Short Story | Fred Aiken Writing

May 8, 2024

A Job Interview

Vicky realized she would be late to the job interview the moment she woke up. It would not matter how quickly she rushed through her morning routine, nor the steps in her routine that she could shorten, like using a Listerine strip rather than brushing her teeth for a full 2 minutes like her dentist had recommended back in the 10th grade when she went in for her sixth cavity of her childhood.

So, while Vicky sat in traffic on I-729, or, as her mom would colloquially refer to it as, Molasses Lane, she thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a small swig from the flask her ex-boyfriend got for her 2 Christmases prior. He hadn’t been her ex when he gifted her the flask, though. In fact, they had been in a happy relationship for the past 3 years, and she had even considered marrying him, if he had asked. But alas, he had not. Rather, her ex-boyfriend had found it more prudent to cheat on her with a coworker of his instead of asking Vicky to marry him. Now all she had to remember him by was the flask, and she used it quite regularly to forget about him as much as possible.

But she does not have a problem with alcohol.

So she keeps telling herself.

She figured she could take a couple of gulps from the flask in the parking lot right before rushing into the door. Perhaps the liquor would give her the confidence to come up with a brilliant excuse as to why she was running late and why the company should still hire her despite her running late.

First impressions. First impressions. A small voice dawdled through her head.

A part of her also consistently chose chaos, and she assumed that because she was running late to the job interview, she might as well take the edge off and let out the sting of not being hired once again. Essentially, reject the job before the job rejected her. Something like that. The logic was definitely nestled somewhere in what she convinced herself of. Also, the liquor helped with the searing headache.

A warming calm washed over her. She pulled down the sun visor and checked herself in the mirror. She noticed beads of sweat washing down her face, ruining what little makeup she had on. But nothing too noticeable. She knows she looks a mess. Though perhaps it will be to her benefit. She’s both received a free beer or two for either looking pretty and looking disheveled, depending on the night. So maybe she would get a sympathy hire. One could hope, she thought.

Another swig for good luck.

Good luck, she said into the sun visor.

The interview was a complete mess. She didn’t need the hindsight of sobering up to realize that. She slurred her words. She was pretty sure the hiring manager looked deep within her soul to be able to tell that she was a no good, lying, piece of shit, or perhaps he was amazed someone’s eyes could be as blood-shot as hers that early in the morning. At the end of the interview, she expected to get up as gracefully as she could in her condition, shake the guys hand, and walk out to her car where at least she could take another sip from her trusty flask that never judged or cared how much she drank.

Instead, she heard the words she was least expecting to hear that day. “Welcome aboard. We’re glad you’re here. We think you do well.”

The man in a white lab coat shook her hand and then had Vicky sign a stack of papers before ushering her into a brand new role to fill. A new job, a new life, a new everything, she imagined. Perhaps she would finally be able to get control.

May 7, 2024

private eye//watching what’s coming next

I’ve never stalked. I’m not a stalker. Despite what some of the people I’ve tailed have called me. The difference between a stalker and an investigator is that I’m paid to follow certain people around. I guess a similar distinction can be made between a prostitute and a porn star; the camera.

But like most people, I don’t enjoy my job. I sort of fell into it. I won’t bore you with the details of the circuitous career path that led to me becoming a private investigator, but I will say that it is quite a boring story.

Most of the cases I deal with are boring, as well. It’s mostly spouses wanting me to follow their significant other to see if they’re cheating or actually working late like they claim to be. Then there’s the occasional missing kid or ransom case, in which the cops came to a dead end or the ransomers threatened the parents not to go to the cops and so instead they came to me to help them find their child.

But in the case that I’m working on at the moment, well, I don’t understand it at all. I was hired to follow this guy named Samuel.

Samuel is a curious case. A bit morbid, if I’m being completely honest. He has a compulsive routine that he barely deviates from. He wakes up at 5am. He fixes either coffee or black tea, then reads the same book, Infinite Jest, before getting into traffic for his morning commute. I suppose Samuel’s job isn’t all that boring, if I’m being perfectly honest.

You see, Samuel does not have a traditional 9-to-5 office sort of job. One might say that Samuel works for himself. Others might say that Samuel does not work at all. Though he does sustain himself and his lifestyle off of what he does.

Samuel is a serial killer. Or at least that’s the conclusion that I’ve come to. I’ve seen Samuel kill 3 women, 2 women, and a number of different animals, from crows to cats to rats. I watched him succumb to a level of depravity that I have never witnessed before, nor did I think was possible outside of movies and videogames. I do feel ashamed for not contacting the police, I should say. I wanted to, I really did. But I was contractually obligated not to because, you see, Samuel was the one that hired me to follow him around. When he initially contacted me about the job, I thought he was off his rocker. But I figured if a guy was going to pay me to just follow him around and observe him for a couple of weeks, then so be it. Might as well collect on an easy paycheck, I thought.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, as it goes.

