Copyright 2019. 
This work is not to appear elsewhere, 
in whole or in part, without the express 
permission of the author.

Killing Joe Prince

     By Ken Stark

    "Bill, Oprah only interviews the big fish. She doesn't have time for small fry."
    The words were just what he didn't want to hear.
    "But the reviews for Dingo Summer are awesome. Five stars, right across the board!"
    "Yes, and sales have never been better. Congratulations, Bill, and I mean it. Congratulations! Four books in, and you've already built a loyal following. But decent sales and glowing reviews won't land you on Oprah, Bill. When you sell a million and climb to the top ten on the New York Times best seller list, maybe you'll catch her eye. Until then, you'll just have to stick with it. Keep writing. Keep plugging away. You're a good writer, Bill. You're one of the best I've ever known. The time will come when the world beats a path to your door, but you have to be patient. You have to pay your dues."
    "Dues?" Anders scoffed into the phone. "I've been paying my dues for four years, Harv."
    Dead air for several long moments. He knew exactly what Harvey was doing. He was in his big overstuffed chair with the phone cradled under his chin, and he was looking to the ceiling like he always did when he was exasperated. He could almost hear the man rolling his eyes. 
    "Bill, every overnight success was years in the making," the voice sighed at last. Rowling, Patterson, Straub.... they all took years just to get noticed. Why, even your idol, the crown Prince of horror, had five books under his belt before anyone other than his wife knew his name. It was his sixth that made him a household name."
    "Fire Nymph. Yes, I know. It wasn't even a very good book."
    "Oh, yeah? I thought you told me once that Fire Nymph changed your life."
    He looked to the shelves lining the back wall of his study. His own books occupied just one tiny corner of the top shelf. Below that was a long shelf filled with hardcover masterpieces. The entire Joe Prince library.
     "It did," he said, more to himself than to anyone else. "They all did."
     "Patience and hard work, Bill. That's the name of the game. Patience and hard work. Your time will come, my friend."
     "When?" Anders snorted, "After I'm dead?"
     More silence, this time punctuated with the tell-tale tapping of pen on blotter. Clearly, Harv had heard enough. Next would come the dismissal. Polite, but definite. Then a quick compliment to stroke his ego, followed by a hasty end to the conversation.
     On cue, Harvey said, "Alright, Bill. I have a meeting in two minutes, so I'll have to let you go. But keep up the good work, buddy! You're an awesome talent and we're thrilled to have you on board. Take care of yourself, my friend. Talk to you later!"
     And that was it. The phone went dead, and the next great American horror novelist, Bill Anders, drained his scotch while running his eyes once more over the Joe Prince library.
     Damn Joe Prince. The man was too good to be true. From the very first moment he'd come upon a Joe Prince book and cracked it open, he'd known that he was in the presence of greatness. Sure, the man tended to ramble a bit, and he didn't always stick to the rules of proper grammar, but that was part of the legend's charm. Since then, he hadn't just read every Joe Prince book the day it'd come out, he'd devoured them. More than anyone or anything in his life, Joe Prince was what'd made him want to write. 
     With a cheap-as-Hell laptop and a pirated version of Word, he'd crawled through his first manuscript. But as the crawl turned into a walk and then into a sprint, he'd come to understand the true magic of the profession. Creating worlds. Crafting characters out of nothingness. The sheer joy of rereading a passage so well-written that he could barely admit to himself that it'd come from his own hand. The rush was intoxicating! 
     Under Joe Prince's tutelage, he'd become a god. The maker and destroyer of worlds. The bringer of nightmares. If some of the comments he'd read on Twitter we're anything more than empty platitudes, he was even on his way to becoming the next Joe Prince. But in a world that already had a Joe Prince, what did it need with the next Joe Prince?
      He refilled his glass and drained it in a swallow.
      Joe Prince. The crown Prince of horror. Thirty-three books, and not a dud in the bunch. Every one, a million seller. The man had certainly acquired his fair share of critics in the old days, but he'd outwitted the dullards as only Joe Prince could have done. He'd outlived the fuckers. And now, no one had a bad word to say about his occasional ramblings or of the way he so blatantly thumbed his nose at the so-called rules.
      Joe Prince. His idol. The only reason he'd ever sat down at a keyboard and strung his first few words together. He knew every bit of the man's life, from his predilection for fine wines to his favorite flavor of ice cream. He'd read the biographies, he'd seen the interviews, and he'd poured over every review on every website for every book the man had ever written.
     The great Joe Prince. He knew the man as well as he knew himself. Hell, with how much of his own life a writer allows to bleed into his works, maybe he knew him better than himself. And why not? Idols were meant to be worshipped, after all. 
     But Harv was right. The bald bastard might spend the majority of his days blowing smoke up various skirts, but of one thing he had been dead-on correct. Joe Prince was no overnight success. He'd had five years to hone his craft and five books under his belt before hitting the big time. Before him, it was Bloch, Dick and Matheson. Before them, Lovecraft. And before him, the true pioneers of the genre. Shelley. Poe. Stoker. And for every generation, a new great was christened upon the death of the old. 
     For Prince, it was Algernon Huxley. From Prince's own accounts, he'd spent his life worshipping Huxley, and though he'd already penned five of the greatest novels ever written, it was only after the old man fell to his death on that fateful night thirty years ago that Prince had finally come into his own. As far as the reading public was concerned, the king was dead, so long live Prince.
      He refilled his glass and drained it again, then he hauled himself out of his chair and found himself on the other side of the room, running a finger along the spines of thirty-three perfectly written masterpieces of horror. 
