Sex and Murder Magazine

By Ward Crockett

The slaughter began on the day Gary Johnson, CEO and owner of Little Man Technologies, Inc. - named the sixth most important technology company by the latest Fortune 500 - acquired a silly little PDA/Phone company. Not coincidentally, just twelve hours prior, Gary had fallen in love for the first time - true love that is. This was really quite something, as, prior to that magical moment twelve hours ago, Gary Johnson had loved only two things: his six-year-old daughter and pornography.

The third floor of Gary's 12th Street brownstone was Mia's. He had only three pictures of his daughter. One was an enlargement of Mia smiling proudly in her blue preschool graduation robe. The other two were of Mia's first hours: a close-up of her pudgy, cherubic face, and a wider shot of Gary cradling Mia in his arms as she slept off the trauma of birth.

The rest of the 12th Street mansion was a palace of skin. A member of all the fine and not so fine websites, a four-star frequent-video-renter club member at every decent adult entertainment shop, owner of 2,576 hard copy videos (with 36 more in the mail) - VHS, DVD, and the rare Laserdisc, ranging from 30-minute bachelor-party-prostitute-home-videos to top-notch AVN award winners (not to mention a complete video collection of the AVN award ceremonies themselves) - 18,232 compressed video files ranging from five-second teasers to six-hour epics of semi-pixilated lust, Gary figured he must be among the top ten porn collectors of all time.

And that was just the movies.

Aside from complete collections of Playboy, Penthouse, and High Society, posters of Jenna Jameson, Marilyn Chambers, Traci Lords, Sylvia Saint, Asia Carrera, Temptation, Joanna Angel, and the eternally pregnant Chubby Mama Sisters canvassed the walls and ceilings with their variegated "oooh" and "ahhh" and "oh yes" and "do me now now now" expressions of lasciviousness. Considering the top secret nature of the project and the amount of time it took to paper the first floor (he solicited help from no one), the second floor was not yet done. But that turned out to be a blessing, as he was going to need several hundred square feet of wall space for his true love.

"What do you think, Gary?" someone said, and it took Gary's wanderlusting mind a few seconds to lock the front door, jump in the limo, ride to the office, and saunter into the boardroom where his empire was negotiating the takeover of the silly little PDA/Phone company that had come up with a fantastic wireless unit three years before and produced nothing but tripe ever since. The Handy something or other. Gary Johnson had never owned a PDA. He didn't need one. Before last night, there had been only two things he needed to keep track of - Mia and his castle - and now, after last night's premiere viewing, there was a third: Rebecca Blade.

"Gary?"

Gary spun around on his $499.95 heel to face his underlings: Harry Li, VP; David Printz, exec-VP; Ronald Something-or-Other, secretary or some such position; his soon-to-be underlings: the youngish owner and the execs of this week's takeover; and a pack of lawyers who were overseeing the deal.

"You see, gentlemen," Gary said, "business is fast-" punctuated by a sword-like thrust of his index finger, "-brutal, unforgiving. So is the cosmos. In fact, think of business as a microcosm within the larger skyscraper that is the universe. Stars die and new ones are born, as are planets and moons."

The little moons stared at him blankly.

"The absorption of your tiny solar system by my financial galaxy symbolizes the process of life."

He spun around to look down on the roofs of eighty-story buildings. It was such a drag to make speeches.

Back to Rebecca. Last night, she debuted in full, high-resolution color and the gloriously hollow sound quality of the best gritty smut. "Valhalla Sluts" featured an orgy of well-hung Nordic gods - Odin, Thor, Heimdal and Loki - and a flock of buxom Valkyrie clad in gold latex bikinis complemented by black net stockings, glittering lightning bolt helmets and five-inch heels. Gary Johnson's true love, the fierce, bedroom-eyed Rebecca Blade, led the Valkyrie into battle, as it were, with her rippling war cries of pre-orgasm. Before Gary's very eyes, as his body tingled and hardened for the first time in years, Rebecca came to life.

"There, it's signed," someone said. "That's it."

Again, Gary spun on his heel.

"Good," he said.

The thirty-something who must've been the founder of the PDA/Phone company noisily gathered up his papers.

"You're destroying the lives of ninety-seven hardworking Americans, you know. I hope you know that, Mr. Johnson. I want you to know that."

