The Best Show Ever

The Rhode Island cast colloquially called RKO ARMY (the latest of several name changes) had just finished their best show ever; over 200 people were in the audience. I was among them. I should have been up on that stage performing a part I was a star in for 20 years, but no, I was in the audience. Our cast (or rather my former cast) at its height was over 30 members strong. Now it’s down to about 20. I used to be in their number, but for reasons I’d rather not go into, I was expelled.

I am still friends with a few of them so I have knowledge of issues and get togethers. The cast had just finished its 1000^th show and they planned to celebrate. One of our members had a secluded house deep in the woods of Cumberland. It was ideal for parties. There were no neighbors to disturb and difficult to reach, so the police weren’t inclined to pay visits without a reason.

Their 1000^th show, and in my opinion the best one the cast ever did. They were going to party and they invited cast members from over two decades past and present and other casts from neighboring states to help celebrate this milestone. Except, they didn’t invite me. First, I got expelled from the cast I helped to start—I am, or was, a founding member—and then I was purposely uninvited to their grand celebration. For this they would pay, they would all pay!

I sat patiently in the audience waiting for the show to be over; watching the audience leave telling cast members how good the show was. I was hoping some of my former teammates would at least acknowledge me; all I got was a few dirty looks. They knew that I knew about their party, but no one invited me—including the house owner who was hosting. Oh, how they would pay!

I drove away but reentered the plaza from a different point that allowed me to watch them leave unobserved. I knew exactly where they were going, I had been there before. In fact, I had visited there just recently when I knew no one would be around. I wanted to case the place and learn the layout of the grounds and woodland area. I have locksmith skills so I was easily able to make duplicate keys to every lock and padlock on the place. I planned my revenge carefully. I purchased a high-powered crossbow and some arrows from a sporting goods store. Who needs guns? They are loud noisy things. Arrows are nice and quiet and you can always pull them out and use them again.

I parked my car about a mile from the road that led to the house and covered it up with broken tree branches and bushes. It made pretty good camouflage I thought. As I walked through the woods towards the house, I checked to see if the machetes and axes and other things were still where I had hidden them. It was all still there. Now for my revenge, now for justice.

I hid high up in a tree with my night vision gear and watched them as they started their barbeque and broke out their beers and drinks, they had no idea I was there.

As the party got underway two of them walked off into the woods together obviously for sex. I knew these two. I first met them in a graveyard next to a parade the cast was putting a float in. We smoked a couple of joints together. I knew for a fact they were among the people that lobbied for my removal from the show. They did that behind my back, all the while smiling in my face, even after I gave their new baby a teddy bear. I overheard them laughing when they thought I couldn’t hear about how they just threw it in the trash. They were now nice and isolated from the rest they would die first.

I notched up an arrow in my crossbow and took careful aim watching them for the best moment. I waited until they were in a close embrace up against a tree and fired. The arrow went through the back of his neck and through both their throats and into the tree pinning them to it. They were still alive making gurgling sounds, so I put another through their heads. As I watched them die, I thought to myself Jason Voorhees has nothing on me.

I climbed down from my tree to better pick my next victim. The next one was a good one he was a veteran cast member. I had worked with him many times. In the earlier years he made several jokes about me comparing me to Teddy Ruxpin, a talking teddy bear. He stopped doing that after he watched me in a fight with a drunk and I tossed the guy over a bridge into the Blackstone River, however I never forgot the insults. He walked away from the house to smoke a joint and have a piss. I didn’t want to waste an arrow on this guy; I wanted to do him up close and personal. I took my machete and snuck up from behind. He turned and saw me.

 “You!? What the hell are YOU doing here?”

Those were the last words he would ever speak in this world. Before he could even move, I took his head off with one swipe of my machete. I took his head with me. I thought it might prove useful later.

I figured sooner or later they will make a run for it so I’d better disable their cars. On one car, a pickup truck, I opened the hood and connected a wire to one of the sparkplugs then ran the wire underneath the truck to the gas tank. Then I put the other end of the wire into the gas tank itself. The wire was the same color as the truck and it was dark, so in a panic they would be unlikely to see it. The end result would be when someone started the car, boom! The next car I simply punctured the gas tank to let the gas drain out into a gas can. I thought the gasoline might prove useful later. On another car I loosened the lug nuts on the tires so the tires would fall off. The others I simply flattened the tires. No one would escape me this night.

The owner of the house was a kinky bastard. He enjoyed sex toys and restraints. In his back yard was a human sized turn table with restraints for forced group sex. After a while one of the girls went out back with two guys to play on the turn table. This bitch went with every single guy in the cast but me claiming I was too creepy. Jeeze, a guy gets caught with one damn sheep and he’s marked for life. I waited until she was restrained and blindfolded. After the first man, a heavy-set comic book store owner, inserted himself into her from behind and she opened her mouth to take in the second guy, an equally large man, and would-be politician, I fired from five feet away. The arrow went completely through the first man’s head and into the throat of the second man. They both died instantly, but the man who inserted himself stood rock steady on his feet, his brain had caused some kind of muscle freeze. An extra bonus for me! The man with the arrow in his throat had an arterial spray sending blood down on the woman on the turntable for a few seconds before he fell over. Apparently, she thought he was urinating on her as she squealed in delight—and I’m the creepy one? I ran up quickly and severed the penis of the first man at the root so the shaft stayed in her.