     Carmine. Jerusalem's Hammer.  Glint. Lying Down. The Deaders. They were all there. Then his finger stopped at Fire Nymph, and he pulled it out from its queue as lovingly as a cardinal might an ancient tome deep within the catacombs of the Vatican Library.
      The cover was simple. A girl on fire. Plain font. Not exactly eye-catching, but in a world that no longer held an Algernon Huxley, readers had scooped it up. A million books were sold in that first year, and who knows how many since. He opened the book and read that first line as if he'd never seen it before.
      "Daddy that hurts," the little girl in the green pants and red blouse said, fretfully.
      Christ, what a lame opening! According to Prince's own words, the path to Hell is paved with overly-descriptive prose, yet here he was, overly describing his royal ass off. But somehow, it worked. A million eyes had seen that prosaic cover and the blah-blah blurb on the back and that horrible first line, and they'd handed him the throne, just like that.
     He slid Fire Nymph back into its exalted spot and brought down one of his own books. Eye-catching cover. Bright colors. Gothic font. And on the back, a blurb that'd taken him a month to get just right. It was perfect. Beautiful, even! He cracked open the book and read the first paragraph, and he felt the same rush he'd felt the first time he'd held that book in his hands. That opening line was magnificent, and the rest of the book was top drawer. Scary, but with a heart, and filled with prose that would make a reader alternatively weep and shudder in fear. 
     By anyone's measure, he was better than the Prince. Some people had even told him so, right to his face. Yet, here he was, barely making a living while the crown Prince of horror made millions. 
     He folded himself cross-legged to the floor and took in the entirety of the book shelf. All of the classics were there. Dracula. Frankenstein. The Call of Cthulu. The Shrinking Man. And there in the middle of the pack, a slim little volume with the words 'The Raven' barely visible along its spine. 
     Whether it was the scotch talking or not, of one thing he suddenly became most certain. There was only room for one at the top. Every one of those incredible authors had achieved success for one reason and one reason only. Whether in life or after death, those literary giants had all achieved their lofty positions only after the death of the previous top dog. 
     Lovecraft. Poe. Shelley. They'd all reached some level of acclaim early on, but nothing like what they experienced when the last great master of scary tales had shuffled off his or her mortal coil. And Joe Prince might have been the luckiest of the lot. Barely five books in, and Algernon Huxley, the undefeated grand master of horror, chose that particular moment in all of history to fall from his balcony in a drunken stupor. 
     "Lucky fuck....." he said aloud.
     It could have been him. If he had been born thirty years previous, he'd have given Prince a run for his money. He would have matched him book for book, and then he would have done something Joe Prince could never have done. He would've gone to Algernon Huxley's home in the mountains and thrown that drunken bastard off of his own damn balcony. He would have watched him spiral all the way down to the canyon floor, and then he would have spit over the railing.
    There was only ever room for one at the top. Number two might be good enough for some, but not for the great Bill Anders. If he'd been born thirty years earlier, he would have done what needed to be done, and the world would've come together to hoist him on their shoulders and carry him straight to the top.
     "You've had long enough," he grumbled, running a narrowed eye along the spines of thirty-three masterpieces, then up to the five meagre tomes above. "Time to make room for the next top dog."
     He knew what needed to be done. Joe Prince had to relinquish the throne, and there was only one way that would ever happen.
     He had to kill Joe Prince.

*********************

     Planning the thing wasn't hard. After all, he'd killed more people than Bundy, Gacy and Gein combined. He'd strangled them, he'd clubbed them, he'd stabbed them and he'd shot them. He'd had them fall down stairs and snap their necks. He'd given them cancer. He'd led them outside in the middle of a snowstorm and left them there to die. Hell, he'd killed off characters in some of the most wonderfully gruesome scenes in modern literature! Chainsaws. Pickaxes. Knitting needles. A porcelain bust of Agatha Christie. In one particularly disturbing scene, he'd even used a garbage disposal to end a life. 
     But this death had to be different. In this one instance of bringing life to his art, he had to do it right. Real life cops tended to be smarter than the flatfoots in his books, so he had to be careful. Noise brought witnesses and blood held the risk of evidence transfer, so no guns, no knives, and no blunt instruments. No sir. The best death for Joe Prince would be a quiet death. No drama. No screams. No splashes of gore. No reason for the police to investigate at all. 
     Smothering him in his sleep, maybe? Considering the man's age, it was certainly a plausible way for him to take his leave, but smothering left tell-tale signs. Bruising around the nose and mouth. Hemorrhaging in the eyes. High CO2 count in the blood. 
     Poison. then? Undoubtedly, there were some poisons that couldn't be detected by modern medicine, but contrary to the worlds he'd built himself, there was no convenient apothecary shop around the corner where he could avail himself of a vial of exotic green liquid from some far-off land in exchange for a few coins.
     He envisioned him once again hurling a drunken Algernon Huxley from the balcony of his mountaintop lair, and it was decided. Yes, an accident was the way to go. A stumble down the stairs maybe, or a slip in the bathtub. Something so mundane that the boys in blue wouldn't bat an eye. 
     But wait. Maybe he was looking at the thing all wrong. Sure, thousands of people every year died in some ridiculous fashion in their own homes, but Joe Prince wasn't most people. He was special. He deserved an end befitting one of his masterpiece novels. And the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. After all, he was no slouch himself. Years of research had gone into his stories, so he was hardly a novice at police procedures. If he was careful, if he was very, very careful, he was  certain that he could do it without leaving behind a single trace of evidence. And if his name happened to come up during the investigation, well, so what? Without evidence, the best the cops would ever be able to do would be to question him and try to trap him in a lie. But they'd fail. He was too smart to fall for such a simple ruse. Hell, maybe he'd even play a little cat-and-mouse game with the interrogator like he'd had Fred Jameson do in Fair Trade Summer. 
