Wildlife on the Serengeti

By Michael Bruce Blackwell

If you can dream it, you can kill it.

Mac Sexton is a good-looking teenager and up-and-coming force of nature who harbors a secret ambition: to become the Number One Serial Killer in America, if not the world. Born into a wealthy, robustly dysfunctional family in the Northeast, and choosing (It/It/Its) as preferred pronouns, Mac chronicles its grisly journey from abused child to apex predator in humor darker than a lump of anthracite.

Mac’s family is a veritable smorgasbord of warped souls. Its father, referred to by Mac sarcastically as “Dear Old Dad,” is a powerful and well-thought-of figure in the community, a Yale alumnus whose achievements and privilege camouflage a secret life of gut-wrenching perversity. Mac’s mother is a gin-swilling socialite and all-around enabler who routinely turns a blind eye to her husband’s cruelty. Mac’s younger adoptive sister Morgan is a conniving 10-year-old, a pint-sized problem child from China with more issues than Hustler. Mac’s older brother Wally is an awkward loner bullied by their father and on a path of self-destruction, especially when he decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and use Mac for his personal enjoyment, not realizing that his younger sibling is morphing everyday into one of the most vicious creatures the Devil on a bad day has ever created—a twisted child with a high IQ, a streak of mean wider than the Mississippi and Styx combined, and an insatiable appetite for violence—a psychopath who considers Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy as heroes and stellar role models.

From its days in an elite prep school wreaking havoc on wayward teachers, to its time spent in a hardcore “troubled teen” therapy program in the Utah desert where it finds itself eventually captured by a cult group of renegade Mormons, to its embittering enrollment as a student at Vassar and Amherst, Mac proves unflinching in its desire to rack up the body count of victims to stratospheric levels.

Dropping out of college, Mac heads to Maryland where it witnesses the murder of a bearded cross-dressing Good Samaritan before travelling to Richmond, Virginia, where an 85-year-old billionaire, smitten by lust and with a taste for wives and catamites, proposes marriage, much to the horror of the doddering old sugar daddy’s family. It is while travelling to Tennessee, under the guise of visiting Graceland to pay respects to Elvis instead of searching for fresh victims, that Mac’s BMW hits a deer, and a kindly old couple stops to render aid—an event that will prove pivotal for Mac, and definitely not for the better, thrusting the teen into a nightmarish world that will demand the utmost in survival skills and resolve, forcing it to use its unique skill set and bloodlust and can-do attitude to prove once and for all that it, and it only, deserves the title of Number One Serial Killer in America. A title for which no consolation prize is given for second place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Jun 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005806651

Book preview

WILDLIFE ON THE SERENGETI

Michael Bruce Blackwell

Copyright © 2021 by Michael Bruce Blackwell

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Wildlife on the Serengeti

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Preview from Blue Moonlight by Vincent Zandri

Preview from Roughhouse by Jeffery Hess

Preview from A Place for Snakes to Breed by Patrick Michael Finn

To my wife Shirla and children Shoshannah and Dylan.

Despite being a writer, I don’t have the words

to adequately tell you how much I love you.

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.

—Mary Shelley

What’s one less person on the face of the earth, anyway?

—Ted Bundy, aka The Campus Killer (1946-1989)

FUN FACT: Only 42% of violent crimes are reported to the police and only 47% are solved.

First things first…

Before we go any further, let’s get a couple of things straight. To begin with, I’m not a fucking idiot. Not like others of my kind you’ve probably read about or seen on TV. I have an IQ that’s off the charts. Damned near genius-level. That’s what my therapist used to tell me, at any rate, shortly before I killed her (that’ll teach the stupid bitch to call me a psychopath). If there’s one thing I hate, it’s having a label slapped on me like that, especially by a so-called mental health professional with a crappy Virginia Tech degree who ought to know better. She accused me of having serious aggression management issues. Aggression management issues, my ass. I kill because I want to. Because I love it. Always have, always will. What can I say? I’m an artist. I’m good at what I do. And getting better all the time.