Gary gave him the thin, sympathetic smile he gave to everyone he bought.

Then the window behind Gary exploded inward, filling the room with slivers of glass that glimmered as they hung suspended in the fluorescent light of the boardroom. Gary leapt back as a woman clad in golden steel landed on the long table, driving her spiked heels an inch into the oak.

Her bikini bottom, though clearly made of rigid steel, perfectly matched the curves of her buttocks. Gary would've recognized that rear end anywhere. Even as glass spiraled through the air around her, Rebecca Blade did a front flip over the PDA/Phone men sitting in front of her, spun in midair, landed behind them. Gary watched with fascination as her breasts almost bounced out of her glowing bikini top. With a swipe of her hand, she flipped up the aquiline mask on the lightning bolt helmet that shielded her nose and bedroom eyes.

Gary almost swooned.

Sometime during this acrobatic display she'd drawn a bejeweled long sword, which she now lifted over her head in preparation to strike.

"Oh, yeah, baby," Rebecca cried, "oh, yes!"

An almost imperceptible flash of steel, the hiss of divine speed, and the three heads of Gary's newly acquired PDA/Phone company were headless. Through fountains of blood pluming from their necks, Rebecca blew Gary a kiss.

Then she leapt into the air and bulleted out the window with a thunderous crack. The decapitated PDA/Phone execs tumbled forward onto the table, then whisked through the air on an invisible current that sucked them through the shattered window. Their heads, faces frozen in disgust, bounced across the table and chased their bodies into the morning air.

Gary watched the grotesque entourage, bathed in golden light, zoom over the smog-stained building tops and arc into the clouds.

Gary's crew and the lawyers filed out of the boardroom.

*****

On his way home, Gary stopped at his secret castle to take a fourth look at his virginal love's video debut. Curious, he surfed for some info on Norse mythology. He learned that Odin sent his Valkyrie into the battles of humankind to determine which soldiers would fall. The beautiful warriors would then bring the fallen men to Odin's dining hall for a great feast, followed by an eternal dessert of heavenly debauchery.

Myths are interesting, Gary decided.

He watched Rebecca's movie a fifth time.

*****

"Where the fuck have you been?" Charlotte greeted in her gravelly voice when Gary walked into their penthouse at 1 AM.

His wife's chin rested on the arm of a couch pulled too close to the fireplace. That gravelly voice and the sour smell in the air meant she'd been drinking. Irish coffee. Decaf. Gary hated coffee.

"Your son overdosed tonight. Again."

"David?"

"No, your other lipshtick-wearin' shtepshon. They prumped hish shtomach. Leasht now we know what he'sh been eating."

"Is Mia asleep?"

Charlotte's head lolled to the side. She gazed into the gas-fueled blaze three feet from her nose.

"She throught it'd be cute to throw up jusht like her brother."

Gary tossed his coat on a chair he didn't recognize. Was it new?

"Is she still sick? Does she have a fever?"

His wife's mumbling trailed off as he jogged down the hall and up the stairs. A bilious snore reeked through David's open door, which Gary closed quietly. He tiptoed down to Mia's door, decorated with glittering paper hearts and crayon drawings of blue horses and pink unicorns. The door squeaked on its hinges. Squeaking? He had paid twelve million for this place?

He navigated his way between toys illuminated by an elephant nightlight and a crack of dim light from the hallway. Mia, her tiny arms wrapped around a stuffed pony, slept peacefully in her four-poster bed. Her mouth hung open the way it always did when she slept, and Gary could just make out a small drool stain on her pillow. He gently brushed a lock of hair from her eyes, felt her forehead for fever, pulled her unicorn blanket over her unicorn pajamas, and then rolled the comforter up to her shoulders. If he'd had a camera, he would have taken a picture of her awash in the cerulean elephant glow.

"Where's the camera, Char?" Gary asked when he went back out to the living room.

Quiet.

"She feels a little warm to me. You check her temp?"

Charlotte finally responded with a loud snore.

Just as he hit the switch to turn off the fireplace, his cell rang. Charlotte snorted, mumbled something.

"What?" Gary said into the phone. He walked out of the living room.

"Gary, DMR is gonna destroy us. Destroy you." It was Edgar, his stockbroker.

