MY BOOK

Pizza of Death

a novel

In the summer of 1996, death stalks the employees and customers of an independent pizza parlor in small-town Arkansas. As the body count rises to ridiculous levels, can the barely-functional degenerates who pretend to work there discover the killer's identity before it's too late?

No.

Filled with mutilation, mayhem, perversion, and filth, this book is not suitable for human consumption.

* * *
This book combines three of my favorite topics: pizza, dick jokes, and brutal fucking murder. The unnamed town it takes place in is loosely based on a city in Northeast Arkansas where I grew up and "worked" my first job in a pizza kitchen. Most of the death scenes involve tools from that kitchen being creatively repurposed.

Below is an excerpt from the book. If you like what you see here, please go to the Amazon page and buy the Kindle version. Don't have an e-reader? Email me and I'll send you a .pdf copy. But first, go to Amazon and GIMME FIVE DOLLARS!

Pizza Delivery Murder Spree

Movie Night in the Thompson household. It was the last week before school started back, and the kids were trying to squeeze as many midnight bedtimes and nine AM wakeups as possible into the few remaining days of summer freedom. It might have been better to get them used to a scheduled routine before one was forced on them by the new schoolyear, but Scott and Debbie were typically indulgent middle-class white American parents, and the kids mainly got what they wanted.

It was right at the part in Carnosaur (Evan’s pick for the night) where the dino eats a bunch of tree-hugging hippies when the doorbell rang.

“Pizza’s here!” Scott Thompson said, and levered himself up out of his chair with a pull of the reclining lever. He scooted past the couch, where his wife was looking at her gleeful son with some concern over his movie rental choices, and into the front hall where he opened the door.

The thing on the doorstep may have met the technical requirements to be considered a human being, but only barely. Scott’s eyes widened in shock and he quickly turned his attention to his wallet to avoid staring.

“Uh, hi,” he stammered as he fumbled with the money. “W-what do I owe you?”

The pizza delivery monster responded by wordlessly shoving the box at Scott’s chest. He took it with both hands, balancing his wallet on top of the greasy cardboard square.

Still awkwardly averting his eyes to the ground, Scott asked “will fifteen be enough?” and a silver crescent flashed between them. Pizza and wallet tumbled to the welcome mat as Scott Thompson’s throat popped open along an invisible seam. He backed up hard, clutching at the wound that split his second chin. Blood poured between his fingers as he tried to hold his pale-pink flesh together.

His mouth stretched open soundlessly, silently screaming a warning to his family that danger was approaching, that the devil was at the door. He knocked the hat rack off the wall, tipped over the umbrella stand, and slid gradually down to a sitting position against the red-streaked plaster as his life poured out on the hardwood.

“Hon?” Debbie shouted in the other room. “You’re missing the movie!”

The killer squashed the pizza box under his sandal as he stepped over the threshold and into the house. He closed the door behind him.

* * *
Rick Marley didn’t notice there was someone at the door until the fourth knock, which nearly battered the flimsy wooden door off its hinges. He cursed and quickly steered his Marine to a less-traveled corner of MAP01, where he could hopefully camp unnoticed till his meatspace counterpart was finished with the pizza boy.

He painfully lifted himself from his chair at the computer desk and began the long walk across the living room to the front door, assisted by a cheap aluminum cane. Every few steps, he had to lean on a piece of furniture and catch his breath. He didn’t get up from the computer until he was forced to by the pathetic needs of the flesh, and so the flesh was very out of shape.

There was another knock, hard enough to shake the whole trailer on its cinderblock foundations. Was it the pizza guy or the cops? Either way: fuck ‘em, they could wait. He’d get there when he got there.

Rick took nearly a full minute crossing the six meter length of his rented mobile home because the crippling arthritis in his legs, a special Fuck You Surprise from nature that came on in his early twenties, made every step he took a journey into Hell. But the Social Security/Disability check he got each month was enough to afford a DWANGO subscription that let him deathmatch all day over a blazing-fast 33.6 kbit/s dial-up modem, so it all evened out.

In DOOM II, he could run around at 60 MPH without ever getting tired. Compared to that, what was this bullshit the people outside called ‘real life’?

When he finally got to the door and threw it open, he was panting from exertion. With mild interest, he noted that the pizza…thing looked like the Elephant Man’s body-builder cousin. Maybe it was a sympathy hire or some kind of state-sponsored work program. Anyway, at least it was quiet. Rick hated small talk.

