

Rather, I’m only a fly who occasionally buzzes into a web and then kills the spider.

9

A picture of my parents sits on my desk. You’d think that people you lived with for thirteen years would still haunt your memory, but they don’t. Honestly, I can hardly remember their voices. Only a strange recollection, like a half-remembered song you heard on the radio once and struggle to remember the lyrics and melody. Maybe I’ve chosen not to remember them.

Sometimes I lie awake at night in the darkness watching the gauzy white curtains of my bedroom window billow in the gentle breeze. Just barely able to make out the other details of my room like my bookshelf or my desk or the hope chest that sits at the foot my bed. Like I said, this used to be my mother’s room. Other than me repainting it from the original pale pink to a creamy pistachio green (my favorite color), not much of it is different. All of the worn, bone-colored furniture that once belonged to her remained. Sometimes I wonder what it was like for my dead mother, Chloe Newberry, to grow up in this house on 217 Straw Street and attend DeFeo Catholic High School like me. But she was not really like me at all. Not that I want to remember that much about her.

Vague recollections of my parents sometimes come to mind.

Our house in Broomfield, Colorado where I grew up was this one-story, two-bedroom home that was the color of putty. It looked like the other forty-seven houses in the gated community. My dad, Dan Bleecker, worked some generic computer repair job and my mom worked on being a functional alcoholic.

She was a vodkatarian.

Most of the time ol’ Chloe would sit in the house in a comatose state watching DVRed reality TV shows like The Bachelorette and Keeping Up With the Kardashians. That’s how I really remember Chloe. Hunching on the couch, wearing a permanent spot in it like that movie where the guy’s dead mother makes the perfect effigy of her form on the bed where he keeps her taxidermy-preserved corpse.

As long as Chloe wouldn’t fly into her fits of rage, the man of the house didn’t really deal with the problem. Dan the Man would come home from work, sit in front of his laptop most of the night, go to bed, and then leave early the next morning. Dan Bleecker was more like a roommate than an actual father. I guess that’s why I have a hard time remembering the sound of Dan and Chloe’s voices. They didn’t say much.

This isn’t some boo-hoo crying-in-my-beer confessional. That’s just the way they were.

And how I remember them.

Or not.

When Dan and Chloe did finally tackle that drinking problem, with her going to AA and him going to Al-Anon, that’s when they were hit head-on. Killed by a drunken driver going the wrong direction on a late-night highway. Farewell, Dan and Chloe Bleecker.

See what happens when you try to change stuff?

You become the butt of God’s joke for some ironic punch line.

10

Breakfast with Grams and Gramps Newberry. Me: fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, two avocado halves sprinkled with sea salt, and a couple of bananas to go. Them: All-Bran Buds and turkey bacon. Gramps Ellis tells me about his woodworking project. In his green tartan woolen shirt and faded jeans he’s going on and on about building a birdhouse condominium for the back yard. He obsesses about the finches, sparrows, and thrushes that he feeds out there daily. Pretty cute.

Now I’m sitting here at the breakfast table across from my grandparents trying to remember the color of that Mazda. Was it piss blue or shit black?

Did that whole thing happen yesterday or did I only dream it?

Later, when I arrive at school, I get my answer.

11

DeFeo Catholic High School is like every cliché private school you’ve ever seen on TV. Girls wear the knee-length, pleated, plaid skirts with the navy-blue blazers and sky-blue blouses. Boys wear khakis with a sky-blue shirt and navy-blue blazer. Everyone wears the signature navy blue and cream high school colors tie. For variety, we can also wear cardigans and pullover V-neck sweaters in the autumn and winter.

Yeah, I wear the full regalia—I’m like the poster girl for the Catholic school set.

Lots of girls hate it. But I love it.

Each morning, I get up and press my uniform. It’s the ritual every day that keeps my sanity in check. Wash the bod, press the clothes, pack the bag, breakfast with the fam, and then out the door and on my way.

When you’re ritualistic or like routines like me, wearing the same uniform every day is helpful. Think about it, you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to wear the next day. You simply pull the next one off the hanger. Einstein wore the same

Reviews for Clare at Sixteen

[nadineeg-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as an Library Thing Early Reviewer. Clare is Sixteen, an orphan to a horrific car accident, she now lives with her beloved grandparents in a small tourist town in Washington State. Clare goes to a co-ed Catholic school, where she is officially classified as weird by many there. She has one good friend - made during Clare rescuing said friend from the school bullies. Clare has had a lousy childhood and the one stability she had was her martial arts. This comes in handy in a few short months in Clare's life where, having knifed a pervert in his car and possibly getting away with it, (except for the cop who seems to know too much and happens to be the step father of Clare's crush). In a quite short time the body count is rising and Clare's life is in danger as is the life of her grandparents and friends. What's a girl to do when she really enjoys killing the bad guys and can do it well. Read on and see.

[amy1825-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was PHENOMENAL! I could not stop reading, it was so creative and so well written!!