And do you know what the truly cool and awesome thing about it is? I’m still at large. That’s right, baby. As free as an uncaged bird with talons sharpened. I killed that shitty therapist over seven years ago to the day, when I was the ripe old age of fourteen (yes, you could say I had remarkably high ambitions for one so young), and the cops are no closer to solving the case than they were the day of the autopsy. If the case were any colder, they’d have to put it on a bed of dry ice and stick it in a deep freeze just to warm it up.

I should mention I paid that therapist a visit a while back, for old time’s sake. I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by the cemetery to say hello. The cops had quit staking out her grave years ago, so I figured it was safe for me to make an appearance and pay my disrespects. Nostalgia got the better of me, I guess. She was, after all, my first and one of my more memorable kills, and certainly one of my more high-profile (you should’ve seen the news coverage; it was freaking glorious). I did her in with arsenic—the classics never go out of style, as they say. Got my hands on a dose from a kindly old neighbor who kept some in his garage to use on rats. Me, I had a rat of my own that needed tending to: a really annoying little sucker that overcharged by the hour, far more than her miserable life was worth, even in the best of economies. I slipped it in her coffee when she wasn’t looking. As soon as the vomiting and dysentery hit, she concluded she had come down with a bad case of the flu—a misdiagnosis all the way around. It was my one and only time to use poison on my prey. I went on to bigger and better things after that. But what can I say? I was only fourteen when I killed her. Just a kid, still wet behind the ears. I had a lot to learn about being an artist.

As I stood over her grave on that gray, misty afternoon, surrounded by choir after choir of cemetery angels and weather-beaten tombstones with names erased by time, looking down on her in death as I had in life, I fantasized about what a kick it’d be to dig the bitch up, pry her coffin open, and see what her body looked like after all these years. See how well she’d held up and if her looks had improved any. A cat-killing case of curiosity on my part, I suppose. It’s just as well I didn’t. Aside from the risk of getting caught, she’s probably just skin and bones and a few tufts of hair by now, sorrier looking in death than she was in life. Not worth bothering with, much less looking at. As the years pile up, a dead body under the ground can go to crap faster than a porn star’s looks, decomposing to the point there’s not much to get excited about. Of course, it depends on a shitload of factors: things like moisture level, environmental conditions, how tightly sealed the coffin is, the type of coffin, the quality of the embalming job, and so on. Contrary to what a lot of people think, modern embalming isn’t the art of the pharaohs, designed to last forever; it just forestalls the inevitable and keeps the body from bloating and turning all gassy and frothy during the funeral. What the bitch looks like now is anyone’s guess. For all I know, she could look as fresh as the day I killed her, like one of those incorruptible saints Catholics get all gaga about. Or she could be a moldy mess covered in grave wax and fungal spores, or, better yet, a shriveled piece of mummy-meat with collapsed eyeballs and prune-like boobs, dressed to the nines in a highly distressed, slit-up-the-back Ann Taylor business suit: a dead ringer for Norman Bates’ desiccated mother. If she’s indeed already turned skeletal, she probably has a big grin on her face. Just like I had the day I killed her.

Rest in Pieces, bitch were my parting words to her as I left the cemetery to head south for the winter. Thanks to you, I’m doing so much better now. My self-esteem’s through the roof.

Secondly, as you can plainly see, I’m no slobbering lunatic; no hulking galoot with a face only a mother blinded in both eyes could love. I look far from hideous, no Frankenstein’s monster out to strangle a bride—not the sort of person you’d expect would get such a thrill out of killing. That’s the beauty of it: I don’t fit the profile—at all—which is why I keep getting away with it…why the cops and even the FBI spend so much of their time running in circles and chasing their own tails in the blindest of alleys like the dumbass fools they are, no matter how many corpses I leave in my wake.

