The Slaying Game, page 1
THE SLAYING GAME
THE JOLVIX EPISODES
FAITH GARDNER
Copyright © 2023 by Faith Gardner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover by Dissect Designs
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
One more thing …
A note from the author
Also by Faith Gardner
About the Author
Dedicated to my enemies,
may they Rest In Peace.
CHAPTER 1
THE GAME
One day, I’ll make a perfect ghost.
I’ve spent my life learning how to haunt.
How to skulk crowded streets, to step into the shadows on instinct.
How to comb my hair and choose outfits in a way to render myself forgettable.
When I was young, I used to hate how unremarkable I am—a hair color that can’t decide if it’s blond or brown, eyes that could look blue, gray, or green depending on the light, no freckles, dimples, or cleft chin to distinguish me. But I’ve learned over time that’s my strength.
I’m no leading player, I’m a supporting actor people see a hundred times in different roles with an uncanny wave of déjà vu but never learn their name.
Madison La Rosa has no idea what’s coming.
I’m watching her through her back window right now.
She’s on the only rat race she’s ever known—her treadmill—ponytail swishing in rhythm as she watches her big-screen TV, a cooking show with meals far too caloric than she likely ever consumes.
Every now and then, she wipes the sweat from her forehead with the edge of her pink bedazzled workout shirt.
For all those Broadway dreams, she ended up a McHousewife in a McMansion outside of Fresno.
She looks older than her twenty-seven years when I zoom in to examine her face. It’s expressionless.
Her husband is out of town most weeks so she spends her evenings alone, scrolling her phone while the TV blares in the background and she drains a bottle of wine. I’ve seen her cry, late nights up in her bedroom when her curtains are open and her husband isn’t home.
I wish you could see it—you deserve to see such a sight, after what she did to you.
The delivery truck just pulled up to Madison’s house, right on cue.
Madison must be a shopaholic because that truck rolls up every night and it’s always the same: ding-dong, Madison flicks the blinds to peer out the window, waits until the driver pulls his truck back into the street, then flounces out to retrieve her package from her heart-shaped doormat.
Tonight, though, when the driver goes whistling back to his truck, I emerge from behind the oak tree to cross their expansive lawn.
I crouch on her porch beside the mailbox.
As soon as I see her shape in the opaque window on her front door and the doorknob turns, I spring to my feet and lunge like a hungry wildcat, push her back inside.
She splats backward on her wood floor with a yelp, recoiling, eyes shining with terror.
I close the door behind us and lock it with a snick.
I point the gun down at her like someone in a movie.
It feels good to imagine I’m a leading player for a change.
“Don’t scream,” I say. “Do what I say and I won’t shoot you.”
She’s panting, putting a hand over her own mouth as if she doesn’t trust herself to follow directions. Her eyes are so wide they look like they could pop right out of her head.
I give her a second to calm down while I stand here near the hat rack and look around.
The place is spotless, which isn’t shocking since I’ve seen the maid service that comes Tuesdays and Fridays. Furniture so forgettable and colorless it looks staged.
The living room’s got picture windows that I’ve been looking through for the past month, but the space looks different now that I’ve stepped inside it.
Real for the first time.
Warm, cozy, upscale—though the deer head above the fireplace isn’t really to my taste.
“Get up,” I tell Madison.
She scrambles to her feet, manicured hands visibly shaking.
She doesn’t recognize my voice. Of course she doesn’t.
I was never a talker and she was never one to listen.
I dig the gun under her chin and gesture for her to start up the carpeted stairs, which she does, slowly, rigidly, turning as if she’s made of glass to glance behind me after every step.
“What is that on your face?” she whispers.
“Eyes ahead,” I say.
She snaps her attention forward and we pause at the landing, the hallway lined with wedding photos and nothing else, confirming what I’ve suspected: this here’s a woman who peaked at twenty-three.
I point the gun toward her bedroom, where the blinds are drawn and the lights are off. A king-sized bed, a vanity, a dresser. She leads the way there, sobbing, “Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her.
And I’m not lying.
I tell her to turn around and I duct-tape her wrists behind her, duct-tape her feet together at the ankles, too.