So he returned the favor, silently holding out a twenty and reaching for the pizza—when the delivery guy rudely shoved the box against Rick’s chest, flat-side first, and held it there. Rick looked down at himself, confused at how the box was still sticking to him even when he moved away from the belligerent mutant. Then he saw the knife handle sprouting from the cardboard and the dark stain spreading around it. Aha.

From the Compaq’s speakers, very far away, he heard the familiar scream of his Marine getting fragged. Some n00b had found his camping spot.

“God damn this rock,” Rick said, and died.

* * *
The Piggy Pen was full of drunken shitheads, as usual. Music from three different CD players competed for volume dominance, blending together in a scrambled symphony of black noise. This helpfully eliminated the need to think of something clever to say, since nobody would hear it unless you shouted it right in their ear. Around the spacious party basement, people stood clustered in groups of two and three, babbling their streams of badly-impaired consciousness past one another’s nodding heads.

Dustin King was trying to extract himself from one such cluster of fuckheads when he saw the red light on the wall start flashing, indicating someone was at the front door. One of his brothers in the Fraternal Order of the Pork Sword had rigged the bulb to the doorbell so they could respond quickly if the cops came by on a noise complaint. Despite the basement’s excellent soundproofing, this was a common occurrence.

Excusing himself with the Sign of the Swine, Dustin started up the stairs, past the lumpy concrete statue that gave the Piggy Pen its name. It was a four-foot tall cartoon cowboy pig which somebody stole from a local BBQ joint years ago. Draped in Mardi Gras beads, Hawaiian lei necklaces, and tacky costume jewelry, the pig presided over all the sacred ceremonies of the Order. A hand-painted sign on the wall read: ‘Par T. Pig sez DO the GOO!’ with an arrow pointing to the Mighty Jizz Bong held aloft between the statue’s hoof-hands (the Jizz Bong, which featured heavily in the initiation rites of the Fraternal Order of the Pork Sword, was a regular beer bong put to bad use).

Dustin reached the top of the stairs and hurried to the door. After taking a moment to look Very Sober, he opened it and was pleasantly surprised to find, instead of the cops, a very strange-looking pizza guy.

“Dude,” Dustin slurred, “are you going to a toga party later?”

The dude threw the pizza box at Dustin’s shirt with a lazy, one-hand toss and stabbed him in the eyeball with the goatknife. After a brief spasm, Dustin stood rigidly straight, squealed once, and tipped slowly backwards like a felled tree.

The killer let himself in, pausing to step on Dustin’s face and retrieve the knife on his way downstairs where the party was happening.

* * *
On Sherry Martin’s day off work, she took a late lunch. Six 12-hour shifts in the guard shack every week, from 7 PM to 7 AM, had cursed her with the sleep cycle of a vampire. Her roommate and partner, Rachel Hunt, worked the second shift at a call center, so this was dinner time for her.

They were married in all but the legal sense, but only saw about four hours of each other a week. This was fine with Sherry; it kept them from getting in each other’s way.

This was the only night of the week they consistently had a meal together, and they usually took it at the coffee table in front of the TV. Frozen dinners were the norm, but tonight the freezer was empty, so Rachel ordered pizza from Mario’s. It was going on an hour and a half since she called when a car pulled up with some God-awful racket playing loud on the stereo.

“About fuckin’ time,” Sherry said as she got up to answer the knock at the door.

She pulled it open with some bitchy words ready for the driver, but there was nobody out there. The pizza box was just sitting on the concrete patio of the duplex and the delivery car was already headed down the street, taking with it the raw screams and out-of-tune guitar riffs of early 90s Norway. Sherry shrugged and brought the pizza inside. It might be late, but at least it was free.

She set the box on the formica-top bar in the kitchen and opened it up for inspection.

“Baby, what kind of pizza did you order?” Sherry asked with a tone of concern in her voice.

“Pepperoni and mushroom,” Rachel said. “Why, what did they give us?”

Rachel walked around to see what Sherry was staring at. The pizza in the box was covered with heart-shaped slices of smooth purple flesh and bumpy, brownish-pink disks of skin that sprouted wiry little hairs, and in one case, a barbell.

“Nipples and dicks,” her wife replied.

Want more book read? GIVE ME MONEY.

Home Again