"What?"

"Their new processor, the Nova, the one they've been downplaying for months? The one your VoltX is supposed to trample?"

"Yeah? What? I'm tired."

"The Nova benchmarked at four times the speed of the Volt, Gary."

"So? So we make it faster."

"And it's three-quarters the Volt's retail value! My guy at DMR says they're making the announcement mid-morning tomorrow, Gary!"

"So?"

"You're releasing the VoltX the day after tomorrow! Nobody is going to buy it! Your entire company is riding on this! It's going to destroy Volt and bring Little Man down with it! We have to sell Volt!"

Gary opened the fridge. No beer. The bitch had probably downed that first.

"Fine," Gary said. "Do it."

Gary hung up, hoping Edgar wouldn't crack and blab to someone. He was mildly comforted by the fact that he'd had the business sense to splinter off the CPU division of Little Man into its own little company: Volt, Ltd.

On his way upstairs, he caught another whiff of Charlotte's alcohol-and coffee-laden breath. He returned to the kitchen, grabbed her coffee maker and tossed it out the kitchen window.

While he got ready for bed, Gary thought about Rebecca: a bolt of lightning, instantaneous, exquisite, unpredictable, thrilling. True love. For so long he'd been dealing in quantity: but even a thousand porn stars could not solve his problem, and drugs were for the weak. It had turned out to be an issue of quality: all he'd had to do was find the right woman. It went against every one of his business instincts.

Before falling asleep, Gary Johnson pleasured himself for the first time in years and thought about how he'd be leaving his family in a few weeks.

*****

When he arrived for work in the mornings, Gary sometimes enjoyed walking through some of the lower offices to remind himself how glad he was that he'd never had to work in them.

Kevin Johnson, the Little Man himself, now living in a haze of dementia on a Caribbean island somewhere - Gary didn't keep track of his stepfather's wanderings, anymore - used to lead Gary by the elbow through the mailroom, saying, "Gary, you're going to have to work your way up, son. Work hard, like I did. Work with your hands."

But Kevin Johnson had had a stroke, and he'd named Gary next in line instead of giving it to Kevin Gibbons, Johnson's longtime VP, who'd been saying for years that if he had the chance he'd turn the company toward home appliances and rename it Two Kevins Enterprises.
Gary had taken control of the company at age nineteen, brought aboard the big-talking class geek from his high school, computer genius Harry Li, fired Kevin Gibbons, and, not three years later, Little Man Technologies, Inc., adopted ten floors of the tallest building downtown. Now the company shared the skyscraper with its offshoot, Volt, Ltd., and, though the upper executive floors were lavish as could be, the lower offices and mailroom of the Volt peons looked the same as they had two buildings and sixteen years ago when the Little Man had steered Gary around by the elbow. Same cramped cubicles, same tired faces, same boring work. Funny how some things never changed.

But this morning was different.

Twin blades flashing in the fluorescent office light, Rebecca ran in just as a Volt number-cruncher's head popped up like a whack-a-mole from a cubicle and yelled, "The Nova is four times faster!"

Less than a second later, the Volt number-cruncher's head careened over the tops of the cubicle walls and finally plunked down into the thirteenth cubicle like a golf ball. There was a scream, and up popped more Volt heads ripe for the taking. But Rebecca surprised Gary by pulling a gigantic spear from a harness on her back, hefting it in her golden hand, and throwing it with a force that would have broken every javelin-throwing world record ever recorded. The spear whistled as it effortlessly pierced wall, computer, employee, repeat. The cubes erupted with computer sparks, spurts of blood and cries of agony. One by one, the moles sank into their cubicles as the missile did its work.

"Ooooh, it's soooo big," Rebecca moaned, watching the flight of the spear.

She winked at Gary, then jumped through the ceiling, releasing a thundershower of plaster, cables and concrete. Gary watched the golden trail of the spear as it burst through a supervisor's office - the supervisor wasn't there, lucky for him - and out the window.

Further appreciating the fact that he'd never had to work down here, Gary ran to the elevator.