     With his mind fully on that single track, he rode the line all the way to its logical conclusion, and what he saw there sent a tingle up his spine. A stream of banner headlines swept past his mind's eye, and every one of them read as pure gold. 
     Horror Author Arrested in Murder of Joe Prince! 
     Police Questioning Horror Novelist in Grisly Death of Joe Prince! 
     Bill Anders Arrested. 
     No Evidence Against Bill Anders. 
     Novelist Bill Anders Released, Police Stymied!
     Yes. If he were actually arrested for the crime, everyone would want to know everything there was to know about the man who may or may not have murdered the legendary Joe Prince. Bill Anders? Who was that, they'd say. And in their need to find answers, they'd buy his books, they'd pour over his interviews, they'd follow his every word in print, and they'd listen to every podcast he'd ever been on. They'd comb through every facet of his life, from birth to arrest, because they'd all have to know, who is this man called Bill Anders? And when they as one came to the inescapable conclusion that he might have actually done the bloody deed but was simply too smart to be caught, those millions upon millions of new fans would hunger for his every new word. 
     Best seller list? Hell, the New York Times would have to come up with a whole new classification just for the great Bill Anders.
     He returned to the desk and dug out a spiral notebook from the bottom drawer. In this notebook were the outlines for every story he'd ever written. They were rarely long, and they often left huge gaps where he would rely more on the flow of the story than on a rigid structure to dictate how he got from point A to point B, but this was one outline he would have to construct properly. This would be his greatest opus, so every detail had to be mapped out from start to finish. Every moment had to be planned. No detail was too small. He'd leave nothing to chance, and though he abhorred the very notion, he would allow himself no artistic license whatsoever. No sir, this had to be perfect! No inept cops. Zero plot holes. Not a single damn thing overlooked or swept under the rug of colorful prose.
     He uncapped his favorite fountain pen,  flipped to a new page, and wrote the title of his greatest opus in bold script.

 Killing Joe Prince.

     Beneath that, he began for real. 
      As always, he laid out the most important plot points first, and as always, the details eventually came. One by one, the blank spaces were filled in, and as the whole thing began to come together, he could feel a familiar rush of creative adrenalin. 
      Well into the night, he worked. When he felt hungry, he'd pour himself a scotch and light a cigarette. When he grew fatigued, he'd pour himself a scotch and light a cigarette. And when his eyelids began to droop and he didn't think that he could write another word, he poured himself a scotch and lit a cigarette, and he kept on writing. 
     All through the night, he worked. When at last his body betrayed him and his head slumped to the desk,  the rising sun streaming in a few hours later roused him from his sleep, and he picked up right where he left off. 
      Details. Details. It was all about details. No need for dialogue, no character arcs, no subtext or thinly-veiled analogy, this was all about the details. Place. Time. Weapon. Gloves. Hair. Blood. Fibers. And with every new plot point, he'd lay out a dozen or more scenarios where things might go wrong and how those things would be dealt with. He covered every imaginable base. Nothing was left to chance. 
      Nothing. 
      By the end of the second night, he was done. But a good tale was never done for good. He went to bed with the story in his head and woke up to again in the morning, and little by little, he honed the outline to perfection. And as the days rolled into weeks with him polishing every bit of it through every waking moment, he finally concluded that the outline of the story was not only as good as it was ever going to get, but it was as good as any outline that had ever been written for any story since the beginning of time.
     In a word, it was perfect. Simply and absolutely perfect! Having decided that, he then set himself to the onerous task of memorizing every single word and arrow and parenthetical remark scrawled across twenty-plus pages bound in a spiral notebook. Then he performed the hardest task he would ever be forced to undertake. He tore those pages out, one by one, folded each one individually into a tiny square of paper, and placed them in the fireplace. Then he burned them. All of them. Every word he'd written to outline the greatest story he would ever tell was consigned to the flames. He watched them burn all the way down to ash, and as a final salute to that vanished outline, he used the poker to stir the ashes into a soup that not even the best forensics lab in the world would be able to piece together. 
     After that, he poured himself a scotch, lit a cigarette, and drank a toast to the soon-to-be-late crown Prince of horror.
     "The Prince is dead," he said aloud, blowing a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, "Long live the motherfuckin' king..."

************************************

     Finding him was easy. 
     Everyone knew where Joe Prince lived. His home might not be on a map to the stars in a shitty little burg like Peoria, but he'd never made any bones about where he laid his head at night. Hell, he'd made Peoria a household name by basing every one of his stories there. The town had become a cult Mecca for Prince fans, and Joe Prince's home was the Kaaba. Tourists stopped outside his home and took pictures. They posted them to Facebook. They Tweeted. They Instagrammed. And every Halloween, Prince made the place up to look like a haunted house, and the public plastered that shit everywhere. 
      301 Hawser Street. That was the address. 301 Hawser Street, Peoria, Illinois. Between him and there lay a circuitous stretch of I-90 highway, precisely two thousand and six miles long. Spokane. Butte. Sioux Falls. Some little shit town called Mason City. Then Cedar Rapids, Davenport, and on to Peoria.
     He drove his own car as far as Spokane, and parked in the back corner of Shadle Center Walmart. There were signs posted throughout the lot warning that parking was for Walmart customers only and that all others might be towed, but he was well aware of Walmart's reputation of never acting on that threat. And so, he threw his bag over a shoulder, double-checked that the car was locked up tight, and walked three miles back the way he'd come.
