Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Artifice of Flesh: Unnatural Perpetrator Department, #2
    Artifice of Flesh: Unnatural Perpetrator Department, #2
    Artifice of Flesh: Unnatural Perpetrator Department, #2
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    Artifice of Flesh: Unnatural Perpetrator Department, #2

    By Reed Alexander and John Baltisberger

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The second book in the UPD Series.

    Dianna has worked hard to integrate into the Unnatural Perpetrators Department, it isn't what she was expecting to do with her life when she joined the FBI, but chasing down supernatural serial killers was certainly interesting work.

    Now a series of incredibly grisly killings has everyone on edge, and the team's supervisory agents Miranda and Ronny are no exception. Forced to bring in a consultant to deal with a killer that flenses its victims and then poses the skeletal remains to mirror classical art, the UPD must work fast or be shut down by their own internal struggles.

    Written by John Baltisberger & Reed Alexander

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMadness Heart Press
    Release dateFeb 6, 2020
    ISBN9781393369684
    Artifice of Flesh: Unnatural Perpetrator Department, #2
    Author

    Reed Alexander

    Reed Alexander is not a pen name used to protect the author from public scrutiny but actually to protect the public from the real weirdo behind the pen name. Getting to know Reed is the social equivalent of getting to know a rabid honey badger with megalomaniacal delusions. It really is better for the public at large to reduce him to a caricature estranged from his actual life. One might otherwise be worried why he’d be allowed to wander unattended without someone on hand ready to administer Thorazine. The focal points of Reed Alexander’s writing is almost always something that “causes him to froth at the mouth,” (in his own words). Whether it’s the politics of the day, uninformed public opinion, what he calls modern anti intellectualism, or pop culture run rampant. Reed always has some level of negative criticism which reduces the public at large to a pack of marauding troglodytes being ruled by used car salesmen. From the perspectives of Reed Alexander, the world is one marvelous catastrophe waiting to happen and this is what motivates him to write. The author attempts to see the world at large from the outside in abstract and uses that as the pinion of his stories. Thus, in essence, Reed Alexander hopes to leave his works behind him as a moral lesson; a sort of “I told you so.” He does this in the hopes that any survivors or intergalactic explorers can look upon his works and hopefully learn a thing or two at the great failed experiment called human society.

    Related to Artifice of Flesh

    Titles in the series (2)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Oct 31, 2024

      It Happened to Me…
      8 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    • Article

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men

      Sep 10, 2020

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men
      8 min read

    • Article

      Murder mystery

      Jan 26, 2023

      Murder mystery
      4 min read

    • Article

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 19, 2020

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Cosy Crime Wave

      Jul 22, 2024

      The feathers covered the hallway carpet. There were more scattered about in the second-best bedroom. The blanket on the second-best bed was littered with the tiny grey tufts, too. Detective Inspector Dixon sighed. Not again, he thought. Not another m

      2 min read

    • Article

      Breaking The Law

      Jan 7, 2020

      Breaking The Law
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Weirdest Ghosts Of All?

      Feb 25, 2021

      The Weirdest Ghosts Of All?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 14, 2024

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      May 18, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Nov 9, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Fright Night

      Dec 17, 2022

      Fright Night
      6 min read

    • Article

      Licensed To Chill

      Feb 24, 2022

      Licensed To Chill
      9 min read

    • Article

      Licensed To Chill

      Feb 24, 2022

      Licensed To Chill
      9 min read

    • Article

      Leviathan

      Aug 10, 2022

      After we killed the passengers, we put the bodies in one of the low-pressure, unheated storage compartments. Some people had wanted to have some kind of solemn burial-in-space thing; that was too ghoulish for most of us, though. Mostly the ones we ki

      25 min read

    • Article

      “What Kind of Kid Would Do This?”: An Excerpt from Rita Cameron’s ‘The House Party’

      Sep 9, 2022

      He’d imagined himself in an office with parquet floors and brass fixtures. Maybe even a bar cart. The reality of public service had turned out to be a little different. The post “What Kind of Kid Would Do This?”: An Excerpt from Rita Cameron’s ‘The H

      6 min read

    • Article

      “Really?”

      Jun 2, 2022

      “Really?”
      6 min read

    • Article

      Framed for MurderBy His Own DNA

      Apr 19, 2018

      We leave traces of our genetic material everywhere, even on things we’ve never touched. That got Lukis Anderson charged with a brutal crime he didn’t commit.

      22 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Bullet in My Arm

      Sep 6, 2018

      The Bullet in My Arm
      13 min read

    • Article

      Our Last Days in Country

      Nov 29, 2018

      Our Last Days in Country
      15 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Feb 24, 2022

      It Happened to Me…
      7 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Feb 24, 2022

      It Happened to Me…
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Artifice of Flesh

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Artifice of Flesh - Reed Alexander

      Alhambra, Granada 1485 - Prologue

      Its first memory was being told to stand perfectly still on the tip of one toe, its other leg bent and raised at the knee, arms embracing the air above. It was told to do many things like that through the beginning of its existence, but the first time was the most crucial memory. Master placed strange cloth about its body, placed a stiff woven wreath around the top of its head. Master adorned its hands and wrists with metal and polished rocks. The ritual was strange indeed, but master was particular about everything's placement, and it was told to move nothing. This seemed simple enough, and at the time, insignificant.  It knew to do what it was told and could do it with ease.

      That was before it began to understand the ritual. Master added different pigmented lacquers to a whitened piece of cloth stretched across a wooden frame. At first, it could not see.  Master always had the back of the cloth facing it. Master studied it intimately as he added

      LAYER AFTER LAYER OF color. Master was making something on the other side of the cloth that had something to do with this bizarre ritual.