At this point she seemed to realize something was wrong and tried to get free of the restraints. I took her head off with my machete, another souvenir for me to use later. I walked away carrying her head. Before long, the others would start to notice people were missing. So far, the score was six down and twelve to go. This was getting to be fun.

I returned to the woods to plan my next victim and soon I got a two for one. Two cast people walked out the front door heading towards the cars. At first, I was worried they would find the sabotaged cars, but no they just wanted to smoke a couple of joints. One, I knew well, he used to be a very close friend of mine, but when the ouster took place, he didn’t speak up for me. He stood by silently and allowed them to vote me out. His death would be painful.

The other I didn’t know at all but I recognized her from her movie roles. This woman was one of a very few cast members to actually advance to becoming a professional actor. She wasn’t involved with the vote but I really couldn’t leave witnesses so she had to die as well. In this case I simply walked up to them carrying my machete and gas can. “Hello Andy,” I said. “Hold this for me for a moment, will you?” I handed him the gas can. “I need to get at my weed.” This guy was a bigger stoner than me and that’s saying something. His eyes sparkled at the thought of more pot. In one quick motion I swung my machete and decapitated the young actress. Her head seemed to actually live for a few moments before it bled out—her eyes looked at me with a ‘why?’ expression.

“I’m really very sorry,” I told her before she bled out. “I can’t leave witnesses.”

My old friend looked at her headless body in a shocked silent horror. “Shame on you,” I told him. “She was young enough to be your daughter! Suppose your wife Fran learned of this?” I kicked him hard in the testicles. As he dropped to the ground holding his groin, I took the gas can from him and poured the gas all over him. “You should have spoke up for me buddy,” was my last words to him. I walked away about ten feet. I lit one of my arrows on fire and shot him—igniting the gas. Amazingly no one in the house heard the whoosh of the gas going up or smelled the burning flesh. I knew the music was a bit loud and they were all indoors but damn you’d think they would have noticed—something at least. I returned to the darkness of the woods.

I hid in the darkness and watched the house from behind, they still didn’t notice anyone was missing, they were partying so hard. The barbecue was fired up for food later but no one was attending it because they hadn’t put the steaks and such on it yet. I snuck up and closed the lid and placed the head of the man on top of it, once they found him that would really get the party started, at least my party anyway. As a side note to any who read this story, see what happens when you exclude people from your party?

After about a half hour they decided to start cooking the food. Two of the girls went out back to get the barbeque going and saw the head on top of the grill and screamed. The rest ran out to see what was happening and saw the head. Not very far away they saw the turntable with the headless woman and two men. They started to panic and decided to make a run for the cars to get the police. I ran around to the front of the house and threw the head of the woman from the turntable through the window! I crouched behind a big rock with my crossbow at the ready. They all came spilling out the front door at once in a blind panic falling all over each other in a desperate attempt to escape!

I put an arrow through the head of the owner. The kinky bastard was supposed to be my friend as well. He was the cast leader and could have stopped the vote but he let me get railroaded out. That was bad enough, but he didn’t invite me to the party and he invited cast people that hadn’t performed in years. I got him right between the eyes.

A few of them saw me and recognized me, but it didn’t matter—nobody was getting away. They made it to the cars. A few quickly learned all four of their tires had been flattened. One of them learned his car no longer had any gas. They all piled into the remaining car, the pickup truck, the one rigged to explode! The boom was quite satisfying. I thought I got them all but surprisingly one actually climbed out of the wreckage. All four of his limbs were on fire! He screamed in pain and danced a macabre dance trying to put out his flames; he dropped to the ground and trying to roll it out. This was my final stroke of luck for the night; this was the guy that started my ouster vote in the first place. He actually managed to put out his flames and looked up at me from the ground moaning in pain. “You know I could have pissed the fire out for you if you wanted, all you had to do was ask,” I told him as I notched my final arrow and put it through his head.

I collected my crossbow and machete, then looked around to make sure I didn’t leave any evidence of my identity behind. I got in my car and drove away. It was a shame I thought to myself, they had just done the best show ever.

Three months later, after all the police investigations had died off for lack of evidence, I went to the owner of the theater we had performed at for so many years and asked if I could resurrect the show in the memories of all my departed friends. He knew of the ouster of course, but didn’t know I was purposely not invited to the party. Rocky was a money maker for the theater so he readily agreed. I simply took possession of the spotlight and props. I ran an ad in the Providence Journal asking for new cast members to come join our new show. Many people replied including a few old faces that simply weren’t there that night.

THE END

Bio: Ray Prew was originally from Rhode Island, but now lives in Florida. He is a graduate of the New England Institute of Technology. Ray has been a blue-collar worker all his life, and started writing as a hobby. He spent 9 enjoyable years as a phone psychic. Ray’s work has been published in Spinetinglers magazine (6 times) one of the stories was used in a trivia quiz. Two Spinetinglers stories are on You Tube, one story called Some Monsters Are Real is narrated by someone, and the other was made into a short video called "Let Me Out by Ray Prew." He has been published in Blood Moon Rising (7 times including 2 poems), Aphelion magazine (12 times including 2 poems) as well as several other magazines. He has an anthology book of published and unpublished stories available on Amazon called Delightful Nightmares. His work has also appeared in the anthology vicious circle season one put out by sinister grin, and one poem in an anthology of vampire poetry called vampoetry.

E-mail: Ray Prew

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