      He'd spotted this insignificant little corner of the world on Google Earth, and it looked even better in person. An out-of-the-way Starbucks with a good-sized parking lot. People came, people went, and not a single one of them paid any attention whatsoever to the man with the backpack over his shoulder, pretending to talk on his phone. He watched the cars come and he watched them go, and every once in a while, he saw exactly what he was looking for.
      It was a common enough occurrence outside every coffee shop and convenience store in North America. A certain percentage of the population apparently found it too arduous a task to turn the car off and on again a few minutes later, so they'd leave their car running. He'd always loathed those people for their sloth and for raising the cost of his car insurance, but now he awaited them eagerly and noted them as they came and went.
     Toyota. Rust around the wheel wells. Twenty years old if it was a day. 
     Pass.
     Brown Hyundai SUV. Woman driver. Baby seat in the back.
     Pass.
     Black Mustang. Mid 90's. Beautifully restored, but with headers rumbling enough to wake the dead. 
      Pass. Reluctantly.
      Then he had it. Brown sedan. Chrysler. Sebring, by the look of it. Totally nondescript. Older gal getting out for her morning joe. Old-lady slacks and cheap-ass blouse. Probably just coming back from her morning shopping. Maybe even at the same Walmart where he'd left his Camaro.
     This was it.
     He waited until the woman went inside, then he made his way in an indirect line through the parking lot, blathering on about whatever wandered through his head into a cel phone from which the battery and sim card had already been removed. He took a quick peek through the Starbucks windows and saw old-lady slacks six deep in a line to the counter, so he hung out ten feet away from the Sebring and watched the customers emerge.
      Not one of them looked up. They'd come here for a fix of caffeine, not to take in the local scenery, so after five minutes of no one taking any notice whatsoever of his presence, he sidled up beside the Sebring and made his move. Two seconds later, he was pulling out of the parking lot and bee-lining the old Sebring back toward the I-90.
     If the cops stopped him now, he'd own up to the theft. He'd claim that he was just trying to teach to woman a lesson, and he'd take his medicine. But it didn't come to that. In fact, aside from a quick stop for gas in some place called Falls Park, for which he paid in cash with a Cubs baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, the ride to Illinois was completely uneventful. 
      And just like that, he was there. Peoria, in all of it's lackluster glory. 
      It looked every bit like it had on Google Earth. If he had to pick a better place, he couldn't imagine it. Two hundred thousand residents. Fifty square miles. Bordered on the east by the Illinois River and Peoria Lake. All other directions, open to traffic. He wheeled the Chrysler north and kept the car precisely at the posted speed limit, and two minutes later, he pulled into something called the Peoria Supercenter and helped himself to a new set of license plates from a similar Sebring at the far reaches of an overcrowded parking lot. The exchange made, he swung the car back around and followed North Prospect Road right up to Peoria Heights.
      And there it was. 301 Hawser Street. Wrought-iron gates before a wide, two-story home. Pleasant enough, but hardly a mansion deserving of a Prince. If it wasn't for those gates, the nondescript house would've practically vanished into the suburban background. But he still would have known it. He would've known it if he'd been speeding past on a bullet train, much less crawling along this quiet street at midday. He had downloaded every image of that house from every fan's posting on every social media site on the web, and he'd studied them until he was certain that he could be dropped blindfolded into the middle of the place and know every square inch of his surroundings.
      He knew the security system, too. One photo was all it'd taken. Prince's oldest daughter had posted a picture on Facebook nearly two years ago, showing off her new baby. But in that photo, she'd shown off something else as well. Over her left shoulder, he could just make out a motion detector hugging the ceiling. Enlarging the photo gave him the name Hoylett Securities. After that, all it took was a quick search on the Hoylett webpage, and he had the make, model, and specifications of that particular unit. 
     It was a good system. Top of the line. Just what a cautious man like Prince would go for. And being a cautious man, he'd have the whole house wired. Windows. Doors. Probably even the doggie flap at the back of the house. But that was the chink in armor, right there. The doggie door was for Myna, made famous through Prince's Twitter feed. She was a snub-nosed little pug, and according to the man's own account in an interview with Colbert to plug Kumquat's Song, Myna the Monster was spoiled positively rotten. A dog that spoiled would have the run of the house, which meant that any and all motion sensors would be aimed high to avoid false alarms. Waist-height or higher, just like that single sensor hovering over Amanda and little baby Saffron's shoulders.
     He barely turned his head as he passed by the high iron gates. He drove on at a suburban-friendly twenty miles an hour, continued past, and drove on for several more miles. At last, he pulled the car into the first large parking lot he came across, wheeled in between two big SUVs, and keyed the car off.
      A sudden roar startled him, making him jump in his seat, but he let it wash quickly away. He hadn't noticed, but the parking lot he'd pulled into was at one end of a baseball field, and there was a game in progress. Little League. A hundred or more parents in attendance, all in the bleachers with their eyes trained on little Bobby or Jimmy or Julie-Sue, and not a single soul to take note of a stranger sitting in his car, desperately trying to settle his nerves. An later, the game reached its ninth inning, so he keyed the car back to life and pulled slowly away again. 
     The second pass did much to put his mind at ease. There were no nosy neighbors peeking over the hedges, and no one hanging idly about. In fact, the only life he saw at all was one man out mowing his lawn and a little old gal tending to her flower garden. Then a kid flew by on his bike, but he paid as little attention to the Sebring as the other two. 
