The Damn Rodents Are Everywhere

by Kevin R. Tipple

About the Author: Kevin R. Tipple reviews books, watches way too much television, and offers unsolicited opinions on anything. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as "Lynx Eye," "Starblade," "Show and Tell," and "The Writer's Post Journal" among others and online at such places as "Mouth Full Of Bullets," "Crime And Suspense," "Mysterical-e" and others.

Excerpt

Have you ever wanted to kill somebody? I have. I did. It was glorious. My problem was the damn body went missing. Yep, the damn thing up and vanished.

You might think I am going to tell you to never kill somebody. Nope. Some folks need killing. What you want to watch for is messing up when you do it. You can watch all the CSI shows and reality mystery shows and cover those bases pretty well. But, you can’t lose the damn body.

You see, I left a perfectly good dead body on the bench down by the lake. The bench that faces that hideous chain link fence those idiots down at City Hall put up after the kid set fire to one of the wooden piers. Back when I was a kid, the marina was full of boats. These days, it is empty and the slips themselves and the surrounding wooden walkways are all slowly disintegrating piece by piece into the lake. The whole thing is one rotting disintegrating mess. After the late-night party where the kid set fire to part of it on accident—allegedly—instead of removing all the wood and cleaning things up, they just put the six-foot-high chain link fence. Does nothing to keep anyone out except for the fishermen who used to go out there. It is also a nifty trash catcher that catches tons of trash. Trash that sits and rots in the chain fence until it is removed every six months or so. Or when the television media comes out and does a story on how nasty things look.

Those stories don’t get much coverage these days with the way the Dallas murder count is soaring. Those guys that do the bio hazard cleanup must be making a killing.

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