Rebecca waited for him, as though she wanted him to witness the carnage she wreaked. He was about to tell her to calm down when she licked her lips, moaned, and leapt into the air above another honeycomb of cubicles. She worked her twin swords like great fan blades, slicing effortlessly through fabric, metal, plastic, glass, clothing, flesh, bone, fax machine, all the while gliding through the conditioned air, her thighs rippling with lust, her breasts jiggling beneath their double-D steel cups, the lightning bolts protruding from her helmet leaving a shimmering, saffron trail in the air: a ballerina of carnage accompanied by the stealthy murmur of white noise generators lurking above the ceiling tiles.

The Valkyrie's spear burst through the far window and rejoined the fray, kebobbing managers and supervisors and their corner-office Venetian blinds before flying on to maraud the cubicles.

The Valkyrie's slaughter turned Gary's stomach as he went from floor to floor, a slack-jawed witness to the destruction of Volt, Ltd. Soon, all he could see was a cloud of white dust streaked with spurts of crimson, flickering with sparks, echoing with screams and groans. On each floor, a few lucky survivors, miraculously unscathed in the violence, popped up, looked at each other.

"Four times faster, huh?"

"Yeah, there goes our retirement."

"No skin off my back. I just started here."

When Gary reached the higher, executive-populated floors, the battle was nowhere to be found.

Li and Printz were talking gravely by the elevator.

"Volt's thirty points down," Li said as Gary shambled past them, his Bruno Magli Carsons clicking and sliding on the marble floor, "and Little Man's down fifteen. The Nova benchmarked at four times our speed."

Printz looked merely addled, but Li's face was white, his eyes red. The VoltX processor had been Li's baby from the beginning.

"Gary!" Printz said. "Have you heard?"

"Yeah," Gary said before vomiting on his secretary's radio, which triumphantly blared out Wagner. Luckily his secretary was away from her desk.

When Gary got into his office, which was roughly the size of one floor of his secret brownstone, he went to the window, briefly considered throwing a chair through it and taking a seat in the cool, ninety-second floor air of the city, then simply stared out at the overcast day. The light was even, gray, moist with the memory of the early morning's rainfall.

Then a horizontal tower of liquid red exploded from the skyscraper several floors below, and, looking straight down with his forehead pressed against the cold glass, Gary had the impression that the geyser of blood was coming from his own body. He watched his Valkyrie love lead the whirlwind procession of corpses, the souls of those felled in battle, out over the skyline and up into the clouds.

*****

Gary paused "Valhalla Sluts" on a shot of Rebecca about to remove her bikini top, her gold lipsticked lips parted with a moan, and went to chat with the soon-to-be dead man who wouldn't stop ringing his castle's thoroughly obnoxious doorbell.

Gary set the privacy chain, opened the door a crack and peeked outside, admitting a tall rectangle of bitter air.

Edgar stood outside looking very frazzled.

"Gary! I have to talk to you!" his breath stank of vodka.

"How'd you find me?"

"Look, it's really important. Can I come in?"

"How'd you find me?"

"Come on, everybody knows about this place, Gary."

Gary had been so careful to keep this place a secret. Of course, the smell of money unzips every mouth. He'd fire his limo driver tomorrow.

"All right." Gary unchained the door, let his stockbroker into his porn palace, then shut the door quickly and quietly. He flipped off the porch light - he'd have to remove that when he removed the doorbell.

Edgar gazed in awe at the wallpaper of skin and eyes and genitalia. Some color returned to his face.

"The ceiling, too?" he mumbled.

"You have five minutes. What do you want?"

Edgar's face paled again.

"You have to fess up to this, Gary," he pleaded. "You have to help me."

"What? What're you talking about?"

"Joe knows about the whole thing. He fired me today. He's gonna bring the whole thing crashing down. I'm gonna go to fucking jail!"

Gary groaned inwardly. The dumbass had caved.

"What thing? What're you talking about?"

Edgar took a step toward him. His eyes were wide, nuts.

"The Volt stock! We sold right before the announcement! You told me to sell because of the Nova! Volt fell fifty-three points today!"

"What do you mean, we sold? I never told you to sell! You can't...that's illegal!" Gary didn't consider himself a great liar, but disavowal was his only choice in the situation. He figured his lawyer would approve.

Edgar shook his head violently. His eyes danced with tears and vodka.

"You told me..."

Suddenly there was a gun in the stockbroker's hand. A small gun, but a gun nonetheless. So much for disavowal.