       As he crested the hill, the iron gate came back into view, but this time, there was some kind of activity there too. His first thought was that another fan had stopped to take a selfie in front of that famous house, but the closer he got, the more he realized that this was something else entirely. Then he came upon the property itself, and he couldn't help but utter a short-breathed gasp.
     It was him. Prince. Joe Prince, right there on the other side of the gate.
      His wife was there, too. Stephanie. Prince's childhood sweetheart. According to his own press, the two of them had married straight out of high school, nearly fifty years ago. And here the two of them were, arm in arm, simply strolling around their property and content just to be in each other's company. Myna was there, too, alternatively chasing after their feet and stopping to sniff at one spot of grass or another, both of which elicited laughter from Prince and his ravishingly beautiful bride.
     Shit....
     For the first time since the idea had first tickled the very edges of his consciousness, he found himself thinking twice about this crusade he was on. The Joe Prince he'd determined to kill was an icon. An avatar. An aged face on the back of a book, nothing more. But seeing the man in person made it all suddenly and extremely real. 
     He had set about this holy quest to clear the way to the top, but looking across at a man strolling arm in arm with his beloved wife and a pugly little dog chirping along in their wake brought the whole crazy venture into proper focus. With that one image of the man in his natural environment, Joe Prince ceased being a god and had become a real person. A husband. A father. A grandfather.
     A man.
      He couldn't help his foot coming off the gas as he passed by the gate, but slowing down on that wide, quiet street naturally attracted the attention of the only two people in view. Stephanie looked up first, and as her eyes locked on the slowing Sebring, a gentle nudge of an elbow drew the other's attention away from the gaily yapping Myna. 
     Joe Prince raised his eyes and clapped them directly on him. Not on the Sebring, but on him directly. His eyes alit on the strange man huddled behind the wheel of that ancient chariot, and in that single horrible moment when their gaze met somewhere in the middle of the street, he could feel the power behind those sharp, half-lidded eyes. 
     He gunned the engine and tore back down the hill, and it was only when he was well clear of the place that he dared to take a full breath.
     Christ almighty.... What the hell was that? The man hadn't just looked at him as he passed by. In that brief, interminable fraction of a second when their gaze connected, Prince had looked straight through him, right to the core.
     With his heart beating like a trip-hammer and his imagination running wild with speculation, he came to the only conclusion he could. Joe Prince was no ordinary man. Maybe he was psychic, or maybe he just a keen sense of his fellow man. Hell, maybe he'd even signed a pact with the devil all those years ago, just like some of those conspiracy websites said. But whatever the reason behind that single look that'd passed between them, the message was clear. 
     Joe Prince knew. He knew who the stranger in his midst was, and he knew what was coming. But Bill Anders knew something, too. He knew that he was in this to the end. He had to go through with it, no matter what. Writer, father, grandfather, and whatever else he was, Joe Prince had to die.
     Working from memory, he found Peoria General Hospital and parked at the darkest corner of the overflow parking lot. Any cameras here would be too far away to make out a face behind the glass, and whatever underpaid security company they'd contracted to look after the joint would be concentrating their attentions more on the inside of the place than the outside. So, for the moment at least, he was safe.
     He unzipped his knapsack and pulled out a sandwich in plastic wrap and a warm can of Coke, and he had a picnic on his console. That done, he smoked a cigar down halfway, then he stubbed it out in its own ashes, reclined his seat, took a quick pull on a flask of scotch, closed his eyes, and drifted off to a fitful sleep full of bizarre, discolored dreams. 
     Several hours later, he startled himself awake in absolute darkness. He quickly raised his seat and reached for the ignition, but from what he could see of the world around him, all was as it had been before. No security. No cops. No one at all in this lost little corner of the world.
     His watch read a little after two a.m. He smoked the last half of a cigar while pawing through his knapsack, then he slipped quietly out into the shadows, replaced his license plates once again, and keyed the car back to life.
     This was it. Everything he'd spent these past weeks planning would come to fruition tonight. Come Hell or high water, Joe Prince would die this very night.
     He lumbered the car slowly back up the hill and took a right turn just short of the iron gates. From there, he wheeled left into an alley and emerged onto a side street running behind the Prince property. He took one last turn and allowed the car's momentum to carry him the last few yards, and at last, he gazed out upon the back of a house shrouded in darkness.
     He climbed out of the car, threw the knapsack over his back, and set about this night's business. 
     The iron gate was all for show. The rest of the property was as open as a whore on Easter Sunday.  All he had to do was hitch the crotch of his pants up an inch to straddle the picket fence, and he was in. He bent low to scurry across the back yard unseen, but he needn't have bothered. Even the black hoodie and dark pants were overkill. No one in the neighborhood was stirring. After an early bird dinner at Denny's and the latest rerun of Matlock, all of Peoria Heights was apparently dead to the world.
     He padded right up to the sliding glass doors across from the patio and held himself fast. The curtains were drawn, but a narrow gap allowed him a glimpse inside. Couch. Coffee table. Big screen TV hanging on the wall. And there, a fat, overstuffed Lazy-Boy. It was his chair. It had to be. Every king needed a throne, after all. 
     He dropped to a knee, unzipped his bag, and withdrew a few items from the very top. Latex gloves were the first order of business. He'd considered committing to a full Hazmat body condom, but the few he could find online were cumbersome things that would hinder both his vision and his hearing. So instead, he'd picked out several changes of clothing from the local thrift store, including three pairs of shoes and a ratty old ski mask, and he'd surreptitiously pocketed a can of lighter fluid while paying for a handful of Cohibas at his regular smoke shop. To keep the cross-contamination at a minimum, he would change his clothes after the fact, change them again once he was back in the Sebring, then once more into a final set of his own clothes, pre-wrapped in several layers of plastic. When he got home, he'd scrub himself from head to toe to remove the slightest trace of dust or fibers that might've snuck through the process, then he'd have himself a bonfire in the barbecue pit out back and eliminate any lingering traces of evidence that might possibly still remain in a puff of smoke. 
