Page 7 of The Carnage We Keep

I mean, it’s not something I’m burdened with an abundance of, but it’s there.

Probably.

Sometimes.

A bit.

No, I’m here because Carl Bigsby is a prolific pedophile and a purveyor of innocence, who operates the—I can’t fucking use the word brothel without wanting to throw up, but that's exactly what it is—on the top floor of this very building.

And for that, as well as several other things…but mostly that…he needs to die. Tonight. With extreme prejudice.

This is a multi-step operation, planned with the precision of cutting a diamond into a faceted gem. Even considering something like this without a step-by-step plan is courting chaos and anarchy, both of which I abhor.

Plans, though?

Plans get me fucking hard.

Step one tonight involved going to the tenement housing a few blocks from here where Carl’s been keeping his latest collection of thirteen-to-sixteen-year-old girls, all trafficked from eastern Russia via a fucking shipping container two days ago.

Step two was cutting the fuel line in the shuttle van parked in the garage so Carl’s men couldn't bring those girls to this building and his clients couldn't pay to do unspeakably evil shit to them upstairs in his club.

Step three was coming here, checking the perimeter, and then making an anonymous call to the FBI tip-line about a suspected child trafficking operation back at the tenement building.

That sorts out the girls. The authorities will scoop them up and they’ll either be sent back to the families they were stolen from or else offered asylum here.

Again, I’m not a hero. I just hate loose ends.

It was step four, though, that had my dick more than slightly chubbed as I slipped into the basement of the building that houses Carl’s pedo-club. Because step four involves finding that motherfucker, tying him upside-down to a sloped table, nicking his carotid or femoral artery, and then letting him drip into a drainage pipe until he’s a bloodless corpse ready for dismemberment and disposal.

God, do I love a clean, efficient plan. It brings me to a truly Zen-like state.

Except several things have already happened to fuck with that Zen. For one, my reconnaissance of this building placed an armed guard at the door to the basement. But that guard was no longer armed when I found him.

To be precise, that guard was no longer breathing.

Having your throat…well, let's describe it as hacked out…has a way of fucking with your ability to do that.

Secondly, I don’t find Carl up in his club where he’s supposed to be, but down here in the basement, standing on a metal catwalk over the old industrial tanks.

But it’s the third thing to fuck with plan that has my full attention right now. She's kneeling at my feet and clinging to my pants leg as she praises me, God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, half the saints, a few made-up ones, Allah and…

…Did she just praise Dolly fucking Parton?

“Thank you!” she wails. “He was going to hurt me!!”

This whole time she’s been sobbing, I’ve had my tranquilizer gun trained on Carl. But then it hits me as odd that Carl hasn’t said a fucking word since I walked up behind them, and I pull my eyes away from the girl to look at him.

“He’s a monster!” she sobs. “The horrible, disgusting things he was saying he was going to do to me! He’s the devil!”

I mean, she’s not wrong. Carl Bigsby is a devil, a monster, a pedo piece of shit, and a cancer upon the world.

But he's also bound and gagged, tied to a rope strung up into the rafters of the place, not to mention standing on the edge of the catwalk above a giant vat of neon green bubbling stuff that looks like it's straight out of a Loony Tunes cartoon and should have “ACME ACID” on the side of it.

What the fuck is going on here?

My eyes narrow on Carl, then slowly drop to the girl.

“Why is he tied up?”