"Get out of my house."

Tears ran down Edgar's face. He aimed the gun half-heartedly at Gary's belly, but it wavered.

"You liar. How can you... You destroyed my life, you fucking...you fucking..."

Gary rolled his eyes, looked up at the divinely beautiful porn stars gazing down on the scene and prayed to all that was good and holy that the gun was not loaded.

"How can you just destroy people? They just lie down for you." Edgar wiped his nose on the sleeve of his Martin Margiela, then brought his weapon to bear on Gary's face as best he could. "I'm not gonna lie down for you like everyone else, you-"

Edgar stopped as a long, golden cone burst through his chest with a sickening crack of ribs and a gurgle of punctured organs. Rebecca winked at Gary over Edgar's shoulder, grinned as she pulled the lance from the stockbroker's lifeless body. The man crumpled to the floor.

"Ooooh, yes," Rebecca moaned.

Gary looked down at his ex-stockbroker, up at his true love, back to the dead man, returned to the Valkyrie. She looked back at him invitingly, eyes and lips paused with lust. Then she exploded out through the front door. Gary watched Edgar's body rise from the floor and float out after her.

He was beginning to understand what she was doing. He had ruined his stockbroker's life. He'd ruined the lives of the Volt employees. He'd ruined the lives of the employees of that PDA/Phone company, whatever it was called. These were the lives he'd destroyed. These were the warriors he'd defeated.

His stomach lurched.

There was only one life he really cared about.

*****

"You're just like that dictator, you bastard," Charlotte said from her spot on the couch in front of the fire, "the one with the camps with the gas..."

"Hitler?" Gary said, throwing his coat on the chair he didn't remember buying.

"Yeah, Hitler, you bastard. I know we're ruined now 'cause uh you. 'Stroyed your whole company."

"I have more companies," Gary said, though Little Man itself had fallen thirty-five points.

"You're gonna die in your bunker, you bastard. You shoulda sold it all while we were ahead. Ahead uh..." she trailed off.

Her words almost made Gary change his mind. But he couldn't. He had to do it. For Mia. It would be hell, but he'd do anything to save Mia.

"An' what the fuck did you do with my coffee maker?"

David's door was wide open; he wasn't in his room. Probably off committing suicide again with all his Goth friends.

Mia's door was closed. He opened it quietly, slipped into the soft blue glow of the room, shut the door. Mia was sound asleep, her entire body wrapped around the giant stuffed bear he'd given to her for Christmas. He brushed a lock of hair from her face, brushed her flawless cheek, kissed her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open, and Gary almost cried for the first time in years. She yawned.

"Hi, Daddy."

"Hey, kiddo."

"Why are you up so late? You have work tomorrow."

Gary smiled, held back his tears.

"Not tomorrow, kiddo. Tomorrow," he said, caressing Mia's hair, "you and I are going to the zoo."

"Oh. Daddy, I don't like the zoo. It makes my nose runny."

"Oh, okay. Well, we'll do whatever you want to do, sweet pea. You sleep on it."

"Okay, Daddy. Daddy?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"Can we get ice cream?"

"Sure can. And cotton candy, too. We can get whatever you want."

"OK. N'night, Daddy. You go get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow." Mia yawned again. She was asleep seconds later.

It would be hell to stay, to keep on enduring Charlotte and David and what was left of the company. He could just take Mia with him, but it would end up bad. Charlotte would go crazy, Gary would be charged with kidnapping - not to mention give Edgar's firm and the authorities another reason to suspect him - David would get another reason to hate his life and poison himself, and Mia would suffer through the whole thing. Mia's life would be the one truly destroyed. Mia would be the one to fall in battle. Yes, Gary would stay for her. Even get rid of the brownstone if he had to. He'd stay for the only real person he loved.

Gary kissed Mia's forehead once more, then walked to the door.

When he turned to look back at his daughter once more, Rebecca Blade sat up next to Mia. T he Valkyrie's mask gleamed in the blue light of the plastic elephant plugged into the wall. The Valkyrie flipped up the mask, looked at Gary, smiled.

"I did it," Gary said. "Mia's going to be fine because I'm not leaving. You don't have to take her. I'm saving her. I'm staying."

"Exactly," Rebecca moaned.

She lifted her sword.

















































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