     He slipped his hood back, donned the ski mask and refitted the hood, and now he was ready. But he wouldn't make his entry here.  He slung the bag over his shoulder and hugged the side of the house as he made his way to the kitchen door, and there it was, just as he'd seen it in a Thanksgiving post on Stephanie Prince's Twitter feed. The thing was essentially a series of small glass panes, four across and ten high, set inside a wooden frame. In any other house, it was a burglar's dream. With one pane knocked out, a hand could reach through and flip the lock. Here, though, that door swinging open would undoubtedly trip a motion sensor. But a good burglar, a proper burglar, would have already worked it all out.
     He dug into his bag and quickly found his kit. He stuck a suction cup to the pane in the lowest corner, then as slowly as he dared and as quietly as he could, he began systematically chipping away the thin strips of wood and old putty holding the thing in place. Five minutes later, the pane came loose, so he carefully laid it aside and had at the next. And the next. And the next. And when that lowest row of glass panes had all been removed, he gingerly pried away the remaining vertical slats of pine one by one, and laid them beside the discarded glass.
     It was too easy. A man like Joe Prince should have known better. Thirty minutes of tinkering was all it'd taken to breach the castle walls. Hell, didn't the man read his own books? After all, he hadn't come up with this idea by chance. In Fallout Mystery, the protagonist had used almost the exact same strategy to break into the old woman's house and steal her trophy. Had Prince forgotten about that obscure chapter in a book he'd written a dozen years ago, or had he simply grown too reliant on modern technology to consider such a thing possible? Either way, that oversight would be his undoing. 
     Moving so slowly as to barely be moving at all, he slid his bag through first, then he dropped to his back and slithered his way in without a breath of sound. Climbing to a crouch, then, he remained utterly motionless for several long minutes as he listened to the house sleep.
      A gentle hum from the refrigerator. A clock ticking on the far wall. And aside from that, nothing. Not a single solitary sound. No creaking floorboards. No shifting of weight on bed springs. No clicking of little pug claws. Nothing. Nothing at all to break the deathly silence.
     He looked up, and sure enough, there it was. A motion detector bearing the name Hoylett. He gauged the height of the invisible beam at three feet, just as he'd expected. Smiling to himself beneath his mask, he proceeded to crawl on hands and knees up to the counter, and with one more look to make certain that he was well outside the range of the motion detector, he climbed slowly to his feet. 
     He had seen something else in Stephanie's Thanksgiving tweet. A set of horribly expensive stainless steel knives in a wooden block near the sink, just like the ones featured in Prince's masterpiece, Gustav's Tale. And once the notion struck him, it had stuck. It was just too perfect. He'd use the man's own plot twist to do him in. Just like Gustav in the penultimate chapter of that epic tome, he'd gut the man with his own knife.
     He selected the largest knife from the block, tucked it through a belt loop, and dropped back down to his hands and knees. He made his way through the kitchen and into the family room. From there, he could see most of the main floor, so he mapped out the location of every sensor and plotted the safest course through the maze. Upon reaching the bottom of the staircase, he stopped again and turned an ear upward, but the place was as still and quiet as a tomb. 
     He was in the crossfire of three separate motion sensors down below, and he could just make out another in the hallway up above, but none of them were aimed directly at the stairs. Chalk one more up to poor judgement and pugly little Myna. He rose to his feet and took the stairs one carpeted step at a time without a breath of sound. When he reached the point when he could finally see down the long, straight hallway of the second floor, he dropped back to his hands and knees and crawled up the last six stairs as if they'd been covered in egg shells.
     The master bedroom was at the end of the hall. Even if the balcony outside hadn't given it away, he would've known it. There were two doors on either side of the hallway; three shut tight, and one hanging ajar. At the far end of the hall, a wide set of double doors, both open. The closed doors would be the  kids' bedrooms, long since abandoned. The door hanging ajar would be the bathroom. That left the wide-open double doors at the end as the master bedroom. 
     This was the moment of truth. One misstep now, and it would all be over. A single creak of a floorboard or rustle of clothing would do it. He looked back down the stairs and plotted his escape route in his head. At the first sound of trouble, he'd beat it down those steps and launch himself through the front door, and as the alarms wailed and Myna yapped her snub-nosed little head off, he'd circle around behind the house, hurdle the picket fence, and be gone before the cops had even been notified.
     One sound was all it would take. One sound from either end, and all of his dreams would be shot to Hell. But he hadn't come this far to quit. Despite his every nerve tingling and a growing unease roiling through his belly, he continued on, crawling his way gingerly down the hall.
     Ten long minutes later, he was there. He froze in place just beyond those open double doors, and listened. Now, he could here them. All of them. All three. The slight nasal rattle belonged to Prince. His allergies were well known. The steadier breathing was Stephanie's. The snoring could only be coming from Myna with her pushed-in nose.  He squatted there for another ten minutes or more, merely listening to the trio breath, then he screwed up his courage, rounded the corner, and slithered on his belly right up to the side of the big, four-poster bed.
      A pair of slippers were tucked neatly against the night table. On the table itself, a pair of reading glasses and a spray bottle of Claritin. This was Prince's side of the bed, alright.
     Christ, he was only a foot away from the man. Two weeks ago, he couldn't have imagined any scenario in the world that might've had the two of them in the same building let alone in the same room, and yet here he was, close enough to his idol to quite literally reach out and touch him.