Even now, the Five-O crowd is wasting precious time and resources and taxpayer dollars investigating my whereabouts in the backwoods of Mississippi, shit-deep in Robert Johnson country, while Yours Truly is sitting here in this club in Nowheresville, Louisiana, watching this blonde bitch getting so hammered she might as well be a nail. I have to admit, she looks good—damned good—especially in this club’s meager lighting. She’s older than me by a good seven years, I’d say, creeping her way towards thirty. As fake a blonde as they come (those roots don’t lie, honey, even when you beg them to) and cute as the proverbial bug. Her hair’s nearly as short as the stonewashed denim skirt she’s wearing. She’s trying too hard to be the life of the party, however. The center of attention. Way too hard. One of those loudmouthed chicks you want to slap senseless, just to shut her the hell up. She’s being too damned loud for her own good and laughing entirely too much for all the wrong reasons. It’s the alcohol talking, doing a monologue—a rather unfunny one. She’s getting on everybody’s nerves, my own included. Making a complete fool of herself, to the point of flashing her panties every chance she gets as only a chick desperate for attention and pulling out all the stops can. She must’ve broken up with her boyfriend or girlfriend recently, or accidentally backed over her cat, or just gone through one hell of a divorce (the kind where you trot in as a pig and come out as a sausage, as they say). Looks to me like her self-esteem’s running a quart low; like she needs someone to part those silky thighs and prove to her that she’s still got it, that she’s still somewhat fuckable. Someone like Yours Truly. Bad for her, good for me, I guess. But what can I say? Shit happens, on a regular basis and when you least expect it. A commode-full of it.

It’s time for me to make my move. I can see the dudes at the club—hyenas, I call them—eyeing her and licking their chops. They’re scavengers, especially at closing time. Like me, they feed at night and can spot the weak and wounded in the herd a mile off. They can smell her desperation. Her delicious vulnerability. They all want to take her home and give her a proper fucking. Sorry, boys. This bitch is mine. I call dibs.

Care to dance? I ask her as the house band launches into a peppy cover of Down at the Twist and Shout—a Cajun-inspired oldie requested by a couple of middle-aged yokels celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary and out on the floor, dancing like fools, as if ten years of waking up to the same loser is anything to break out the champagne and give a whoop-de-doo about. Ugh. I swear, some people…

I never thought you’d ask, she purrs, putting her drink down and spilling a good forty-five percent of it. I help her to her feet—no easy task. She’s as wobbly as a newborn fawn. It’s a scientific fact that women can’t hold their liquor like men can—a fact I’ve come to appreciate when picking up chicks like her. It has to do with the difference in body composition, experts say. Chicks’ bodies have less water and more fat, not to mention fewer of the enzymes needed to break down alcohol. Booze shoots straight to their heads faster than a Carcano M38 bullet running late for an assassination—a fact this bitch is proving with every drink she takes. It makes my job all that easier. Easy-peasy. A piece of cake, as they say.

We dance for a number or two. She truly sucks as a dancer—an epileptic chimp in mid-seizure could do better—but hey, no one’s perfect. She gets drunker and drunker as the evening wears on, so I suggest we go to my place and get naked. She’s all for it. She doesn’t suspect a thing, that’s how smooth an operator I am.

We leave the club—she staggers and wobbles every step of the way—and after a passionate kiss or two as a foretaste of things to come, we head to our respective vehicles. She wants to ride in my car, gets downright annoying about it, but I tell her no, to take her own damned car—I’m not running a taxi service or interested in being her designated driver. She follows me to my apartment. I drive extra-slow so I don’t lose her. Fortunately, traffic’s light to non-existent, thanks to the vampirish hours we’re keeping. I keep her in my rearview mirror the whole time. She’s all over the road in her silver Volvo, swerving from one lane to the next, to the point that I worry a cop’s going to spot her and pull her over. Make her walk the line like Johnny Cash and play the booze kazoo. But no cop stops her; no overheads light up the night and slice up the darkness with those damned red and blue flashes. My evening’s saved. There is a God after all.

We arrive at my apartment in one piece and we park (if you want to call what the drunken bitch attempts to do parking). I help her out of her car and through my front door. I steer her towards my bedroom. She wobbles inside, none the wiser. Her fly to my spider.

