Creative Writing Clinic Massacre ⋆ Stefan Diamante

Bent over my knee. Plaid miniskirt up around her waist. Bare assed to the class. Save for traces of a red satin thong. Skin on skin as I teach her a valuable lesson.

“A sentence containing a semicolon is two sentences. Write them that way. How many fucking times do I have to tell you that?”

“I’m so sorry, Mr, Diamante. I guess you’ll just have to spank me every time until I get it right.”

“But I keep spanking you and you keep doing it.”

“Exactly.”

The rest of my naughty schoolgirls erupt in giggling. All decked out in their respective costumes. Each expressing her individual identity. Visual metaphors for the creative writing knowledge I’ve been imparting to them. Itself expressed in metaphors. Everything coming full circle. Including me spanking this girl’s butt in front of my audience. Bringing back memories of doing this time after time at bachelorette and birthday parties. Utilizing my stories of those experiences and encouraging my new brand of party girls to follow my lead. Even this event space is reminiscent of places in which I performed. This drab meeting room in all its eggshell paint and tan Berber carpet glory dressed up with colorful lighting and sexy music. Plus champagne on demand. This purple prose contrasting the stripped down writing style I practice and champion. Some things never change.

There’s something comforting about spanking this naughty schoolgirl. I mean, besides placing my hand on a firm round female ass over and over. It’s that everything about delivering these creative writing clinics has gone oh so right. The immense social anxiety I developed from dramas past and carried for so long has been for nothing during these sessions. Not that this has been smooth sailing. I being a hot guy who also happens to be far and away the best writer – because I aim to best my previous efforts with each literary outing – throughout the region pose a threat to many a hideous woman who fancies herself an author. Who “deserves” to be a great writer because “reasons” or some fucking bullshit. Like that gross pig Brenda who heads the state’s unofficial writing council. Or that decrepit old battleaxe Maeve. Deeming herself the dean of creative writers in the state while bulging out one pointless novel after another. But she’s nothing more than a grammar nazi with zero creativity. Also, Maeve is an Irish name that means “the intoxicating one.” More like “the vomit-inducing one” in her case. To say nothing of the various self-described authors, journalists, or girlboss publishers as well as the local library system. All of them pissed off at my existence. But none of them can stop me. So, here I am with my burgeoning storytellers. Showing them how it’s done right.

My students and I have the run of the building tonight. Save for the facility owner and manager. A heavyset middle-aged man named Tim. All too eager to take my bookings for this space. “Yeah, man. You and those women can do anything you want back there. No one will know,” he informs me every time with a wink and a nudge. I could probably get away with paying him in flash fiction tales of sexual orgies. Why aren’t I? Or I could let him watch me administer corporal punishment. Not at the moment, though. He’s busy sanitizing the storeroom after discovering Hank’s spank bank of Lane Bryant underwear ads hidden behind some boxes. Along with a soiled pair of Hank’s pants. Hank is ostensibly the maintenance man at this facility. The reality is that he’s a drunk who does odd jobs for additional income to supplement the modest government stipend he receives because his dad was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. This win-win arrangement provides Tim with cheap albeit shoddy manual labor while allowing Hank to live on Wild Irish Rose and non-filtered GPCs and still pay his rent. I caught Hank enjoying the sight of my naughty schoolgirl. Watching from outside as she walked down the hallway with its wall of windows on one side. From the front entrance to our meeting room in the rear. Thinking he was hidden in the trees but too drunk to conceal his voyeurism. Meh, he seems harmless enough. And my schoolgirl didn’t seem to care. Nor does she care now as she jumps up, lowers her skirt, and heads for the door.

“Sorry. My eye won’t stop itching. It might be pollen. Things are definitely blooming now.”

“Don’t be giving Hank another peep show.”

“Maybe I want to give Hank another peep show.”

“Maybe you’re asking for another spanking, missy.”

“Maybe I am.”