     As the tell-tale breathing went on from above, he had a look at all four corners of the ceiling. Seeing not a single motion detector anywhere in the room, he rose slowly to his feet, withdrew the butcher knife from his belt loop, and hovered over the sleeping Joe Prince. 
     After a lifetime of idolizing the man and doting over his every word, he still wasn't prepared for this moment of seeing him in the flesh. Prince looked older than his picture. Older even than his last appearance with Ellen. The bushy eyebrows were there, as was the overbite, but that was where any semblance to the image of Joe Prince he'd carried around in his mind's eye ended. The man's face was heavily lined. His cheeks, sallow and sunken. His trademark silver mane riding the pillow in wild swirls and eddies instead of slicked back and tucked behind his ears. And yet, it was he. It was Joe Prince. This barely-recognizable stranger tucked under the eiderdown was Joe Prince, but instead of Joe Prince the idol, he was now looking down upon Joe Prince the man. A man, just like him. A man. A writer. A lonely scribbler of words, whose only crime had been to reach the pinnacle of success. In another world, it might've been him under the eiderdown, and someone else looming over him with a knife, ready to carve out his heart. 
     But no, he would've been smarter than that. He would never have settled in a nondescript house in a nothing little town. If he'd had Joe Prince's money and fame, he would've bought himself an island and ringed it with guard posts. And he sure as shit wouldn't be sharing his bed with an old woman and a sawed-off little mutt. Hell, no! He'd have gotten himself a a couple of Dobermans, and if his latest beauty queen squeeze couldn't abide sharing the bed with a trio of killers, he'd simply replace her with the next in line.
     He threw the sleeping giant a sneer from beneath his ski mask, then he raised the knife high over his head, and without a moment's hesitation, he plunged it down with all of his might. And all Hell suddenly broke loose. 
     With the tip of the blade mere inches from Prince's heart, a hand came up to meet his, and a grip of iron took hold of his wrist. Then the lights came on, and the woman he'd thought dead to the world was suddenly on her knees with a pistol aimed directly between his eyes. And through it all, the ugly little pug didn't utter a single yap. No, that monster simply bared its teeth and launched itself straight at the intruder's throat.
     The single word, "Aus!" from the old man stopped the killer pug in its tracks, and the hushed command, "Nieder," from the old woman had it hunker down between them. And while the dog bared its teeth and growled all manner of unholy retribution should the intruder move but a single muscle, the legendary Joe Prince twisted his wrist ever so slightly, plucked the offending butcher knife from his grasp, and uttered a plaintive, "Tsk tsk tsk,..." as he handed the thing over to his wife.
     "I-I'm sorry...." Anders started to say, but Prince cut him off with a shake of his head. 
     "I'm sure you are," the man said plainly enough, "But you're not as sorry as you soon will be."
     In the blink of an eye, the covers were thrown back and everyone was on their feet. Joe Prince kept hold of his wrist tightly enough to send pain shooting up his arm, and now Stephanie was there on his other side with the pistol pressed against his temple and the horribly expensive Henkel knife aimed directly at his ribs. 
     "What's your name?" Prince asked, almost nonchalantly.
     "Uh.... Anders, sir. Bill Anders. Uh..... Sir."
     Prince considered the name for a moment, then he shook his head.
     "Never heard of you. Let me guess, you're a writer?"
     Unable to form the right words, all Anders could do was nod.
     "Horror writer?"
     Again, a nod.        
     "Oh, Bill," Prince said, looking genuinely hurt, "Did you really think it would be that easy? You have a couple of books out, you're doing alright, so you figured you'd off the guy at the top and take over? Really?"
     All Anders could manage was a tepid, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
     Prince laughed, but the iron grip never wavered.
     "I'm sure it did.... uh.... Bill. But let me ask you a question. Once you rose to the top, how did you imagine hanging on to that spot? Oh no, wait, let me guess. You haven't thought that far ahead, have you?"
     When no words came,  Stephanie answered for him.
     "No, of course not. The only thought rattling around in that big empty head of yours was to kill my husband, right Bill? Tell me, when you were plotting out the storyline for this particular tale, how exactly did my character arc play out? I mean, you couldn't leave an eye-witness behind, could you? So, were you planning on simply finishing me off, or did you have something a little more.... devilish in mind?"
     Myna took two steps closer and bared her teeth in a low, menacing growl.
     "I truly don't know," he lied, "I might have just tied you up and left you."
     "And Myna?"
     "That would have depended on her."
     "Well,  I have to hand it to you," Prince acknowledged with the slightest of nods, "You did a good job of skirting the alarms. Too bad you missed the one covering the kitchen door, though. What, you really thought I'd leave such an obvious entry point unsecured? Hell, Bill, Fallout Mystery sold two million copies. How dense do you think I am?"
     "I'm sorry, Mr. Prince, I really am," Anders said, this time honestly, "If we could just forget this whole thing, I promise never to bother you ag....."
      A gentle, "Tsk, tsk, tsk..." from Prince stopped him short. "I know you're sorry, Bill. I do. I have no doubt whatsoever that you are well and truly sorry. I'm sure our prisons are full of sorry men."
      There it was. That word. Prison. Well, so what? Two years for breaking and entering would be the best they'd ever do against a man who quite literally lied for a living. What? No, your honor, of course I intended no harm to Mr. Prince! The knife? Oh, I just took that as a souvenir. You see, Mr. Prince is my idol!
