Dark and, at times, amusing fiction from award-winning author Dave Zeltserman

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Bullet of Prose #23 from BLOOD CRIMES


Faces of the perverts and rapists and sociopaths that Jim had killed over the last three years blurred in his mind into something generic, something almost cartoonish. Outside of that first thug who attacked Carol in Newark, it was hard for him to recall any of them. Even the latest one from only several hours before. Their faces just kept fading in and out, never quite coming into focus. He forced himself to concentrate, to try to picture what at least one of them looked like, but couldn’t do it. Whenever he came close, the image would morph into Bluto from those old Popeye cartoons. Giving up, he forced himself to count how many of these predators he had killed since hooking up with Carol. It took a while but he came up with a number—a hundred and ten, plus the two vampires that Serena had sicced on him. Fuck. If this kept up and he lived to a ripe old age he could go down as one of the deadliest serial killers in history, or the most successful vigilante, depending on your point of view. The fact that these were all violent sociopathic thugs, the worst that humanity had to offer, only slightly helped to ease his conscience. No matter how hard he tried convincing himself otherwise, it still came down to that he was robbing them of any chance of redemption. Even though he had to kill them for his survival, he probably wouldn’t be able to do it if they weren’t trying to hurt Carol. Not that he hadn’t killed before becoming a vampire.

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