I turn to my other students now caught in another collective fit of giggling. Two or three per table. Sipping champagne. Jotting down notes and ideas on phones, tablets, and laptops. I use the current Tim and Hank drama as an example of writing what you know. Suggesting how Tim or Hank could write about this from his perspective and dress it up in metaphor. The settings are endless. It could be presented as a couple’s spat on a weekend getaway. Maybe a family tragedy. As comedy or drama. Or both. Hell, it could even be a horror story. With blood and guts and everything.

“AAAAH!”

A female voice cuts through the night. Dripping with pure terror. That has to be my naughty schoolgirl.

“Stay here!”

I bolt for the door as my other students get on their phones in unison. The hallway is empty. Illuminated by a dim amber glow. Allowing me to see outside. Nothing but trees and a quiet neighborhood beyond them. Houselights twinkling in a black void. If someone is hiding, they’re doing a better job than Hank. But that’s true of anything Hank does. I sprint down the long corridor on Berber carpet from door to door. All locked. Not a sound as I press my ear against each one. I creep up on Tim’s office door at the end of the line. Slowly reaching for the handle. The door flies open. I throw my back against the wall beside it. Tim stumbles out. Holding a Big Mouth Billy Bass over his stomach. I step in front of him. He looks at me with terror in his eyes. Like he desperately wants to tell me something.

“What’s wrong, Tim?”

He opens his mouth, “Hank…” and blood gushes down his chin. Dropping the Big Mouth Billy Bass. Revealing that he’s been gutted like a bass. A tidal wave of blood and guts and everything rushes from the wide laceration across his gut and splatters all over the floor. I jump back to avoid getting any of it on me. Jumping back again as he falls over face first onto a steaming pile of his own entrails. Billy starts singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and I peer around the doorway into the office. I don’t see anyone else, so I enter. Illuminated by the dim amber glow of a desk lamp. Dead silent. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary aside from Tim’s blood on the carpet. And the stepmom porn on his computer. Actually, that doesn’t seem out of the ordinary at all for him. I hear it. A low rumple. A metallic squink. A galonk. What sounds like someone whispering, “Dear God,” coming from the other side of the wall. Inside the storeroom. Has Hank taken his spanking game to a new and dangerous level? Aww… Fuck it. I guess I’ll go kill him and rescue my naughty schoolgirl. Now she’s really going to get spanked.

I grab the M1911 from Tim’s top right desk drawer. That “bad boy” he liked showing off to everyone but probably should’ve been packing since, you know, he might still be alive if he had. I rack the slide and, unsurprisingly, the chamber was empty. Back into the hallway. Billy is still singing that horrible fucking song. It takes all my might to keep from shooting him. “Priorities, Stefan,” I tell myself. Sneaking around the corner into the reception area. The same combination of trees, houselights, and darkness from the hallway follows via the glass and metal facade. So does the deafening silence. The eerie calm before a storm. And by storm, I mean bloodbath. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s about to occur given the totality of the circumstance so far. Back against the wall. Sliding to the next corner on my way to the storeroom. Noticing the broken glass on the floor below the fire emergency box on the wall. The extinguisher still in place. But the ax is missing. I reach the door. Slightly ajar. Like an engraved invitation just for me. Safety off. Finger on the trigger. I take a deep breath, spin around, kick the door open, and prepare to fire if necessary.

The overhead fluorescent light flickers in an inconsistent beat across a clusterfuck of clutter. Countless boxes piled on the floor and on tables. Awash in a sea of folding chairs. In one of which, at the center of this unblessed mess, sits my naughty schoolgirl. Bound and gagged. Eyes wide. Looking at me with both terror and relief. My deviant imagination runs wild for a split second before Hank reminds me why I’m here. He stumbles out from behind a stack of boxes. Staggering my way. Jesus Christ. I can smell the bum wine and stale cigarette smoke on him from here. Motherfucker looks even more dazed and confused than normal. And that’s saying a lot. I reach back into my bachelorette party days as a cop.

“On the ground, Hank! Now!”