     Yes, it would work. They'd believe him and they'd put him up for a couple of years in minimum security. Probably half that if he minded his p's and q's. And while he was locked up, his notoriety would only grow. He'd spend his year behind bars penning his next great novel, and Harv would time its release for the day he was sprung. They'd both come out together, then he'd ride the gravy train all the way to Oprah and beyond. Book tours. Signings. Personal appearances. Hell, maybe even a TED talk on his struggle behind bars. The public would eat that shit up and beg him for more. Fuck, he'd be a hero!
     "Alright," he said at last, "You can call the police now. I won't try anything."
      Prince studied his eyes for what seemed an eternity, then he released his grip on Anders' wrist and motioned for him to remove his ridiculous ski mask. 
      "Tell you what, Bill," he sighed as Anders dropped the thing to the floor, "Let's continue this conversation downstairs."
      Anders felt the tip of a knife pierce his skin, but a finger laid gently on Stephanie's lips was enough to keep him from crying out.
     "That's the idea, Bill," she said through a smile. "Nice and quiet, now. Poor little Myna doesn't like loud noises."
     Prince led the way out, and with Stephanie at his back and Myna the Monster growling along at his heels, he followed dutifully along. They made their way down the hallway and took the stairs to the main floor, but they didn't stop there. Joe Prince produced a key from one hidden pocket or another, fitted it into a padlock securing a door tucked into a corner, and unlatched the thing, letting the door swing wide open. Stephanie reached around him and stabbed at a switch, and now he could see it. It was another staircase, heading down. 
     As his eyes tried to adjust to the changing light, he heard Joe Prince's voice in his ear.
     "What's the matter, Bill? You didn't know this was here? Nothing on social media about a basement? No mention of it anywhere? Huh.... I wonder why?"
     A foot suddenly came out of nowhere, and an almighty kick sent him cartwheeling down the stairs. He landed at the bottom in a heap, but aside from his head ringing like a bell and a wound on his side trickling blood through his hoodie, he appeared to be hail and hearty. But then he cast an eye about his new surroundings, and his breath caught in his throat.
     The basement wasn't big. Barely twenty feet to a side. But it wasn't the size of the place that chilled him to the bones, it was the layers of plastic sheeting hanging from the walls and spread across the floor like carpeting.
     "A good writer should know his main characters inside and out, Bill," Prince's called down after him. "But characters are tricky things, aren't they? Just when you think you've got them right where you want them, one of those persnickety bastards just up and refuses to do what you tell them to. And being a benevolent god, of course you allow it. As you should. But a good writer should always be thinking a few chapters ahead, Bill. Even with his characters in full revolt, you should've seen this plot twist coming from a mile away." He took the carving knife from his wife and began descending the stairs one at a time. "Myself, I like to have all of that shit worked out before I put a single word to paper, but I suppose there's something to be said for winging it."
     Anders tried to stand, but the blow to his head kept him from regaining his balance. So he took to scuttling backwards on ass and elbows until he came up against a solid concrete wall and could go no farther.
     "Say, Bill," Prince cooed as he continued down, one slow step at a time. "Do you remember a guy by the name of Algernon Huxley? Yes, of course you do. Everyone knows the name Algernon Huxley! Poor troubled genius, done in by his own inner demons and a rickety balcony railing. It's a sad story, really. For him, that is. The whole thing worked out rather wonderfully for me."
     The man smiled from ear to ear as Anders huddled on the cold, hard floor.
     "Did you think you were the first, Bill? Honestly, I've lost track by now, but I assure you, my friend, many before you have tried. You know, I tend to give writers a little more credit than most. I mean really, spending your days coming up with convoluted story lines and character arcs and plugging all of those plot holes has to give writers a bit of an edge in a chaotic world, don't you think? But no. Apparently, the one thing today's writers tend to lack is an over-abundance of imagination. You see the plastic, right? You know what it's for, don't you? Surely you have imagination enough for that! I mean, it's pretty damn obvious, don't you think?"
     "After all, Bill," Stephanie called down from above, "One doesn't stay on top without a little.... effort?"
     "Well," Prince admitted, slyly, "It's more of a pleasure than an effort, but hey, apples and oranges."
     Stephanie giggled to herself, then she threw a kiss down to her husband.
     "You have fun, my love. I'll put the coffee on and ready your things. I know how badly you need to write when the muse is upon you."
     The door clicked shut, and now it was just he and Prince, all alone in a cold basement lined with plastic. With all words suddenly failing him and his body not far behind, Anders curled up into a ball and wept openly as he watched the man descend the last few steps.
     "You were going to plunge this into my heart," Prince said, regarding the gleaming knife in his hand. "You were going to plunge this into my heart and be done with it. What a waste. What a damned waste. Where's your sense of theater, Bill? A knife like this isn't meant to be plunged into a heart and left there like a banner on the hill. Hell, no! A knife like this is meant for a more.... shall I say intimate experience."
     "I-I'm sorry," Anders gasped between tears, but Prince would have none of it.
     "Oh, I know, Bill. I get why you came here and what you tried to do. Seriously, I do. I get it, Bill. After all, I had the same idea thirty years ago, and it worked like a charm. You know, I've always wanted to capture that moment in one of my books. The look of confusion on his face. That breathless scream he made as he went over. The sound of his body hitting the rocks. But I never could. I don't know, it just seemed wrong to lump him in with all of my other..... exploits."
     Anders roused himself enough to see the man towering over his crumpled form, and he even had the privilege of witness the trademark Joe Prince smirk in person as his idol spoke the last words he would ever hear.
     "I have to tell you, Bill, you came along at just the right time. You see, I've been in the throes of a terrible writer's block for days now, but I think I'm about to work my way through it..."

 The end