After witnessing Samuel kill quite a few people and documenting all of it, I went to Samuel to hand over all the evidence I had collected of him. I asked him why. Why did he want a private investigator to follow him and take pictures of everything he did, especially since it was all incredibly illegal.

“I got tired of no one seeing my work. The thrill of killing people lost its romance a long time ago, and now it’s more of a chore. I figured if I had someone following me around and collecting evidence against me, then it might be fun again. I’m no Zodiac Killer, or anything. I didn’t want to be caught by the police. But I figured if I could find the right private investigator, like yourself, to document my exploits without turning me into the police, then I would get some of the spark that I lost in my killing some time ago.”

“And did you? Did it somehow enhance the experience?” I don’t know why I asked. It wasn’t like I cared all that much. When it was all said and done, I was repulsed by the sight of Samuel. I wanted to be as far away from him as possible. But I sometimes can’t help myself, especially when it comes to paying customers. I find myself engaged in polite conversation, no matter where it takes me.

“A little bit. I have you to thank for that. It was nowhere near the serotonin hit that it was back in my twenties. But I will say that I kinda enjoyed the idea of knowing someone was following me as I hunted.”

“Still, even though you didn’t taunt the cops or anything, it still seems risky hiring a private investigator like myself to follow you around and document your kills.”

“I agree. But I always had a failsafe built in just in case you didn’t uphold your part of the deal in keeping our business discreet.”

Samuel knocked me over the head with an unidentifiable object. I suppose the exact nature of the object doesn’t quite matter, so much so that it was thick and solid enough to leave a welt the size of a grapefruit on my forehead, along with a throbbing headache that might be indicative of a concussion. Given hindsight, I should have known. I should have known a serial killer wouldn’t hire me to document their crimes and then, what, just let me go about my business-as-usual life.

I’m not sure if this will reach anyone that will be able to do anything about this, but I’d at least like to put it out there in the universe before I die that Samuel did it. Samuel was the one that killed me.

April 28, 2024

El Tigre

I don’t know why people call him El Tigre. I think it might have something to do with when he was a kid and every Halloween his mother would paint Randall in orange and black body paint and pin an orange and black tail to his black gym shorts and he would go around the neighborhood roaring at adults that handed him candy. His mother was obsessed with Winnie the Pooh when she was growing up, and she most identified with Tigger and his boundless, imaginary energy that she suspected, in retrospect, and after years of psychology training and study, was due to her undiagnosed adolescent ADHD. A neighbor of Randall’s, a Guatemalan husband and wife that had fled the country during the mass genocides of the 1980’s thought Randall was adorable and began calling him El Tigre whenever they saw him walking and playing around the cul-de-sac, and the nickname sort of stuck.

So, I guess that is to say, I do kinda know why they call him El Tigre. At least, I knew how he got the name. Why and how the nickname stuck into Randall’s adulthood, well, I guess that’s more of a mystery.

When Randall turned 16, he began to workout furiously. He obsessed over becoming muscular and tough and strong. He needed to be the strongest kid in his class. He did not have the usual reasons, such as being bullied when he was younger and wanting to exact some amount of revenge on his torturers, nor did Randall play any sports that required him to be in such physical shape. But rather, Randall got it in his head one day that in order to go from being a child to a young adult to a one day full-fledged adult, he would need to have muscles in order to do so.

His mother blamed television for such an influence, but due to the serotonin release he received when working out and how happy and well-rounded he became as a result of his muscular obsession and improvement, she did not stop him. Rather, her tacitness became passive approval of her son’s change in mood and behavior.

Despite not searching to join or become a part of a school team sport, the wrestling coach at Randall’s school sought him out after witnessing his pupil’s sudden change in stature and form. Coach Bilsby approached Randall one day after gym class and told Randall that he would be perfect for wrestling.

In Randall’s mind, he instinctively went to WWE-style wrestling, and thus he agreed to come to the team’s next practice. He would declare to his teammates that his wrestling name was El Tigre.

But alas, traditional wrestling was not what Randall expected. He watched as the other boys in spandex and sweat tussled on the ground. To Randall, the other boys looked to be having a seizure while hugging one another in outfits that left little to the imagination. The gym smelled like adolescent sweat and dirty sneakers. The entire ambiance of wrestling lost its allure for Randall pretty quickly, and he declined Coach Bilsby’s offer to join the wrestling team.

Randall sought grander aspirations. So, as any teenager that watched grownups in colorful spandex getups and made-up names and personas, Randall took his childhood nickname, El Tigre, and made his own wrestling persona from it. That’s how we got El Tigre. It’s how I came to know him, coming up at the same time in the amateur wrestling circuit. It’s how I ended up in the hospital after El Tigre taped a pair of ham spirals to his hands and beat me mercilessly until I was unconscious during our matchup. As I lay bleeding from multiple orifices, fellow amateur wrestlers and promoters had to pull El Tigre off of me as the crowd cheered and screeched their approval. El Tigre! El Tigre! I heard. And that’s the last I remembered.