AT THE EXPLOSION SITE- 

     Joshua stood in the midst of the rubble and gently moved piles of carnage with the tip of his plastic encased boots. The entire area was covered with the worst odor known to man. Even after two days the lingering smell of fried flesh, and burning wood permeated the mask covering his nose and mouth. Now that the pieces of remaining flesh were decaying, the smell was even worse. The gagging odor turned his stomach and made him vow to stay away from barbecued meat forever.

     What a mess, the full visual impact of the site worse in the daylight. Forensics was having a hard time sorting one body from the next while the news system was having a field day tearing apart the wall and façade of normalcy the dead men had built around their lives. Once the secret of the men’s activities had been leaked, all hell had broken loose. Knowing no one in Shiningbal’s community would have dared to open their mouths and inform the media, he had wasted many hours sleep wondering who the informer could be. And even more, what was to happen next. Though he agreed with everything that had been written or spoken about the six men, he hated the affect it was having on his town and worse on what it was doing to his family and the families of the six men. The little town was filled to capacity with gawkers, protesters, and news-whores.

     The knowledge a ring of pedophiles inhabited and had been killed so close to a small city was the biggest revelation in centuries to hit the media market and yet not to the natives of Shiningbal. The fact each man’s occupation was so diverse and viable to the smoothing running of sections of the community had turned the city upside down. People were unforgiving. Society found it hard to have sympathy for the mothers of the abused children. They were blamed and attacked for their ignorance. The social networks spread the sordid details of the abuse so quickly and so far in the stratosphere, the innocence of the mother’s involvement hadn’t had a chance to be voiced before they were accused, publicly stripped of their defenses and their raw emotions were exposed.

     Trust in the governmental authorities had been shaken to its roots. Because Penny worked in the child protective system and the major pedophile happened to have been her brother-in-law, the confidence parents once had in the system to scrutinize records and its ability to protect the children had disintegrated. Parents were running scared. All of the giddy with vanity mothers who had granted Bertrand the liberties with their children now worried whether they had done the right things. Because of the pediatrician’s part in the coven, children were being taken to neighboring cities to be checked for possible signs of sexual abuse. Everyone was rightfully running amuck. Trust in the city was questioned from the electricians to delivery people to everyone employed within the police force and DA’s office. No one trusted anyone.

     Once the media became involved in the case no one was safe from its scrutiny. Files were pulled out and the former DA’s prosecution record of pedophiles and sexual molesters was laid out to the public. Shiningbal’s legal system was a joke.

     Judge Maradoo had let the entire local ‘home grown’ crop of child molesters plea-bargain their way out of a prison sentence for years. Most were given probation without having to pay any fines or participate in any form of community service after being charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child. It was as if all of the children were caught in a big incestual ring of sex and torture. Hell forget about paying restitution to any injured parties it was as if the fool saw sexual child abuse as a ‘boy will be boys’ way of life and it didn’t mean anything.

     Joshua looked up at the obvious flash of a camera and into the expectant faces of the news media there was nothing new he could share with them. The explosion looked like an accident. Shaking his head at the uselessness of him being there, Joshua walked to where his truck was parked. Removing the covering from his boots, he tossed the plastic and the gloves in the bed of the truck. Without a backward glance he climbed in the cab and drove away.

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THE INTERVIEWED CHARACTER

A quick view from The Fishing Trip a work in progress.

Scene-Durham is on his way to handle-up on some last minute business before leaving town.

     Durham drove the F150 sixty miles into the woods at thirty miles over the speed limit with the windows down, the cool wind aiding the cigar smoke to swirl through the trucks interior. The sounds of Battle Without Honor or Humility from the Kill Bill movie blaring in the silence of the dark cool night air. This was his theme song. He loved a good challenge and tonight he had a big one, even if he was the only one who knew it.


     The cabin where he was driving was now filled with the sickest single group of sadistic perverts he had ever come across. At the moment they were sitting in a warm fully equipped cabin watching their homemade child porn on a 52 inch flat screen television, drinking and eating and having a laughing good time. They had trusted him when he said he was going to run into town for more supplies. The same way those little children had trusted them. Each of their wives and children had either won a trip or were on sleepovers or pretty much engaged somewhere else for the week. Unaware of how their lives were about to change for the better. Those cretins in the cabin trusted and believed he had wanted to invest in their porno film making business. Durham found it mind numbing how easily it had been to fool people who prided themselves on being cunning and conniving. They thought they had made it to the ‘big times’, an often repeated phrase from the FedEx man as they had fished off what they believed to be his yacht in the middle of the ocean the day before. Durham’s intention had been to blow the boat up in the middle of the water after he had gotten safely away, but when Bertrand began talking and then begging about a wish to own a cabin, Durham began a discussion intimating the pretense of possibly selling. What they didn’t know was, yeah he was selling alright; selling them a bunch of crap and a trip to hell.

     For twenty years he had used the cabin as a way to remind himself of the reasons he did the things he did and the person he really was inside. A superhero, a savior of sorts and not the mad killing machine his stepfather and all of the f’in fathers had turned him into.
   
     The cabin was his protection against the ‘kryptonite of doubt and fear’. He would sit on the porch leaning back on a wooden chair, feet on the rail and smoke a cigarette as he had seen so many men do in the movies, Clint Eastwood especially. He’d sit squint his eyed in the sunset and through the burning smoke of the cigarette, watch the still waters of the lake rolling over the umpteen bodies buried in its depths and smile at the fact they were piled one on top the other and his stepfather was the foundation. The platform for the superhero for children he had become.

     Durham turned off the music as he drew nearer the building. From his vantage point he could see the television through the huge pate glass windows and was sickened over the events occurring on the screen. The sight of a child screaming and crying while being raped and the images of the sorry bastards sitting on the couch and chairs laughing and cheering through the windows fueled his intentions to end their life. They deserved a quick and fitting punishment. Adjusting the gloves on his hands and covering the soles of his boots with plastic bags Durham slid out of the truck.