“What do you want?” she asks. “Money? I—I can get you money, whatever you want. Take whatever you want, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Take a seat on the bed,” I tell her.
Her gaze is locked on the gun. “What are you going to do to me?” she whispers.
“I’m not going to do anything,” I tell her. “You’re in control.”
“But—I’m—” she sputters. “I don’t understand.”
With my right hand, I keep the gun on her. With my left hand, I open my backpack and pull out the VixSpex—a black, shiny virtual reality headset with a special attachment on the side where a gun fits. I hold it up. She squints at it.
“What—what is that?” she asks, a wave of curiosity watering down her fear for just a second, until she notices the weapon attached. “Wait, is that a gun?”
I take a nice deep breath, savoring this moment, memorizing it for future replay.
Stepping forward, I slide the headset on her skull as Madison gasps.
A grin spreads behind my plastic mask, warm and slow as honey dripping.
“It’s playtime,” I say.
CHAPTER 2
LEELA
A shattered storefront window, four missing cats, and a trail of blood leading all the way down the block—this is not how anyone wants to start a workday.
The Berkeley street I work on is usually peaceful this early in the morning, ash trees and shadows, no traffic, maybe a few pedestrians, a bicyclist or two. Right now it’s a gut-wrenching crime scene. I take off my sunglasses and squint at the horrific mess that spans a quarter of a city block.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I say.
“It was like this when I got here,” my co-worker Esmerelda says in a quivering voice, shaking her thick head of curls. “I looked around the corners but I didn’t see nothing, I—I don’t know what to do.”
I hold my purse tight, pulse racing as I take in the devastation. Someone could have been seriously injured. What if we’d been open? What if I’d been training volunteers? Horrific hypotheticals firework in my brain. I step closer to Esmerelda, glass crunching under the soles of my boots.
“I’m just thinking of the kitties, you know?” Esmerelda wipes her eyes with her talon nails. I’m in awe of how she gets anything done in life with nails like that. “I don’t want anything to happen to them. Should I go look for them?”
“Right now, no, let’s wait for the cops,” I say. “Did café staff see anything?”
Esmerelda shakes her head. “They’re around the corner.”
“And they didn’t hear a cinder block exploding a plate glass window next door?”
“You know how loud they listen to their music.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“I don’t think so. Meditation place is across the street, but they’re not open mornings. Neither is Dry.”
For the most part, this block’s a ghost town of shuttered commercial buildings. It’s an industrial neighborhood in Berkeley between downtown and the marina. The most exciting thing around here, besides our cat café/shelter of course, is a sober bar called “Dry.”
I squint at the sidewalk, where blood’s puddled on the ground in front of the open window, bright red, still wet. My stomach does a nasty somersault. If someone hurt our cats, I swear to God. “Man, I hope that’s human blood.”
Esmerelda gasps like I stuck her with a tiny knife.
“I’m sure it’s human,” I assure her. I follow the trail a few steps. Down the sidewalk, there’s a rainy splatter that peters to a drizzle at the corner and then disappears completely, right where the loading zone is.
“I wonder if they jumped in a car there,” I say. “Oh! Cops.”
A cruiser pulls up and Esmerelda stands closer to me. “You seem so calm. I’m about to flip out.”
“I’m just good at faking it.” I wave down the two police officers taking their sweet time as they strut up the sidewalk. “Hi there. Leela Crowe, Volunteer Coordinator at Feline Better. Thanks for arriving so quickly. From what I’ve gathered, the suspect hurled a cinder block through the window about—” I take a quick peek at my phone. “—ten, fifteen minutes ago. Four cats that reside in the Meow Meow Lounge are missing. There’s this trail of blood—” I point to the ground. “—leading up there, to the corner, where it stops in the loading zone. Unfortunately, doesn’t seem like there were any witnesses. Our café staff are around the corner and don’t have visibility into the cat shelter. They didn’t hear anything either, according to our Operations Manager Esmerelda Hernandez here. Nothing was taken. The motive’s unclear.”
Both cops are female, thirtysomething I’d guess. One has pocked skin and big doe eyes, the other has glowing skin and beady pug eyes, and both share identically jaded Mona Lisa expressions. Doe Eyes pulls out a pad and starts asking questions and taking notes. Her partner paces the sidewalk, following the blood, and then disappears behind the corner.