Hank opens his mouth. Blood gushes down his chin as he complies with my order. Albeit involuntarily, Crashing face down on the concrete floor. Smacking into a few chairs along the way. A fire ax buried deep in his back. Well, that’s one mystery solved. I ease my way inside the room. Still on high alert. Having no idea what the fuck is going on here. Not seeing anyone else. But there are plenty of hiding spots. I remove my schoolgirl’s gag and start untying her despite my sexually conflicted feelings.

“Stefan!” she yells.

I look up and see two massive blobs emerging from behind boxes near the door. How those figures managed to squeeze between them and the wall is life’s newest great mystery. Their grotesque visages done no favors by the unflattering lighting. Perfect avatars for the banality of evil. Each wearing a smug grin designed to camouflage low self-esteem that instead enhances it. And each with a butcher knife in hand. Although I’m surprised by this reveal, there’s nothing surprising about how it’s playing out. It’s playing out like the climax in a bad mystery novel. The sort of unoriginal and hamfisted rhetoric I’d expect from would-be storytellers like Brenda and Maeve. I train the pistol on them.

“So…” Brenda proclaims with all the giddiness of a middle-aged white woman drunk on perceived authority and a whole box of wine, “… we finally meet in the flesh.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Au contraire,” Maeve wags her knife at me, “Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.”

“Shut the fuck up, you pig. And ‘au contraire’ doesn’t even work for that.”

“I was utilizing creative license.”

“You don’t believe in creative license. Or creativity. If you did, you wouldn’t have corrected me on the preposition thing. Anyway, enough of this bullshit,” I start debating which one of them to shoot first. Fuck it. I decide to start blasting. Squeezing the trigger. And it’s jammed. Damn it, Tim. Can’t say I’m surprised that he went with a finicky weapon and neglected to maintain it.

Brenda chuckles like a jackass, “I love it when a plot comes together.”

“What are you talking about? You got lucky. And your ‘plot’ has serious holes. There’s absolutely no fucking way in hell you pigs can oink your way out of responsibility for this.”

“Enough! We’ve had enough of your pretty boy transgressive writing challenging us. These whores should be attending our creative writing clinics. But they’re not because of you.”

“Or maybe it’s because you call them whores. And because you’re all shitty writers.”

“Excuse me,” Maeve interjects with equal smugness, “But we’re award-winning writers.”

“And so am I. What’s your fucking point?”

“Language, young man. Our point is that we decide what is and what is not literature in these parts. And we’re putting a stop to this now.”

The hags begin waddling towards me and my schoolgirl. They may outnumber me and be armed, but they’re fat old women. And I’m an athletic young man. They’re fucked as I grab a folding chair and hurl it at them. Knocking the knives from their hands and their pig asses to the floor. Maeve cries out in pain about her hip. I find a new use for the 1911. Pistol whipping the absolute fuck out of Brenda’s cranium. Breaking it wide open. Her brains splattering all over the stained concrete.

“Hey, Maeve. I’m surprised that Brenda had a brain. No matter. Get it?”

“That’s not funny!”

“I think it’s funny,” my schoolgirl giggles.

“Shut up, you shameless hussy. I don’t need to dress like you.”

“That’s not a viable option for you, personally or professionally, and you know it,” I decide it’s time to end this. Kicking Maeve’s nasal bone into her wasted gray matter with the heel of my snakeskin cowboy boot. Watching the blood hemorrhage from her eyes, mouth, and what’s left of her nose, “I thought she’d never shut the fuck up.”

“What’s going on here?”

I turn to see a cop in the doorway. My students gathered behind him. Visually inspecting the carnage surrounding my schoolgirl and me. I turn to face him, “These two murdered Tim and Hank. Then each fell down and suffered a fatal head injury.”

“It’s true, officer,” my schoolgirl nods in agreement, “I saw the whole thing.”

“Good enough for me,” the cop shrugs his shoulders and leaves. I untie my schoolgirl and she stands.

“I guess you’ll be giving me another spanking now.”

“Oh, I think this calls for more than a spanking. Much more,” I once again channel my bachelorette party cop persona, “Bend over and assume the position.”

The other students cheer as I pull down my naughty schoolgirl’s thong and unbutton my black leather pants.

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