She plops down on my bed, kicks off her shoes, and flops back on the mattress, giggling as only a woman sloshed to the point of silliness can. Tries to look sexy. Seductive. She opens her legs. Her skirt rides high enough for me to see her panties. They’re white. They won’t be for long.

I put on Moon River—the Audrey Hepburn version—to set the mood, and we get undressed and down to business. We play around for a little while until I get bored. That’s when I kill her. Stab her twenty or more times (sorry, in all the excitement I lost count) with the titanium ice pick I bought for such an occasion. Into her head it goes—Whack! Whack!—into her eyes, her neck, her chest—everywhere vital. I thought about torturing the bitch first…stuffing her mouth with those swan-white panties, tying her up, and giving her what-for, but I was too tired to bother. The slut wore me out with all her yakking. As if I give a hippy dippy shit about her troubles and hearing her life story. Why should I? She’s just a thing to me. A cipher. One more kill to add to my record. Nothing more.

After she’s good and dead, I roll her on her stomach. It’s time to add the finishing touch. The pièce de résistance. My signature. My calling card. A little something to get the cops excited and the media orgasmic. I spread her ass open as well as her pussy. For inspection purposes, mostly. I’m trying to decide which hole wins the jackpot and gets the foreign object shoved into it to make her death look like something it’s not. Decisions, decisions. I flip a coin. Heads it is. Her pussy wins. The Fates have spoken.

I look around the room, to see what’s handy. I settle on a beer bottle; one I picked up off the side of the road the other day during one of my strolls. Not my brand, of course. That would be incriminating. A dead giveaway. Like I said, I’m not stupid.

I shove it good and tight up her twat, wipe it down, and then wrap her up in a blanket I bought on sale at Walmart. I get dressed, slip on some gloves and a pair of oversized boots padded with newspaper, and cover my head with a black knit cap. I go outside to back her car up to the front door. When I’m sure none of my neighbors are awake and watching, I drag her carcass to the trunk. She’s not a big gal but heavy nonetheless, being dead weight and all. I manage to get her inside the trunk and close the lid with the softest of clicks. I lock up my apartment and off we go, she and I, on our date. Into the bayou.

The night is hot and steamy, as nights in Louisiana typically are, the moon full—a bullet hole of light. I drive to a spot I picked two days before. I open the trunk and drag her corpse out of the car and into the brackish water as far as I dare. The Volvo’s headlights are shining on the swamp’s surface, and I can see gators’ eyes glowing red in the distance. The brutes are drifting closer and closer to shore, eager for a kill. I speak to them as one apex predator to another:

Come and get it, boys. This meal’s on me.

I free the body from its blanket, push it towards them, and scramble like hell out of the water. I hop back into her car and drive to an abandoned single lane bridge a few miles up the road. I send the car hurtling off the side (once I’m out of it, of course) and watch it sink in the swampy darkness. I watch its headlights go dead. Then I walk farther up the road, throw the ice pick and oversized boots minus the wads of newspaper into the muck as far as I can, and slip on a pair of running shoes I brought with me. I set fire to the wads of newspaper, watch them burn. Then I hoof it home, keeping to the shadows and ducking out of sight whenever I see headlights coming. It takes a while, but I make it.

Once back at my apartment, I do my usual post-killing cleanup. Break out the bleach and snap on the rubber gloves. I vacuum the place thoroughly and wipe everything down. Wash the bedding. Her clothes as well before bagging them up and dropping them in a charity donation bin across town—my good deed for the day. It’s a pain in the ass, having to do all this work and pay so much attention to detail, but it’s got to be done. A necessary part of being an artist.

By the time I finish, it’s nearly dawn. The world is waking, people stirring. Grey light is bleeding through the window shades. I yawn. I have to go to work in a couple of hours. Better get some shuteye. I’ve got a long day ahead of me. I’ll catch up on my sleep tonight after I finish my shift. Go to bed early. A body needs its rest.

I set the alarm, take off my clothes, throw them in the washer, and crawl into bed. My head sinks into my pile of memory foam pillows as I close my eyes. I drift off. It’s been a good night and an even better morning. The start of a great