      Day in and day out, master would return to it, sit in front of the cloth, add color, and over time become fatigued. Master would leave every night, taking the light with him, leaving it in darkness.

      One day, as the bizarre ritual continued, master suddenly stopped, nodded firmly, picked the cloth up, and turned around with it. Master then placed it on a wall to examine. On the cloth, bathed in color, was a beautiful creature, like master, but dressed as it was decorated. The cloth that hung from its body, in many ways, resembled the creature master had created. Now it understood its purpose for the first time. It understood the ritual entirely, and it would never forget that first moment when the creature of color was revealed to it.

      Over the years, there were many other poses, many different things to wear, and many unusual creatures the master captured with his ritual. But it never forgot the first.

      Grand Pines Lodge

      Agent Ronny stood in the lobby of the Grand Pines Lodge, Spa, and Resort. Everywhere he looked, there were signs of murder. One didn't have to be a trained tracker to see it. Trails of dried blood ran from room to room. Ronny looked a bit out of place with all of the uniformed units swarming about. He wore a simple leather jacket over a white t-shirt and black slacks. He was older than a lot of the field teams there, but his indigenous bloodline kept him looking young. He raised one tanned hand then brushed back his high and tight, before tracing the carnage with his eyes.

      One trail for both the bar-back and chef on duty, which lead from the kitchen, through the bar, and into the beer cellar. Caucasian male, 32, six-foot, 195lbs. African male 54, five foot ten, 365lbs. A trail of blood led to the emergency stairs past the elevators and went all the way to the room of a lone businesswoman, there for a meeting. Spanish female, 35, five foot eight, 145lbs. Chad, Brett, Derek, three frat boys hunting snipe. Found by following a trail of blood from the main lounge by the bar, through the game room, to the utility shack outside. Caucasian Male, 23, five foot ten, 168lbs. Narragansett male, 23, six-foot, 204lbs. African male, 22, six foot six, 281lbs. The night maintenance and groundskeeper found at the end of a trail of blood that led from the side exit, through the lobby and into a display gallery for fine wood arts. Korean male, 62, six foot two, 167lbs. Finally, the last victim, Penny, the night manager. Found in the cold storage of the kitchen. Lock from the inside. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, otherwise perfectly preserved. Caucasian female, 28, five foot eight, 162lbs.

      The rest had their bones methodically removed, leaving flesh, meat, and tendons. Piles of messy little offal that only vaguely resembled the people they once were. Whatever it was removed the bones. Ronny had never heard of anything like it.

      Ho-ly shit, Joe-Jack stepped out from where he'd been hiding behind the front desk. If Ron looked out of place, then Joe-Jack looked absurd. He wore a Dolly Parton t-shirt under a moth-eaten navy blue blazer and blue jeans. While Ronny could be described as tall, dark, and handsome by anyone who had a taste for that sort of thing, Joe-Jack was scrawny, pasty, and gangly. Looks like they fought like hell. Molotov cocktails, a homemade flame-thrower that dun blowed up, all sorts of hack'n and slash'n tools. Took all three fire axes in the building.

      Not the killer, though. These were for defense, Ronny nodded; he was sure of it. He was familiar with at least that much from other slashers. At one point, they even barricaded themselves in the kitchen. It slipped down the vents. Judging by the scuff marks, there must have been at least four survivors in there, all well-armed. But rather than try to fight it, someone actually cut their way back out of the kitchen and tried to make a run for it. The night manager just locked herself in the cooler and blew her own brains out.

      No recordings from security, Joe-Jack shrugged. Whatever it was knew ta wipe the hard drives and destroy all the cameras.

      Ronny cued up his phone as forensics did their thing. Yeah... Chief, we got another one.  Yeah... I'm sure of it.

      Excuse me, who the hell do you think you are? From behind Ronny came an annoyed masculine voice.

      He turned to see a younger agent. Combed back, blond, slick top, aviators, even a manicure.  Dressed to impress and likely fresh out of the academy. In Ronny's experience, bucks like that were out to make a name for themselves; get noticed. A collar like the massacre at Grand Pines could make a young agent's career. UPD had authority, but a greenhorn likely wouldn't have heard of them, and just as likely wouldn't easily give up a collar of this magnitude.

      Where's your senior, son, Ronny was blunt and brushed off the agent's offense.

      Oh, real fucking cute pal, I've been off the leash for half the damn year, the agent explained. It was clear he was going to be a problem. You can't just walk in and take a man's scene without following procedure!

      Can and did, Ronny produced his card with his ID. This falls under the UPD jurisdiction. I don't need to call and ask, and you definitely don't want me to.

      Ronny stared down the agent. He stared back for a moment, but eventually took the card and left to call his CO.

      At that moment, Joe-Jack spoke up. Ronny, I normally trust yer instincts, but you sure this is UPD business? Weird as some of the circumstances were, they're all purty much rationally explainable.

      Then you wanna tell me how a normal killer squeezed themselves down a vent pipe no more than a foot in diameter? How four well-armed individuals were overcome to the point one literally cut themselves out of safety?

      Cabin fever, Joe-Jack nodded. I ain't saying it's a normal thing, but one time my uncle Jimmy and his buddy Carl, they went out on this fishing trip, and, well, I think they may have eaten some of them mushrooms that grow out by the lake, but anywa...

      At that moment, a uni ran out of the far stairwell, down the hall past the two agents, then out the front of the lobby, where he started vomiting.

      Ronny just gave Joe-Jack a look. The two of them drew weapons and proceeded up the stairs.

      I want units on every exit! the young agent called out, following the two.

      Ronny followed a trail of size 12 standard issue boot prints in blood. They led

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1