After we give our statements, they do a search through the neighborhood. We step over the window shards and inside the Meow Meow Lounge, where broken glass glitters like crushed ice on the cat beds, cat toys, cat dishes, litter boxes. That’s going to be hell to clean up later. No sign of anyone, no cats left inside. Luckily most of the cats sleep in the back rooms and are all oblivious to this mess. The cops ask about employees or volunteers who might have done this, but I shake my head.
“We’re a non-profit cat café and cat rescue org. It’s not like we make a lot of enemies.”
“It could be personal,” Doe Eyes says, pointing at Esmerelda and me with her pen. “Anyone who might be targeting you?”
“I’m a happily married woman of twenty-five years,” Esmerelda says, as if that answers the question.
That old familiar oh shit feeling creeps in. I hadn’t even entertained the idea that this could be someone after me specifically. I’ve been living a boring, low-profile life for a solid year now. There are no fresh vendettas out there with my name on them.
There is no such thing as the Leela Curse. Bad things happen to everyone. I whisper these things internally, my private mantra.
“I don’t think it’s personal,” I tell the cops.
“Could be completely random,” Doe Eyes says.
Her partner nods. “We’ve had a few car break-ins in this neighborhood; nothing taken, just windows smashed.”
“We’ll be following up with you soon,” Doe Eyes promises.
“This place looks like a lot of fun,” her partner tells us, smiling at the cat paintings on the walls. To Esmerelda, she says, “Love the shirt.”
“I made it myself,” Esmerelda sniffles.
Esmerelda’s wearing one of her favorite airbrushed creations featuring Jesus surrounded by lambs but instead of lambs, it’s kittens. She’s not wearing it ironically either.
The cops thank us and head out. When they’re gone, Esmerelda and I turn to each other.
“Mugsy needs his medication,” she finally says. “And Ethel’s ear drops—”
I’m not a hugger, but if there’s a hugger in need, I can make the sacrifice. I put my arms around Esmerelda and she hugs me back, shuddering with emotion. She’s probably eight inches shorter than me and she smells like cheap hairspray. I pat her back awkwardly. Is that what people do when they embrace? I forget.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “The cats in the other rooms are all fine. We’ll call and get the window fixed and the blood cleaned up.”
“The kitties …”
“They’re probably hiding somewhere nearby. I’ll take a few walks today, see what I can find.” I pull away from her. “Your mascara’s smeared on that side.”
Esmerelda wipes under her eyes and makes it worse.
“I need coffee,” I say. “All this and I haven’t even had caffeine yet today.”
“The new volunteers are coming for orientation at one,” she reminds me.
“Damn,” I mutter, taking out my phone. Imagine a set of bright-eyed cat lovers showing up to this shitshow. “I’ll have to move it to next week.”
Across the street, a local news van pulls up with a crane on it and everything. Look at that—sharks smelled the blood in the water. I sigh. Guess I’m not getting my coffee for a while.
Hands on hips, I wait for the reporter to emerge from the van and think through the outcomes of media coverage. After about five seconds, I decide that it will work solely in our favor. The audience will eat this up like buttered popcorn—a vandalized cat shelter, missing cats, suspect at large.
My prediction? This will be the best fundraising month this organization’s ever seen.
CHAPTER 3
A little over twenty-four hours later and I’ve proven myself right.
“Leela,” my boss Daisy says as she refreshes the donation page on her computer for the hundredth time this afternoon. “This is incredible. Almost two thousand dollars in a single day.”
Daisy has an earnestness paired with a soothing voice and a manner of speaking that reminds me of charity commercials. For the price of a cup of coffee a day, you could save a kitten’s life …
A room away, the Mr. Window people are replacing the storefront. We found the four missing cats yesterday and paid a crew to power wash the blood off the sidewalk this morning. By evening, no one will ever be able to tell we had a smash job. Good as new, with two thousand extra bucks in our account and two dozen people calling and wanting to adopt our cats. It’s been a day and a half.
“Thanks,” I say from the desk behind her. This is how we work—back-to-back in a closet-sized room crowded with cat pictures all over the walls.
